It was a cold December of 2019 and I had just arrived in Delhi for some work-related meeting from Bangalore. 

Having hopped a lot of cities in life for work, I was a newbie in Bangalore too, having shifted there just a couple of months back. My nomadic heart belonged to absolutely no city in particular. Any person who lived for two years in Gurgaon would feel like Delhi was home for them when they'd arrive from the Southern Capital of India, but for me, having lived in Gurgaon but not really roamed a lot, Delhi was still as alien as Bangalore - another new place where I was completely alone despite the crowds all around.

I had arrived in the late Evening, having boarded the flight after work-hours at around 7pm. Delhi air was chillier and foggier than I had thought, and I thanked my charts for having picked a long pink sweater to wear that evening on top of my regular white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. I wrapped my hands around myself as much as I could to avoid feeling so cold. I wish I had gloves and, maybe, a cap. I could feel my hair blessing me for tying them up instead of letting them loose and be damaged in this ever polluted city. My hands were cold and I juggled between rubbing my hands together and wrapping them around myself. My left hand felt more frozen than ever due to the cold while it was already stiff owing the fracture I had a couple of months back and then having worn the plaster for a little too longer than required.

I took a cab outside the airport for the Hotel. Even though my meeting was in Gurgaon, where I had lived  before and hence, would be familiar with, our travel desk had booked me a hotel near the airport. The preferred hotels near Gurgaon were unavailable, they said.

The hotel seemed decent when I reached, with a plethora of stairs and a high number of uniformed bellboys. I concluded that when a hotel's name contains the word "International" they will probably be livable. They won't be as good as the Lemon Trees or Westins of the world but they would attempt to compete with these, their only downside being that they were constructed some 10-20 years before the new hotels were and hence, can't compete on the interior designs.

The next day, my meeting at Gurgaon got over quickly and I returned to the hotel by around 5:00pm. I was supposed to go attend a friend's wedding near Ghaziabad that night but while scrolling through the news app in the cab, a news of rape in Telangana ticked me off completely by the time I reached the hotel. The victim was an well established doctor about my age, in her mid-20s, who was returning home from her clinic when her scooty stopped working. A driver in that area came to her rescue and the rest was on the news - raped, burnt, almost dead - disturbing affairs of the modern society.

I decided to cancel traveling so far for the wedding, and to spend the rest of the evening in the hotel itself. I was safer there, I thought.

Later in the evening I decided to just walk around the hotel, exploring the neighbourhood. The place is called Aerocity and I had only seen the shiny multi-coloured signboards that showed off the names of the hotels there from a distance.

This place always seemed to be like mini Vegas for me from a distance until that evening.

The roads were crowded with people even in that wintry evening. It was around 6:30pm and I had just stepped out to look around, so I didn't bother to dress up very well. My hair was tied loosely in a pony tail, my face as bland as the cloudy night-sky, devoid of any kohl, foundation or lipstick. My pastel-coloured long sweater stood out amidst a crowd wearing either bright red or brown sweaters. The people who live in the same area start looking like each other, I thought.

But then, that place seemed like a place with a lot of moving crowd apart from the hoteliers, the shopkeers and the roadside vendors. Yet the moving crowd didn't seem varied, they mostly seemed to be North Indians and middle-aged.

As I was walking on the road, crossing multiple vendors selling chaat on the street I couldn't help but notice the spa places there. I am a Taurean and a true lover of body massages. I spend a lot on quality massages every month. I thought I could desperately use some massage to pass the time that night, with all my plans cancelled and the lehenga I brought with myself for the wedding left back in the suitcase in the hotel room.

I went to the Spa that seemed to be squeaky clean from the outside with its bright white board and all-in-white waiting room except for the black sofas. A stout fair-skinned lady in her late 30s was at the reception who showed me the menu card of the different massages. She was wearing a black sweater over a lime green salwar kameez, her hair reasonably dyed black. I couldn't help but notice all the glitter in her earrings and necklaces that shows she is the authoritative manager of that spa.

I booked the Swedish massage and paid the money upfront, which was 1500 rupees using my card. She assigned her assistant to show me the massage room. He was a tall and thin guy, wearing a muffler around his neck and head to keep himself warm in the December evening. His skin was dark, hands lean, fingers long and he seemed like he could do with a cup of tea or two to relieve himself from the cold.

He led me to the first room. Usually, in spas your designated masseuse leads you to a massage room and gives you some clothes (which are basically thin towels to cover your private parts) to change. Here, as soon as I entered the room, he brought in a line of women one by one in front of me. He asked them to come one after the other. These were fair-skinned women, some fat and some thin, but mostly all in their early or mid twenties. Some women even turned around to flaunt their bodies. Some smiled at me embarrassingly as I gaped at them in disbelief.

