“It is not like that. They can make trouble. My ma does not have an identity card. She does not have a birth certificate. And my birth certificate is fake. I have no right to be in the school.”
“That’s crazy.”
She shrugged.
“Well, then the rules need to change,” I said stoutly.
She gave me a look like I’d just suggested we should throw up a high-rise across the road to solve homelessness.
“Hello,” said VJ, suddenly materializing beside us. He extended his hand to the girl. “I’m VJ Patel. Yes, that VJ Patel. And who might you be?” He gave her his best magazine-cover smile.
I thought, even in her current circumstances, her heart must have skipped just a little. If so, she hid it well. In fact, she looked at his hand as if it were a dead rat. After a delay that would have embarrassed most people, though it did nothing to shake VJ’s confidence, she took it for about a second.
“Noor,” she said. She added her surname after an extended deliberation. “Benkatti.”
“Noor Benkatti,” said VJ warmly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
“So why have you come to Sisters Helping Sisters?” I asked when it was clear that Noor wasn’t going to respond to VJ. “Are you a member?”
She cut a look at VJ and crossed her arms. I wished he’d leave us alone. Instead, he shot her another winning smile. She glowered back but finally answered.
“I am not a member, but sometimes the NGOs can stop the schools from making us leave.”
“Her school’s going to kick her out,” I explained to VJ.
“Really?” exclaimed VJ cheerfully. “I go for years not meeting a single interesting person and then I meet two rebels in one week. Isn’t life unexpected?”
“So, if the NGO speaks to the school they’ll let you stay?” I asked, elbowing VJ in the ribs.
“I said sometimes.”
“We don’t need the NGO,” said VJ. “Just tell me who to pay off.”
“My ma does not know I am here,” said Noor.
I could tell by the way she said this that it was significant information. I’d actually forgotten that the woman with her wasn’t her mom.
“Is your mom sick?” I asked hesitantly.
“I could pay the medical bills as well,” said VJ.
“My ma hates the NGOs,” said Noor.
“Oh.” I didn’t really understand. Even if her mom didn’t like NGOs, surely she’d make use of them under the circumstances. “So …?” I prompted.
“The NGO lady says they cannot help me because I am not in their program.”
“Can’t you join?”
“My ma would never allow it. Prita-Auntie, the lady who brought me, wants the NGO to talk to my school anyway.”
“Do you want to be in the program?” asked VJ. I could tell he was hatching something.
“I want to be in school. If I have to be in a program for them to talk to my school …” She trailed off. “Ma will never agree. She will take me out of school before she will allow me to come here. Ma says the NGOs think they are better than us. They waste our time teaching useless things like sewing and Mehndi.”
“Mehndi?” I asked.
“Henna design,” said VJ. “Noor, if you take Mehndi, can I sign up with you?” he added.
I glared at him, while Noor looked at him curiously. Even I knew that only girls did Mehndi.
“Ma is proud,” Noor continued, as if she was explaining to herself as much as me. “She comes from a tradition where sex work was part of a religious duty.”
I tried not to let the shock show on my face but that had to be one of the strangest things I’d ever heard. “Religious?”
“Devadasi,” said VJ. “I’ll explain it to you later. It’s positively medieval.”
Noor scowled at VJ. “It goes back a long time to when women like my ma were given to the temple to serve the priest. At that time, it was not only for sex. Devadasi women had many talents. Ma is not proud of being a sex worker but she is not ashamed.”
“So, let’s just recap, if I may,” said VJ, holding up his fingers as he itemized his points. “Noor has to join the program but can’t actually darken the door of this building as someone in the neighborhood is bound to see her and spill the beans. Gracie has to find a teen she can mentor, which isn’t going to be easy since the girls here aren’t keen on her.”
I started to object but he raised his hand and continued. “Sorry, darling, but you know it’s true. So, I have the solution.”
VJ stepped away from us and raised both hands in the air. “Ladies, attention, please,” he shouted over the babble of voices. “We’ve solved the problem.”
