The Parcel Read Online Free PDF Page A

this frenzied menagerie they were insects, insignificant yet capable of transmitting disease. Way above these women, on the rooftop, three men lay sprawled like panthers on a tree branch, scanning the labyrinth of streets below. These were the “watchers,”the eyes of the brothel, who noticed the movement of the flora and fauna beneath. Even a slight deviation from any of their prostitutes, a single attempt to move beyond their allocated boundaries, and they were beaten with wooden sticks the way mattresses are thrashed until the dust comes out, then slowly settles back again.
    There were scores of brothels such as this one, some smaller, some larger, and even though the district spread out over fourteen lanes, the majority of the brothels conglomerated between Lanes Fourteen to Ten, stuck together in desperation, conspiring to form one of Asia’s largest red-light areas. When Madhu had been in school, when she’d worn a boy’s uniform, she had learned about a triangle somewhere far away, and how people got sucked through it into another world. The red-light district was exactly like that. Most of the prostitutes had been tricked into landing here, some came on purpose, but everyone got lost in its black hole of existence. It slowly stripped away the past until you were reduced to a nameless, past-less creature unable to find a way out.
    The world saw the prostitutes standing on display behind huge windows with bars and called these rooms “The Cages,” but Madhu knew there was only one cage. It started at Alexandra Cinema and went all the way down to Underwear Tree. This was a cage without bars, and it had a name, and if Madhu were to come back to earth in another life, she would do so as a Mumbai tourist guide, and her mother-father would know this from the start because the minute she slid down the clouds and into her mother’s womb and out again, she would begin speaking, and her first words would point to this open-air cage, to this wound in the city, and as more and more nurses and doctorsand ward boys gathered around, she would announce with the pomp and splendour of a lion tamer, “Welcome to the Cage. Welcome to Kamathipura.”
    —
    As Madhu climbed the stairs to Padma’s brothel, her slipper got stuck in a nail. Perhaps it was a sign for her to stop and turn back. But no, that was not possible. It was thanks to Padma that gurumai was able to own her current abode. Here, in the district, favours stretched on for decades and had more value than currency. Padma had known that by helping gurumai, she would have access to all her hijras as well, and they would have no choice but to do her bidding, which was why Madhu was climbing her stairs now.
    It was a long, steep walk to the first floor, thirty stairs in all, through passages sprayed with paan and urine, until Madhu reached the reception area. The first floor was where the more expensive, cleaner women were housed. A bearded guard sat on a stool, but did not flinch when he saw Madhu. A hijra was hardly a matter of concern or importance. The guard was more interested in making sure that the tourists Nirmal had brought up were feeling at home. They were seated on a sunken sofa in the “showroom,” cold beers in their hands.
    She moved on to the second floor, the clash of light and darkness jarring. It made no sense to a visitor, the way the showroom was bursting with light but the corridors and stairs were uneven, shadowy crevasses where one had to watch each step, eyes adjusting like an animal’s. This set-up was for the police, in case of the obligatory raid. The wiring of the building was in such disarray that there wasn’t a central fuse for theguards to snap shut. So it was prudent to keep the stairs in darkness so the insides of the brothel could go dead and quiet when needed, and just as quickly come back to rude life.
    The second floor was where the second- and third-hand goods were stored. It was the haunt of truck drivers, labourers, servants,