by Vikas Khanna
A couple of tourists chucked a half-eaten potato cutlet in Choti and Anarkali’s general direction, and the two friends scooped it off the ground with their hands and blew off the dirt before squatting to devour it.
Choti frowned. “Anarkali. I will never cut my hair, lice or no lice. It’s one of my powers in life. Never never never, and over my dead body,” she said.
Anarkali stared at Choti, affection suddenly oozing from her eyes, smiling at Choti as she chewed.
“Anarkali, where did you get your name?” Choti said between bites.
At first Anarkali didn’t answer.
“Oh, come on, na,” Choti said, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head, finally swallowing the big piece of potato cutlet she had been savoring in her mouth for as long as she could.
Anarkali continued to stare at Choti, before saying, “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.”
Anarkali started her story:
“Once there was a Hindu couple who traveled from the region of Sindh, that would soon become modern-day Western Pakistan. The family was lucky to have survived the burning hatred of one of the largest massacres in India’s history. The newly married couple, Aman and Sita, had left all their belongings in Sindh and were making one of the most challenging journeys of their life. Along the way, Sita had the thought she was pregnant, because she was vomiting and feeling nauseous. But Aman told her that they had to keep moving to stay safe. They needed to cross the border into India before the border was sealed.
“Back then, even in those days of chaos, betrayal, and mass killings, many still held to an ancient belief in the power of the pen. And that power had fully expressed itself when a line had been drawn between two nations that were in fact comprised of the same people. It was that simple line, drawn on a map by a human hand that caused so much sorrow and grief. A nation that might have been celebrating freedom and unity was left to mourn its division.
“Aman and Sita sought safety at refugee camp near Lahore. Afterward, they made the arduous train journey via Delhi to finally arrive at Varanasi. By that time, Sita’s stomach had grown twice its size. Sita was right. She was pregnant.
“Being refugees, it was hard to survive, but they soon found work making bricks at a factory kiln that seemed as ancient as the Mohenjo-Daro site, which still bears the ruins of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Nothing at the kiln—neither the bricks nor the attitudes of the boss and his workers—seemed to have changed over the centuries. Not one wind of freedom blew there for them, and everyone was a virtual slave. But, in order to survive and to be able to support their unborn child, Aman and Sita worked there alongside the many other families who had traveled the same path. They shared cramped shacks with the other workers, while turning the raw clay into the solid bricks that would build the New India.
“Months passed and Sita’s stomach grew even larger, so large that it became too difficult for her to carry or cart the bricks going in and out of the kiln. A few months later, with the help of the other women at the kiln, Sita gave birth to what at the time everyone believed was a baby girl. Sita and Aman named their baby ‘Lakshmi.’ The reaction of almost all the people of the kiln was one or the other of two utterances: ‘Next time it will be a boy,’ or to console the new parents, ‘Giving birth to Lakshmi will bring you good fortune.’
“But Sita knew something about her new Lakshmi was amiss. In the weeks following the birth, every time she gave her baby a bath, something stuck out that she wished she didn’t notice and could simply forget. The thing tormenting Sita was a set of tiny male genitals that appeared just above Lakshmi’s female folds. Lakshmi was not your average baby girl.
“Sita did not mention the anomaly to anyone and did everything she could to hide her naked baby from the eyes of her husband. She took to sitting alone atop the kiln’s low walls, holding her daughter, while a million shaming voices screamed in her mind. She silenced the voices by holding her child as tight as she could for as long as she and her baby could hold their secret, but the tears that cleaned Sita’s brick-dust and soot-covered face soon made a river that flowed strong enough for anyone to see.
