Apsara Hotel, a century-old hotel in Aurangabad, serves as a stopover on Lin and Prabaker’s journey back to Bombay. Its faded grandeur surrounds two sharply different episodes: a misdirected attempt to arrange sex for Lin, and the aftermath of a beating that revives his memories of prison.

Setting and Character

The hotel was built for a more splendid age. Its high, wide rooms opened onto balconies facing a busy street, and cornices and ceiling rosettes preserved traces of its former elegance. But the present had worn through that surface: corridor carpet was shaggy with holes, paint peeled from dirty, bruised walls, and the furniture was shabby and haphazardly assembled. Its rooms were cheap, which suited Prabaker’s plan for a happy night on the way back to Bombay.

The Doorway Encounter

After explaining that he had paid a deposit for Lin to have sex with a woman at the hotel, Prabaker persuaded him to go and look, partly because the deposit would not be returned otherwise. Lin locked their room behind them, and they walked down the wide corridor to a door at the far end of their floor. Prabaker was trembling with excitement when Lin knocked.

A woman of more than fifty opened the door, wearing a red-and-yellow sari and glaring at them. Several men sat inside on the floor, eating dhal, rice, and roti; their dhotis and white caps resembled the farmers in Prabaker’s village. The woman stepped into the corridor and shut the door behind her, fixing her hostile gaze on Prabaker. The encounter exposed the gulf between Prabaker’s confident arrangement and the reality at the door, turning the hotel corridor into the stage for his embarrassed misunderstanding.

The Hotel After the Beating

After Lin was beaten during an outing to a remote bar, he and Prabaker returned to the hotel. In its huge, white-tiled bathroom, Lin washed his face at the basin while Prabaker blamed himself for leading them to the bar and allowing them to drink too much. Prabaker said he would gladly bear Lin’s bruises himself if he could, and urged him to seek money from family and friends and report an emergency to the New Zealand embassy when they reached Bombay.

Looking into the mirror, Lin assessed a forming black eye, a swollen but unbroken nose, cut and thickened lips, and grazes across his cheeks and jaw. The bathroom’s mirror prompted a comparison with earlier beatings, especially the violence inflicted by prison guards. For Lin, the memory carried a particular force: the men who beat him were supposed to uphold peace, and their violence made the injustice seem systemic. The hotel thus holds both a temporary refuge and the setting for an involuntary return to the prison past.