Farhan Wahab
Days are tricky as dogs, you don’t know what they will offer you on the next day even if you had been running on your own routine. I was really tired of handling everything on my own.
I had been so heartbroken, kind of restless, tried to figure out the reason but couldn’t, even tried to read ‘Living In The End Times’ that I had bought last week in an old bookstore. When I bought that, I thought I could finish it in two days or so: I gave a try that didn’t work, couldn’t do it because my mind wasn’t ready to absorb the intellectual stimulations. So I had a few bottles of beers and a rolled up joint, but still felt bad about everything: self -loathing, anxiety everything was playing a big role.
Have you ever experienced all these without a proper reason?
No, right? I’m that kind of an asshole, I get everything without reasons. I think I’m having this little visit of misery just because of her.
My girlfriend!
I have been with her for 2 years and this is not my typical affair. It is a bit different from my previous fuck ups. I had this weird thought about love: ‘there was no such thing called love’. It is a fancy way of putting our possessiveness. This has been my credo in the case of love.
But when this chick came along, in my way, it had begun to make some differences in my so-called definition for love. Once I had to cry for her and cried then thought love does exist.
I don’t want to make you bored with my half boiled philosophical mess ups, so let’s come to the point.
Our last conversation wasn’t a pleasurable one but that didn’t affect me that much, maybe 10 years of the same routine has brought me to this emptiness inside me. Anyway I said, everything had to fuck off and got my ass out to find myself at a karaoke bar.
I know this bar nearby my place, I have been going there for years.
Just a small walk through Rohini Road.
They sell alcohol to a shit load of alcoholic dumps like myself, I like their lighting setups and the kind of blackish atmosphere everywhere, but in the middle of the hall there is this small stage where the bar girls dance for their customers’ pleasure, Some say this place is owned by a politician and the former neighbourhood thug but who gives a fuck, as long as they serve the best non adulterated alcohol.
On my way to the karaoke, I saw a few gym boys returning from a flesh orgy. I always hated those gym boys, just for their waxed chest and pumped up biceps displaying them everywhere with endless pride. They remind me of high-class hookers. As I was passing them, I could smell the dirty sweat.
Eventually, I reached the bar, They charge 500 rupees for the entrance, went in and ordered a peg of Absolut vodka. I’ve seen many people take vodka with orange juice.
Fuck ! that sucks, and is so disgusting, if you want to taste the alcohol, you should take it as it is. Why do we need to mix things that fuck up the taste?
I sat down at a corner table so I could observe all the absurdities that take place in that godforsaken place, this little house of crime that receives the visits of many different highly talented individuals such as gangsters, bureaucrats, ordinary government servants, cops, petty bourgeois and eccentrics like myself. They don’t have waiters, only half naked waitresses to oblige you with sexy boobs and thighs.
It’s a good combination. isn’t it? Selling alcohol while showing the flesh that increases the sale. Dumps drink more alcohol when they are served by chicks, additionally all of them are with tight pants that display the thighs, on top, the cleavages of them are visible, you get a few chicks in the middle of the bar, they dance to some shitty Bollywood songs, whenever I go there I badly curse the DJ bugger for his bad taste in music. It seems more like a musical mess.
Oh God! why don’t you play some good music from your iPod to musically enlighten these bastards? I wish I had been born in the 70s or 80s because The Beatles and The Doors were their mainstream, but look at this generation we are struck with that vulgar kid Justin Bieber and that high-class hooker Taylor Swift and they run the show. They are the musical mainstream of this digitally fucked up generation which I belong to.
I think about the 70s and 80s people, how they witnessed many revolts and uprisings but this era is so much worse – how bad it is, to live in this! I often feel as if I’m culturally orphaned – a person who is lost in the middle of nowhere because I grew up listening to those eighties bands and my literature collections were Russian classics because of my utterly failed communist father, the man who couldn’t cope with the third world hangover of capitalism.