“Sita felt as torn apart as the lands torn apart by the Radcliffe line. The division of Ardhanarishvara, the half-male, half-female form of Lord Shiva, was testing her. And the journey of accepting Lakshmi for what he or she was would prove even more difficult than her and Aman’s journey from their native Sindh. Sita’s mind reeled trying to find a solution. She could stop Lakshmi’s breath before it felt the real air of life. She could do Lakshmi this favor of suffocation before the world saw her, knew her, or had the chance to do the same, which the world certainly would— or dishonor, reject, then discard her. Sita already felt the walls of prejudice, stigma, and pain Lakshmi would have to confront every day of her life closing in. Sita knew the sad life of the hijras of Sindh and she knew exactly where that life ended. Why allow a life only destined to end? These thoughts of dread gathered around her like the smoke she watched every day coming off the hardening bricks made from soft clay.
“When Sita went back to work, every day during breaks, she lightly rocked Lakshmi, whom she kept fully clothed in her cloth cradle, but was unable to rock away her thoughts of the harsh future her child was certain to face. The present wasn’t any kinder to Sita, either. Even when mother and daughter became covered from head to toe with brick-dust and grime from the burning coals, Sita had to refuse to wash Lakshmi’s body, lest she reveal the secret of her dual gender. The very thought of Lakshmi growing up was as repellent as viewing her undecided genitals. The prayers she had secretly made for the unity of her home nation, now divided by ink and brutality into nations, never sounded for the true gift she had birthed—a child possessing a unity of gender, who would have to forever live with the conflict of that unity. Sita saw no gifts from the gods or miracles coming their way.
“She was ashamed of it, but somedays Sita cursed the gods for delivering their rare ‘gift’ of Lakshmi to her. Other days she anticipated the day she would take Lakshmi and drown her in the Ganga. And when she wasn’t anticipating that terrible act, she would dream about it, and she dreamed of Lakshmi’s drowning many times.
“One afternoon, as Sita tried to balance herself as she carried a pile of bricks, a small poster stuck on the back wall of the kiln captured her eyes. It was a poster depicting Ardhanarishvara, him and herself:
Half man, half woman
Half immortal, half human
Half giver, half receiver
Half becoming, half being
Half God, half Goddess
“Then Sita remembered the stories about Mohini, the female form of Krishna, her grandmother in Sindh used to tell her.
“As Lakshmi approached twelve years of age, the suspicion about her real gender increased so much amongst their community of refugee brick-makers at the Varanasi kiln that everyone forced Sita to reveal the truth.
“Within a matter of few hours of this revelation, Lakshmi suddenly became an outcast. There would be no place for her or her kind anywhere in their society. She was punished for a ‘crime’ she had no control over. If anything, it was a crime committed by God. Now Lakshmi was considered a curse. Sita’s husband, Aman, became furious, betrayed by both God and his wife, and threatened to eject Lakshmi immediately from the kiln into the streets. The truth was that Sita was entirely disheartened, yet managed to remain strangely calm because she had other plans for Lakshmi. The wet clay-like, hopeful softness her heart had once felt even when reminiscing about Lakshmi’s birth, the feeling of hope that had allowed her and her husband to travel the thousands of miles to find a new home after suffering a riotous division, had turned as hard as the bricks she and Aman now turned out at the kiln. Her heart was hard and dead, the joy of raising Lakshmi, gone, the pain of keeping their secret, worse than ever.
“One day the small family of three decided to go see a tent-film together, going straight into the heart of Varanasi to watch Mughal-e-Azam, India’s
biggest silver screen epic of love, power, and betrayal. This was the first time the family watched a movie together, and it would be their last. Sita and Aman made it Lakshmi’s happiest day, dressed her in her best pink frock and braided her hair in its usual two plaits complete with red ribbons.
“Lakshmi sat delighted and hypnotized in front of the big screen throughout, but when the movie ended and the lights came on she looked over and saw she was alone. Both her mother and her father had vanished. She sunk in her seat, waiting, but they never returned.
