New Delhi, last bit

On our last night in Delhi, I went out with two filmmakers. Our guide promised to take us to some of the nightspots, and promptly delivered us to the dance club in a five-star hotel.

We argued with him--we didn't want to spend the rest of our rupees in an overpriced disco with a bunch of yuppies! Where do YOU hang out? He told us that most places are closed by eleven, so he would have to think of something...

He did. He brought us to this alley with a lot of people walking (unusual, as Delhi is dead by nine p.m.) to this decrepit old building. Not a dance club--no music, no sound of a crowd inside. We looked up and in the balcony were this row of girls waving at us.

 

Yep, it was that kind of "club."

Our guide was at the top of the stairs looking down;One of the filmmakers looked at me, and I asked him: "do we want to do this?"He said, "no, I just wanted to drink." We entered, crossed a dark hallway, and I swear, I had to step over the women's kids--some of them two years old, others almost newborn--to get across. All four of us were led into a room--one room!--with a bed over three feet high, as high as my waist (I had to hop to get on the bed, and my feet dangled).

A woman stood in the doorway, gave us a hard stare. We blinked back. She had something of a paunch...but she was pretty, with lovely doe eyes.

We asked our guide if we could just drink there; he said that's not possible. We asked what was the going rate; he said it's a thousand rupees for the three of us. We said, we'll pay the going rate, only the girls don't have to sleep with us, they just had to drink with us. We handed over the money.

Hell, don't ask me why we did that--it was my chance to taste "curried pussy," as someone put it, and as things turned out, I was as shy as a teenage virgin.

They didn't like that. No sex, just drink--what kind of perverts were we? They demanded an extra two hundred rupees each. Our guide said no. They said they didn't have the beer. We stood there, stony-faced, then as if on cue, got up to leave. Our guide had a few heated words with the girl, then we went down the stairs.

Our guide had a surprise for us as we left. He had told them that he was related to the city's police chief, so they handed back the money we gave, but no, he was magnificent; he pushed away the cash and said they can add it to their usual take at the police station tomorrow. They pressed the cash in his hand. Outside, we counted it--all one thousand rupees, intact. We had gotten a full refund from a Delhi whorehouse.