There were five to ten minutes left before the departure of the train. The crowd in the general compartment was comparatively thin on that day. A twelve-year-old boot-polish boy with a ragged bag on his shoulder entered the compartment. Asrar sat on the first seat near the door, next to the window. The moment the boy entered he shouted, ‘Boot polish, sir, should I polish yours?’

Asrar looked at him with sleepy eyes and yawned. ‘I am wearing slippers, walk ahead, kid.’

‘So what? Let me polish your chappals,’ snap came the reply. Asrar was impressed by his confidence and wit. He said, ‘Leave it’ and handed him Rs 5. The boy took the coin and raised his hand in a quick salaam and moved forward. A man with a cardboard box full of water bottles boarded the train and shouted, ‘Paniwala, pani.’ Asrar stopped him and bought a bottle of water. He took two gulps. The train moved. Asrar had been feeling very tired over the past few days. When the cold breeze touched his face, he fell asleep. He had closed his eyes, but it was not sleep. For now his eyes opened in the same bed where Ali had taken him two months ago. He had felt that the room was congested. He went there for the sake of Mohammad Ali’s friendship. On the other hand, that area, those women, the ambience, gave rise to feelings that fuelled carnal desire. This passion, this desire and need is a self-feeding want. No one guides anyone on how to quench this thirst. The paths unfold themselves. Like the passion of love, the desire of sex moves, unstoppable, towards Nimrod’s fire! Once the ambience was set, Asrar had simply flown along.

Shanti had drawn the curtains of the diwan. The curtains were made of red cotton. The light that sieved through the red colour cast its shadows on their skin, making their complexion alter its colour.

Shanti had had more than twenty to thirty customers daily since the age of fourteen. Drunkards, rogues, pious, communal, respectable, noble men with established status in society would all come to her and pour the heat of their blood into her and return to their civilized society. This was the routine. She wasn’t interested in who crawled on her in what way, who trampled her with all his might. She kept lying like the ground beneath one’s feet. Does a whore symbolize the downtrodden earth? Was she the dying sound of creation and fertility? God only knows. But Shanti was that ground within which life and creation were taking their last breath.