“The tent emptied and Lakshmi was left alone in total darkness. She ran out of the tent-theater and looked for her parents everywhere. They were nowhere to be found. She thought to go to the kiln the next day, but if they didn’t want her, well, she decided she didn’t want them either. Lakshmi began to cry. She loved her parents, especially Sita, but feared their punishment and humiliation. She braced herself, took a deep breath and went to live with other hijras such as she was in their community, and spent the rest of her days singing, dancing, cursing, blessing, and begging to survive. But for the rest of Lakshmi’s life, she would never trust anyone again, and she had developed a serious love/hate regard for her once favorite film, Mughal-e-Azam.”
Thus went Anarkali’s tale, until Choti eagerly interrupted, “So, Anarkali, you are Lakshmi?”
Anarkali stared at Choti. “Before her parents abandoned her, Lakshmi loved the movie so much that, on that very day, she changed her name to ‘Anarkali’, the beautiful, ill-fated dancer from the film, who fell in love with a prince.”
Choti fidgeted, listening, while Anarkali only persisted to stare at her. “But she also hated it so much for the moment it represented that she refused to ever watch Mughal-e-Azam or any other film again.”
Whether anyone else cared to realize it or reckon with it or not, when Anarkali stood and begged in Sangam Chowk, in the reality of things, she stood at the crossroads of mortals and immortals, of male and female, of rivers and oceans. For the rest of Anarkali’s life, she would burn and bake under Varanasi’s unforgiving sun, as hot and ready as the hardened bricks that founded the free nation.
Choti, Chintu and Bhura with their rope.
(L to R) Rajesh, Anuj, Vikas and Neeraj after Holi in Vrindavan.
Choti and Chintu go for a drive and discuss what they want to be when they grow up.
Neena Gupta and Aqsa Siddiqui after their first acting workshop together.
Getting ready for the majestic Holi shoot.
(From L to R) Vikas, Bindu Khanna, Aqsa, Jitendra Mishra, Rajeshwar and Poonam Kaul during the shoot
Chintu on a bed of flowers.
Chintu counts his day’s earnings.
Noor’s roommate, Asha (Rashmi Sharma).
(From L to R) Bindu Khanna, Anuj Tyagi, Rudrani Chettri, Vikas Khanna, Rajeshwar, Neena Gupta, Aqsa Siddiqui, Jyoti, Aslam, Rajesh Singh and Subhransu Kumar Das.
The widows ashram before the Holi shoot.
Noor awash in her favourite color.
Noor and Choti in a tiny restaurant.
Widows line up to receive their daily rations.
Noor and Asha rehearse their lines.
Noor’s room in the ashram.
The cast and crew at the final pack-up.
Chintu and Choti on the banks of the Ganga.
Noor steps out with her toes nails painted pink.
Noor braids Choti’s hair.
Noor Saxena lights a lamp on the ghats of the Ganga.
Getting the perfect shot: Aqsa, Anuj, Vikas and Subhransu Kumar Das
Picture perfect: Subhransu and Vikas.
Noor praying to the rising Sun.
Gaay Ghat at sunrise.
Anarkali and Choti, learning the tricks of begging.
The Legacy of Nothing
What we leave behind and what we take
It was in the middle of the night, when Choti was in her sky nest looking at a constellation of stars in the heavens through the boughs of the tree she called home, that she heard muffled screams.
Choti looked through the small hole in her cardboard wall and saw two shadows fighting. One of the shadow’s voices she recognized.
It was Anarkali.
“No, I won’t open my mouth for—” she sounded desperate, like she was in pain. Choti recognized the other voice too, but it wasn’t talking so much as making animal sounds. Then she heard heavy thuds like wood makes on flesh.
“Please, don’t hit my arm again,” was the last thing she heard from Anarkali’s mouth.
Choti covered her ears and hid her face and head inside the bundle of old rags she used as her bedclothes. Having such a pillow was a luxury. She tried to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t allow her to. The voices and activity she had listened to were too disturbing. To distract herself and calm herself to sleep, she peeked her head out from under the sarees to gaze at the lovely blue slippers Noor had given her. She knew it was weird for a person to sleep with their dirty slippers so close to their head, but their presence comforted her. Soon she fell asleep, wrapped in some bluish dream, she would never remember.