So whenever I come to this bar, I would listen to Doors or Eagles on my iPod to protect myself from that musical mess while I’m drinking,
I would be looking at those dancing girls so it turns out as they dance to Eagle’s ‘Witchy Woman” or “One Of These Nights “.
Next, to my table, there was this guy, he was rubbing the waitress’s ass and she pours more Red Label into his glass. ‘What a way to sell bloody alcohol’.
He looked like he is in his late 50s. His outfit and his bag told me he is another corrupted employee of this hopelessly malnourished system. His face carried a bureaucratic vulgar smile, so that made my assumption true.
And finally this girl came to take my second drink order, and I asked her to bring me Hennessy cognac. I thought that could take out “my self -sympathetic grieving for no reason”. She brought what I ordered and left me with my bill. I began to drink it while replaying in mind the conversation which I had with my girlfriend, we never fought over personal things because we didn’t find our flaws and fix points in the beginning days like a military chief who aims to carry out a successful operation, but we fought over literature and other shitty political things. She always read mainstream books and watched mainstream movies because she firmly believes that popular stuff could only bring back a change and serious stuff is just for some crackheads like myself. I had no complaint about that, but when she talks she holds up as admirable the mainstream values that those things teach.
When that happens, I go mad but somehow we managed to be together. Love is a disaster that ruins everything: that is the biggest reason for all our fuck ups. Having said that, still, I feel really happy, when I’m madly in love with her and I would feel really sad when I stop loving her, the love and the deep lust had been the glue of our relationship. At our last meeting, she was talking about CSR (corporate social responsibility) and praised a thousand times over those corporate heads, and championed their successful journey. That really irritated me intensely, sense but after all, it was her, so I tolerated and didn’t say anything. If it was a friend of mine, definitely I would have smashed his bloody nose. As I’m madly in bloody love with her, secretly inside of me, at a corner table I was enjoying her euphoria.
But at the last, I did a stupid thing to ruin everything. Sometimes, when you are entertained by stupid arguments, you ought to keep your mouth shut. A little smile or ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ should be the answers but if you try to give your intellectuality a shot then that fucks things up. I said to her she was so shallow and her ideas are the garbage of corporate media.
There you go, she got angry and ran out on me, saying that I was a male chauvinist pig.
By the time I returned from her, I had finished my drink so I began to roll my cigarette and smoked but still none of that made any difference, I felt utterly bored by everything around me, so I decided to get my ass out of that place, and went to the bartender and paid the bill. While I was leaving the place I saw that bureaucratic guy still had his hands on that young waitress’s ass.
I played Javier Navarrette’s music on my iPod and walked under the yellow light, which was seeping everywhere like a flood.
I was reaching the darkness of Rohini Road. How many times I have thought about this name “Rohini “, I am kind of stuck with it, who possibly could have put this name on a street sign? What was the reason? Who was that chick ‘Rohini “?
It is an elite neighbourhood, both sides of the road accommodated big houses with big gates, every gate carried a “Beware of The Dog” sign.
But the name of the street “Rohini” keeps provoking me to find out the story behind that goddamn name.
Maybe that is the name of the biggest elite of the neighbourhood who had given some of her lands for the road, or she might have thrown out a little part of her wealth for the school which is in this area, or a rich man’s vulgar daughter who happened to be the dream girl of many men in this neighbourhood.
Only God knows,
I always fantasise the last hypothesis, because I like it. I know it is a weird thought but it sounds so interesting. Doesn’t it?
As I was walking, I got myself into many random thoughts: more than 10 years of solitary life has brought me many strange and weird habits. I hate to mingle with people, my comfort zone is so small, and I have got only a few people. All of them had no criticisms about me or my life except for one thing: every one of them thinks that I’m a lonely narcissist who cruelly enjoys his miserable fucked up solitude. What they don’t understand is!
I tell them this:
‘I’m not lonely. I just live alone’
An absolute punch to knock them.
