ABLUTIONS

It’s late evening. A shapeless form lumbers along the sidewalk, dragging a loaded huge trash can. I sit at the front window of a bar taking long sips of my beer, thinking  about my next big story, pretending to be busy with my pile of papers and pen.  

The hulk collapses cross-legged on the sidewalk, just below the wrecked traffic lights, facing me. I stare. I think that it’s almost lewd the way the tongues of those battered combat boots lick the pavement. I strike the word “lewd” and search for another. Don’t confuse one kind of dirty for another, I tell myself.

Out there in the growing sunlight, layers are shed one by one–shirt opens to reveal another which lifts to expose a sweater; the heap of discarded skins grows–and I can’t help but think “strip tease” even though the wrongness makes me glance around to see if anyone’s looking.

I write: deviant and deviate, so close they must be sisters, one step removed.  But I can’t resist. My transient gaze swings back to where the sidewalk metamorphosis has revealed a man, skinny, sunburned face lined with dirt, and a knot of bronze hair.  No wonder he needs all those clothes: Camouflage. His eyes are flat as glass and I think maybe he can’t see me here in the window, watching. Maybe it’s okay to stare because he doesn’t know. Maybe he can only see his own reflection.

He pulls out something wrapped in fabric and unfolds ceremoniously, placing each item carefully on the cloth: jars, tubes, pencils, brushes, surgical instruments, a cigarette. A compact unfolds into a mirror. He places each item reverently like a relic on an altar cloth.

And then the ablutions begin– a lid lifted, finger dips in and smears a dollop on his forehead. His hands move in slow, circular patterns until the whole face is covered.  All the while, his eyes are locked on the mirror.  A shirt from the pile becomes a towel to wipe and his face emerges, moist and pale, strangely naked, almost childlike.

But it only lasts a moment.  Next, another layer from a tube, then another, then pencils, black and blue and red. Eyebrows lift to arches, cheeks blush. Then the hair, first with fingers and then with the brush, he works it until it loosens and sends stray copper strands slithering along the sidewalk and floating into the air. With bright red lipstick he draws a smile, big and shiny. My jaw drops as I witness the transformation of a middle aged rag picker into a lewd cross dresser.

When I look up again he's there, cross-legged, supple supplicant, a hooker doing yoga.

A shady looking car stops across the sidewalk. A few well built men emerge from t and stand right in front of the technicolour man, making it difficult for me to watch the exchange that takes place between them. The belts comes off  in one smooth swing and rest on the hood of the car for the next twenty odd minutes. I move on to my second pint, waiting curiously for the next set of twists and turns like in a movie.

The men take off with the car, tossing a few pennies that strike the pole and somehow land in the rusty bowl next to the pale faced man.

I chug my beer and try to get a better look at his face which hasn't changed. He uses the same shirt to carefully wipe the evidence off of his mouth and his face.

Vulnerability makes people uncomfortable. Poverty is hard to face, I tell myself. This is why I’m on edge and pretend my eyes have merely wandered for a moment, a brief deviation as I withdraw into paper and pen.

- Kalyani Kamat

Culinary artist & founder of ‘Bun Intended’