The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  The ceremony took place in the middle of the first winter. Castrations were always carried out in winter in order to reduce the risk of infection and allow the wound to heal more rapidly. The risks were by no means negligible. No statistics really revealed how many Hijras died

  each year from the aftermath of emasculation. Still, the Indian press never missed the opportunity to denounce dramas like that of a Delhi hairdresser, aged about thirty, who died after his emasculation carried out by eunuchs who had persuaded him to join their group. At one time the operation was performed in particularly atrocious conditions. Hijras took away their victim's masculinity with a horsehair which was tightened progressively each day until the genital organs were severed completely.

  One day Kalima was taken by Sultana, his godmother-guru, to an isolated village where a small community of eunuchs lived. The community's astrologer selected an auspicious night for the operation. The Hijras called such nights when castrations were carried out "black nights." Sultana made his young disciple drink several glasses of todi> an alcoholic drink made from palm tree juice into which some powder of bhang, a narcotic with analgesic properties, had been dissolved. While Kalima lost consciousness his guru lit a great fire. A priest recited mantras and poured a bowlful of ghee into the flames. Tradition required that the flames flare up if the castration was to take place. This night the flames leaped into the sky like fireworks. That signified that Nandni-na and Beehra-na, goddesses of the Hijras, would accept the new recruit. The officiant could now tie a thread around the young man's penis and testicles and draw the knot progressively tighter to anesthetize the organs. Then, with a slash of a razor blade, he sliced straight through.

  A scream rent the night air. The agonizing pain had woken Kalima. Immediately a saraband of drums struck up and all the eunuchs began to dance and sing round the flames, while a soloist intoned a canticle intended to chase away all maleficent powers and evil spirits. The other Hijras punctuated each phrase with a resounding Hanji! Yes!

  A new Hijra has been born!

  Hanji!

  A sari without a woman!

  Hanji!

  A cart without wheels!

  Hanji!

  A stone without fruit!

  Hanji!

  A man without a penis!

  Hanji!

  A man without a vagina!

  Hanji!

  Sultana himself applied the first dressing to his disciple's wound. It consisted of a kind of plaster made of ashes, herbs, and oil mixed together. The recipe dated back to the days of the Mogul conquest, a time when the eunuch caste had undergone a veritable Golden Age. That was the era when, all over India, poor parents sold their children to traders who emasculated them. One nobleman at the court of one of the Mogul emperors possessed twelve hundred eunuchs. In those days some Hijras raised themselves to elevated positions, not merely as guardians of the harem, court dancers, or musicians, but even as confidants of kings, provincial governors, and army generals.

  Once Kalima had recovered from his mutilation, Sultana entrusted him to the care of professional musicians and other gurus, who taught him the traditional songs and dances. They also taught him how to mime a mother cuddling her child or breast-feeding a baby, to act the part of a young bride or a woman expecting a child or in labor. Soon he was awarded the title of "Bai," or "dancer and courtesan," and then began a period of traveling for the young eunuch. Hijras travel a great deal from one end of India to another to visit their "relatives." Kalima's guru had a "sister" in New Delhi, "aunts" at Nagpur, and "cousins" in Benares. Links between eunuchs and their "relatives" are much stronger than any of those they might maintain with their real parents. It was in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, that tragedy suddenly struck. At dawn one day as he was on his way to the ghats to dip himself in the waters of the sacred river and worship the sun, Kalima saw his "godmother" collapse in the street. The Hijra was dead, struck down by a heart attack.

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  Fortunately for Kalima, it was the time of the year for pilgrimages and there were many Hijras in the holy city. Almost immediately a guru volunteered to take him as his disciple. He had prominent cheekbones and a doleful expression. He came from Calcutta, his name was Boulboul, and he was Stephan Kovalski's neighbor.

