For Hardik, soon to be known as Harry, the dream had come true.
Surpassing all other boys of his remote village town, he had made it to The City. Twenty years of
education from borrowed books had borne fruit. The loan his father had taken would eventually be
paid. He would miss his mother’s cooking and her persistent pampering, but that was a small
sacrifice. Even Veena could wait. With the promise that he would return soon and take her along, he
had set out for The City.
The City!
The very thought of it stirred something in him. It was love, of course. He had fallen in love with The
City ever since Prakash Sir had spoken about her in a sixth-grade geography lesson. He had then
studied her on the Internet and in films, and as the years progressed, his research had become more
and more meticulous.
No one could challenge his knowledge of her. He knew that The City was built two-hundred years
ago, planned by a foreign urban planner whose bust stood at the museum, which was one of the three
largest museums in the country. He knew that she housed people from all states and countries, and
they lived together as if they belonged to her. He knew all the sights there were to see, and he hoped
to see them soon, and he knew where to go to have the shady kind of fun that can be had only in the
cities, and he knew which neighborhoods to avoid. He even knew the color of the soil in its Grand
Memorial Park and the graffiti scribbled on the toilet of its largest Metro station (pictures on the
Internet had helped). What else was there to know?
It had been a sublime love affair so far. And now, as he got off the train and stepped on her ground for
the first time, the love became physical. He shuddered in delight, and he squealed, making the ticketcollector
turn at him sharply, but he only proudly flaunted his ticket and walked on.
He had arrived in The City.
***
“This is where you work and this is where you stay,” the man whose designation described him as
producer told him.
Harry saw no bed.
“What is my job?” he asked.
“Assisting me. Looking after this production studio through the day. When there’s an outdoors shoot,
helping me set things up at the location. When there is no shoot, making sure that everything here is
working properly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I sleep in the studio?”
“Yes, but my cabin is out of bounds. Sleep on the couch or floor or wherever else it suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome to the city.”
He hadn’t got the job easily. He had spent years of research into what he could do, and when he
decided that the film world was what excited him the most, he looked for suitable job profiles. He
wrote to, mailed, and called about thirty production offices for anything suitable to him, just to get a
toehold really, and then this one had responded.
The pay was low, but then he would be in The City!
He looked at the posters of the production office’s previous ventures. The face of The Hero made him
sigh. Harry had read in a cheap film-zine that The Hero had come from a small town too, and now his
house was a sprawling bungalow in the heart of the city. Would he ever get there? He didn’t look any
less handsome than The Hero. But in The City looks were a dime a dozen. Everyone knew how to
look good. The need was of something else. People had to figure that out by themselves.
Thus, his life began. The job allowed him the evenings to do as he chose. Seven to seven was his
time. This was when he roamed the streets of The City and became intimate with her. He took in her
sights and smells and made friends with other people like him who had moved here. Their stories
amazed him and though he often sensed a twinge of sadness in them, he did not let those stories faze
him. They were the ones The City had discarded; he would not allow himself to be discarded.
There were days that were difficult. The job wasn’t easy, with almost every other person making him
struggle and get humiliated for every rupee. There were days he overworked, days he slept hungry,
days he did things that he would not mention to anyone he knew. But he smiled through it. He was in
The City. Every night after his backbreaking duties, The City took him in her embrace, and showed
him new sights and gave him new pleasures as if she had kept them hidden from everyone else and
only for him, just like a mother does for her favorite son.
After the salary of the first month came in, he hit the bigger spots. He walked into a multiplex and
watched a movie of The Hero. He did not understand the story, for that wasn’t where his attention
was focused. The only thing that played on his mind was how The Hero had changed himself and how
comfortable he was in the skin that The City had given him.
He sighed.
He decided to spend some money on a drink. He took himself to the best bar in The City, and though
the cost of one glass of whiskey was more than what his father earned in a day back home, he felt that
he deserved it. He placed the order with a flourish, and when it came, he carefully observed the other
people drinking and emulated them. Drinking is not about the drink, someone had told him, it’s about
how you handle it.
It was past eleven when he leaped off his chair. He had forgotten to lock the studio.
The studio was just twenty minutes away. Slightly inebriated but also revived by the salty smell of
fish and rust, the typical smell of The City, he rushed to the studio. And then he stopped.
His sight had fallen upon an alley that he had never seen before. He could feel something here. He felt
as if he were being summoned. Something stirred in his loins.
Drawn by it, he walked into the alley.
***
Right in front of him was The Fracture.
He had seen his share of ugly sights in The City already—from the garbage dumps to the open-air
toilets, from the dead shanties built by slum-dwellers to the dangerously filthy open sewage, from the
tobacco-stained walls to the carcasses of dead rodents in the middle of the road. He chalked them
down as necessary collateral. The City could not be clean at all times. In its ugliness also, he found
its beauty. But The Fracture was the lowest The City could stoop to.
