“TACKY,” she thought. The foundation color is too light for her skin tone; it makes her look almost like a ghost. “Well, ghost is what I am now, for the mortal me died long, long ago,” Shujata said to herself. She still walks, eats, laughs, weeps and… sleeps with men, which is what she does for a living, but her soul leapt from her battered body 5 years ago.
She rummages through her red plastic bag for a lipstick. She has four colours altogether-red, bright red, dark pink and deep magenta. People say that girls like Shujata can attract more men when they wear such garish colours. There had been many days when she wished to wear a light shade of brown, but she never had a chance. She does not have a place to go, a place where she can go and be herself, where she can breathe in fresh air and watch cuckoos fly in the blue sky. The pungent alleys, the filthy men with even filthier insides, the worn-out walls and the impoverished, hopeless women like her are all that she sees every day, every single day.
She chooses to wear the red lipstick tonight; it has a blue transparent case. The poor quality of the shell says it is cheap; Shujata bought it for only Tk.10 from the make-up vendor, who comes to their place. “The old man is mean even at the age of 60,” she thought. She remembers the day when he wanted to spend the night with her in exchange for just two bottles of nail polish. “Once a nasty man, always a nasty man,” Shujata thought. Her mouth almost frothed at the thought of the old man.
She brings the green plastic mirror closer to her face and scrutinises the dark lips. They were not dark at one time; the repeated use of inexpensive lipsticks had ruined their once-soft skin. And not to forget the cigarettes, which she smokes daily. One pack lasts her only a day these days. “My whole body is a piece of shit now,” she thought. “But I died a long time ago, so I have little to worry about this body. Who doesn't know that a body is worthless when its soul leaves it?”
She searches her red plastic bag again, this time for kohl. She lines her eyes with a stick of Lakmé kajal every day; this is the only luxury in her miserable life. She tried using cheap kohl but it always irritated her eyes. She remembers the time when she had to go to the hospital, for her eyes were as red as the hair ribbons her father once bought for her when she was just 10. The doctor was not a nice man; he scowled at her, asked her questions that had nothing to do with her allergic reaction to cheap kohl. “Men are nasty. The educated ones are no less nasty,” Shujata growled and spat on the floor.
She looks deep into her own eyes. Shujata's mother always said that she had the eyes of a deer. Shujata never saw a deer, but she knows for certain that her puffy eyes cannot and do not resemble those of a deer. She runs her slender fingers over the bags under her eyes. “I am too young to have these bags. The sleepless nights have killed my eyes, and so has the booze.” At 21, she has assumed the appearance of a woman in her mid-thirties; the adolescent look is long gone. She heaves a deep sigh and takes up the kohl to line the edge of her eyes.
Shujata then picks up the box of blush; it is an expensive one. No other girl in her place has one like hers; it's a brand called Revlon that one of her guests brought for her from London. As she brushes some on her right cheek, the scar catches her eyes. It's a long thin line that runs along the side of her face. Even the make-up cannot hide it. "Maybe a concealer could, but who has the money to buy it! Moreover, I don't even care about this scar anymore." The scar is a reminder of her first time, when the 16-year-old Shujata tried to break free from the talons of a monster twice her age. “I could not break free; I wish I died that night. But the creator had different plans for me…,” Shujata chuckled.
Her panderer barked outside, a sign that she was taking too much time tonight. Shujata is almost done with her makeup. She stands up and it is then when she notices the bunch of roses that the 9-year-old daughter of a friend gave her that morning. Shujata thinks about the little girl, “She is such a beautiful child. I wish she left us and found a life outside the walls of this hell hole, or else she too will soon become one of us.”
Shujata carefully picks up a red rose and tucks it into her neatly folded bun. The panderer barks again, and she knows it is time to step outside and embrace another endless night.
By Wara Karim
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