Basically, I don’t hate anyone, with thousands of complaints. I feel more comfortable when I’m alone than being with people, hearing their most boring whining that’s like you are sitting at your own funeral. Another benefit of being alone is that your happiness doesn’t have to depend on someone else’s presence: if you get familiar or get engaged with people, then you will also begin to complain about everyone, you would spend your evenings worrying about someone else’s sickness or complaining about their mad behaviours.
I have this uncle, a distant relation of my mum’s, he lives next to my neighbourhood: whenever he sees me he would begin to preach religion. That will go on for hours. When he finishes the sermon he stops it with a vulgar note about a third person.
So I prefer to be alone in my own hell.
When I’m alone, I can live in my own world which doesn’t take anything seriously. I don’t make judgements, I would like to see everything with utmost parody.
Oh god, walking with all these thoughts without a smoke makes me tired so I stopped at this bus stand to roll a cigarette. It had three seats, courtesy of the Urban Development Authority, enjoying the tax money because in the third world these are the only things that you get to enjoy the maximum out of your hard-earned tax money that you indirectly pay.
I suddenly heard a female voice, and I looked back and there was a woman standing behind me.
She asked me if I had a lighter.
I said “yes”, and gave my zippo to light her cigarette. As she was lighting the cigarette she sat next to me. I threw a sight on her to see the face and realised that she is one of those people I call roadside assistance.
Yes! people call some police people ‘roadside assistance’, but she wasn’t a police officer, she was a prostitute. I mean the civilised people would call them commercial sex workers, some call them sluts or whores, jargonistic mess ups.
Anyway, forget about it!
She used the zippo with a great style and handed it over to me saying,
‘ pretty good lighter’, and asked me the price. I said it was a gift from a friend, and she noticed my other hand and suspiciously asked
‘Was it a joint that I was rolling ?’
I immediately denied that and said it was a cigarette, again surprisingly she said I was lying.
After that I had to show the pack of the tobacco, to make her believe that it was just wet tobacco.
She had big eyes and when she talks they are always wide open with awe, somehow she was so different from other prostitutes that I have seen in my goddamn life. Her skin was dark – a dusky beauty!
She was so beautiful, I noticed her hands: she had long beautiful fingers and her nails were nicely painted in a red colour. I have got this weird thing, I mostly get aroused by beautiful fingers or the skin wrinkles of a woman, rather than by big boobs. Because I’m a man of simple pleasures.
The way she holds the cigarette reminds me of 80s Hollywood movies, holding the cigarette in the bottom of two fingers and inhaling the smoke when she exhales it, her head goes up with the smoke and she is making rings as if she was fucking orgasming or something
I really enjoyed it, by the time I fixed my cigarette and put that between my lips to light it up, she had almost finished half of her cigarette.
I asked her who she is.
‘Oh C’mon! don’t you see? I’m a roadside whore. Do I look like a housewife who roams the city for unusual fantasies?C’mon! I’m the whore of madtown.’
Those were the exact words she said.
When she was saying that, she laughed out loud, and looked at me for my reply.
I said nothing but gave her a little smile.
I asked why she was not busy at this time, especially since it was a Saturday night.
She put the cigarette butt on the ground, and said,
‘Two boys took me to an old railway station, they agreed Rs.5000/= for both each for one hour but it took only 30 minutes for both of them because the bastards couldn’t go further, they opened up their zip and fucked, but once they cum they just got tired. They were high on booze and coke
Is that my fault?
After they fucked me, they threw just Rs.2500/= on my face. I argued to get the full amount which they promised to pay. And I got angry and said it wasn’t my fault that they came. But they paid the full amount so I’m done for the day.’
I didn’t say anything.
Two or three vehicles passed by, the street was so dark but the Coca-Cola advertising board provided us with the light. On that Sangakkara was standing with that ridiculously intolerable dirty salesman smile, with that same fake rebellious body which the entire world fantasises about.
