It was an almost ridiculous performance, but it turned into the most renowned act of the Majestic Oriental Circus, all at the touch of Shehzad Marid. As the three of us hemmed and hawed through our scripted gibberish, the jinni would emerge from his lamp in clouds of curling smoke. Illuminated by our cheap stage lights, the clouds would take the shape of a magnificent palace, the gaping maw of a cave, raging armies on horseback that crashed into the audience until our entire circus tent would erupt with gasps, applause, and cries of horror and disbelief. A small child could hold open his palm and receive a dancing houree, crafted immaculately of ice as the clouds condensed. Then they billowed up again—into monsters never heard of; swooping rocs; clerics whose voices soared in prayer across minarets that pierced the sky above a faraway, mythical city; hundreds of jinn, and back to the only one. It was a show unlike anything offered by any rival circus company in our land.
I was assigned to this act four months after I joined the Majestic Oriental Circus—a naïve, illiterate, village young man who had been given a job by Dayaram, the former trapeze master, almost out of pity. It turned out that I climbed better than anyone else on the team, but I had never seen a circus before, could hardly follow the shimmering line between illusion and truth. Before I took over, Johuree would play both Alladin and Zafar, disappearing behind the clouds and reappearing in changed costume with a lightness of foot you would not expect from a fat, middle-aged man like him. But then, no one at the Majestic Oriental Circus was merely what met the eye. The circus life is not for the mundane.
Johuree had been happy to delegate Alladin to me. An agile young man was more suited to the role than himself, he had said with a wink in front of the entire company. I nodded along, though both of us knew that was just the cover. A circus troupe had no dearth of agile young men. No—we both knew it was because I was the only other person at the Majestic Oriental Circus that Shehzad Marid had entrusted with his lamp.
I was a hack Alladin, awkward and bombarding, nothing like my fluid, almost lyrical performance on the trapeze ropes. It made the entire act of “Alladin and His Magic Lamp” come across as gaudy, over-the-top. That was just the effect Johuree was going for.
We were a traveling circus, never spending more than a week or two in the same city, town, or village fair. So the day Johuree declared that we would travel to Thripuram to perform at the wedding of the raja’s daughter, we packed up our tents and bags and set out on the journey.
• • • •
There is little power left in the hands of the rajas of yore, but you wouldn’t think so if you were at the palace of the Thripuram raja on the day we arrived. Accustomed though we were to the illusory palaces of Arabia that Shehzad conjured up three shows a day, our entire troupe gazed awestruck at the vibrantly painted temples, spires, courtly residences, and finally, looming over them all, resplendent in its intricate balconies and mythological frescos adorning the walls, pillars, and steps—the palace itself.
The palace grounds teemed with musicians, poets, storytellers, snake charmers, tawaifs, nautankis—entertainers from all over the land. Those traditional artists had been assigned living quarters inside the buildings. A circus was a foreign entertainment—our troupe an unrestrained mingling of men and women of indistinct lineage, sharing space with monkeys, elephants, birds, tigers. Though we had been invited to perform on the night of the wedding, we were allowed to sleep only in our own trucks and tents. We set them up within the palace grounds, under the sky.
The grounds were thrumming with activity as we rolled into our spots. The hot afternoon air was cloying with the aroma of outdoor cooking, for all the poor people of the city were to eat two meals at the raja’s generosity every day of the festivities. There were two queues of revelers waiting to be fed—one for Brahmins, another for the infidels and the untouchables—winding as long as the eye could see. Wedding guests wandered within the premises, trailed by servants holding umbrellas, fans, and jugs of water. Massive electricity generators growled along the palace walls, powering thousands of lanterns and strings of light. It was a spectacle more modern and grandiose than anything Shehzad could pull up from the myths of a distant past.
If the circus was a novelty to the raja’s palace, it was no less a novelty to us—our entire troupe was comprised of people who had grown up poor. We dealt in glitter and illusion, but all our clothes were cheap synthetics and sequins, often threadbare and sewn together in places; our jewelry made of glass, tinfoil, and paint. We had never seen so many varieties of silk, so many diamonds, rubies, and emeralds casually glittering under daylight as the royal guests wandered by. At lunch, my trapeze team would not stop eating until I threatened them with immediate unemployment if any of them disgraced me at the night’s performance.
As the busy day waned toward sunset, conch shells were sounded, and there was instant silence within the palace grounds. A procession of young women emerged from the doorway of the palace, led by a priest. Each of them carried a holy tray of prayer offerings.
The women were indescribably beautiful, more so in their dazzling, elegant attire, reminding me of the sculptures of apsaras—heavenly dancers—that I had only seen before on temple walls. These women were not dressed like the wives or daughters of the royalty, yet they were too demure, too distant from us. They did not speak with, or even look at, any of the other performers, who stepped back to make way for them to pass.
“Devadasis,” whispered a girl from my trapeze team, her voice nearly choking in awe.
“What are they?” I whispered back. I was completely ignorant of the customs of royalty, but even Shehzad, who was less so, stared uncomprehendingly at these women.
