Prohibition Incident
A woman, walking slowly in her proud pregnancy on a hot Bombay pavement, turned coyly from the eyes of knowing men. Folds of her sari were ribbons of cloud round the moon of her belly. Womanhood floated on inward dreams, the warm, new blood.
Till a Prohibition Officer noticed her and kept one dim star of an eye open.
What was wonderful was that this pregnant woman, walking always at the same hour to her tryst, had the strange capacity to delay nature. Men joked: her child is made of clay.
So that the Officer followed her home, a mud-house with holes for windows.
There she unwound her sari : not to the throes of love, for no gay lover of handsome looks awaited her there: she was no loom on which to weave acts of love in that room.
Light fell in that dark room as small ice-cubes from the slits of windows. Plain earthen pots lay on the floor. There she untied the knots of her sari. On her waist were bicycle-tubes. And who'd blame her? There's no quicker way to make cash than by illicit liquor.
ZULFIKAR GROSE
Previous page