Fuck’kkk !!
She threw the cigarette butt away and took another. I gave her the lighter but this time that didn’t work. She tried two times and gave it to me. I shook it twice, but still, it didn’t work.
So she opened her bag to find one.
‘What happened to this little fucker all of a sudden?’
‘No! I think it’s running out of gas.’
‘Let’s see I might have a lighter in my bag’ she said and took her bag to find one.
The moment she opened her handbag to find a lighter, it fell off on the floor. Bitch was high, I reckoned. Whatever she had inside her bag everything was visible now. She had a shit load of condom packs, some cigarettes, and makeup stuff.
I asked her how come she was carrying so many condoms.
Irritatingly, she replied while collecting all of them,
‘I and my friends had gone to Ms.Arthi’s office for a class. It’s about how to fuck safely. They even taught us how to use this rubber thing properly, they had plastic peckers. Those are bigger than you have. You know I have never seen such big dicks in all these years, but they gave us good food! Buriyani, Pepsi, and Rs.4000 /= money when we were leaving. Ms.Arthi and other madams gave us lots of these for free, in shops, these are very expensive nowadays.’
I was like: fuck! what the hell is this?
I understood why my friends call those prostitutes ‘condom teachers’ but my perverted consciousness led my eyes and I was staring at those silver packs which carried the government logo on them, a curiosity was spreading through my mind. I couldn’t think of anything else. My veins of perversion were aroused to seek some instant pleasures.
I badly wanted to have her lips on my dingus, my mind was seeking for a justification to do that.
In a single minute, I was sweating but she was saying something: I couldn’t get what she was saying.
I even thought to fuck her but my corrupted middle-class psyche wasn’t ready to penetrate its dick through a roadside whore’s pussy, just because her vagina has been repeatedly penetrated by hundreds of dirty fuckers who rot on the streets but that psyche found her mouth so pure. What a depraved bastard I was.
Still, I wasn’t convinced, as I had been contemplating to get a blow job from her, I needed her to blow me.
Suddenly she slapped me on my shoulder. It was like waking up from a deep sleep in an evening of summer or like someone pinching you while you are daydreaming.
Bitch !
She asked
‘Hey ! you wanna cigarette?’
I said, ‘I will have mine ‘
‘No ! just have one of these.’
‘No ! that alright! thank you.’
She had begun to talk about something, but my mind wasn’t following her blabbering. I looked at her face, she was telling me something, her hands were flying on the air here and there, it was like a teacher who is trying to explain the theory of evolution to her sincere student.
I rolled a cigarette and lit it up.
She asked for a puff.
After a deep inhale, she gave it back to me saying it doesn’t hit like gold leaf.
I just smiled.
Again my mind begun to contemplate, I was trying to gather all the justifications to convince myself, but I felt really bad about this attempt, I’m a man of simple pleasures as I said earlier. If I needed something I would do it straight away, but here I’m disturbed in a strange way, so I put a restraining order on my sudden erection and listened to her.
It seemed like she was enjoying the moment with those cigarettes. I remembered what she said about her plans for that night, my mind said every night she is sucking someone out for her bread and butter. At least tonight somebody should let her enjoy on her own. I realised that there were still some leftovers of compassion in my decrepit heart, so I decided not to be bothered.
A little guilt goes a long way.
Basically, I got some policies for myself: I do everything. I am a manifested physical hedonist. Sleeping with women, smoking joints now and then, and a world-class alcoholic but if something brings me guilt I won’t do, it doesn’t matter what it is. We do things to be happy, a pleasure should bring us nothing but happiness. If that works the other way around, then what is the point of doing it.
In this case, I really felt bad about ruining her evening so I let it go, thinking to jerk off if needed!
Later on, I was ashamed of my pseudo-humanism and cursed it for missing those lips on my dingus.
She asked me if I smoke weed. I said, I do smoke it, but not every day.
She started to talk about that shit.