Shockingly, everyone actually did quiet down.
“Grace and Noor have discovered a budding kinship. They give true meaning to the idea of sisters helping sisters …”
“Get to the point,” I groused.
He gave me a wounded look before continuing. “They’re going to meet at least once a week, for the requisite bonding experiences, but they will never meet here, so there’s no need to get Noor’s mom’s permission. Should anyone ask, we say only that Grace is Noor’s new friend. Are we all in agreement? Can I have a show of hands?”
There were several minutes of stunned silence. VJ repeated his suggestion in Hindi.
“Is this what you want to do, Grace?” asked Mr. Donleavy.
I didn’t even have to think about it. “If Noor agrees.”
I looked down in surprise when I felt Noor slip her hand into mine.
Noor
The foreigners …
Parvati and I waited on the corner, at the end of our lane, for the foreigners. Shami was asleep in my arms. As usual he had a fever. It wasn’t too high, though his breathing was raspy and labored. I’d stolen some of Binti-Ma’am’s alcohol that morning. An alcohol-soaked rag was wrapped tightly around his chest.
Aamaal picked through a rubbish heap across the street from us. I scolded her whenever she accidentally picked up broken glass or syringes, though she rarely did. Aamaal had learned quickly how to avoid the dangers of our world. Most days she amassed a small bag of recyclables, carefully sorted, to sell to the rag picker when his cart rattled by. I let her keep what she earned. We could have used the money but she wouldn’t have stuck with it if she’d had to share. It was worth it just to keep her busy.
“Are you sure they can be trusted?” asked Parvati, for perhaps the tenth time.
A lot had changed in the months since Parvati’s rape, not the least of which was Parvati herself. She’d always been distrustful of strangers; that was just common sense in a community where most of the girls and women we knew had been forced into sex work. But her spark of mischief had withered.
“You can’t count on them to help you. Foreigners are as different from us as elephants.” Parvati rhythmically thumped Shami’s back as she talked. She was as familiar with the tricks for loosening the mucus in his lungs as I was. “Elephants act tame for years and then one day they crush their masters to death. People think the attacks are unprovoked but elephants have long memories. They take revenge for things that happened long ago, sometimes in a previous life. Foreigners are like that—unpredictable.”
I squeezed Parvati’s shoulder. I knew what was really troubling her. “We’ll find a way to get you away from Suresh. We don’t need the foreigners for that.”
Parvati self-consciously put her left arm behind her back, as if I hadn’t already noticed the fresh cuts. I had tried to talk Parvati into asking Chanda-Teacher for help but I couldn’t convince her she wouldn’t be arrested for prostitution. We’d both heard stories about the prisons where they incarcerated underage sex workers who’d been “rescued.” The conditions were so bad that only last year a group of girls had scaled the thirty-foot fence surrounding their “rescue home” and broken their legs in the long, desperate drop to freedom.
“What if the foreigners try to kidnap you?” asked Parvati.
I
had explained the deal I’d struck with the NGO, but Parvati refused to believe that friendship with a foreigner was necessary to prevent my being expelled from my own school. I still felt raw when I thought of the teachers I’d loved who’d tried to get rid of me. I wondered if any of them had argued to let me stay before Chanda-Teacher spoke to them.
Chanda-Teacher tried to comfort me by saying that many of my teachers were even more impressed with my academic success when they learned of my background, but that made me feel worse. It was like everyone expected me to be stupid or lazy just because my mother was a sex worker. Didn’t they know it was because of my mother that I studied so hard? Ma suffered to send me to school. The teachers had things completely backwards.
“I have to do this, Paru.”
“I still don’t understand what the foreigners want.”
I didn’t have time to answer as just then a gleaming silver SUV turned into our lane and stopped. I glanced back at our house to where Adit was leaning on the wall out front. He’d followed me outside. In the old days I would have invited him along but we weren’t friends anymore. Adit said he had no time to waste with girls. I’d heard he was working in one of the gambling houses, running errands. I prayed he wouldn’t tell Ma what I was up to. It made me nervous, the way he watched me.
