by Anosh Irani
So fourteen years passed, and Rama became stronger and wiser in seclusion, and when he returned to the banks of the river again, he saw strange beings buried halfway in the ground. Their long hair was down to their waists, and the forest breeze was churning it, making it more alive than bird or beast. “Who are you?” he asked. “And what are you doing here?” The buried ones answered, “You asked all men and women to go back. We are neither men nor women, so we stayed here and prayed for your safe return.” Pleased with their devotion, Rama offered them a boon: “From now on, whatsoever you speak, it shall come true.”
And that is how men with neither cock nor balls moved from impotence to omnipotence. That is why people believe that if a hijra curses you, you are doomed, and if she blesses you, no matter how the stars are aligned, no matter what your astrologer has predicted, her tongue can make the stars shower luck on you, like divine saliva.
What Madhu did not tell the parcel was what her gurumai had told her. Gurumai had confessed that this might just be a complete concoction; perhaps it was not part of The Ramayana. But even though it might have been a fabrication, it was powerful. The hijras had been obliged to keep changing their stories depending on who was in power. When the Mughals were dominant, the hijras were exchanged as slaves, as novelties, and were assigned a value similar to that of gold and horses and land. They were therefore included as part of the booty when a kingdom was lost. But they stayed close to the women and listened for secrets, and they become confidantes to queens, until eventually they rose to the ranks of commanders and diplomats. By carving their bodies, they carved a niche for themselves in both the household and politics. As gurumai would tell her chelas, “Our bodies have been used as lumps of clay. We have been mutilated to serve the needs of men and women. And society thinks of us as abnormal. Who is the freak? Us or them?”
When Hindus came into power, the hijras began to flounder. “Until someone had the bright idea of attaching the hijras to that great Hindu epic. I doubt poor Rama ever said those words,” gurumai said. But the hijras had empowered themselves, bestowed on themselves the ability to bless or curse—a Hindu ability, with Hindu origins.
Madhu had bought the story once. Tonight, in front of the parcel, she needed to believe it again. She could see that the parcel had moved closer to her, not physically, but the story had drawn her in. The two of them were still kilometres apart, but an inch had been won.
“So remember this,” said Madhu. “Whatsoever I say, it shall come true. And to you, I want to say just one thing: if you do as I say, you will go through less pain. That is my promise.”
Madhu had not sold the parcel a lie. She had told her the truth.
“Now,” she said, “let’s talk about your name.”
“Kinjal,” said the parcel.
“I did not ask you your name. I did not ask you your name because you do not have one. Your name is the first thing your parents gave you. And it is the first thing I shall take away. Now your name is Jhanvi. Say it. Say your name.”
But the parcel didn’t. She needed an explanation.
“Whoever you are, wherever you have come from, you must forget all of that. Your mother, father, brother, sister, everything. Whatever you were is in the past. From now on, you are my daughter. And as your mother, I get to rename you.”
The parcel looked at Madhu for just a second, the way a small animal might, a street cat angry and scared, and then she withdrew again.
“Now I’m asking you again. Say your name.”
“Jhanvi,” she said softly.
We’ve begun, thought Madhu. The painting has begun.
“Now tell me your age,” said Madhu.
“Ten,” said the parcel.
“You are twelve,” said Madhu. “What languages do you speak? Do you speak any Hindi?”
“No.”
“You will learn.”
If circumstances had been different, if Madhu had more time, she would have interviewed the parcel at length. But right now, she had to prevent the parcel from being caught. Madhu’s most pressing job was to familiarize the parcel with every nook, every hole, every trap door and false ceiling.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Where are we going?” the parcel asked.
“Swimming,” replied Madhu.
—
Madhu could tell that the parcel did not know what to make of her new name. She had come close to realizing what Madhu was telling her, but it was too much for her to digest, so she preferred to remain at the edge of understanding. Even if the name change made some small bit of sense, the parcel had no idea at all why she was being made to stare at a black water tank on the terrace.
