The passengers hiding by the windows are trying to look outside and ignore, but they cannot. Arjuni Ma is specifically calling to them. “Listen, mother, give us a few rupees from the goodness of your heart.”
Every face that is turning to me, I am hoping it is not somebody from Mr. Debnath’s acting class. Please god, I am thinking. Now I am on my way to being a star, why to ruin that reputation? Those classmates are maybe the only people in my life who have not seen me in this trade. They have not seen how this trade is making me a little disgusting in the eyes of others. But if I am not having this trade, how am I saving money for acting classes?
I am always learning from the train. Here is a mother sitting cross-legged with her baby sleeping in her lap. Her head is tilting on her shoulder and she is sleeping also, dead to the world. She is not hearing any of our words. Next time when I am having a role as a tired mother, I will be thinking about her.
A lot of people are looking outside, to the fields of their country, the soothing green outside the window. The fields of paddy and coconut trees, the endless green of the rural parts. Oh, fantasy! They are actually looking at the ugly suburbs. Banners are hanging above a lane, advertising cold cream. The cloth of the banners is poked with holes for letting the wind through. In quiet towns, two-story houses painted such colors like you may never see in the city—bright blue and yellow! pink and green!—are jutting up from dust, some with flags of the local political party, and one with a stray man on the roof, sent up to fix the satellite dish, scratching his head at the sky.
All this I am seeing through the windows of the train, like they are a kind of television.
* * *
*
THE INVITATION CARD IS arriving one morning, passed from hand to hand because there is no address on it except Lovely Hijra, near Kolabagan Railway Station. I am opening the card as if it is a flap of my heart. I am reading the words so many times I am knowing them like a song. Opening and closing the card, opening and closing the card—I am ready for my heart to be tearing at the fold.
On the given day, I am shampooing in the cold water of the municipal tap, oiling my elbows, putting some rose water on my face, putting a garland around the thick bun high on my head, and then I am setting out for the event hall where Azad is going to marry a woman. A real woman, with whom he is someday having children, just like I was pushing him to do. His days of being with a he-she like me are over. In my armpit I am holding a nicely wrapped box with a small European-looking statue inside.
The hall is having a flower-and-leaf gate spelling out in front: Azad weds Shabnam. A lady standing over there is giving every guest a cup of cool rose-flavored Rooh Afza.
I am slurping it down, so thirsty I am suddenly feeling. Still my tongue is feeling thick, my throat is feeling dry. Inside, Azad and his bride are sitting on matching thrones. Behind the thrones there is a heap of big wrapped boxes—must be they are toasters, blankets, dinner plates. Azad is smiling with all thirty-two teeth and shaking some old uncle’s hand. Then he is seeing me, and we are going on looking at each other. We are having no words.
I was the one who was telling Azad to move forward and marry a woman, am I not remembering? But now Azad is looking handsome. His hair is nicely combed, and he is wearing an ivory dhoti kurta. His bride’s face is powdered white like a ghost, and her lips are red like a tomato. On her neck she is wearing at least five–six gold necklaces. I am not caring about gold, but I am caring, with my empty Rooh Afza cup in my hand, that Azad was buying these for her with love. Wasn’t Azad once telling me that he could not live without me? So why was he not marrying some ugly one-eyed person?
Anyway, I am having to be noble now. I am going up to the bride and groom with my gift.
“Lovely,” Azad is saying uncomfortably, “good that you came.”
I am feeling like I will cry. While my heart is bouncing like a Ping-Pong ball inside my chest, I am saying to them, “Long married life to both of you.” The girl is bending low, wanting to be blessed, and I, Lovely, am feeling like a kind of goddess, a kind of saint, believing when you love him let him go.
In the dinner line, one eye on the biryani and one eye on the Chinese chili chicken, I am not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Look at me, waiting for the feast at my husband’s marriage. With my plate and napkin in one hand, chomping chomping, I am looking around at the hall, decorated with plastic flowers, a small fountain in one corner. Isn’t this life strange?
My love for Azad, I am telling myself, is existing in some other world, where there is no society, no god. In this life we were never getting to know that other world, but I am sure it is existing. There, our love story is being written.
At the end of the night, when I am walking down the lane, all the shops are shuttered other than a welder’s shop where a masked man is working. From the machine, bright sparks are falling on the road. In the hands of this tired man, it is like Diwali.
* * *
*
MR. DEBNATH IS TELLING me to have a demo video prepared so I can be showing my reel to his movie’s producers, and starting to get small, small projects on my own also. At one demo office, the front desk man’s mouth is hanging open, and he is poking inside his mouth with a toothpick. This is the cheapest place I could be finding, so I am having to make my demo video here, no question.
“Which level,” the man is saying dully.
“What?”
“Which level demo video you are wanting? Basic level six hundred rupees, better variety a thousand rupees, deluxe package twenty-five hundred rupees.”
I am gulping to hear the prices. Then I am choosing basic level. When he is filling out a form on a clipboard, he is asking, “What is your name?”
“Lovely,” I am saying.
At this he is snorting like a horse.
When I am looking at the form, I am seeing that he is writing next to my name: B.
