Summary
Lakshmi and Uncle Husband pass by a slum where two boys beg for money. One is disabled and starving, and the other dances like Michael Jackson. People give the dancer coins but ignore the disabled boy.
Uncle and Lakshmi then reach Happiness House, which is full of girls wearing “festival clothes” and makeup. Uncle Husband negotiates with the brothel madam, Aunty Mumtaz, and sells Lakshmi for ten thousand rupees. Shilpa, another girl who has “the reed-thin body of a girl and the hollow cheeks of an old woman,” leads Lakshmi to a bedroom and locks her inside. The next day, Lakshmi awakens to women gathered around a television. Aunty Mumtaz instructs the other girls to clean Lakshmi, paint her nails, brush her hair, and apply makeup. Lakshmi, unable to speak the “city language,” does not understand what is happening to her.
Then, Mumtaz asks Lakshmi if she is “ready to work,” and Lakshmi agrees, still not understanding that she is not going to be a maid. Mumtaz brings Lakshmi to a room with an old man. When Lakshmi does not move toward him, Mumtaz throws Lakshmi by the hair, and the old man sexually assaults her. Lakshmi, afraid and confused, bites his tongue and runs away. Convinced there has been a mistake, Lakshmi runs back to her room and tries to change into her clothes, intending to return home. Mumtaz coldly states that Lakshmi is trapped since she doesn’t know where she is and has no money for a train. Mumtaz then explains that she has bought Lakshmi, and has Shahanna, another girl, cuts Lakshmi’s hair so that if she tries to escape, she will be brought back.
For days, Mumtaz beats Lakshmi and starves her until she agrees to work in the brothel. However, Lakshmi, accustomed to hunger, tries to outlast Mumtaz. After five days of beating and starvation, Shahanna brings Lakshmi a cup of tea and recommends she submit to Mumtaz’s will, as living conditions in the brothel are better than those in the city. Lakshmi initially refuses to do “this disgraceful thing,” but she is drugged and raped by a man named Habib, who, disgustingly, is excited to take Lakshmi’s virginity. Why Lakshmi awakens the next day, traumatized physically and psychologically, she sees herself in the mirror and believes she has “become one of them.” After, Mumtaz drugs Lakshmi and allows men to rape her each night. Lakshmi’s real-life experiences blend together with her nightmares and drug-induced hallucinations.
Shahanna gives Lakshmi a condom and tells her to ask the men to wear it to prevent disease. She advises Lakshmi not to insist, or Mumtaz will beat her. After an indeterminable amount of time, Mumtaz removes Lakshmi from her room, as she is “no longer a virgin” and cannot fetch a good price. Mumtaz then lies, saying she paid twenty thousand rupees for Lakshmi, and that Lakshmi still has to work off her debt. Lakshmi then joins the other girls downstairs, where she sees a new young girl taking her place. The other girls feed Lakshmi and bring her to watch television, an American soap opera called “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Lakshmi does not understand how the girls can laugh and enjoy themselves when the men come later that night.
The women play with the many children who live in the brothel. Shahanna explains that having children is the only way many of the women can have families. Mumtaz allows the women to have children to drive them deeper into debt. The children play on the roof while their mothers take customers, and the babies are drugged so that they can sleep under the beds while their mothers receive customers.
Analysis
The two beggar boys parallel the way society treats girls who work in Happiness House. The girls only survive by “entertaining” their clients; people in the city do not provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. This scene also recalls Lakshmi’s stepfather’s situation; because his arm is deformed, he is shamed and ignored by his community. Unable to work like other men, he makes money by gambling and eventually selling Lakshmi.
At each stage of Lakshmi’s trafficking, her price increases. Lakshmi’s family only receives four hundred rupees, whereas Uncle Husband, who simply transported Lakshmi for a day, receives ten thousand rupees. Lakshmi, who is horribly abused, gets nothing. Encapsulating the theme of the commodification of sexuality, Mumtaz soon moves Lakshmi to the lower room with the other girls, since she is no longer a virgin, and men pay less for "used goods."
While Lakshmi tries to outlast Mumtaz, she lists the opportunities for food she tries to ignore, starting each sentence with the phrase “I don’t," followed by a description of food-related imagery, such as "smell the onions frying" and "the footsteps of the street boy who brings afternoon tea." The fact that Lakshmi notices and then lists each food vendor in detail means that she does, in fact, listen, notice, and dream of food.
The chapter title "Everything I need to know now" parallels the earlier chapter, "Everything I need to know," in which Ama explains Lakshmi's future duties as Krishna's wife. Shahanna's advice deals primarily with avoiding abusive men and deadly diseases. Shahanna explains to Lakshmi that she must tell the customers she is twelve years old, do whatever they ask, hide tips and condoms, eat sweets as soon as they are given, and ignore Americans. Like the earlier chapter, Lakshmi recounts the advice in a plain, matter-of-fact list, which highlights how much her life and priorities have changed since being sold, as well as the hopelessness of her situation at Happiness House. The most damning piece of advice Shahanna gives is that a shawl can be used to both seduce men and commit suicide.
Lakshmi's first days in the brothel introduce the theme of escapism. Outside of sleeping with customers, the women escape reality by watching soap operas to imagine their lives are glamorous and doting on children to pretend their lives are ordinary. Since Lakshmi endures sexual assault in a drug-induced haze and does not fully understand what sex is, she describes being sexually assaulted through metaphors, sounds, and personification, such as the sound of “a zipper baring its teeth.” Eventually, Lakshmi learns to focus on other sounds.
After being raped for the first time, Lakshmi grapples with shame. Though she attempted to resist Mumtaz and was drugged, she still believes her experiences are "disgraceful" and scorns her brutalized reflection, angry that she has "become one of them," meaning the other women working in the brothel. This misplaced shame is later reiterated when Monica's family shuns her for working in Happiness House, though she provides for them financially.