  To sleep! Sleep for fifteen, twenty hours at a stretch! On cement, with rats, scolopendras, scorpions, anywhere, but just sleep! Since his arrival in the compound, Stephan Kovalski's dream was turning into an obsession. His nights had been reduced to three or four hours of relative silence punctuated by outbreaks of coughing and spitting. As early as four-thirty the musical squalling of a transistor sounded the reveille. Garuda, the eunuchs' cockerel, then preened himself to let off his volley of cock-a-doodle-doos, Other such birds answered him from every corner of the slum, and from all around the veranda there burst forth a concert of tears and cries from children whose stomachs were empty. Shadows armed with tins full of water rose in haste to go in search of a latrine or some gutter spared by the cesspool emptiers strike. Little girls were already lighting the chulas, scouring the pots and pans from the previous evening, putting the mats away, bringing buckets of water from the fountain, making up cow dung cakes, or delousing their elder sister's hair. They were the first to set to work.

  Every morning at about five o'clock, Kovalski saw little

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  Padmini, the youngest daughter of the Adivasi who killed the Hijra with the cobra, set off for somewhere. He wondered where so tiny a girl might go at such an early hour. One morning he followed her. After padding across the slum behind her he saw her scale the railway embankment. It was the time of dawn when passenger trains arrived in Calcutta from the various towns in the Ganges valley. As soon as Kovalski heard the sound of the first train, he saw the child take a stick from under her patched blouse. The tip of it had been split so that she could fix a one-rupee note to it. As the locomotive slowly passed her, she held out the stick. A blackened hand grabbed the note. Then Kovalski saw the driver go into the tender and throw out a few pieces of coal. Padmini scrambled to pick up the miraculous manna and ran off with it in her skirt. Her father would keep half of it, religiously breaking it up into small pieces for use of the family chula. The other half would be resold. This trade was only one of innumerable tricks invented by the underprivileged people of the City of Joy in order simply to survive.

  Yet, despite his lack of sleep, Kovalski did not miss his alley. The compound was a matchless observation ground for one who felt himself, as he did, married to the poor. What a hive of activity the place was from daybreak till night. There was no end to the comings and goings: at every moment there seemed to be some bell ringing, a gong, a whistle, or a voice announcing the arrival of a vendor of this or that, a Brahmin priest who had come to sell a few drops of Ganges water, or an entertainer of some kind. The most popular visitor was the exhibitor of bears, especially among the children. As soon as his drum was heard, the entire courtyard would come running. Nor was there any lack of enthusiasm for the monkey, goat, mongoose, rats, parrot, or scorpion trainers, or the viper and cobra charmers. The same was true of the chroniclers, puppet shows, poets, storytellers, troubadours, fakirs, mim-ers, strongmen, dwarfs, conjurers, illusionists, contortionists, acrobats, wrestlers, madmen, saints. . . indeed all the Zampanos and Barnums that a special hunger for entertainment and celebration could invent to enable the slum people to escape the sadness of their lot.

  The compound was first and foremost the children's domain. "Marvelous children of the City of Joy," Kovalski would say. "Little innocent beings nourished on poverty, from whom the life force never ceased to burst forth. Their freedom from care, their zest for life, their magical smiles and dark faces set off by luminous gazes colored the entire world in which they lived with beauty. If the adults here managed to retain some spark of hope, was it not because of them, because of their dazzling freshness, because of the earnestness of their games? Without them the slums would have been nothing but prisons. It w
as they who managed to turn these places of distress into places of joy."

  Kovalski counted seventy-two children in those few square feet of space so rarely penetrated by the sun's rays. It was in the rough-and-ready school of life that they learned their lessons, discovering how to fight their own battles as early as the age of three. Even before that age there were never any intermediaries between them and their world. They did everything directly with their little hands: eating with the right hand; sweeping, cleaning, going to the latrines with the left. A stone or a piece of wood served as their first toy. Right from the start this direct link with objects encouraged their relationship with all things and nurtured their creative instincts. With their hands as their only tools, their communion with nature was immediate and deep-rooted and would influence their entire lives. So too would their games, games that were concrete and simple. No Lego sets or electric or automatic objects for them. The children of the compound invented their own toys. The piece of string that Padmini, the little girl who went to fetch the coal from the railway embankment each morning, attached to her left foot with a stone on the end of it made a perfect skipping rope. The skipping left her hands free for the simultaneous composition of a dance or piece of mimicry. Kovalski was enchanted by her display: the child's postures were those of the temple divinities. All the genius of Indian dance was contained in that frail poverty-stricken body in the depths of the compound. For the boys, a simple piece of plank became a Ben Hur chariot on which the older enthusiasts