It was a gaping crack in a space between two buildings, but it looked very much like a wound
inflicted upon the street. Its jagged edges looked ominous even from the distance, like the jaws of
some predatory animal lying in wait. From within arose the smell of The City—that of the fish and the
rust and the salt—only it was putrid and much stronger than anywhere else, so strong that he had to
hold his breath.
Harry hadn’t heard of anything like this. Maybe the ground of The City, after it had lived its life, fell
apart in this fashion. This was death and decay that he was seeing. He stepped back.
“Hi, there!” said a voice.
It made him jump. For a moment it seemed as if someone from inside The Fracture had spoken.
But the voice had come from behind him. He turned.
It was a woman. A woman of breathtaking beauty. Dressed in the attire of The City and wearing a
fragrance that was perhaps needed to mask the smell of The City.
“Who are you?” he asked .
“I am Mimi. Who are you?”
“Hardik… er, Harry.”
“You don’t seem to be from here.”
“I am new here.”
Something was happening to him as he looked at her. There was something in her eyes, a mysterious
allure, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Even in the darkness, he could see that it was the
color of The City’s sea.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked.
He could ask her the same question, but he did not want to be the kind of man who points out a latehour
to a woman. He’d have probably done that in his small town, but not here.
“I was just strolling.”
“Here? No one comes here.”
“I can see that,” he said. His eyes moved to The Fracture. “What is that?”
“Just one of the hidden sights of this city. The pictures in the magazines and on the Internet show the
beautiful sights, but they hide these ugly spots.”
As he looked at the gaping hole of The Fracture, it seemed to move. It was not just a wound; it was a
festering wound.
“You have seen the ugly scar of The City. Sooner or later, everyone sees it,” Mimi said with a smile.
“You are not new here anymore.”
And they talked. They walked out from that goddammed place and sat in a café that was still open.
She ordered for him and she spoke about the sights he had seen and what else he must see. It was past
midnight when she squeezed his arm.
“Where do you live?”
“I live in the studio I work in,” he said.
“Alone?”
He smiled.
** *
Mimi did not mind the mattress on the floor. Sensing his reluctance, she sat down on it first and then
dragged him down with her. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
Half an hour later, she was facing him with her head propped on her hand. “You do not look happy
with what we just did,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s not that,” he said sheepishly.
“There is something nagging you. What is it? Are you married or something? Young small-town guys
who move here usually have wives back home.”
“I am not married.” He omitted the fact that he was engaged and that he had not called up his fiancée
for a week.
“Then what is it? Wasn’t I good for you?”
“No, no… it’s not that.”
Even as he spoke, he realized there was something bugging him. But he could not put his finger on it.
“I think I know what it is.” She suddenly sat up, crossing her legs, not minding her nakedness. “Your
disillusionment is with this place.”
“The City?”
“Yes. It happens to guys like you. I know the type. Young men come here, full of dreams, but the
novelty wears off fast. They face the struggle and they experience the loneliness, and they begin to
miss their simpler laidback lives back home.”
He pictured it as she spoke. He saw the flashes of everything that had transpired over the last month,
and the realized the truth of it.
But soon came denial. How could he entertain that thought? How could he tell himself that he was not
happy with The City? It was the only thing he had lived for so far.
And yet, there was The Fracture… Something in him had died when he saw that.
“You don’t worry,” she said. “I will help you make friends with the city. I will help you see its
glorious side.”
He looked at her as she spoke, staring into the depth of her eyes that had the shade of the sea. “But
who are you?”
She laughed. “What does it matter?”
“Have you always lived in the City?”
“Yes.” In her eyes was a sparkle. “I have always lived here.”
“Where is your home? Is it near the… near the…” He could not bring himself to say ‘The Fracture’.
“It is close, yes.”
“And what do you do?”
“Enough questions!” she said abruptly, but then broke into another tantalizing laugh. “This is not about
me; it is about you. Don’t you want to see the best bits of the city?”
“I do,” he said, and they flopped on the mattress again.
***
Days passed on in such confused dalliance. Harry experienced more of the ugly side of The City—
when his money ran out, when he fell sick with no one to care for him, and on the one night when he
was nearly arrested just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when the nights came,
Mimi would always be waiting for him. She would set all his worries to rest with her promising
laughter, she would bring him peace with her assuring talks, and then give him the greatest of
pleasures on the shoddy studio floor. When he was with her, he forgot everything else. The worries of
his job and his health did not matter to him. All that mattered was her fragrance and the fact that he
could touch her wherever he wanted.