She had already memorized all the passages in the brothel. Madhu had been pleased to find that she was a quick learner—even if it was to be expected. She was eager to please because she had realized she could get something out of Madhu. As a result, the corridors and stairways were now embedded in her brain thanks to Madhu’s fierce directions. Madhu’s voice was ink making new marks:
This door leads to the reception area.
There is a false ceiling here.
To go back to the staircase, turn left, not right.
Never enter this room. It is Madam’s room.
This floor is wooden. If you move even an inch, the floor will creak.
“Get in,” said Madhu now.
Madhu slid the lid of the water tank to the side. The tank had been “modified” to Padma’s specifications. Its mouth had been narrowed, but the workmanship was so good that the change was hard to detect. This synthetic water tank was the most important object in the brothel. It was the safest hiding place, something the police had yet to sniff.
“Go in,” said Madhu.
The parcel tried to climb up into the tank but lost her footing. She held her hand out to Madhu.
“Do it on your own. There will be no one to help you.”
After a couple of tries, the girl found the lesions that the modifier had made just for this purpose. Once you knew where they were, clambering up was easy.
“I don’t know how to swim,” said the parcel.
“Then make sure you don’t drown. Don’t jump in. It’s deep. On the side there is a rung. Hold on to it first and then lower yourself.”
The parcel got in, wiggled to the side, and was soon out of sight.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.” Her voice echoed in the tank.
Madhu shut the lid. The hardest part, she knew, was staying in there with the smell of plastic. It was like being trapped in a large bottle of mineral water in the middle of the afternoon. The air had a hot, flat taste that made you choke. In the cage, the parcel had gotten used to the air in an enclosed space. Now another element had been added to the mix.
Madhu would keep her there for a while.
The parcel could choose to drown herself—Madhu had considered the possibility—but drowning required a lot of depth. The water took you on a journey, allowed you to sink more and more, and the travelling itself made you feel you were going somewhere, to a faraway better place, which made drowning work. But not inside this tank. If she tried to drown herself, her legs would automatically push her off the floor.
No matter how hard the police or NGOs tried to rescue these girls, nature always provided a hiding place, thought Madhu. Previously, when the brothels were informed of a raid, or the watchers saw the police coming, the underage girls were made to climb up on the roof, through a single tile that was removed and then reinstalled. The girls perched there, amidst scattered newspapers and old kites, and the police had never thought to look up until one girl screamed for help. That was when the cops realized that the skies were giving them shelter. Now that the skies could no longer do that, the girls were sent to the depths to hide until the danger was gone. There had been occasions when the police had turned the brothel upside down and could not find a single child. One cop had even opened the lid to the tank, and Salma had laughed at him
, just to irritate him and break his concentration. “If I jump in, will you rescue me?” she had asked. Little did the cop know that there was a girl breathing just below him, to the side. The modifications had worked—the mouth of the tank had been narrowed to perfection and the girls turned to fish.
After ten minutes had passed, Madhu lifted the lid and peered inside.
The parcel’s dress bloated in the water. “I can see you from here,” said Madhu. “You need to hold your dress close to your body. Make sure it sticks to you.”
The girl came out shivering. The water was warm, but it made no difference.
“If there is any trouble in the brothel, if anyone ever tells you to run and hide, this is the place you come to,” said Madhu. “Do you know who will come looking for you?”
“The po-police,” said the parcel through chattering teeth.
“That’s right. If they find you, they will not take you back to your family. They will put you in jail. Then Padma Madam will have to give them lots of money to free you. If you get caught, it will be your fault. I will not be able to do anything. This water tank is your temple. It is the closest thing to God in this place.”
