Any experienced lecher knows that one should not waste words with a teenager because when it comes to real business she gets tongue-tied or can only say ‘No.’ It is best to talk to her body with your hands. That excites her to a state of speechless acceptance. I ran my fingers up and down her lower arm. She watched them till goose pimples came up. Thereafter all I had to do was to put my arm around her waist, draw her towards me and smother her lips, eyes, nose, ears and neck with kisses. She moaned helplessly. I slipped my hand under her kamiz and played with her taut nipples. Then I undid her pyjama cord and slipped my fingers between her damp thighs. A little gentle ministration with the hand made her convulse and she climaxed groaning ‘O God! O God!’ She lay still like a human-sized rubber doll. I put my hand on her bosom. She slapped it and pushed it away. She picked up her clothes and went to the bedroom. She came back in her jeans, tossed the bundle of salwar-kameez and sequined dupatta on the settee and strode out of the apartment.

That was the last I saw of Georgine.

She was the last customer Carlyle put my way. I do not know whether what I had done amounted to having carnal knowledge of a girl below the age of consent. But for many long days and nights I pondered over the words in the Mahabharata: ‘As two pieces of wood floating on the ocean come together at one time and are again separated, even such is the union of living creatures in this world.’

After many years I have come to Delhi by train. The railway station has changed. But not beyond recognition. The platforms bear the same numbers they did fifty years ago. The same line of coolies in dark-red shirts and dirty white dhotis, bearing metal brassards with identification numbers on their arms, line up on their haunches along the platform. There are the mynahs chittering and quarrelling with cows. The same hawkers; the same melodious cries: lemon-soda-barraf (ice); chai, garant (hot) chai. And the same all pervading stench of shit, urine and phenyl.