It did not matter to him any longer who she was. He didn’t ask her after that first night, and she did not
tell. It did not matter. She was his company in the loneliness, and, truth be told, he was terrified that
he might lose her if he pressed too hard. He toed the invisible line she had drawn and stayed within
those unspoken limits. He was the unschooled and unlearned one here, the new dude in town, and so
he let her take the lead in everything—from the topics of their conversations to the things they did on
the mattress. It was surrender.
It also did not intrigue him that she did not ask anything about him. She knew he came from a small
town, but she never asked which. She did not ask about his family or his qualification or even about
the job he held in this studio where they made love every night. It did not puzzle him. He knew The
City was carefree; such questions made no sense when people got what they wanted.
Then, one morning, when he was under the shower in the tiny cubicle of the studio toilet, he saw
something in the mirror that horrified him.
He saw himself.
It took him a moment to realize what was wrong. He had shrunk. Shrunk, as in, reduced. His body
wasn’t what it was. He had muscles once, some unremarkable biceps too, but they were gone. His
upper arms were but spindly tubes. His chest had withered, flattened out against his ribcage, and his
belly had curved inward as if he were sucking in his breath. He turned and could easily feel the knobs
of his hipbone, his skinny legs jutting out from beneath them.
Mortified, he quickly wrapped a towel around himself—realizing that he could turn it halfway more
around his body than he could do earlier—and stepped out.
She was on the floor, sleeping.
He shook her awake. “What’s happening to me?”
She sat up immediately. Looking at him from the top to the bottom, she asked, “What?”
“I don’t know. Am I sick? How have I become so thin?”
She stood up and placed her arm around his shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“Just look at me.”
She did. “What? I don’t see anything. You have always been like that. ”
“No!” Harry screamed out, for the first time in Mimi’s presence. “This is not how I am.”
“But you are!” She smiled as she drew in closer to him. “And I love you like this.”
Love!
Had she just uttered that word? That word which has brought nations to their knees? That word which
has tempted even the gods and caused catastrophes? What was he, a mere mortal, in its presence
then?
“What? Don’t you have to say anything?” she laughed.
“I… I don’t…”
“Anyway, it is day now. Time for you to dress up for work and time for me to leave. We shall meet
again tonight.”
She sashayed away to the door, and he could not keep himself from looking at her. In fact, he stared at
her—at her back, at her fulsome hips—and then he had another shock.
She was… healthier. Yeah, that was it. Plumper, even. Her body shone as if it had been fed something
that both nourished it and made it blossom.
That was when the dread set in. What did he know about her? What was she? Was she even a woman?
His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.
Was he the prey she was feeding on?
***
But he could not resist her.
That night when she came to him in the bar where he was nursing his drink, finding him as she always
did, he had to take only one look at her sea-colored eyes and one whiff of her earthy perfume, and he
knew he was done for. When she opened her arms, he knew there was nowhere else to go. Like a
dummy pulled by a string, he submitted to her and for all those moments that he made contact with her,
he could think of no other pleasure that came even close.
“You worry a lot,” she said when he was spent. “You are here now. You are not alone. I am with
you.”
He felt himself thinner still, and those arms of hers weren’t just hugging him; it was a squeeze. Was
she squashing him?
“I am all right,” he said without meaning it.
Were her teeth different now? They seemed to have grown whiter. Sharper.
“You are worried.”
He was scared to tell the truth, that he was intimidated by her. Part of him wanted to tear away but the
larger part wanted to stay in her squeeze. He said something else instead. “It’s my work. It’s difficult.
That’s my worry.”
“Whoever said surviving here was easy?” She laughed that laugh again. “It will take every ounce of
your energy but at the end of it, it is bliss. What would you have done in your small village anyway?”
He said nothing further. But he did not sleep that night. As she slept peacefully, snoring away as if
nothing mattered, all he could was to keep staring at her.
***
The next night, he left the studio before she arrived and walked around The City. He wanted to purge
himself of the nasty thoughts that had been brewing in his mind about her. He wanted to be soothed by
the embrace of The City and not some unknown seductive woman who was sucking the life-juices out
of him. He could not refuse her, and he feared he would kill her because that was much easier.
The very next moment, he castigated himself for that diabolical thought. Never before had such a
thought entered his mind. The woman—that woman—had turned him evil.
There was something about The City that caught his attention. It had changed. It had improved. How
long had he been cooped up in the studio?
The lanes looked slicker; the lights of the shops looked brighter. There was music pervading the air—
not a single song but a mélange of hundreds of songs playing in as many establishments. The buildings
looked statelier, as if they had fresh coats of paints, and even the cars that stood parked outside them
looked sleeker and poised to run extra miles.
It was true what he had heard then—The City is growing all the time.
He was a fool to let himself be trapped in the worries of his own mind. He was here to make the most
of his life in The City and what was he doing? As he stood on the ballast that lined The City’s big
beach, he made a decision—he’d give up this job and the woman and start afresh.