I was supposed to choose one of them for my massage as per the assistant's instruction.

I was shell-shocked. I had just rejected a wedding invite because of an article on rape and the victim that I had read, so, naturally, my mind was clouded with fear. It felt like a trap, and although I was probably the perceived oppressor there but the red bulb in my head screamed and lit up as if there was fire. I didn't know what to do until I walked out of the room without saying a word.

I told the lady at the reception to give me back my 1500 bucks so that I could walk out of the place with my dignity intact. She asked me, "Why? Don't you like the girls here?"

I couldn't explain to her that I was not looking for what she thought I was looking for. I ended up saying, "I think it's something fishy." She took a few moments to understand me and then pretended to scold the staff. Kya karte ho tumlog?, there was a visible smirk in her face as she appeared to be annoyed at them.  She then asked another of the girls to do my massage. I could recall the girl as one of the women in the queue, a fair-skinned tall and stout woman who could easily beat me at a wrestling match.
"Why don't you do it?" she asked the girl and then turned to me to say, "Ma'am, she will give you the massage."

Apparently, she couldn't return the money I had paid and I had to take a service. I insisted her to pay me back the amount since I was not comfortable there.

Finally, she led me to another spa near the end of the road and promised there was no fishy business there. I should have been more firm to decline the offer, but those days were my days of being a little timid so I followed her.

She led me to another spa at the end of the road. It was already 7 in the evening and I wanted to go back to my hotel room yet I followed her obediently. She kept walking at the fastest pace possible, and I simply didn't know how to ask her to stop and express my disappointment.

We reached a spa which had a darker reception this time. The lights were red, the curtains mustard yellow, the sofas were dark red and this one definitely didn't look like a great place. There are spas that use this theme of colours, mostly the Thai ones, but in this corner of Delhi, after having seen what I saw, this definitely seemed shady. 

I have something fundamentally wrong in me that believes in second chances, in giving the benefit of doubt to the other person. So when the manager, this time another lanky and dark guy, insisted that this was a proper spa and I will get a good masseuse, I obliged. The masseuse he called to the reception was an older woman, probably in her early 40s, wearing a brown cardigan over black jeans and just a thin gold chain for a neckwear and tiny golden tops for earrings. Her wrinkles were visible near the red bindi she was wearing.

They probably thought an older woman is whom I'd trust now. 

She led me to the massage room which was one floor below the reception area. The stairs were metallic and narrow. The alley was partly dark and partly lit with reddish yellow lights. My  heart was beating fast and I wondered what was their reason to lead me to this spa- whether they planned to give me some real privacy with this woman or were they planning to kill me and dump my body in the ground below.

Before getting into the room, I finally mustered the courage to ask her, "Can I ask you something?"

"What is it, ma'am?"

"I don't want any fishy business. I am okay to just walk out of here without asking for my money back. Can I trust you to tell me the truth what is going on here?"

Something in me felt like I could trust her and she would tell me the truth.

"I promise I will not complain," I added. She reassured me that it is just going to be a massage and that that particular spa was one of the safest and reputed in the area. I only learnt later what she meant by that.

As the massage progressed, I realized this woman knew nothing about a professional massage. The skin on her palms were harsh and she missed the pressure points on my feet. I regretted every minute of the massage and just prayed it gets over soon. In retrospect, I was just scared, nervous, young and someone who couldn't vocalize things or offend someone. I wasn't always like this but I was definitely like this back in 2018 and 2019.

Eventually she asked me, "What did you mean by fishy business?"

I finally said what I should have said when I was trying to back out of the massage. "I felt like there's illegal prostitution going on in the spa I went to before this one, so I asked the same here."

She explained that all the massage parlours in that area were actually meant for exactly that. 1500 was just the entry fee to make things appear official and legal. Once the client enters the room, the attendee quotes her own rate which he pays in cash or via GooglePay,

Before I could utter my words of shock, she added, "but here we don't do anything like that." I was relieved for a bit. And then I wondered how could I not know the reputation of Aerocity and its spas before, having lived two years of my life in Gurgaon with the likes of the infamous Sahara Mall around.

After a few minutes of quiet, she added further, "Here, no sex at all. We only give hand jobs. No sex!!!" Jo bhi aadmi aata hai, hand job toh maangta hi hai, she added. There were other services like body-to-body massage that they allowed in this particular spa.

She was massaging my left hand at that time. Well, it would be wrong to say she was giving a  "massage" because she was just pressing my muscles and pulling my fingers the way a grandmother does to a small child. Suddenly, we both heard a loud sound of breaking bones. I screamed my lungs out partly from the fear of getting my hand broken again and partly from the grossness of what she had just said.

