I’m not the only one who walks these streets at night. There are other women too. It’s a human jungle here, although the bright neon lights, the loud music from the cafés and hotels, the crowds jostling each other on the pavements give the impression that it’s a safe and recognizable world. It never is. Sometimes I fear that I may never see my children again. The men can turn violent. Many of the rougher ones carry a knife at the waist. They are used to brawling. They belong to the underworld of gangs and gang warfare. They live in danger too. Some of my clients are just lone men with money to spend. So, I do not know what the night will really hold for me. And with whom I will share a bed. I am now used to the beds in the hotel rooms. There is a familiarity about them. But there is never rest, never peace there. The shadows on the walls cast by our bodies are magnified, distorted beyond recognition. The shadows have a flatness, lack dimension—a sombre darkness over which the buzzing insects or the wingless ants crawl like maggots on festering flesh.

My bones ache. My flesh feels bruised but my senses are numb. I have a phial of beheth thel from the physician in Kolonnawa. I massage my body with this oil. The relief is only temporary. There are deeper wounds that need to be healed. All kinds of men come to the jungle waterhole to assuage their thirst …. Does the jungle ever suffer from drought? Does the earth grow parched? Still the animals come in unending herds. Deep, grooved fissures bite into the ridged and hardened mud. When it rains the mud is churned up and becomes a ploughed up field. Sometimes the animals lie down wearily at the rim of the waterhole and die of thirst. They give up the struggle and the carcass is soon hollowed out by the predators, leaving the concave arches of bone to form a canopy over the seething earth. That is their end …

But what about myself? The rain replenishes my store of water. Sometimes a single nelum flower blooms upon its surface. Dragonflies skim over the tremulous ripples. A slant of light slashes the water mirror to reveal the struggling fish that the birds swoop down to feed on. Even when the sun has drunk up almost all the water and a muddy residue is left, until the rocks are bared like jutting crocodile sharp teeth, the animals reach out to quench their thirst.