  pulled the smallest ones about. A few pebbles and fruit pits provided for heated marble games played from one end of the courtyard to the other and even right into Kovalski's room. One day Mallika Ghosh, the little girl next door who always came running to him with a bowl of milky tea, made a doll out of rags. But realizing all of a sudden that there were quite enough real babies in the compound for them to play at being mothers, she and her friends decided to turn their doll into an object of worship. The rag doll became Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity, to whom the poor of the slums pledge a very special veneration.

  Hopscotch, spinning tops, yo-yos, hoops ... the energy, the fervor, the ingenuity, the zest for play displayed by those small beings with their distended stomachs, never ceased to amaze Kovalski. One day the neighboring woman^ little boy ran between the priest's legs in hot pursuit of a hoop. Kovalski caught hold of the toddler's arm and asked him to teach him how to operate his toy. The toy in question was a simple scrap iron wheel propelled along by a stick with a hook. After three attempts, the Pole gave up to a deluge of laughter. Mastery of the Indian hoop requires a long apprenticeship and it takes the dexterity of an acrobat to keep it balanced among so many people and obstacles.

  The toy par excellence, however, the game to crown all games, and the one that unleashed as much enthusiasm among the parents as it did among the children, the one that aroused most competition, rivalry, and conflict, the one that carried with it all the dreams of freedom and escape harbored by these immured people, was a toy made out of a simple wooden framework and paper and string. Here the kite was more than just a game. It was the reflection of a civilization, of the joy of being borne along, guided, mastered by the force of nature. It was an art form, a religion, a philosophy. The shredded remains of the hundreds of kites that dangled from the electric cables across the slum were the decorative emblems of the people of the City of Joy.

  The tiniest children tried their hands with bits of packing paper. By the age of six or seven they were already seeking to perfect their aircraft. By that time, they were

  quite capable of turning a piece of khadi, an end of a shirt, or a rag into a real airship. They decorated them with geometric designs and asked their "big brother Stephan" to write their names in calligraphy on the wings. The most sophisticated devices, complete with tail and drift, were the work of the eldest boys. Sometimes the pieces of string that secured them were coated with paste and powdered glass to sever the strings of rival kites.

  One evening, a premonsoon squall precipitated the launching of one of these aircraft. The whole compound was caught up in a fever. "It was like being at Cape Canaveral on the brink of a space launching," Kovalski was to say. Twelve-year-old Jai, one of the sons of the onetime sailor from Kerala, climbed onto the roof and ran across the tiles to launch his cloth bird into an ascending' gust of air. Buffeted by a squall, the kite took off, each upward lurch encouraged by a burst of cheers. "It was as if every mouth were blowing heavenward to help it climb more quickly." The boy leaped from one roof to another to steer his creation, restrain it, and direct it toward a stronger current.

  Dozens of youngsters from the slum had broken their bones performing these kinds of acrobatics. "Up, up, up!" yelled the people. Jai* had maneuvered it so well that the great white bug with the two pink ribbons trailing behind its tail, rose above the electric cables. There was a tremendous burst of applause. Gaiety had taken over. The eunuchs banged frantically on their drums. Even Kovalski felt himself carried away by the general exultation. It was then that a second kite appeared in the air. The adjoining Muslim compound was offering a challenge. From then on the business became far too serious to be left in the hands of the children. Jafs father and Ashish Ghosh, the young therapist who was preparing to leave the slum to go back to his village, sprang onto the roof. They took charge of the aircraft's string. The rival was to be shot down and captured no matter what the price. Men from the other compound also hoisted themselves up onto the tiles. A savage duel ensued, punctuated by the enthusiastic yells of the onlookers. The game had become a battle. For long minutes the result remained undecided. Each team maneu-

