Read Online Lost in Pattaya by Kishore Modak - Free Book Online Page B

are ready to share and confess the random
order in which life commits us to.
    It would be abusive to call any lifetime
‘normal’.
    At the café, I spotted Rashmi easily. She
was well aged, with no attempts at hiding the grey in her hair, or the
pendulous sinking that we expect from any beyond our own age. She was slight
built and it seemed she looked herself after since she was athletic and quick
to move if the need for action presented itself. She was strangely attractive,
in a cosmetic-free, natural sort of a manner, and friendly in the bright pastel
shades of her ethnic wear.
    If you were to kiss a person like that,
spontaneously, you would meet only healthy lips with no chemicals to mask the
taste of a woman. Spontaneity was the gravity which I longed for, not needing
washing and wiping before the moment of nearness dies belly up, leaving me
flaccid and ready for sleep.
    “Are you Ok, you look awful today,” she
said, after we had greeted. My state was reduced to such, even a complete
stranger could tell there was something physically wrong here.
    “Yes I am fine. How are you today?” I sat
down, asking for coffee. We made small talk, meaningless, before she asked
kindly, “You wanted to see me?”
    “I wanted to share stories,” I said, a
pearl of water appearing across my eyes, like a child controlling a wailing
weep.
    She too had lost a girl.
    “We had given up on finding her, before I
decided to move to Bangkok and start looking for her again,” she said, sliding
her hand off mine, after the minutes it took for me to collect myself.
    “You mean you and your husband?” I asked.
    “No, I mean me, alone. She was our only
child and the falling apart of our marriage was inevitable after she was gone.
It is tough to remain coupled after you have lost the essence of a
relationship, children,” she looked at me, kind enough not to pry into my
impressions of her words, mostly agreement gathered through personal
experience.
    My ballooned face seemed to de-tense back
to its natural shape with the conversation that ensued. The coffee lay
untouched and tepid on the table. I called for ice and a taller glass, into
which I poured the latte over melting ice. I called for some water too, sensing
that I was settling into an important conversation.
    “There was a gap of over ten years from
when we lost her to when I found her,” she continued, speaking softly, but
clearly; her composure too was cracking with each word of illustration.
    “How did you look for her?” I asked, this
time keeping my hand on hers, hoping I’d ease the recounting of horror that I
knew lay ahead.
    “First, I patrolled the red light
districts, just moving about looking in the throng of girls that work in
Bangkok. In fact, I even approached and worked with pimps, who were strangely
sympathetic and some even tried to help, leading me into the dark, hidden world
of child prostitution. She was not there, we did not find her . . . ” she drew
her hands back, gently folding them as if in a long laborious prayer.
    “Why did the pimps offer help?”
    Because, for the right price, everything is
for sale. “Where did you eventually find her?” I asked.
    “I found her begging in the streets. It is
inaccurate to say that I found her, because what I found was not her, not
mentally at least,” Rashmi spoke with an uneasy composure, forced, hiding all
her angst and disappointment with her herculean effort of will. “I knew it was
her, my baby, all grown physically, though her looks were ragged and her
clothes were in tatters. But, she never recognised me, simply begging money off
me as if I was another passer-by. Only the shell of her body remained . . .
mentally she was ruined, or, shall we say rescued in premature senility. I was
never able to hold her or hug her; she trembled and resisted my embraces. For
that matter, any human touch left her panicking. The ten years, they had stolen
her, and, in that sense, I never really found my daughter, I