“I have never seen one of them before,” the girl explained under her breath, never once taking her eyes off the fascinating trail. “You never see a devadasi—no commoner does, except on occasions like this. Devadasis are holy courtesans, bequeathed at birth to the patron deity of a kingdom, maintained by its king. They are trained as dancers, but not like any of us. They will never perform before a commoner, or in exchange for money. Their dance is an act of worship. They are divine.” The girl’s words swung gently between envy and faith. “The devadasis will now go to the town’s main temple to seek blessings for the raja’s daughter. Offer themselves up in performance. The wedding can only take place after the kuldevi—the patron goddess of the kingdom—has bestowed her blessings.”
“No one told me there was anything supernatural in this town,” I said, intrigued. Two years ago I would have laughed at any mention of such things, but enough time at the Majestic Oriental Circus opens the mind to all kinds of possibilities.
The girl laughed. “Who said anything was supernatural? Everything’s a joke to you, Binu’da. I meant real divine, like priests are divine. Devadasis commune with the gods. They are born into holiness. They don’t do tricks with sleight of hand and offstage machinery. That’s what people come to us for.”
I stared again—the face of the young woman at the head of the procession was so flawless and serene that I could almost believe in her divinity. Priests were born into the Brahmin caste, and I had met enough Brahmins in my life to know that not all of them were priests, or even had a shred of spirituality in them. Usually they were arrogant and corrupt, frankly quite despicable people to know. But the gaze of this woman was clear and resolute, fixed at the vermilion sky toward the temple where she was headed. Her step was graceful, undoubtedly perfected through the lifelong dance-worship to which she was devoted. No creature could be further removed from the giggling girls in my circus, whose brittle poise disappeared as soon as they stepped behind the stage.
Afterward, we returned to our tents to prepare for our show, which was to be the opening performance of the wedding celebrations. We were not there to watch the devadasis return.
• • • •
The show went off smoothly. My boys and girls could hardly keep their eyes off the ornate ceiling of the raja’s court as they swung and swerved ac
ross it, but none of them faltered at their act. “Alladin and His Magic Lamp” was a roaring success with the royal wedding guests. Shehzad was stoic through all of it—he had seen his share of palace interiors in his time. The raja came down from his throne to shake our hands after the show, but we were never introduced to the princess, who had watched our performance from a latticed balcony above. No common entertainer was permitted to speak with the royal bride, even if they performed at her wedding.
“Really, Binu, stop staring at that balcony and shut your mouth,” Shehzad snapped at me as our troupe filed out of the royal court. “You make yourself look like a fool.”
“Hey, Alladin is meant to be really popular with the princesses, right?” I teased him. I was still decked out in the satin-pants-and-skullcap attire. “But this pathetic Alladin can’t even catch a glimpse of a real princess. What good is having a faithful jinni at your command if he cannot even introduce you to a princess?”
“Princesses look just like other women,” Shehzad sneered. “And this one is getting married already, so you’re out of luck. You’ve met the raja. His daughter probably would have the same, uh, generous nose. Hopefully not also the generous moustache.”
We guffawed, eyes shining into each other’s for a fleeting moment. Then I said, “But you saw all those devadasis. Think about it. If mere women of the court can look like that, the princess must be—”
“The princess is not one of those women,” Shehzad said, making a sharp turn away from the direction of the lavish dining arrangements.
“You will not dine with us?”
“Since when did I eat the same food as you people, Binu?”
“But you always come along and make the pretense,” I said, surprised at the brusqueness that I did not entirely feel I deserved.
“That’s when we dine with the rest of our circus troupe, to make sure that no one suspects otherwise,” he replied. “There are too many people at this place. Too much going on. No one will miss Shehzad Marid.”
“I will.”
“I must retire to the lamp,” he said, as if shaking off the hurt in my voice. “These festivities will continue late into the night, and our troupe begins to pack up at dawn. If I slip away now, I can steal a few hours of respite.”
I always carried the lamp in our trunk of clothes, scrubby enough to look like a circus prop. The actual prop was a cheaper but shinier replica, tossed around on the stage between Alladin and Zafar. No human hand but mine had touched the real lamp in the past two years, and with nothing but gratitude. Nothing but love.
Nothing but that inchoate sensation of wistfulness that congealed in my chest on the nights that I lay awake in our tent, gazing at the lamp on my bedside after Shehzad had receded into it. If I picked it up, it would be cold, weightless—a thing forged centuries ago in a distant land; a curiosity, but not an especially valuable one in itself. It was a common household object, Shehzad once told me; street vendors in Arabia sold great quantities of them to this day. With regular use, it would have lasted about five or six years.
But this lamp had survived centuries, traveled hundreds of miles from its homeland, passed from hand to bloody, victorious hand. My callused trapeze-artist hands could barely contain it. Another century or two will blow over any trace of my fingers from its surface, as perhaps from the spirit it enclosed.