He shut his eyes and pictured himself living a happy life with his own family in an apartment of one
of those skyscrapers. He qualified for a bigger job now; he’d make the upward leap. But he had to get
rid of things first.
***
The next morning itself, he told his boss he was quitting. The boss did not say anything. He only
nodded, gave him his pending salary of three months, and let him move out. With a sizeable wad of
notes bulging in the pocket of his jeans, Harry felt like a rich man. But then he passed by the mirror of
a roadside salon and shuddered. His face had sunken in further by almost an inch.
Doesn’t matter. He’d nurse himself to good health now.
He spent that morning roaming around The City. His lightness of weight was evident as he placed
each step on the ground; it hardly left a footprint. His shirt hung loose and his jeans were held up by
the last hole in his belt. One of the first things he did was to have a meal at a roadside eatery, and that
gave him some sustenance. He then visited some offices that he had earmarked for application, but all
he got was doors slammed in his face. Cocooned in his studio for close to a year, he had
underestimated the struggle .
When night began to wear on and he realized that he had no place to shelter himself, the worry crept
in.
The natural thought was to spend the night at a hotel or a lodge. Of those, there were many in The
City, but when he went to their reception desks, he realized that they weren’t for him. The first thing
they asked was for proof of identity, which he hadn’t been able to create for himself yet; and even if
some of the seedier ones bypassed that necessity, they did not wish to give rooms to an emaciated
jobless young man. When his efforts yielded no results, he came out into the streets, disillusioned
again by The City he had given his heart to, and decided to spend the night like the millions of others
who had no homes here did—on the streets.
He found a place for himself, a place right under the poster of a movie starring The Hero, and he
remembered his early days in The City. He wanted to become The Hero, but here he was, lying on the
ground, using his shirt as a mattress. Did The Hero have to sleep like this in his early days too?
When he was looking at the stars above his head, with the sounds of nearby barking dogs among the
many things that did not let him sleep, he was aroused by a hand over his chest.
“Why did you run away?”
He turned sharply and saw her again.
“I looked everywhere for you,” said Mimi, that smile still dancing on her lips. “And I find you here.”
“Why are you after me?” he asked. “Please go away. We have nothing to do with each other
anymore.”
“But you do! You have come to me. You have come to me with stars in your eyes.”
He balked. “I never came to you.”
“But you did!” she said with the same unwavering mysterious smile. “I never go to anyone; they come
to me.”
His eyes then fell on the other men sleeping beside him on the pavement. None of them stirred. None
of them indicated any sign that they saw the woman. Only he did .
A dog came up close to where she was. He sniffed tentatively at the ground and then he ran away
whimpering as if he had been struck. The woman only smiled.
And in that moment, Harry realized that he was in the jaws of death. This was not a woman but the
personification of his dreams. This was what had been sapping his energy, bit by bit, and thriving on
the loot. This woman was The City, the seductress that claimed lonely and gullible young men such as
him and fed on their flesh.
That’s how The City thrives. Or, what else is there?
He stood up as fast as he could, and he broke into a run. He ran, not minding the hard concrete of the
roads of The City fraying the skin of his soles. He ran, not minding the glares of the many neon signs
and the traffic headlights falling into his eyes. He ran, not minding which turns he took.
But The City was endless.
With great fear, he realized he was a rat in a maze. He was in a labyrinth, and The City was mocking
him, challenging him to find his way out. He had been chosen as the victim this once, and The City
had him in a vice and she would not let him go.
He came to a dead halt in a lonely alley. He looked around furtively; there was nowhere to go.
The voice came from behind him: “You are where I need you to be.”
It was the woman’s voice. He did not dare to look at her. Instead, he looked straight ahead, almost
obstinately. And he found himself staring at The Fracture.
***
As he found The City stepping forward to meet him, he felt even the last vestiges of energy in him
drying away. He felt it seeping through his body into the ground; she was devouring him whole. He
had to get away, but his paces only came as tiny steps now. His movement was in the direction of The
Fracture.
“You wanted to belong here,” she said. “You do now. ”
And then one of his steps found no ground to rest on. His foot found nothing but a blank depth, and he
yelled as he realized what had happened—he had stepped into The Fracture.
Down he fell into The Fracture then with nothing to stop him, his frail body hurtling against the jagged
edges of it, his bones smashing into fragments every time he dashed against its sides. He heard the
voice of the woman from somewhere far above, at the mouth of The Fracture, and she was laughing as
if she had accomplished something of great import.
He whooshed down, deeper and deeper, till the point where he could not hear that laughter anymore.
The only thing that he could hear were his own screams, and they were now blended with millions of
other screams.
With horror, he realized those screams were of the men like him that The City had swallowed whole,
on whose energies she breathed and on whose bones her skyscrapers stood.
***
It was the next day. The train brought another man to The City. For Mukesh, soon to be known as
Mickey, the dream had come true.