In the morning, even before her grunting cop alarm clock went off, she crept across the rooftop adjacent to the gym so she could be gone before the herd of teddy bear-killing animals arrived. She jumped off and walked briskly down the street in her blue slippers, headed for Anarkali’s Temple of Fireflies—the name Anarkali had given her underground home. Anarkali didn’t know she knew where she lived, but Choti knew a lot more than people gave her credit for.
Choti found the iron grill which Anarkali called her ceiling next to the manhole cover she called her front door. She knew exactly where to look through the grill to see if she was home. She knew every trace and shadow of Anarkali, so she could always tell even by the slightest movement if she was home. The slight amber-blue glow of early morning had started to fill the area, but Choti still didn’t see or hear any trace of Anarkali, and that is what worried her.
Choti ran straight to Sangam Chowk, hoping to find Anarkali already working her turf: but she wasn’t there either. That worried her even more.
Choti looked across the intersection toward Ram Sweets Shop and saw a group of people gathered in white kurta pajamas, the traditional Indian dress for men comprised of a loose-fitting long shirt and pants. Choti walked closer to Ram Sweets and saw Ram Halwai’s son mounting his father’s picture on the wall and draping a fresh flower garland around it. She knew what that meant: Ram Halwai had died.
Ram Halwai’s son looked exactly like Ram Halwai, minus some years—whether or not the son also had a tap sticking from his belly, Choti didn’t know and didn’t want to. There were many things in life, she realized, that weren’t meant to be known. Is accepting this “not knowing” part of becoming a “grown-up”? From what she had already seen and already knew, she already felt like one.
Ram’s red money-box jumped out at her from the corner of his shop. Was it empty? Ram’s belly had abandoned it, poor money-box. Ram Halwai had always held it so closely to his potbelly that the two seemed inseparable. The rupees they bred together inside the box seemed like their offspring, both betrayed and orphaned by Ram Halwai’s departure. Choti wondered if the red money-box would have her, or if she could put it to use somehow. But that seemed wrong. How protective Ram Halwai had been about his shop, his sweets, his samosas, and his red money-box, and now he had suddenly left everything behind.
On the way to the ghats, Choti saw Noor in her plain white saree, which had collected more soot than usual. She was standing on a street corner staring at the colorful handprints—salmon-red, forest-green and corn-yellow— that certain of Varanasi’s children had been allowed to press onto the wall with their traditional abir Holi color. The sight of Noor standing so still and staring off into space worried her. She seemed almost paralyzed with fascination, like the sight of so many hands had overwhelmed her. Then Choti saw something that really shocked her.
Noor looked around to make sure no one was watch
ing—Choti didn’t want Noor to see her spying on her, so she ducked behind a corner, but kept one eye on her—then she stepped closer to the wall, reached out her hand and placed it first on the red handprint, then on the green, and then on the yellow one. Then she backed away, looked around the area again, and walked away swiftly like she had never been there.
Instead of going directly to meet Noor at the ghats, Choti raced to the Nameless House with Pink Walls to pick up something special for Noor, something she recalled leaving there when she’d left. She was lucky the place was so dilapidated that the main gate couldn’t even be locked. The angry cow was nowhere to be seen and everyone else seemed to be gone. Choti was able to rush in and rush out.
Minutes later, when she reached the ghats, Noor was already filling her brass pot with water from Ganga’s shore. Choti knew on her way back up the steps she would see her if she sat down in the same spot on the crooked concrete steps where they had first met, so she did. What she really wanted to ask her was why she had pressed her hands against the colorful handprints at the wall, but she wasn’t sure if she should. Pondering this question somehow took away her energy. Suddenly, Noor appeared next to her just as she thought she would. Choti was really deep in thought—this thought of wondering about old hands touching new color—because she hadn’t even noticed her approaching, and now here she was.