You know every Sunday I would smoke weed with my friends mostly at the beach where we could get stoned and sleep on the sand.
It’s so fun. Man! You should try that.
She asked me if I was from this neighbourhood.
I said ‘ yes ‘
Then she told me the Police Inspector of this part of the town also lives on this street.
I said I didn’t know that.
‘Oh, you don’t know him! What kind of a man are you? You live here and you don’t know your neighbours?’.
I said ‘C’mon! who gives a fuck about those things? ‘
‘Bastard’s name is Duttugemunu. Don’t you know him? ‘
Again I said, ‘No.’
‘He is a big-time customer of mine, whenever he does night duty he would call me for a gig ‘.
When she was telling me this, her face had this insulting smirk which is so offensive.
I asked what’s so funny about that.
Since she is a whore definitely she would be called by those johns.
She laughed her ass off.
She asked me to promise her that I wouldn’t share the secret which she was about to share.
I was puzzled and said I promise at any cost.
I will keep her little secret inside of me, if I ever revealed it, then I would ask her to come and chop my dingus to pieces.
She laughed and slapped on my shoulder!
And she came closer to me and said.
‘That idiot got a micropenis, he cannot fuck anyone, whenever he takes off his clothes in front of me, I would laugh, so first, he begins his play by slapping me or biting my thighs. He would spend two hours with me – during that time he doesn’t do much, mostly, he stares at my naked body. At the last, definitely, I would get more bites or sometimes cigarette burns”
As she was telling me all these she lifted up her skirt and showed me the burned scars on her thighs.
She went on talking.
‘Bugger has no wife, earlier he used to sleep with some boys, now he has me and whatever he does, he pays me well. But I hate that uppity bastard for who he is’
‘Now tell me I’m the whore of madtown. Right? Because I fuck the master of the town.’
I replied,
‘No ! you are the crazy queen of mad town.’
‘No ! you don’t know this town, it seems so innocent but it is not. This bloody town is filled with bastards and dumb fucks, you don’t know anything because you live in the backyard of this posh toilet, is not it so?’
I laughed.
I had begun to like her little jokes.
‘Look at these people ! they all live with fucking dogs, not with humans. You know why I hate dogs, they scared the shit out of me, I don’t even take them near.’
I said, ‘You are so rude’.
She denied,
‘No! I’m afraid of them. When I go home I take a three-wheeler from the bus halt to my place because my shitty road is the nightclub of street dogs.’
I asked if she had a boyfriend.
‘Who would fall in love with a whore ?’
She stopped talking for a while.
I felt a bit embarrassed, about asking stupid questions.
‘But one crazy guy did. It’s my Sriyantha, he was a good client of mine wherever he comes to me he would bring roast beef and two bottles of beer. You know K cider? it’s a foreign one. He drinks that so I would get one from him. Actually, he does not fuck, he makes love to me, he is the craziest person I have ever seen. He likes my toes. When he talks, he would be holding my toes in his hand and rubs because he got this weird taste.’
When she was telling all these, her melancholic eyes had been widely opened and I saw something in her eyes that cannot be explained. You know what?
Never try to look into people’s eyes those are tricky, especially big wide open eyes, you would face the consequences later on, that could haunt you, kind of in waves that might attack your consciousness, believe me, that is the recipe for disaster.
She continued,
‘This went on for like one year, he had plans to settle down in Jaffna because they were giving land to some people who are from Colombo, he had been working for this bastard minister. ‘
‘Who is that?’
‘Disanayake! This thug guy with big muscles, don’t you know him ?’
‘Oh ok! That goon I know. C’ mon! ‘
‘On the Election Day, they had a big shootout that was between those two bastard MPs gangs. Baby Mahatya’s people and this Dissanayake’s gang.
Sriyantha was there at the election poll with that motherfucker.
That morning he called me and said if his minister wins the election, he would definitely get the land, I even made jokes about that his minister won’t win the election. That was the last time I spoke to him and later on, I got to know they had blown up his head into pieces in the shootout.’