Surpassing all other boys of his remote village town, he had made it to The City. Twenty years of
education from borrowed books had borne fruit. The loan his father had taken would eventually be
paid. He would miss his mother’s cooking and her persistent pampering, but that was a small
sacrifice. Even Veena could wait. With the promise that he would return soon and take her along, he
had set out for The City.
The City!
The very thought of it stirred something in him. It was love, of course. He had fallen in love with The
City ever since Prakash Sir had spoken about her in a sixth-grade geography lesson. He had then
studied her on the Internet and in films, and as the years progressed, his research had become more
and more meticulous.
No one could challenge his knowledge of her. He knew that The City was built two-hundred years
ago, planned by a foreign urban planner whose bust stood at the museum, which was one of the three
largest museums in the country. He knew that she housed people from all states and countries, and
they lived together as if they belonged to her. He knew all the sights there were to see, and he hoped
to see them soon, and he knew where to go to have the shady kind of fun that can be had only in the
cities, and he knew which neighborhoods to avoid. He even knew the color of the soil in its Grand
Memorial Park and the graffiti scribbled on the toilet of its largest Metro station (pictures on the
Internet had helped). What else was there to know?
It had been a sublime love affair so far. And now, as he got off the train and stepped on her ground for
the first time, the love became physical. He shuddered in delight, and he squealed, making the ticketcollector
turn at him sharply, but he only proudly flaunted his ticket and walked on.
He had arrived in The City.
***
“This is where you work and this is where you stay,” the man whose designation described him as
producer told him.
Harry saw no bed.
“What is my job?” he asked.
“Assisting me. Looking after this production studio through the day. When there’s an outdoors shoot,
helping me set things up at the location. When there is no shoot, making sure that everything here is
working properly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I sleep in the studio?”
“Yes, but my cabin is out of bounds. Sleep on the couch or floor or wherever else it suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome to the city.”
He hadn’t got the job easily. He had spent years of research into what he could do, and when he
decided that the film world was what excited him the most, he looked for suitable job profiles. He
wrote to, mailed, and called about thirty production offices for anything suitable to him, just to get a
toehold really, and then this one had responded.
The pay was low, but then he would be in The City!
He looked at the posters of the production office’s previous ventures. The face of The Hero made him
sigh. Harry had read in a cheap film-zine that The Hero had come from a small town too, and now his
house was a sprawling bungalow in the heart of the city. Would he ever get there? He didn’t look any
less handsome than The Hero. But in The City looks were a dime a dozen. Everyone knew how to
look good. The need was of something else. People had to figure that out by themselves.
Thus, his life began. The job allowed him the evenings to do as he chose. Seven to seven was his
time. This was when he roamed the streets of The City and became intimate with her. He took in her
sights and smells and made friends with other people like him who had moved here. Their stories
amazed him and though he often sensed a twinge of sadness in them, he did not let those stories faze
him. They were the ones The City had discarded; he would not allow himself to be discarded.
There were days that were difficult. The job wasn’t easy, with almost every other person making him
struggle and get humiliated for every rupee. There were days he overworked, days he slept hungry,
days he did things that he would not mention to anyone he knew. But he smiled through it. He was in
The City. Every night after his backbreaking duties, The City took him in her embrace, and showed
him new sights and gave him new pleasures as if she had kept them hidden from everyone else and
only for him, just like a mother does for her favorite son.
After the salary of the first month came in, he hit the bigger spots. He walked into a multiplex and
watched a movie of The Hero. He did not understand the story, for that wasn’t where his attention
was focused. The only thing that played on his mind was how The Hero had changed himself and how
comfortable he was in the skin that The City had given him.
He sighed.
He decided to spend some money on a drink. He took himself to the best bar in The City, and though
the cost of one glass of whiskey was more than what his father earned in a day back home, he felt that
he deserved it. He placed the order with a flourish, and when it came, he carefully observed the other
people drinking and emulated them. Drinking is not about the drink, someone had told him, it’s about
how you handle it.
It was past eleven when he leaped off his chair. He had forgotten to lock the studio.
The studio was just twenty minutes away. Slightly inebriated but also revived by the salty smell of
fish and rust, the typical smell of The City, he rushed to the studio. And then he stopped.
His sight had fallen upon an alley that he had never seen before. He could feel something here. He felt
as if he were being summoned. Something stirred in his loins.
Drawn by it, he walked into the alley.
***
Right in front of him was The Fracture.
He had seen his share of ugly sights in The City already—from the garbage dumps to the open-air
toilets, from the dead shanties built by slum-dwellers to the dangerously filthy open sewage, from the
tobacco-stained walls to the carcasses of dead rodents in the middle of the road. He chalked them
down as necessary collateral. The City could not be clean at all times. In its ugliness also, he found
its beauty. But The Fracture was the lowest The City could stoop to.