—
By the time the parcel got out of the water tank, the first light of the day was showing itself. Soft, it promised something new and gentle, but only for the rest of the city. A new day in Kamathipura was just the day before repeating itself with clockwork precision. Shops opened, temple bells rang, children got ready for school, and the men who worked in the sawmills poured mugfuls of water over themselves from huge tumblers. Wearing nothing but their undershorts, they bathed on the sidewalks and got rid of the sawdust in giant splashes, only to be covered in that golden dust all over again.
Madhu had forgotten to carry a towel for the parcel. A mother, she chided herself, would have remembered to do that. “Take me downstairs,” she said, and was pleased when the parcel led her there correctly. Good, she had an understanding of the geography of the place. Madhu led her to Salma’s room. It was just another tiny cubicle, but it was Salma’s. After years of service, she had earned the right not to share it with anyone else. She no longer brought in customers like she used to, but Padma had made it clear that Salma was a lifetime member. This reminded Madhu of her father’s college and the professors he used to complain about. They could not be thrown out no matter how outdated and incompetent they were as teachers. It burned his bum, constipated him, and made him cough in fury, until he eventually became just like them, a skeleton in the halls, feasting on the past.
But Salma was not resting on her laurels or taking advantage of Padma’s leniency. She worked extra hard, cooked meals for Padma, and even looked after the children of some of the prostitutes while they worked. This morning, she was looking after her own. She was sitting on her haunches in the corridor, hunched over a stove, alongside her three-year-old son. He was an unexpected late entrant into her life. To try to trace the father would have been an imbecilic activity, considering the number of men Salma had been with on a daily basis, and even if she had known who he was, he would probably have beaten her until she got rid of it. Salma was clear that this child, like the one before him, was the only reason she had not killed herself. The rate of suicide was high in Kamathipura, a fact that had prompted Padma to remove all ceiling fans from the brothel. But when the fans were gone, veins were slit—a messier affair. The woman’s memory on the ground, so red and wet and stubborn, refused to leave even after the body was disposed of.
Salma could not afford to kill herself. When she was younger, she had given birth to a girl, and she had sent the child away, just as Padma had, but not as far. There was an NGO on Lane Fourteen, and when the girl was two, Salma strode over there and gave the child up on the condition that she could visit whenever she wanted. It was the best thing she had done in her life, and it made her feel human. Now the girl was sixteen, she could read and write English, and she was on her way to college, which made Salma squeal with excitement.
When Salma saw the parcel, she went inside her room, leaving Madhu to watch over the chai and make sure that it did not boil over. The parcel looked at the bubbling stew with anticipation. Then she lowered her head as though she thought she wasn’t going to get any, did not deserve it.
Salma came back with a towel. She wrapped it around the parcel.
“She is also your friend,” Madhu told the parcel.
Just as Madhu had not revealed her own name to the parcel, she wouldn’t tell her Salma’s. Names created familiarity, comfort. The parcel needed to see Salma and Madhu as nameless, faceless walls. Once the parcel understood this, a hundred names could be revealed and it wouldn’t matter.
Salma bent down and helped the parcel dry up faster. “Go in and wear my nightdress,” she said. “It’s hanging.”
The parcel looked at Madhu. She was asking for permission to move. This was a good sign. Madhu could tell when her training was working by the small hints the parcels gave off—like steam, they could be felt but were almost invisible.
Salma stooped over the stove again. An old firecracker now, her gunpowder could explode anytime, make her say the most inappropriate things, but when she cooked or made chai, when she was with her children, she became a different woman. She was no longer the petrol-mouthed shrew who set the Marys on fire.
“We have to get some clothes for her,” said Madhu.
“You do that,” said Salma. “I have this one to look after today. I am taking the day off…mother-son time…”
She trailed off, like a song fading away.
Madhu glanced at the boy. When she compared her childhood to this little one’s, she felt privileged. Madhu had had a bed to sleep on, in the beginning, until her brother was born. At least she hadn’t had to sleep under one. The toddlers of Kamathipura were given cough drops to induce sleep, then placed under the bed while their mothers worked right above their heads. Sometimes the children would wake up and crawl out from under the bed, and the clients panicked.
