by Vikas Khanna
Anarkali pulled her hair back into a bun the way her mother always did, tied her torn-and-faded red saree around her waist, painted on a large vermilion bindi, lined her eyes with kohl, and smeared her lips red. She then took a small blue plastic container of white powder and used a stained cotton-puff to cake as much powder on her face as it could hold, becoming a flood of another kind. Anarkali, almost involuntarily, splashed so much powder on her sullen face that it not only hid her wrinkles, but also her shame, pain, and darkness, until her skin refused to accept more and the extra powder fell to earth like dead stardust.
Fully made up, Anarkali climbed up the bamboo ladder to a world not waiting for her. She pushed aside the grate, the manhole lid she called her front door, and climbed up and out, reborn on the streets above. Her eyes squinted at the bright sun’s glare as she shoved the grate back in place and sealed it shut.
Shaking out the folds of her saree and then pulling the free end of her pallu, the edge of her saree, tighter around her chest, she walked briskly out into the pathos of daily life: heading toward Sangam Chowk, where she often panhandled with Choti.
Sangam Chowk was always bustling with local traders and business people due to its close proximity to Varanasi’s main bus station. Sangam was Anarkali’s “turf,” and contained the last traffic signal before the ghats, as well as the first signal back toward the city, depending on which direction you were headed.
Anarkali walked with a slight limp, favoring one side and keeping her gait as stable as possible for a person walking briskly to a job she detested. This was due to an injury she’d received at the merciless end of a hard stick. As she neared her Chowk, Raja, the head local cop, in his crisp khaki police uniform, was already stalking her from astride his motorcycle. As he passed, Raja wielded his stick and hit Anarkali across her bad arm and sped away.
“Can’t you see my hand and arm have already been broken? You hit me right there! What did your mother eat before giving birth to you, you shameless bastard!” Anarkali yelled as Raja plunged into the traffic.
Raja swiveled his head around, “It’s what your mother forgot to eat! Let me know where you want me to hit you next time, because I always will whenever and wherever I please,” Raja yelled back, grinning lasciviously and smoothing his mustache. Further ahead at a cigarette kiosk, Raja stopped his motorbike. The skinny vendor handed him a pack of Wills cigarettes and a paan—the red-saliva-generating plug of tobacco and areca nut wrapped in a betel leaf that its users packed in their mouths between their cheek and gums; as much a part of culture as Amitabh Bachchan was, and actually had a song dedicated to it, this product that kept many people spitting its juices on walls and streets everywhere in India. It was Raja’s favorite song, one he would often sing as he chewed his paan, “Khaai kaay paan Banaras walaaa,” which roughly translated to “After eating a Varanasi paan…”
“Everything okay?” Raja said to the paan-vendor, chewing his paan with great relish.
“All because of your blessings, Sahibji,” said the vendor.
Raja gunned his throttle and sped off toward the police station without paying. Between hitting Anarkali and stiffing vendors, Raja filled his days with his favorite daily rituals of harassing the public and demanding his commission for “permitting” people to do their jobs on his turf. Every day after Raja left, the vendors looked straight at Anarkali in sympathetic understanding.
Soon after Anarkali started to work Sangam Chowk, she developed a hard-won, but now thoroughly tested and very efficient strategy that allowed her to know when a customer would part with money, based on the direction and flow of traffic, and an assessment of whether people stopped on one side of the signal or the other.
Further, in her general begging assessments, Anarkali had started to determine and categorize her “begees.” There were the Departers, those headed to the ghats for funerals and cremation—be careful begging from them, she cautioned, they were shattered. The loss of their loved ones or the awaited death of their benefactor made them edgy and indecisive, and at their worst, violent. It had proven prudent to wait for them as they headed back from the ghats, that is only if the cremation priest hadn’t already emptied their pockets. To convert these Departers into Temporary Givers it was a good idea to say, “Bhagwan unki aatma ko shanti de,” may God rest their soul in peace.