“Why you are marking me B already?” I am demanding. “I didn’t even perform.”
“Calm down, madam,” the man is complaining. “Why are you looking at what I am writing? It’s just lingo, nothing personal about you.”
But he is not telling me what it is meaning. I am learning later, on my own. B-class. An actor who is not having the pretty face or light skin color for A-class roles. B-class actor is someone who is only playing a servant, a rickshaw puller, a thief. The audience is wanting to see B-class actors punched and slapped and defeated by the hero.
I am going to a room and standing nervously in front of not a theoretical camera but a real camera. It is balanced on top of a tripod, and there is a blinking red light on it. The man with sleepy eyes is standing behind it, and even though I am not liking him and he is not liking me, I am feeling like a real actress. I am looking at the lens and knowing—through this lens, someday I am reaching a thousand people, a million people. So what if there is only one grumpy man here, and he is receptionist and clerk and cameraperson also? It may be a boutique company, as they say.
The man is telling me that he will give me a fifteen-minute reel with different characters and looks. That is what I am getting for six hundred, he is reminding me.
“Now, if you are taking the deluxe package—”
“No need!” I am saying. “Basic package is okay for me.”
I am tying up my hair and doing some voice exercises. In this empty room, my voice is sounding hollow.
Now he is saying, “Can you do an angry housewife?”
Then: “Now you try a person waiting for the bus and it is just not coming. Subtle expressions, see?”
Then: “You are a baby throwing a tantrum,” to which I am saying, “A baby?”
But maybe these are tests for being an actress. You have to slide into the character, no hesitation.
I am lying down on a dirty mattress laid on the floor anyhow. A small worm is running along the
edge of the mattress, trying to find an opening where it can be hiding. I am lying on my back with my hands and feet up, more like a dying cockroach than a baby. I am wailing waan waan.
The whole time, I am feeling like the man is secretly filming me for a bad website. How is it that this cashier is having full control of the camera? It is giving me an uneasy feeling in my chest.
When the man is taking six hundred and forty rupees from me—“tax,” he is explaining—and giving me the CD, I am feeling somehow cheated.
* * *
*
WHEN I AM COMING back home, there is one man waiting in front of my door. He is suited-booted, and everybody is looking at him because his clothes are looking too clean. On his fingers he is wearing one green stone, one red stone, one blue stone, some copper rings.
“Is your name Lovely?” he is saying, as I am taking my key out of my purse.
“What is it to you?” I am saying. Men are always wanting things.
“Jivan said,” he is gulping, like a nervous fish, “Jivan said you are willing to come to the court, her mother came and saw you—”
“Who are you, mister?” I am asking him.
Then he is saying, “I am Jivan’s lawyer. I just need to confirm that you will come to the court.”
He is giving me a form.
“I am not knowing how to read English,” I am telling him.
“But she was teaching you?” he is asking.
“She was teaching me,” I am sighing. “How is Jivan? Is she getting proper food?”
Instead of answering my question, this man is liking to ask more questions. Now he is saying, “Can I sit and talk with you? I can help you fill this out. Maybe at the tea shop over there?”
PT SIR
TWO MONTHS AFTER BIMALA Pal becomes, quietly and without ceremony, Jana Kalyan Party’s new leader, she sends PT Sir on a mission that, if PT Sir is being honest, he finds a little bewildering.
A winter chill is in the air when a party jeep takes PT Sir to a village called Chalnai, eighty kilometers away. On the highway, large trucks transporting the season’s vegetables—cauliflower, potatoes—blow musical horns. Pedestrians, visible as triangles of wool shawls on two legs, run across the highway now and then, fearing nothing.
Nearing the village, the jeep slows as its wheels crush grain placed on the road by villagers. A girl sits on the pads of her feet, supervising the use of passing cars as millstones. Behind her, fields of stubble roll from the edge of the paved road to a horizon where woods blur.
In Chalnai, the government school is a doorless structure next to a dust field. Inside, a dozen men and women—teachers, PT Sir understands—sit cross-legged on the floor. When PT Sir enters, the teachers say nothing. They have about them an air of waiting to be instructed what to do, how to behave, whether to speak or smile. PT Sir joins his hands in greeting.
PT Sir’s task is to impress upon the teachers that students must have a half hour of physical activity every day. They must be let loose from their books to eat the air, play a sport, or run races. If the school lacks large grounds, the students must be allowed to jump rope. After twenty minutes of lecturing, during which PT Sir feels slightly absurd, he distributes among the teachers pamphlets from the party, with illustrations showing overworked students choosing to hang themselves or jump from the roof. It has happened. It is a serious problem. But here, with the blank-faced teachers nodding at everything he says, PT Sir feels himself sent on a silly mission. This, after all, is a village, with abundant fields and woods where children run wild.
At night, at home with his wife, he takes off a shirt and undershirt going red from the soil of the region. When he washes his face, the red dust is in the crooks of his ears.
“So why did they really send you to this place?” demands his wife.
PT Sir thinks about this. He feels that this field trip was some kind of test, but whether he has passed or not, he does not yet know.