In her dedicated efforts to give me a good massage she had pulled my left hand too hard but just enough to let my frozen finger free. Surprisingly, I didn't feel any pain and my hand looked better than before- less stiff, less swollen and far freer movements for the broken finger. I was so thankful to the Universe for leading me there because she did what the doctor or physiotherapist avoided doing. She realigned my finger joint.

What a "hand job"!, I thought to myself and chuckled

My fears vanished by then because I was happy about the little accident that happened while she was still perplexed and apologetic at what happened. I told her about the fracture I had and reassured her that she didn't break any of my bones. She heaved a sigh of relief, and we continued the discussion as she concluded the body massage and moved to my shoulders and head. Head massage is never included in body massages but usually all masseuses offer some extra 5mins of massaging of head for the client's satisfaction. 

She started talking about her experiences in the various spas in that area aka brothels. I was just thanking my charts that I was not married because I wouldn't be able to stand the thought of my hypothetical man visiting such places.

"Maybe they thought you were married and looking for some fun when you went to the first spa. Mostly married women come here when their husbands are away at work," she said. Damn, I needed to lose some weight to look younger and single, I thought.

I wondered what services women take there and she said, "umm.. different things..Say, a boob massage."

She then told me about her life. She was originally from Nepal, got married too soon and started living in Delhi. She had an alcoholic husband and two kids. Her husband wouldn't lift a finger to bring money home, so she had to do what she was doing.

I asked her if she would like to take up a job in my organization. I had enough credibility in my organization to give her a good life. She declined the offer because she would bring more money home doing what she was doing.  I wondered if I should give her my card but I settled on just giving my phone number for her to keep in case she still needed one.

She said she had better offers.

She had a lover - a rich man who keeps calling her on her phone and comes to meet her often. He has promised her the moon and the stars. He has asked her to elope from her home to live with him. He has offered her marriage. He has offered that he would take care of the kids too. He has promised her that she wouldn't have to work anymore.

"Wow! Why wouldn't you take it up? Just run away with him and take the kids too. Amazing!"

"Par log kya kahenge?" she said.

I couldn't convince her to take up this financially and emotionally brilliant option in the next ten minutes. I changed back to my clothes and she offered to escort me out. When he reached the closest roadside vendor selling some roasted peanuts, I asked him to give me change for the 2000-rupee note I had in my wallet. I wondered how much of tip should I give her for being nice to me and then handed her some 300 rupees from the change of notes he returned,  and asked her to call me if she needed the job. Her phone just rang and she beamed a wide smile. "He has called, let me speak to him," she said and waved me goodbye as she picked up the call.

The massage was over but the countless thoughts in my head were not.

What would people say? - What a horrible thing to ask oneself and take decisions accordingly. The rich is worried what would people say and so is the poor too. A respected well-known woman would worry what people say and so would someone who is in the business of earning, well, not so much respect.  (To be fair, there is supply because there's demand. There's a product in the market because there's a buyer. There's prostitution because there are people looking for easy sex they can buy. There's no shame in having unmet physical needs. I am all in for prostitution to be legal like they have in Amsterdam. If anything, everyone should be free to make their choices, both the clients and the prostitutes alike. But all these thoughts were easier in theory, like I had already experienced by then). I was worried about what would people say about me and here, she was too.

The people in her neighbourhood knew that she works in the spa and does a job she doesn't particularly enjoy but that doesn't bother them. But the same people would be bothered if she left her husband to rot and live a financially better life with her lover. 

What a crime to even expect people to say nice things about you! They are probably going to say miserable things anyway. I had stopped blogging in 2015, bothered by the countless comments my peers in my MBA college would say. After I joined my job in 2017, I would still blog less so that my image of being a corporate workaholic doesn't get tarnished by my liberal thought process that shows up in my writing. My books did attract a few jokes from my colleagues when they were initially released but I had no choice but to release them. It was a matter of "life" or "death" for me, figuratively speaking.

All these years I didn't write about this one experience because my MBA peers would say things like - "Why did you even go there at the first place?"  (Why did you not do this or say that are questions I hate answering.)

But at the heart of everything the fact still remains that if that woman who was mentally strong enough to be doing what she was doing, still fears what would people say if she chose to be a little selfish, and if I, who is a typical millennial snowflake aka marshmallow, still fears what would people say if I chose to be a little more emotional, then who, in this country, really is free?

It's true when they say - Duniya ka sabse bada rog, kya kahenge chaar log!

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P.S. Maybe if you want to live a life free from judgements, you have to stop judging others. We create the society we live in. Change begins at home.