On a good day, a young gigolo in Bangalore can make up to Rs 8,000, finds Joshua Muyiwa.
Akash – that’s his working name – crawls out of bed at 7am on most days. The 21-year-old blames the bleary mornings on his late nights, which are a regular affair. According to him, this is not something that will change anytime soon. His is not a very chatty family and when he’s out plying his trade, they think he’s at a friend’s house studying. “Initially, I used to call my mom and say that I was doing group studies at a friend’s place. Now that’s become a standing reason,” said Akash. Once he’s ready, he takes an auto to college, and attends his commerce classes, as a conscientious, but uninspired student. Since the first day of college, he hasn’t made it for a single first hour.
During accounts class, just before lunch, he gets a text message about where he’s going to be spending his lunch hour. He comes up with a quick lie for his friends – like, he’s meeting his sister for lunch – and runs off. “I’m going to be meeting my ‘regular’. He just wants to talk. I just listen. I don’t share anything of my life.”
Akash always makes sure the restaurant he’s to get to is close to college, so he doesn’t have to bunk an hour: he has low attendance. “My regular is a techie, and works around the same area as college – I don’t know for which company, I don’t ask. I didn’t like him at first – he was very sad and kept talking, the first night he picked me up. We did nothing, but he paid for things we had agreed to do. I had given him my number, so he called again and we started meeting, and slowly it became a regular thing,” he explained. “He’s extremely closeted, so he keeps buying me things, so I will keep quiet. He doesn’t realise that even my life is a secret.”
After lunch, he sits in the back benches, surrounded by girls, daydreaming or reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things all over again. He’s tried reading other books, he said, but keeps getting back to this one. His favourite phrase in the book is “Baby Kochamma’s thundering thighs”. Akash hates accounts class – the last class – but resists the urge to bunk. He draws peacocks through this last hour with a green pen on the last page of his notebook. This adds to his series of bird doodles. He likes birds, he admitted, “not as pets, but generally”.
The moment the bell sounds, he rushes out of class, because he has to sit at his father’s clothes store, between 5pm and 7pm. The daily chore has given him extensive knowledge about fabrics, and he admits to knowing
Shivajinagar like the back of his hand – he can tell you where to find the cheapest muslin or fine chikankari work for a steal. Today, he decides to skip the store and hang out at a friend’s place and watch Irreversible instead. Around 6pm, he gets fidgety, washes his face, applies a thin line of kohl to his eyes, makes another hasty excuse and leaves.
At 7pm, Akash is on a park bench. He usually sits at an edge of the park – on the tenth or eleventh bench, as it’s darkest there and is close to the entrance – so he can make a quick getaway if the cops close in. “These days, the police are getting smarter, they’ve started wearing plain clothes and propositioning us, but I’ve begun to recognise them. It’s easy, because they seem unsure of what to say,” said Akash. “I come here every day by 7pm. I think of this as my office.
I smoke two cigarettes and begin to cruise. The first man of the day is for me to get some practice,” he added.
Twenty minutes later, Akash is making eyes at a moustachioed man who’s just circuited the park and is now lingering in front of his bench. He looks invitingly and waits. The man comes over and sits next to him. Without a word exchanged, he unzips his pants and fellates him. After the man has ejaculated, he sits around for a few minutes and leaves. “I never swallow, just before he comes, I switch it to a hand-job,” he said. He smokes his third cigarette in the park. “I smoke at least 20 cigarettes a day, mostly because it helps me pass the time, but now I’m trying to cut down,” he added.
As he’s finishing his cigarette, he gets a phone call, asking him to head outside the park. The call’s from his pimp, who’s got a client waiting for him at a posh hotel. “I never discuss who or what the client is, I just go,” he said. “But there are rules. I’m given the client’s number, so I can directly meet him, but once the job is done, I have to delete it from my phone. There is a loophole to this, though – nothing prevents me from giving my number to the client.”
The pimp fixes the prices. Akash usually doesn’t know how much is being charged, but sometimes clients throw in a tip. Akash meets the pimp outside and is shepherded into the front seat of a Swift, to find that the pimp has cut a deal for a blowjob. He goes down on the client after they’ve driven to a secluded spot. Once the job is done, he steps out of the car and some cash is passed over to him. “Now I’m going to meet a firang [foreigner] at this posh hotel, which has serviced apartments attached to it. We will do dinner. This meeting will only be two hours,” he said, going through the details of the next transaction, and mentally preparing for it – an all-night client. Akash decides to get some alcohol.
“I usually don’t drink, but these all-night deals are the most boring. There’s hardly any sex, and lots of conversation with the client pouring out the details of his life,” he said. “These people pay us to talk to them. I love listening to their stories, but alcohol helps me get through the boring parts,” added Akash, with a smile.
“I can usually gauge how much I will get as soon as I see the client. If he is fat and ugly, or closeted and scared, then I will get more money,” said Akash, counting the Rs 2,500 he made at the last encounter. Adding this to the previous two, he’s already made Rs 3,000, and it’s only 10pm. The all-night deal will make him another Rs 5,000, bringing his total earnings for the day to Rs 8,000.
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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