“I’ll let you do the talking,” said Parvati.
I hid a smile. I doubted Parvati’s English would have been up to doing the talking and it was me the foreigners were coming to meet, not her.
“If I nudge you,” she continued, “it means there’s something suspicious going on and we must make an excuse and leave.”
I gave her a solemn nod. I couldn’t admit that secretly I hoped the white girl was serious about being my friend. Parvati would have said I was foolish. Even worse would have been to share my hope that perhaps the foreigner understood, even more than Parvati, that my too-dark skin and my mother’s work weren’t the whole story of who I was. The white girl didn’t come from a world where people were judged by the caste they were born into.
The car doors opened and suddenly she was there in front of me. Vijender Patel climbed out on the other side. Parvati gasped. I hadn’t told her about Vijender. There was no way she would have agreed to spend the day with him. The only people Parvati mistrusted more than foreigners were film stars. Every once in a while they showed up in our neighborhood, taking photos of themselves handing out cheap toys to the poor children, which was us. They always promised they were going to make our lives better but the promises were broken as quickly as the toys.
Vijender came round the car and again held out his hand to me. This time I didn’t let my nerves show. I shook it and politely introduced him to Parvati.
“Pleased to meet you, Parvati,” he said. “Will you be joining us today?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by joining him, since we were just going to sit in a local café.
“Hi, Noor,” said Grace. “It’s nice to see you again.”
I was reassured to have the same good feeling about her as before.
Aamaal raced over from the rubbish heap and leaped on VJ Patel. She must have recognized him from billboards or TV commercials. I would have smacked her for her boldness if we’d been alone.
“Hello,” laughed VJ, pretending he liked nothing better than little girls leaping onto his back. He pranced around in a circle for a moment and whinnied like a horse. It was funny and got us through the awkwardness, but she was still going to get a scolding later.
“And who might you be, young sir?” asked VJ, speaking in Hindi to Shami, who had just woken up.
“Shami,” said Shami. He wasn’t impressed by film stars.
“Would you like to climb aboard as well?” asked VJ, leaning toward us.
Shami shook his head and stuck his thumb in his mouth. I pulled it out and kept hold of his hand as I knew he’d just stick it back in.
“So, shall we be off?” VJ gestured toward the gleaming car.
“Off where?” asked Parvati suspiciously.
“Bollywood, of course. We were told to expose Noor to new experiences, so what better place to start than the epicenter of this great city of ours?”
“He wants to show you where his dad works,” said Grace. “Don’t worry. If it’s boring we’ll do something else.”
“Of course,” agreed VJ grandly. “Your wishes are my command.”
“I cannot go,” I said. “I must look after my brother and sister.”
“Bring them along. Don’t tell me they wouldn’t like to see a real Bollywood soundstage.”
“I want to go to Bollywood,” said Aamaal, pounding VJ on the back.
“Feisty,” said VJ. “I like that in a girl.”
I gave him a look, which meant Don’t try anything with my sister. He smiled innocently. Normally that would only have deepened my suspicions, but I felt strangely reassured. VJ might be a foolish boy but he didn’t look at us the way I was used to men staring in Kamathipura, like they wanted to eat us up.
“We could go, Noor,” said Parvati in Kannada, so even Vijender was excluded from our discussion. “Your ma won’t miss you for hours.”
I tried to hide my surprise. It was the first thing she’d shown interest in since the attack.
“Someone might tell.” I glanced down the street. Adit was still watching. If he told Ma I’d gone off with foreigners there’d be no end of trouble.
Parvati looked away, but I caught the flash of disappointment.
“Can you meet us on Bhatti Road?” I asked Vijender. The main road was far enough away that at least Adit wouldn’t see us getting into the car.
“No problem,” he said.