It was a gaping crack in a space between two buildings, but it looked very much like a wound
inflicted upon the street. Its jagged edges looked ominous even from the distance, like the jaws of
some predatory animal lying in wait. From within arose the smell of The City—that of the fish and the
rust and the salt—only it was putrid and much stronger than anywhere else, so strong that he had to
hold his breath.
Harry hadn’t heard of anything like this. Maybe the ground of The City, after it had lived its life, fell
apart in this fashion. This was death and decay that he was seeing. He stepped back.
“Hi, there!” said a voice.
It made him jump. For a moment it seemed as if someone from inside The Fracture had spoken.
But the voice had come from behind him. He turned.
It was a woman. A woman of breathtaking beauty. Dressed in the attire of The City and wearing a
fragrance that was perhaps needed to mask the smell of The City.
“Who are you?” he asked .
“I am Mimi. Who are you?”
“Hardik… er, Harry.”
“You don’t seem to be from here.”
“I am new here.”
Something was happening to him as he looked at her. There was something in her eyes, a mysterious
allure, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Even in the darkness, he could see that it was the
color of The City’s sea.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked.
He could ask her the same question, but he did not want to be the kind of man who points out a latehour
to a woman. He’d have probably done that in his small town, but not here.
“I was just strolling.”
“Here? No one comes here.”
“I can see that,” he said. His eyes moved to The Fracture. “What is that?”
“Just one of the hidden sights of this city. The pictures in the magazines and on the Internet show the
beautiful sights, but they hide these ugly spots.”
As he looked at the gaping hole of The Fracture, it seemed to move. It was not just a wound; it was a
festering wound.
“You have seen the ugly scar of The City. Sooner or later, everyone sees it,” Mimi said with a smile.
“You are not new here anymore.”
And they talked. They walked out from that goddammed place and sat in a café that was still open.
She ordered for him and she spoke about the sights he had seen and what else he must see. It was past
midnight when she squeezed his arm.
“Where do you live?”
“I live in the studio I work in,” he said.
“Alone?”
He smiled.
** *
Mimi did not mind the mattress on the floor. Sensing his reluctance, she sat down on it first and then
dragged him down with her. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
Half an hour later, she was facing him with her head propped on her hand. “You do not look happy
with what we just did,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s not that,” he said sheepishly.
“There is something nagging you. What is it? Are you married or something? Young small-town guys
who move here usually have wives back home.”
“I am not married.” He omitted the fact that he was engaged and that he had not called up his fiancée
for a week.
“Then what is it? Wasn’t I good for you?”
“No, no… it’s not that.”
Even as he spoke, he realized there was something bugging him. But he could not put his finger on it.
“I think I know what it is.” She suddenly sat up, crossing her legs, not minding her nakedness. “Your
disillusionment is with this place.”
“The City?”
“Yes. It happens to guys like you. I know the type. Young men come here, full of dreams, but the
novelty wears off fast. They face the struggle and they experience the loneliness, and they begin to
miss their simpler laidback lives back home.”
He pictured it as she spoke. He saw the flashes of everything that had transpired over the last month,
and the realized the truth of it.
But soon came denial. How could he entertain that thought? How could he tell himself that he was not
happy with The City? It was the only thing he had lived for so far.
And yet, there was The Fracture… Something in him had died when he saw that.
“You don’t worry,” she said. “I will help you make friends with the city. I will help you see its
glorious side.”
He looked at her as she spoke, staring into the depth of her eyes that had the shade of the sea. “But
who are you?”
She laughed. “What does it matter?”
“Have you always lived in the City?”
“Yes.” In her eyes was a sparkle. “I have always lived here.”
“Where is your home? Is it near the… near the…” He could not bring himself to say ‘The Fracture’.
“It is close, yes.”
“And what do you do?”
“Enough questions!” she said abruptly, but then broke into another tantalizing laugh. “This is not about
me; it is about you. Don’t you want to see the best bits of the city?”
“I do,” he said, and they flopped on the mattress again.
***
Days passed on in such confused dalliance. Harry experienced more of the ugly side of The City—
when his money ran out, when he fell sick with no one to care for him, and on the one night when he
was nearly arrested just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when the nights came,
Mimi would always be waiting for him. She would set all his worries to rest with her promising
laughter, she would bring him peace with her assuring talks, and then give him the greatest of
pleasures on the shoddy studio floor. When he was with her, he forgot everything else. The worries of
his job and his health did not matter to him. All that mattered was her fragrance and the fact that he
could touch her wherever he wanted.
It did not matter to him any longer who she was. He didn’t ask her after that first night, and she did not
tell. It did not matter. She was his company in the loneliness, and, truth be told, he was terrified that
he might lose her if he pressed too hard. He toed the invisible line she had drawn and stayed within
those unspoken limits. He was the unschooled and unlearned one here, the new dude in town, and so
he let her take the lead in everything—from the topics of their conversations to the things they did on
the mattress. It was surrender.
