The Entertainer

The shower was one place where she just couldn’t resist singing. Her melodious voice danced over the notes, with the flowing water keeping the rhythm. Her voice obeyed her every command, and the song itself seemed to bring life into the world. It was a wonderful way to start a wonderful evening.

All except…

“Would you cut out your singing and hurry up? You’re making both of us late!” screamed Anuradha from the other side of the door.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m almost done. Give me two more minutes,” said Samaira, while her reflection looked at her accusingly.

‘I should be an Entertainer. I’m supposed to charm people with my voice. Why doesn’t anyone get that?’

The evening was slowly turning into the night, and she was ready to take on the world. With the song still singing itself in her head and her heart, she walked to the Prakash Photo Studio. She needed some glamour shots for work, and Prakash (as it was fondly called in that locality) was the one place to get them from.

She spent an hour at Prakash. When the shots were done, she looked at them. The gentle hint of Kohl in her eyes, the black waves of her hair, the heart shaped face, they all told her that she was, indeed, beautiful.

‘I should be an Entertainer. I’m supposed to charm people with my beauty, with the ladylike grace that I possess. I wish someone else would see that for a change.’

On the street, she heard the sound of ghungrus coming from the local Dance School. She remembered how she used to go there as a child. The long hours she spent, dancing to the wonderful music. She remembered how wonderful and free she felt at that time, to move like she wanted to.

‘I should be an Entertainer. I’m supposed to charm people with my graceful movements, and the gentle taps of the ghungrus on my feet. I wish I could have that stage, once, where people would appreciate that in me.’

She reached her “Office”, her place of work, and met Greg. She didn’t know Greg’s real name, and he didn’t know hers. In the “Office”, she was Sam.

“Sam, your client’s waiting for you upstairs. He’s a Russian man, with big bucks, lots of it. Make sure you entertain him well tonight.”

She looked into the mirror, and the reflection spoke to her.

‘I am an Entertainer. I charm people with my body, and the things I do with it. In here, I’m Sam, and I fuck for a small fee.’