I didn’t have anything to say so I rolled the cigarette and gave it to her.
An uncomfortable silence had occupied that moment for a few minutes.
As we were laughing and smoking, there was this jeep with one headlight, which was reaching toward us. it seemed like a one-eyed blinded man walking on a dark street. I thought someone is gonna ask us for directions, so I didn’t mind its reaching but it was the vehicle of state’s action seeking cowboys, the servants of divine law and order. As they stopped the vehicle, a gentleman stepped out and began to bark at us for no reason.
‘Hey, Romeo! What are you doing with the queen? Smoking pot or getting a blow job?’
As he reached us he gave me a wide slap which probably took me back to school days, and he kicked at her belly, and she fell off on the floor.
She gave a moan of pain but that didn’t shake the servant of authority: again he kicked, this time it was on her spine, she sobbed out.
I was like.. suddenly I fell into a shit hole. I couldn’t get my senses back at that moment. I collapsed. I didn’t know how to react. It was indeed a heavy slap from the master of slaps. He might have got special training for slapping because it was so intense and strong, I never had such one before.
He asked what I was doing with her.
I said I had been waiting for a taxi to take me home because I was drunk. He told me to blow, I did because he thought I had weed, I lied to him that I never had weed and I convinced him to believe that I had too much alcohol to drink.
She was still lying on the ground like she had fainted.
The clothes I had worn and my outlook must have convinced them that I belonged to an upper-class brothel. An elite John who would never fuck a roadside whore, so they didn’t bother about my presence. But she got two kicks on her ass and a fresh load of spit on her face, from that police constable.
He shouted,
‘Bitch, get your dirty ass into jeep or I will break your legs, don’t get me on your face, slut. Do as you are told. If I do that, you wouldn’t be able to sell your rotten ass to those dirty fuckers.’
She didn’t plead for mercy.
‘Fonseka mahatya! Your boss also fucks me.’
She said this as she struggled to stand up.
‘Why you drag him into this? Are you trying to arouse my sympathy, you tricky whore?’
This time he gave a slap, this time her lower lip had split open and bled, she didn’t care to wipe the blood off Maybe this wasn’t an unusual thing to her, seems like enduring daily beatings from random men had made her take it as an ordinary thing.
She refused to go, but he used his full force to pull her and he threw her into the jeep as if he was throwing a dirty bin bag.
She cried aloud, while the jeep moved she was looking at me intensely, her eyes were wide open.
Again, those wide opened eyes!
Her opened up lips were severely damaged and bleeding.
I was frozen and couldn’t get myself cured of the shock of that great slap which I had already got from that guardian of the law.
If you want to know why we need freedom, you should get stoned with weed and try to walk on a street, you will understand why we need to be set free in its absolute sense.
I don’t know if the showed up one was an angel or a satan, but she brought the heaven and hell at once, and let me have it.
Life always offers us such moments, just to keep us calm. Otherwise, we would all have gone mad in this godforsaken Madtown.
She indeed was the whore of madtown.
My mind couldn’t get rid of those eyes.
Out of the darkness, I heard the sounds of firecrackers in the middle of that mess. I noticed it was 12 o’clock. The sounds came randomly from everywhere.
We had already passed over the New Year, and Christmas.
Now for what madness is this, Were they celebrating the arrest of a whore?
Or the finest slap I got from the master of slaps?
I didn’t have any clue to figure it out.
So I began to walk through the dark caves of Rohini Road and I needed to check the date on my mobile calendar to see what these sounds were all about. It didn’t say much, but the date was the 04th of February. I didn’t remember anything special about that goddamn day, so I opened up Facebook, mostly that is where you even get to know your own birthday. I had a lot of notifications. There was a shit load of patriotic posts which had been shared, where people had tagged me in. All carried euphoric messages and wishes.
Happy 67th Independence Day!
My ass!