After begging for so many years, Anarkali could easily tell, to her benefit and safety, who was on their way back from a cremation, or the ritualistic spreading of a loved one’s ashes over the Ganga. Caught just after that moment, these Temporary Givers, whether due to their fleeting realization of life’s arbitrariness, or their sense of loss, grief, or guilt, were the best givers and the most susceptible to having their money begged out of them. The Temporary Givers almost always gave something. But if these same givers encountered Anarkali a day or two after they had returned from the banks, and had returned to their dissolved mirages of vast inherited wealth or material, they immediately saw through her insincerity, and not one rupee came forth.
Anarkali had to strike when the iron of loss was at its hottest.
Welcomers, as Anarkali had branded them with a beaming grin, though they had not proven themselves the most generous, were certainly the most pleasant “begees” at Sangam Chowk. Welcomers were typically mothers taking their newborn babies to the ghats seeking Ganga’s blessings. They considered it auspicious to sight a hijra, and Anarkali certainly was one. Anytime she caught sight of a baby in the arms of its mother, she presented herself clamorously in that direction, doing whatever it took to get their attention—singing, dancing, beating a drum, or ringing a bell. Anarkali loved babies anyhow, rupees or no rupees.
Then there were the tourists wandering aimlessly around, killing time. Anarkali dubbed these more passive wanderers, Time Passers, or TPs, for short. (Sometimes the monikers she created stuck, sometimes they didn’t.) There was nothing particularly challenging or unchallenging about begging from TPs, but what seemed to be true was that the poorer they were, the more likely they were to be on foot, and thus pass closer by Anarkali, whereas the richer TPs had the benefit of distancing themselves from the din and dust of the outside world—especially the strange noise of flamboyant begging hijras—behind the glass windows of their cars.
Finally, Anarkali had classified the Privileged Ones— the many Westerners who visited India on a “spiritual” journey, and who afterwards felt greatly relieved to finally get back home, to live out their newly cleansed, sedate, and predictable lives. Puzzlingly, if they were fresh off the boat Privileged Ones, they were either very generous, or not generous at all. Anarkali had figured out that this depended on whether Varanasi was their first stop in India; or if they had already exhausted their bodies, souls, and monies learning yoga and meditation, and visiting the famous Golden Triangle of Jaipur, Agra, and New Delhi.
“See how people live in poverty here and you are still so thankless!” Anarkali sometimes chided the more ungenerous of the Privileged Ones.
For some reason though, if and when Anarkali ever decided to grant them a picture alongside her, they always paid, and Anarkali never understood why.
Anarkali had taken up her usual position at the intersection by the traffic lights when she saw Choti hurtling toward her; she was obviously in a bad mood because she was banging on every window of every car she passed.
The two had become good friends the moment they had first encountered each other on the rough, smoky streets of Varanasi. And after they’d learned to trust each other, Anarkali had shared all the tricks of her trade, everything she knew about the craft of begging, all her strategies, her customer categories, and nicknames with Choti—and to Anarkali’s surprise, the diminutive tight-rope-walker had mastered them all.
Anarkali spied a hippy, a white guy lounging in the back of a stalled rickshaw with his arms and legs hanging loosely and his head flung black. Most of these types had long beards, long hair, and wore colorful scarves and shorts. There were many such hippies
living or passing through Varanasi all the time, and Anarkali immediately approached him and struck a pose, one that was typically inspired by any of a number of currently trending Bollywood actresses: left hand on hip, and right finger suggestively under her pouted lips, “Hey young man!” Anarkali said. “You are one creamy hot vanilla ice cream. You are so hot you are melting.”
The young man groaned.
“Anyway, sweetheart, may you get a perfect wife someday. Today is Saturday, so for two rupees, I will bless you for it to happen faster. Two rupees is a cheap deal to get you the perfect wife. My arm is broken, or otherwise I would have danced for you as well. How about it? Two rupees to meet the perfect wife?”