From the stories people tell, even those in our own hack show, the lamp sounds like a prison. The listener imagines himself being suffocated, neck twisted, limbs folded at painful angles, squeezed into a box too small to contain his body and left there to wait for decades. But the listener of the tale is human—imprisoned already in his withering flesh and bone, the measured years that are given to him. The human mind can barely fathom the bond between its own body and soul. What would it grasp of the relationship between a jinni and his lamp? What could I—hardly a philosopher, never having read a book, barely literate enough to scribble my own name—grasp of it?
In our two years of friendship, I had learned every detail of Shehzad Marid’s humanity. There was no man, or woman, that I knew better. I could read each of his smiles, each raised eyebrow, each cryptic comment for exactly what it was. But I had also learned that his humanity was mere performance. He was relieved to shed it, as I was to remove my circus costumes and makeup. Shehzad Marid’s greatest gift to me was the knowledge that I would never truly know the core of his existence, and not merely because I was unread.
And perform he did, never cracking, never missing a beat, longer than any of us at the circus. No one but Johuree knew, or suspected, anything about Shehzad’s true nature. Even when he manifested in “Alladin and His Magic Lamp,” weaving his way through wonders that no human could pull off, it was carefully designed to look like a triumph of stagecraft. Because I loved him, because I would never understand him at any greater depth than that, all I could do was to give him a break from the act when he asked.
“Wake me up if you need something,” he told me before he left, adding, “but do spare me if it has more to do with princesses. You need to find yourself a different jinni for that.”
I smiled, squeezed his hand, and let him go. Where would I—Trapeze Master Binu of the Majestic Oriental Circus—find a different jinni, and why would I ever want another?
• • • •
It was past midnight when the members of the troupe retreated to our tents. Within the palace, the tawaifs were still dancing for the last sleepless revelers, but the palace grounds were now empty, for the common revelers had long since departed. Getting into my bed, I pressed a finger against the cold metal of Shehzad’s lamp, but did not drag it. I needed my rest as much as he needed his.
I must have barely drifted into blissful slumber when I woke up again at a hushed commotion from the trapeze artists’ tents. It was the second hour of the night, still too dark to see without a light. A couple of girls came running to our tent.
“It’s a woman from the palace, Binu’da!” they informed me. “Says she wants to have a word with you.”
I couldn’t recall talking much with any woman at the palace. Who would come looking for me in the dead of the night? I turned up the wick of my oil lamp and stepped out, sure that whoever it was must have mistaken me for someone else.
The woman in question was dressed in a simple sari, her long hair flowing over her back. I was startled to recognize the head devadasi of the Thripuram raja’s palace—the woman whose face had launched me into a thousand speculations earlier that day. With the expensive drapes and jewelry removed, she looked no older than sixteen or seventeen.
Seeing her now, the first emotion that hit me was panic. Even speaking to this girl could probably get me punished by the raja. “How did you come here?” I blurted out. “Has anyone seen you?”
“I told my maids that I wanted to pet the tigers,” the girl said, and shrugged nonchalantly. “No one in this palace had ever seen a tiger before. And I am known to be willful.”
“The tigers have been sedated for the night—” I started to say, but she cut me off.
“The tigers can wait. I want you to let me sneak into your circus and escape this wretched palace.”
“What?!”
“I have been dancing for fifteen years now, ever since I learned to walk,” said the girl. “There’s no trick any of your girls can perform that I can’t pick up in just a few days. I will be the best performer you’ve ever had.”
“But you are a devadasi!” I peered in astonishment at the wide-eyed, long-lashed face that was no less attractive for its bareness. “You live at the palace; you have more luxuries than any of us can imagine. You commune with the gods! Why would someone like you want to stoop to the circus?”
“And what does communing with the gods generally entail, do you think?”
I had to admit I didn’t know.
“I live at the palace, but I am not a princess. None of my clothing or jewelry belongs to me. I don’t actually have a single possession that cannot be t
aken away with a command from the raja. I do not employ my maids—they maintain my household but also keep an eye on me, report my activities to the raja. Tell me why the raja spends so much money keeping women like me?”
“Because you commune…?” My own words sounded ridiculous to me.
“That’s what it says in the scriptures, doesn’t it?” said the girl. “The priest communes with the gods with his mind, and the devadasi communes with her body. I wouldn’t know—I was never taught to read the scriptures. I’m illiterate as they come. Reading is not a devadasi’s function. Though I could tell you all you ever wished to know about dance, about communing with higher powers with my body. Make a man of you too, if you wish.” She gave me a saucy smile, but it felt more dangerous than inviting.
“If you don’t like this life, why don’t you go back to your family? Why fling yourself at a group of strangers like this?” I asked.
“Because you’re the only strangers at this wedding who would take me,” said the girl. “You’re an odd bunch. You don’t belong to any traditional system. There are all sorts of performers in your group—surely you can find some use for a devadasi? No one else has any need for me. Devadasis don’t belong to families. We are bequeathed to the gods—we cannot be possessed by men, be that father or husband. My mother was also a devadasi, as was grandmother before her.”
“But some man must have fathered you, seeing as you’re just as human as I am,” I said. “His is the house where you should go, even if you don’t like them, or they you.”
The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 23