The car was cold when we climbed in a few minutes later. I pulled Shami onto my lap, though there was space for him to have his own seat, and wrapped my arms around him. He seemed more tired these days. He was often asleep when I got home from school and had no interest in playing. Every evening, he fell asleep right after dinner and rarely stirred till morning, even if I was having a disrupted night finding us a safe place to sleep. Sometimes, when I was holding him like this, it felt as though his chest wasn’t rising at all. At times like that I squeezed him hard, until he squirmed, so I could go back to knowing he was alive.
At every traffic light, beggars tapped at our windows. For the first few lights I looked closely to see if it was someone I knew. After a while I realized we were too far from Kamathipura, so I did what the foreigners did and tried not to look at them at all. I still heard them though—tap, tap, tap. They must have thought I was rich, riding in a car like that. I wanted to lower my window and explain. I had a few rupees in my pocket for lunch. I was tempted to hand it over, which would have been foolish. It would only have gone to their gang boss, and then how would I have fed Shami and Aamaal? The foreigners talked the whole trip, as if the beggars were just part of the landscape, like garbage and stray dogs.
Gradually, we left the heavily populated part of the city and entered an area that was a mix of small settlements and open spaces. Whistling Wind Studios was on the very edge of Mumbai, in the forested foothills. As we passed through ornate iron gates and headed down a long, winding road, I watched intently for leopards and monkeys. All I saw was what must have been movie sets. There were huge mansions, covered in scaffolding and platforms; a town that was only storefronts; an arid patch of sand, with a few bristly plants that had arm-like branches sticking straight up. Scattered throughout were large, square, windowless buildings pasted with gigantic movie posters. It was interesting, but I would have preferred to see a leopard.
We pulled up to another gate and were waved through by a guard. He saluted to us, as if we were important. Parvati clutched my arm. I think she was regretting our decision to come.
We stopped outside a long, two-story, sparkling white building. It didn’t have any paint missing at all, and there were lots of windows with glass in them and no shutters or metal bars. The windows were so clean and so much light pour
ed into the building that you could see the people inside going about their business.
Shami slept during the drive but woke up when I lifted him out of the car. Two women were standing in front of the building. They rushed forward and hugged VJ. One called him “Darling.” He put his arm around her but his eyes were cold when he turned to us and introduced her.
“You all recognize Vanita Kapoor, don’t you? Rising starlet and the leading lady in my father’s new movie.”
“Not the leading lady, darling,” she purred in a sex-me voice that sounded as false as any I’d heard at home. “Your wicked father only gave me a tiny part.”
We heard the approach of VJ’s father even before he came into view. Sanjay Patel was surrounded by a crowd of people, all competing to be noticed, yet he strode along as though he didn’t even see them. It was the same way the foreigners had acted with the beggars outside the car window. I wondered if rich people all had this ability of not seeing.
VJ’s father had his eyes fixed on the beautiful young film star clinging to his son. He seemed far more interested in her than VJ, who stood rigidly, making no pretense of enjoying her attention. I wondered if it was just this girl VJ didn’t like, despite her beauty, or if perhaps girls were not his preference.
There were plenty of boys in our neighborhood, working alongside Ma and the Aunties, who served the men who preferred other men. VJ had been friendly to us, without being the least bit aggressive, just like these boys always were. It would be rash to let down my guard but I didn’t feel threatened around VJ like I did around most boys.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said, clapping one hand on VJ’s shoulder and the other on the starlet’s back. “On the set barely a minute and already he’s in the arms of a beautiful woman. Be careful of him, girls. My boy’s a heartbreaker.”
“You’ve broken more than a few hearts yourself,” said VJ.
Grace
VJ’s father loaded all of us, including the starlet, into a bus, saying he had a surprise waiting on a neighboring set. VJ was uncharacteristically grim-faced and subdued. He clearly wasn’t a fan of his father’s surprises.
Fifteen Lanes Page 14