Happy Ending

born in the bylanes of patparganj east, mookase was delivered to hazrat majoomdar to have his micro palms read and destiny foretold. protocol involved the hazrat suggesting a clipping of the foreskin under distraction by steel bird, followed by gleefull approval by the mohemeddans and sudden denial by the hindoos (as in mookase's case), which led to the wise old man reading the child's palm and exclaiming in surprisingly fluent english 'a happy ending! this chap has a happy ending in store for him!' to which the assembled screamed 'angreji!' in joyous tenor and carried the child back home sure, albeit for only a few hours or so, that the child wouldn't rot and die here. for mookase, however, hazrat followed the reading of the palm by a grim face, followed by a handing of the bawling baby boy back to the mortified mother. 'a happy ending!', he said darkly, 'this chap has a happy ending in store for him!'

approximately forty years years later, we fly past the tangled electric meshes of chunktown past teedees ('quench your thrust' over the drinks menu) down into the lanes which cars can't enter and wouldn't want to either in a small wooden shack with a plastic window and with no signboard and a rusty bajaj chetak with hazel filing her nails (bright pink) at reception against a save tibet and an 80's sanjay dutt looking at the world with ugly sunglasses and the cheap cosmetics display unit with bright pink nailpolish and cobwebs and slither under the door to see hairy mookase under a towel being oiled vigorously by obese and heavily made up victoria in black spaghetti top with pink bra straps clearly visible like in foreign xxx film. 'happy ending?', she asks expressionless as her hands move to oil the erogenous, 'extra two hundred bucks'. mookase, in turn, laughs quietly to himself before nodding a yes.