Prem turns his head to Ajay.
“Don’t look at him!” Sikandar hisses. “What’s your name?”
“Khushboo,” Prem whispers.
The name from Prem’s lips gives Sikandar goose bumps, ripples of pleasure.
“I’ll make it easy for you, Khushboo, this life,” Sikandar croons, stroking Prem’s hair.
He pulls himself out of his sweat pants and forces Prem’s mouth down.
When he’s finished, he prepares a Mandrax pipe for the sobbing Prem. “Here, take your reward.”
In the early hours there’s no more noise. Prem lost in a Mandrax haze, Sikandar and Bablu snoring drunk. Only Ajay is awake, with death in his mind.
* * *
—
Now Sikandar has women’s clothes brought. A blue-and-pink salwar kameez, chunni bangles, anklets. He presents them to Prem with great ceremony, tells him to put them on. Mute Prem offers no resistance. He does as he’s told. Sikandar produces lipstick and kajal and applies them almost reverently to Prem’s face, bewitched by the transformation. “Now, Khushboo,” he says, “these are the rules.” Prem is told he will perform the womanly duties of the cell: sweeping, washing, cooking, cleaning, and he will tend to Sikandar’s needs. He will not speak unless spoken to, he will not pee unless he has Sikandar’s say. He will talk like a girl. Walk like one. He will be Sikandar’s wife in jail. If he does this right, if he repays Sikandar’s love, he’ll be a queen, lavished with beautiful things. If not, he’ll be thrown to the wolves, or worse.
“Now tell me. What’s your name?”
Prem stares at the cell floor. Holds back the tears. “Prem.”
Enraged Sikandar grips him by the throat.
“Khushboo!” Prem cries.
Sikandar loosens his grip, smiles. “Again.”
“Khushboo.”
Sikandar inhales the fragrance of the name.
He holds Prem close, closes his eyes and strokes the fabric of the clothes, whispers, “Khushboo . . . Khushboo. Never lie to me again.”
* * *
—
The heat creeps in, the burning sun of the day, the mosquitoes of the night. The stale sweat. Prem is Sikandar’s prison wife, his slave, he works and serves and is raped. Day and night. Days and nights. Into May. Raped by Sikandar and then by Bablu too, by Sikandar’s proud consent. “A good wife must do service for her husband’s friends.” Sikandar even tells Ajay to have a taste. But Ajay doesn’t rise to the bait. “You’ll change your mind!” Sikandar laughs, “soon enough, won’t he, Khushboo!”
Prem, every day, in such spiritual and physical pain, every night, until the Mandrax dose. Mandrax, in such doses that the melancholic euphoria of the drug takes hold.
* * *
—
Into May. The heat unbearable. Sikandar suspects a member of their gang is passing secrets to the police and to other gangs—several of Satya’s low-level men have been shot outside. Sikandar had Bablu investigate. He thinks they’ve got it all figured out. They decide to torture the suspect, Shakti Lal. Sikandar arranges for an ice block to be brought into their cell, a ridiculous slab, six feet long. It’s dripping as soon as it arrives. He tells the gang there’s going to be a party in his cell, they’ll enjoy food and whisky and cold drinks and lots and lots of ice. There’s cricket on TV turned up loud. Everyone marvels at the ice slab. Prem serves everyone’s drinks. It’s a raucous night. But at a prearranged signal, Sikandar and Bablu set on Shakti Lal, beat him as the others watch, stuff a rag into his mouth, gag him, strip him, place him on the ice slab, tie him down until his skin is burned with the cold. But he does not confess. So Sikandar has Bablu drag him to the shower room. He hangs him there, and the party goes on. They make their drinks with the ice they tortured him on, until it melts, soaks the mattresses, and they have a cool night’s sleep.
* * *
—
Ajay dreams of a burning pyre, he dreams about his name. Sometimes in the night, he wakes with a start, from a cage, from a lonely room, from headlights on the road, and through the Mandrax haze, pressed against Sikandar’s flesh, Prem looks at him and he looks at Prem and they watch each other, Prem’s desperate, pleading, broken eyes, and Ajay’s hard black pools of pain.
“Why don’t you do it to me,” Prem says, “like they do?”
Ajay watches snoring Sikandar for a sign of wakefulness, but he’s dead drunk.
“I’m not like them.”
“You have nightmares,” Prem says. “I watch you crying in your dreams.”