"I'll see you back at the room, Prabu," I replied, smiling politely at the woman. I offered her a little bow, and took her scornful snarl with me back to our room.
I thought to use the time to update my Marathi dictionary. There were already some six hundred words from everyday usage in the list. I'd made the notes on scraps of paper, as people in the village had given me words and phrases, before transferring them to a sturdy journal for future reference. The last and latest of those notes were spread out on a little writing table, and I'd just begun to enter them in my journal when the door sprung open and Prabaker swaggered into the room. He walked past me without speaking, and fell onto his back on his bed. About nine minutes had passed since I'd left him at the prostitute's door.
"Oh, Lin!" he moaned happily, grinning up at the ceiling. "I knew it. I knew she was a full-of-experience woman."
I stared at him in bewilderment.
"Ah, yes!" he gushed, sitting up and letting his short legs swing from the bed. "She gave me a big money's worth. And I gave it to her a very, very good sex also. And now! Let's go out! We will be having some foods, and some drinks, and a party!"
"If you're sure you've got the strength," I muttered.
"Oh, no need for strength in this place, baba. This place I'm taking you is such a fine place that very often you can even sit down while you are drinking."
As good as his word, Prabaker directed us to a hovel, about an hour's walk past the last bus stop on the outskirts of the town.
With a round of drinks for the house, we insinuated ourselves into the crush of dusty, determined drinkers who occupied the bar's one narrow stone bench. The place was what Australians call a sly grog shop: an unlicensed bar, where men buy over-proof alcohol at under-the-counter prices.
The men we joined in the bar were workers, farmers, and a routine assortment of lawbreakers. They all wore sullen, persecuted expressions. They said little, or nothing at all. Fierce grimaces disfigured them as they drank the foul-tasting, homemade alcohol, and they followed each glass with a miscellany of grunts, groans, and gagging sounds. When we joined them, Prabaker and I consumed the drinks at a gulp, pinching our noses with one hand and hurling the noxious, chemurgic liquid down our open throats. By means of a fierce determination, we summoned the will to keep the poison in our bellies. And when sufficiently recovered we launched ourselves, with no little reluctance, into the next venomous round.
It was a grim and pleasureless business. The strain showed on every face. Some found the going too hard and slunk away, defeated. Some faltered, but were pressed on by the anguished encouragements of fellow sufferers. Prabaker lingered long over his fifth glass of the volatile fluid. I thought he was about to admit defeat, but at last he gasped and spluttered his way through to empty the glass. Then one man threw his glass aside, stood up, and moved to the centre of the shabby little room. He began to sing in a roaring, off-key voice, and because every man of us cheered our passionate and peremptory approval, we all knew that we were drunk.
One by one, we sang a song in turn. A weeping rendition of the Indian national anthem was followed by religious devotionals.
Hindi love songs jingled beside heart-breaking gazals. The two burly waiters recognised the new stage of inebriation, and abandoned their drinks trays and glasses for a while. They took up their positions, sitting on stools on either side of the entrance door. They smiled broadly, nodded, wagged their heads, and cradled long, thick, wooden clubs in the tender embrace of their meaty arms. We all clapped and cheered, with every song. When it was my turn, I sang-I don't know why-the old Kinks' song, "You Really Got Me":
Girl, you really got me goin'
You got me so I can't sleep at night...
I was drunk enough to coach Prabaker, and he was drunk enough to learn the chorus.
Oh, yes, by God, you are a girl!
And you really, really got me, isn't it going?
We were still singing on the dark, deserted stretch of road, leading back to town. We were still singing when the white Ambassador car cruised past us slowly, and turned. And we were still singing when the car cruised past us again, and then turned one more time to block our path on the shoulder of the road. Four men got out of the car, and one stayed behind the wheel. The tallest of the men grabbed at my shirt and barked a command at me in Marathi.
"What is this?" I slurred back at him, in Marathi.