It also did not intrigue him that she did not ask anything about him. She knew he came from a small
town, but she never asked which. She did not ask about his family or his qualification or even about
the job he held in this studio where they made love every night. It did not puzzle him. He knew The
City was carefree; such questions made no sense when people got what they wanted.
Then, one morning, when he was under the shower in the tiny cubicle of the studio toilet, he saw
something in the mirror that horrified him.
He saw himself.
It took him a moment to realize what was wrong. He had shrunk. Shrunk, as in, reduced. His body
wasn’t what it was. He had muscles once, some unremarkable biceps too, but they were gone. His
upper arms were but spindly tubes. His chest had withered, flattened out against his ribcage, and his
belly had curved inward as if he were sucking in his breath. He turned and could easily feel the knobs
of his hipbone, his skinny legs jutting out from beneath them.
Mortified, he quickly wrapped a towel around himself—realizing that he could turn it halfway more
around his body than he could do earlier—and stepped out.
She was on the floor, sleeping.
He shook her awake. “What’s happening to me?”
She sat up immediately. Looking at him from the top to the bottom, she asked, “What?”
“I don’t know. Am I sick? How have I become so thin?”
She stood up and placed her arm around his shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“Just look at me.”
She did. “What? I don’t see anything. You have always been like that. ”
“No!” Harry screamed out, for the first time in Mimi’s presence. “This is not how I am.”
“But you are!” She smiled as she drew in closer to him. “And I love you like this.”
Love!
Had she just uttered that word? That word which has brought nations to their knees? That word which
has tempted even the gods and caused catastrophes? What was he, a mere mortal, in its presence
then?
“What? Don’t you have to say anything?” she laughed.
“I… I don’t…”
“Anyway, it is day now. Time for you to dress up for work and time for me to leave. We shall meet
again tonight.”
She sashayed away to the door, and he could not keep himself from looking at her. In fact, he stared at
her—at her back, at her fulsome hips—and then he had another shock.
She was… healthier. Yeah, that was it. Plumper, even. Her body shone as if it had been fed something
that both nourished it and made it blossom.
That was when the dread set in. What did he know about her? What was she? Was she even a woman?
His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.
Was he the prey she was feeding on?
***
But he could not resist her.
That night when she came to him in the bar where he was nursing his drink, finding him as she always
did, he had to take only one look at her sea-colored eyes and one whiff of her earthy perfume, and he
knew he was done for. When she opened her arms, he knew there was nowhere else to go. Like a
dummy pulled by a string, he submitted to her and for all those moments that he made contact with her,
he could think of no other pleasure that came even close.
“You worry a lot,” she said when he was spent. “You are here now. You are not alone. I am with
you.”
He felt himself thinner still, and those arms of hers weren’t just hugging him; it was a squeeze. Was
she squashing him?
“I am all right,” he said without meaning it.
Were her teeth different now? They seemed to have grown whiter. Sharper.
“You are worried.”
He was scared to tell the truth, that he was intimidated by her. Part of him wanted to tear away but the
larger part wanted to stay in her squeeze. He said something else instead. “It’s my work. It’s difficult.
That’s my worry.”
“Whoever said surviving here was easy?” She laughed that laugh again. “It will take every ounce of
your energy but at the end of it, it is bliss. What would you have done in your small village anyway?”
He said nothing further. But he did not sleep that night. As she slept peacefully, snoring away as if
nothing mattered, all he could was to keep staring at her.
***
The next night, he left the studio before she arrived and walked around The City. He wanted to purge
himself of the nasty thoughts that had been brewing in his mind about her. He wanted to be soothed by
the embrace of The City and not some unknown seductive woman who was sucking the life-juices out
of him. He could not refuse her, and he feared he would kill her because that was much easier.
The very next moment, he castigated himself for that diabolical thought. Never before had such a
thought entered his mind. The woman—that woman—had turned him evil.
There was something about The City that caught his attention. It had changed. It had improved. How
long had he been cooped up in the studio?
The lanes looked slicker; the lights of the shops looked brighter. There was music pervading the air—
not a single song but a mélange of hundreds of songs playing in as many establishments. The buildings
looked statelier, as if they had fresh coats of paints, and even the cars that stood parked outside them
looked sleeker and poised to run extra miles.
It was true what he had heard then—The City is growing all the time.
He was a fool to let himself be trapped in the worries of his own mind. He was here to make the most
of his life in The City and what was he doing? As he stood on the ballast that lined The City’s big
beach, he made a decision—he’d give up this job and the woman and start afresh.