The signal turned green and the rickshaw carrying the limp unresponsive body of the young man accelerated through the intersection, almost grazing Anarkali, who still held out for at least one rupee from him.
A dejected Anarkali walked up to Choti, who was still venting her frustration on the lineup of car windows, even though the cars had started to move forward. “Choti, you’re back,” Anarkali said. “What happened with the tight-rope walking?” Anarkali began counting the money she had collected so far, right under Choti’s nose.
“I’m never going to work with that bloody thief Chintu, anymore. He took my share of the money and escaped on a boat in the Ganga, I have a strong feeling he is going to gamble away all our money and get in trouble with the police,” Choti vented her frustration.
“I’ve told you so many times, one day you will fall off that rope, and when you fall back to earth there will be no one to take care of you and you will end up just like Guddu over there,” Anarkali replied.
Choti looked at Guddu, the old cripple who sat on a single wooden plank with a mismatched set of wheels attached underneath, in the middle of the cow-hoof beaten footpath that led into one side of Anarkali’s turf. Guddu was completely paralyzed due to a spine injury and had to be wheeled around by others everywhere he went. Today, strangely, he was all alone.
“Anarkali, I’ll never fall as far down as Guddu, I’m a bird, remember?” Choti’s humor found her again, and now she laughed, spread and flapped her arms, pretended to fly away, and began to dance.
Anarkali laughed, opening her mouth wide and throwing her head back, then beckoned Choti through the open rickshaw she had convinced to stop. “Choti, stop flying like a bird and come back to earth. It’s time to go to work.” The light had turned red, which meant that the traffic would stop and they could implement their begging strategy.
Choti ran back to take up a position on the traffic’s farthest flank, and the two started to work the traffic from both sides, knocking on every car window, shouting into every rickshaw or at people riding on the back of motortaxis—generally harassing anyone who crossed their path for rupees, no matter their category or status.
“From now on, Choti, this is not my territory, it is our territory,” Anarkali said.
Choti grinned.
“It’s just unfortunate we have to pay Inspector Raja 50% of everything we make, but that’s my extortion agreement with him,” said Anarkali, as she relentlessly propositioned each of her targeted customers with a raucous high-pitched, flirtatious laugh.
“Raja is the worst man, he should be called ‘Ravana,’” Choti growled, referring to the ten-headed demon from the epic, Ramayana. Choti continued, “We burn our flesh under the sun for a few rupees and he gets half of it—I have half-a-mind not to give that Ravana any of my share next time around. I’ve had it up to here with him and the Chintus of the world. Maybe Raja is that bastard Chintu’s secret father.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Anarkali.
“And he keeps threatening to lock me up for the rude replies I give him when he and his boys come to break up my tamasha. He’ll be lucky if I don’t break up his tamasha one day. He can’t arrest me for opening my own mouth, can he?” Choti said.
“I’m sure a bastard like Raja or one of his bastard, potbellied boys could find a way,” Anarkali said.
“The sun and smoke from the pyres must have driven him crazy. He used to be more reasonable. The pumpkin he married must have turned his brain into a pumpkin as well,” Choti said with a loud laugh.
“Choti! Hush your mouth!” Anarkali said. “You’ll get into so much trouble for talking so brazenly all the time. Listen, if you go to the other side of the street you can make more money. Those people over there are TPs arriving from cremations.”
“How do you know?”
“I can smell them. They are ripe for begging. I’ll stay on this side, deal?” Anarkali said.
“No no no, I can’t go to that side. Ram Sweets is on that side, and I already had a fight with him over the sweet jalebi I tried to steal. You know Indian funnel cakes are my weakness,” Choti said.
“Then why aren’t you fat?” Anarkali said.
Choti shrugged. “Ram Halwai even hit me. Cheapster! He makes twenty jalebis at a time, what difference does losing one make? I know he keeps all his money in that big red box he holds close to his big fat stomach, and he’ll be lucky if I don’t punch him in the gut and steal all his rupees one day. What comes around, goes around. He hit me even on the day his father died, and he had already been giving away all away his sweets for free, anyway.”