At least Salma’s son would get an education. He would not grow up to become a pimp. He came crawling to Madhu and tugged at her sari. Madhu wanted to pick him up but she couldn’t. Something stopped her. Seeing that, Salma gave her son a loud, splashy kiss on the cheek.
The parcel reappeared, wearing Salma’s gown. It was so long for her that she had to hold it up from the sides to walk. Salma took the edge of the parcel’s dress and covered her son’s face with it. Then she uncovered it again and played hide-and-seek with him. The little one was delighted.
“Where’s Guddu?” she asked. “Where’s my Guddu?”
Guddu gurgled from underneath the parcel’s dress.
“Come on,” Salma said to the parcel. “Don’t you want to play with him?”
The little boy crawled out from the folds and looked up at the parcel. Madhu could tell that she wanted to lift the boy up; he would be something to hold, something that could not harm her. Maybe she had a brother the same age. Even if she didn’t, she needed to feel skin that was warm—the opposite of Salma’s and Madhu’s.
Madhu wondered how much longer innocence would stay within this boy. It had to leave at some point. But while it was there, everyone fed on it like hyenas—Salma, Madhu, even the parcel. Without realizing what she was doing, the parcel would suck it out of the boy and keep it for herself, store it for the nights to come.
—
In the afternoon, Madhu left the brothel to allow the parcel to bond with Salma. The parcel needed to be comfortable with Salma; a rapport had to be forged between the two. In case of a raid, the parcel would have to follow quick directions and, more important, once she had settled into her new line of work, Madhu would no longer be there to guide her. Salma would take over.
Madhu needed a break. She had no qualms about who she was now—she had come to terms with her life—but starting this parcel work again had taken a toll on her. On the one hand, she felt she was doing a spark of good—or a particle of good even sma
ller than a spark—in that she was breaking the parcel as gently as possible, trying to find something to salvage in the gutter.
If Madhu refused to do this work, she would be dishonouring her gurumai. She would be expelled from the community and treated worse than a pye-dog. To re-enter, she would have to pay a fine to the jamaat, the council of hijra elders, which she could not afford, and knowing gurumai, she would ask Madhu to do parcel work again, just to teach her a lesson. The only other option for her was to run away. But where could she go? She could live in a slum. On Tulsi Pipe Road, there used to be a line of hijra dwellings along the railway tracks. Four or five hijras lived under one tin roof. One day, the municipality trucks came and demolished their hutments—just like that, in one shot.
After being displaced from Tulsi Pipe Road, the hijras had to spend weeks without a roof over their heads. This was when the Mumbai rain was more merciless than a Mumbai cop. Some hijras got wet in the rain and never woke up. Madhu did not want to sleep under an open sky, nor did she want to be rat food.
When her brain rattled this way, with thoughts of old age and homelessness, it was a sign that she needed time off. She longed for Gajja. She wanted him to hold her hand. Nothing more. She just wanted to feel the man’s roughness against her. She called his mobile, but there was no answer. He must be tending to a patient at the hospital. But what about this patient? She could feel it coming, one of those dizzying bouts of self-pity that were so hard to ward off. Even malaria was more bearable. At least with malaria, only the body shook.
She tried him again. No answer. Around her, mobile phones were everywhere. Hearts, brains, and mobile phones—the human body could not function without them. Madhu noted sadly that even the footpath bookseller had a new title, SMS Se Love, about a couple who fall in love via text messaging. At the bookseller’s feet was an old weighing scale. Some of the pojeetives had weighed themselves on it before they knew they were pojeetive, and wondered if the scale was wrong.
Madhu watched a goat trying to wriggle underneath a parked taxi. It struggled to get into the small spot, but finally succeeded. Madhu wanted to join it: she wanted to snuggle up next to it under the car and nuzzle her own beak against its nose. They were both going to be slaughtered at some point. The goat was lucky to go first.