JIVAN
BEHIND THE MAIN PRISON building there is a long gutter, green with growth. Running above it is a crooked water pipe with a dozen faucets. Here I kneel every other morning, and wash clothes for Americandi.
One morning, I am kneeling and scrubbing, I am beating the kameez and salwar against the ground, watching a circle of foam spread, when I feel somebody behind me. It is a guard, who says, “Your lawyer is here. Leave that and come.”
Is it so easy? Don’t I know that Americandi will punish me for leaving her clothes unwashed?
Rapidly I rinse and wring, putting my weight into my arms, the wrung clothes releasing ropes of water. I flap the clothes in the air, a gentle rain falling back toward me, and hang them up to dry on a clothesline inside my cell. When I walk, finally, to the visiting room, with each step my back aches like its hinges need oiling.
* * *
*
I HAVE NEVER SEEN Gobind smile so wide.
“Lovely is here,” he says, standing up when he sees me, “you are right. The message has been delivered.”
“I know,” I tell him. “My mother found her, when you couldn’t!”
“She has promised she will testify,” he says, as if he can’t hear me. “A win for us!”
A few days later, in the papers, I see stories which claim Gobind did extensive on-the-ground investigation, endless nights of detective work, to track down the elusive hijra, Lovely.
* * *
*
WHEN I SPEAK ABOUT PT Sir, Purnendu raises his eyebrows.
“What?” I say. “Do you know him?”
“Is this the man who has been seen with Bimala Pal?” Purnendu says. “The new member of Jana Kalyan Party?”
“No, no,” I tell him. “He was just my PT teacher at S. D. Ghosh School.”
* * *
*
ONE DAY, AFTER A CLASS during which the sun made me feel faint, PT Sir called me. What was wrong now? I wondered. My hem fraying, my shoelaces soiled? But he said, in a scolding tone so as not to embarrass me, “Are you eating properly?”
I tried to smile, as if it was a silly concern. “It was too hot, sir, that’s why I felt weak.”
He looked at me for a while, and I waited to be punished. When teachers called me, that was usually what happened.
But PT Sir took me up to the staff room, and handed me a tiffin box from his bag. Inside, there were several pieces of ruti folded in triangles, and vegetables.
“Sit and eat it,” he said. I did, all those pipes in me clamoring for food, their need louder than my embarrassment. My mother always cooked food for us, but that month, my father needed an injection which cost us our grocery money. I had only eaten some rice and salt for breakfast.
After that, PT Sir kept an eye on me. He slipped me some bread and jam, or a banana. I, in turn, participated enthusiastically in his class. I jogged in place—“High knee! Low!”—and bounced a basketball with vigor. I jumped toward the new hoops. I raced with my elbows slicing the air and my thighs pumping. I thought of all the times I had stayed home to look after my father, and now, my sweat shined on my limbs.
PT Sir, with his balding head ringed by a patch of combed hair, stood in the sun class after class, a whistle ready at his lips. He smiled at me and told me, “Well done!”
Once, he asked me if I was interested in going to a cricket camp.
I wondered sometimes if he paid attention to me because he felt like an outsider too. He was a father, I imagined, and all the other teachers were mothers. When the principal spoke about morals at the morning assembly, and the microphone began to screech, the ladies looked around for PT Sir. Such was his place in the school, a little apart from everybody else.
* * *
*
THEN TWO THINGS HAPPENED.
One, I went to a classmate’s birthday party. Priya’s mother took us home in a bus, and paid fo
r my bus fare. I stood on the uneven wooden planks, this time in shoes, reaching high for the bar that ran along the ceiling. A lady was eating chocolate wafers, and had a full bag in her lap. I looked at the chocolates, sitting ignored, nobody wanting them.
In Priya’s room, she had a desk for working and a special lamp just for the desk, which curved downward to put light on the book but not in her eyes. I had never seen a lamp like it. I still covet it.
In the kitchen, Priya crushed biscuits and chocolate sauce to make a sweet dish that her mother scolded her for making, as it would spoil our appetite for the dinner. But I ate spoonfuls of it, and then ate my fill at dinner. I had never seen such a spread. There was luchi, dal, chicken, but also Chinese noodles from the cart at the bus stop, in case we did not find the home-cooked food delicious. When I left, Priya’s mother gave me a tiffin box full of food for my mother and father. Was Priya a millionaire? No, she was only middle class.
It made me proud. Look at me, Ma, with my middle-class friend. That’s what I thought. One day I would be middle class too.
* * *
*
THE SECOND EVENT HAPPENED one night, when I was woken by my mother shouting. It was dark, and I rose in a panic.
“Look how they scratched me, those savages,” my mother was saying, holding out a bare forearm. And they had, whoever they were. I climbed off the bed, my breath catching, and held her arm tenderly, as if my touch could soothe. A small circle of potential customers stood around, bereft of breakfast, agitated by the event they had stumbled upon.
At the nighttime market, two or three men had shoved my mother, grabbed her grocery-shopping money from her fist, and shouted at her to “go back to Bangladesh.”
Later, when the audience had dispersed, Ma sat in the house with her head in her hands. When she looked up, after long minutes, she said, “They were touching me here, touching me here. Oh my girl, my gold, don’t make me tell you.”
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