  vered to try and hook the other's string. A sudden reversal of the wind direction instantly exploited by the team from Kovalski's compound, enabled them to block the ascent of the Muslim kite and push it onto the electric cables. Pandemonium broke out. In their fury, the Muslims hurled themselves at the two Hindus. Tiles began to fly in all directions and the saraband of drums was redoubled. More men clambered onto the rooftops and from below in the compounds the women urged the combatants on. The two flying machines collided, became entangled with one another, and eventually tumbled like dead leaves onto the electric cables. All the same, down below on the rooftops the fierce confrontation did not stop. Bodies rolled down into the courtyard and the bamboo frameworks shattered, scattering panic-stricken rats.

  Powerless to intervene, Kovalski took refuge in his room. Through the open doorway, he could see young Jai, little Padmini, and other adolescents looking incredulously at "the grown-ups who had stolen their children's game and were fighting each other like wild beasts."

  'KEEPOURLEAViNGa secret?" exclaimed Ashish Ghosh. "In an ants' nest where all spend their time spying on everyone else? Impossible!"

  Son of Miracle wagged his head. The taxi driver knew very well that his young neighbor was right. A slum was a cooking pot in which people simmered together from one end of the year to the other. Every life activity, even the most intimate, like making love or talking in your sleep, was accomplished here with the full knowledge of everybody else. Nevertheless, the taxi driver would have preferred that the word that an accommodation was about to become vacant be kept a secret until he had had time to negotiate its reallocation for Hasari Pal with the landlord. He might just as well have tried to prevent the day from dawning!

  The impending departure of the Ghoshes soon became the sole topic of general conversation. It was not so much the imminent vacation of the room that provoked as much interest, as the news of the departure itself. After a few years in the slum, everyone's dream, the dream of returning home to the village, became so much a mirage that it 408

  seemed insane for anyone to even attempt it. That a couple should decide to give up two salaries to go and plant rice was inconceivable. Strangely too, the reactions back in the Ghoshes' village were equally negative. "When* the goddess, Lakshmi, has put oil in your lamp, it's a crime to extinguish the flame and go elsewhere," the boy's parents
repeated angrily, threatening to prevent him from returning by force.

  All the same, aspiring successors to the hovel crowded around the Ghoshes' door in such large numbers that the landlord himself turned up unexpectedly. He was a corpulent Bengali with hair that shone like a statue of Vishnu coated with ghee. Even the foulest hovel in the City of Joy had a legitimate owner. Some of them even had four, one for each wall. Many of these landlords owned several houses, and sometimes a whole compound.

  'The fact that the fat Bengali has appeared in person does not bode well at all," thought Son of Miracle and, sure enough, it was not long before his worst fears were realized. The owner blithely informed him that he was going to double the rent for the next tenant. Instead of thirty rupees a month, the room would cost sixty, six U.S. dollars, an outrageous price for a rabbit hutch incompatible with the miserable means available to a rickshaw puller stricken with the red fever. Hasari's beautiful dream had just been shattered.

  Yet the taxi driver would not admit defeat. "My nickname was Son of Miracle and, bent on living up to my name, I decided to put up a fight to get that dwelling for Hasari," he was to recount. "So 1 said to my wife, 'Prepare a dish of rice with a banana and a little jasmine, and we'll go and see the Brahmin about making a puja.' " The Brahmin was an extremely thin little man. He lived with his family in the enclosure of a small temple, in one of the poorest parts of the slum, between the railway tracks and the boarded shacks of a community of people originally from Tamil Nadu. Son of Miracle paid him two rupees. The Brahmin put a tilak on the visitors' foreheads and likewise on the foreheads of Shiva and Nandi, the bull of abundance, enthroned beside the deity in its little shrine. Then he took his ceremonial tray, incense sticks, a pot of