He shut his eyes and pictured himself living a happy life with his own family in an apartment of one
of those skyscrapers. He qualified for a bigger job now; he’d make the upward leap. But he had to get
rid of things first.
***
The next morning itself, he told his boss he was quitting. The boss did not say anything. He only
nodded, gave him his pending salary of three months, and let him move out. With a sizeable wad of
notes bulging in the pocket of his jeans, Harry felt like a rich man. But then he passed by the mirror of
a roadside salon and shuddered. His face had sunken in further by almost an inch.
Doesn’t matter. He’d nurse himself to good health now.
He spent that morning roaming around The City. His lightness of weight was evident as he placed
each step on the ground; it hardly left a footprint. His shirt hung loose and his jeans were held up by
the last hole in his belt. One of the first things he did was to have a meal at a roadside eatery, and that
gave him some sustenance. He then visited some offices that he had earmarked for application, but all
he got was doors slammed in his face. Cocooned in his studio for close to a year, he had
underestimated the struggle .
When night began to wear on and he realized that he had no place to shelter himself, the worry crept
in.
The natural thought was to spend the night at a hotel or a lodge. Of those, there were many in The
City, but when he went to their reception desks, he realized that they weren’t for him. The first thing
they asked was for proof of identity, which he hadn’t been able to create for himself yet; and even if
some of the seedier ones bypassed that necessity, they did not wish to give rooms to an emaciated
jobless young man. When his efforts yielded no results, he came out into the streets, disillusioned
again by The City he had given his heart to, and decided to spend the night like the millions of others
who had no homes here did—on the streets.
He found a place for himself, a place right under the poster of a movie starring The Hero, and he
remembered his early days in The City. He wanted to become The Hero, but here he was, lying on the
ground, using his shirt as a mattress. Did The Hero have to sleep like this in his early days too?
When he was looking at the stars above his head, with the sounds of nearby barking dogs among the
many things that did not let him sleep, he was aroused by a hand over his chest.
“Why did you run away?”
He turned sharply and saw her again.
“I looked everywhere for you,” said Mimi, that smile still dancing on her lips. “And I find you here.”
“Why are you after me?” he asked. “Please go away. We have nothing to do with each other
anymore.”
“But you do! You have come to me. You have come to me with stars in your eyes.”
He balked. “I never came to you.”
“But you did!” she said with the same unwavering mysterious smile. “I never go to anyone; they come
to me.”
His eyes then fell on the other men sleeping beside him on the pavement. None of them stirred. None
of them indicated any sign that they saw the woman. Only he did .
A dog came up close to where she was. He sniffed tentatively at the ground and then he ran away
whimpering as if he had been struck. The woman only smiled.
And in that moment, Harry realized that he was in the jaws of death. This was not a woman but the
personification of his dreams. This was what had been sapping his energy, bit by bit, and thriving on
the loot. This woman was The City, the seductress that claimed lonely and gullible young men such as
him and fed on their flesh.
That’s how The City thrives. Or, what else is there?
He stood up as fast as he could, and he broke into a run. He ran, not minding the hard concrete of the
roads of The City fraying the skin of his soles. He ran, not minding the glares of the many neon signs
and the traffic headlights falling into his eyes. He ran, not minding which turns he took.
But The City was endless.
With great fear, he realized he was a rat in a maze. He was in a labyrinth, and The City was mocking
him, challenging him to find his way out. He had been chosen as the victim this once, and The City
had him in a vice and she would not let him go.
He came to a dead halt in a lonely alley. He looked around furtively; there was nowhere to go.
The voice came from behind him: “You are where I need you to be.”
It was the woman’s voice. He did not dare to look at her. Instead, he looked straight ahead, almost
obstinately. And he found himself staring at The Fracture.
***
As he found The City stepping forward to meet him, he felt even the last vestiges of energy in him
drying away. He felt it seeping through his body into the ground; she was devouring him whole. He
had to get away, but his paces only came as tiny steps now. His movement was in the direction of The
Fracture.
“You wanted to belong here,” she said. “You do now. ”
And then one of his steps found no ground to rest on. His foot found nothing but a blank depth, and he
yelled as he realized what had happened—he had stepped into The Fracture.
Down he fell into The Fracture then with nothing to stop him, his frail body hurtling against the jagged
edges of it, his bones smashing into fragments every time he dashed against its sides. He heard the
voice of the woman from somewhere far above, at the mouth of The Fracture, and she was laughing as
if she had accomplished something of great import.
He whooshed down, deeper and deeper, till the point where he could not hear that laughter anymore.
The only thing that he could hear were his own screams, and they were now blended with millions of
other screams.
With horror, he realized those screams were of the men like him that The City had swallowed whole,
on whose energies she breathed and on whose bones her skyscrapers stood.
***
It was the next day. The train brought another man to The City. For Mukesh, soon to be known as
Mickey, the dream had come true.
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