Anarkali slapped her hands across her ears and winced. “Choti, do you ever stop? You’re going to drive all of Varanasi crazy and bring all of Varanasi’s dead back to life with all these schemes you can’t stop spouting off about. Halwai is a rich man, you should respect him.”
“The only thing I respect about Ram Halwai is his big fat hairy stomach, it’s like an old, moss-covered earthen pot with a tap.”
“His gut is a tap?” Anarkali shook her head, utterly confused.
“Not his gut, the button that sticks out of it,” Choti said, laughing and flicking up her right-hand pinky.
Anarkali screwed up her face, caught her tongue between her front teeth and hissed with laughter. “Oh, that kind of tap. Eeww! You’re so bad. I would never drink from Halwai’s dirty tap.”
“Me, neither, but I would consider stealing some of his sweet money out from under it for what he did to me.”
Anarkali reached into the neck of the short-cropped blouse that she wore with her saree, and took out two rupees. “Choti, go buy yourself some samosas for lunch. You must be hungry and that is why you are so cranky at the world today,” she said.
Choti took the rupees and tucked them in her belt, “I don’t like to accept favors from anyone, but Anarkali, you are like my family. I’ll return the money to you when I get my share from Chintu—and after I kill him,” she said.
Anarkali smiled, and turned back to continue her aggressive begging. She didn’t reveal it very often, but the truth was that she had more love in her heart for Choti than for anyone, even more than she had for her hijra sisters.
Choti ran across the street to the chai-wallah. On the way back with the hot treats wrapped in a newspaper, Choti stopped at a traditional old spice shop that displayed colorful mounds of spices.
Before the owner noticed, Choti slyly scooped a small handful of bright yellow turmeric powder from its mound and slipped away, checking the street for the break in traffic that would allow her safest passage back to Anarkali.
On the other side of the street, Choti saw a mother and her toddler daughter also waiting to cross, the toddler whining and refusing to hold her mother’s hand. When the break in traffic came, the mother grabbed her daughter’s hand and led her across the road, passing by Choti as she crossed from the opposite side. As they passed one another, Choti couldn’t help but admire how tightly the mother held her daughter’s hand in order to protect and guide her. Choti had never felt such a hand on hers, so she was fascinated by the way people’s hands interlocked, and paid very close attention to it. This fascination always ended with Choti reaching over and clasping her own hands together, for she had no outside hands to hold, or other hands to hold hers. Was
this a sad thing? She didn’t think about it.
Finally, Choti ran back across the intersection to find Anarkali taking a break, resting against a crooked pole, dead tired and staring blankly at the ground.
Choti held out the turmeric in the calloused palms of her hands. “Anarkali,” she said.
“Hmm?” Anarkali looked up.
“I got something special for you.”
“Turmeric?” said Anarkali.
“It will help your arm and hand.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Anarkali said, squeezing her tired eyes shut as if to fight back tears, suddenly overcome. “Did you have a samosa?”
Choti laughed, “Yes, and I didn’t even have to spend one rupee.”
Anarkali grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“I put on my ‘poor-sad-and-hungry’ face to a Welcomer, and they gave me samosas to fulfill their dead father’s wishes! I drooped my mouth and made my face even poorer, sadder, and hungrier so they would give me an extra samosa for you. Works every time!” Choti returned all the money, plus turmeric and a delicious samosa into Anarkali’s hands.
Anarkali munched off a corner of the samosa Choti had given her and started to apply the turmeric to her wounded arm. “Choti, my girl, my best friend, you are right. Everyone becomes more generous the moment they lose someone.” “Hmm,” Choti said, nodding with her mouth full.
“Did you feed any of your samosa crumbs to your pets?” Anarkali said, still rubbing turmeric on her hand and arm, which were turning yellow. What would another daub of color on her body matter?
“My pets?” Choti said, bouncing on her toes, confused.
“The lice you keep in your hair,” Anarkali spluttered with laughter.