by Anosh Irani
“So wait,” Madhu said. “Let the body stay here so people can come and pay their respects.”
“Those who matter are here already.”
“To you, perhaps,” said Madhu.
Madhu could see that she was trying Bindu nayak’s patience, but she wanted to keep gurumai with her another day. She wanted to sit alone with the body. There were so many things she wanted to tell gurumai. So many questions remained unasked and were sitting on her chest like giant crucifixes.
“Call your man,” said Bindu nayak.
“Why not use the cars you came in?”
“We want the nayaks and body to all travel together.”
Madhu dialled Gajja, but when she spoke into the phone, her voice cracked. When it vaporized, she passed the phone to Bulbul.
Now that the body was washed, Bindu nayak took off her chappals. She handed Madhu one.
“Here,” she said. “This much you can do. You start.”
All seven disciples removed their footwear and stood in a circle around the body. Madhu was the first one to strike. She raised the chappal high above her head and brought it down on gurumai’s stomach. After three strikes from her, the rest followed. They beat gurumai’s body and cursed it for being a hijra. Their beatings were a warning for her never to take rebirth as one. Madhu flinched as she did this. In all her years, she had never raised her hand to gurumai, and now they were chastising her when she was not capable of emitting a single word in reply. Bulbul stopped hitting gurumai and fell over the body, taking a couple of beatings herself. Madhu quickly pulled her away.
When Gajja arrived, gurumai’s body was taken down the stairs and into the night.
The carrom players and steelworkers were still out there, but the hijras formed a barricade around gurumai, preventing them from having a look at the body. This was the reason hijras were buried at night: as the soul left the body, it was the duty of those left behind not to let the look of strangers defile it. One look by man or woman, one sneer or disgusted glance, and the soul was trapped again.
Gajja looked at Madhu, and she gestured that she was okay. He sat in the front with the ambulance driver and urged the nayaks to hurry because he needed to get the ambulance back to the hospital as soon as possible. The nayaks sat in the back with gurumai. Once again, Madhu was left out in the cold, a reminder that hierarchy, not love, ruled her world. It should have been Bulbul and her in there, sitting on either side of gurumai, holding their mother’s hand. Instead, she and Bulbul were trailing the ambulance in a taxi.
When had gurumai breathed her last? Was it when Madhu had been taking the parcel’s picture? Was that why Madhu’s hands had been so shaky? Could she feel gurumai’s longing for her, the need to be comforted during those last few breaths? Madhu’s brain was a tangled nest of thoughts, and yet events were moving so quickly, so smoothly.
Through her haze, Madhu was surprised to see that a grave was ready at the cemetery in Nariyalwadi, waiting for gurumai.
But then again, Bindu nayak owned five graves in this burial ground, including one for herself. She had bought them years ago, when graves were cheaper. Now graves were real estate too, resold at a higher value. Sometimes cemeteries reused old graves, dumping one body on top of an older one.
The ambulance stopped outside the graveyard gates.
The nayaks pulled the stretcher out and laid it on the ground. There were no flowers for gurumai. Madhu would have liked to put flowers on the cloth that covered her. This was all so plain, so ordinary for someone as dazzling as gurumai.
At last it was the disciples’ turn to take over. The final walk would be theirs and theirs alone. The nayaks took the cloth off gurumai’s body and propped the stretcher up vertically, so that it looked as though gurumai was standing. Madhu then placed herself directly in front of gurumai, and allowed her to fall into her arms, as one would accept a child. Behind gurumai, Devyani took the place of the stretcher; Madhu then made gurumai stand erect against Devyani’s tall figure.
Now Bulbul and Madhu stood on either side of gurumai while Tarana and Anjali tied gurumai’s ankles with a thin rope to Bulbul’s and Madhu’s. Gurumai was now propped between Madhu and Bulbul with her arms around their shoulders, the three of them like bosom friends coming out of a bar. In this way, holding their mother up, they walked gurumai to her grave, tall and respectful, her eyes closed but her body moving forward. This was how gurumai had wanted to go. In her final moments on earth, she refused to lie prostrate on a stretcher. Even in death—especially in death—she would walk, upright in bold defiance. Hijras might be forced to live in shame, but they went to their graves better than anyone else.
Madhu could feel Bulbul shuddering in the dark, breaking into tears and then regaining composure again, until they stood before the yawning hole that would soon accept their mother. It would be dawn soon. Madhu took one hard look at the person who had shaped her, who had forged her destiny, who had sculpted her body with one stroke, whose hug was more true than that of her real mother, who had made her feel she was worth something when she did not have a friend in the world, who had taught her how to make a man come, and come again, who had fed her rice and dal with her own hands, who had looked so deep into her eyes that Madhu was convinced their bond went back lifetimes, and who had had the courage to tell her parents who she really was. Madhu loved gurumai, and would continue to do so, but not in the way humans experience love. Madhu loved her the way the wind loved the trees. She was visible only because of her.
Madhu moved away and watched gurumai enter the ground.
11
The next morning was the most silent that Madhu had ever lived through.
Gurumai’s bed was empty. Her crumpled bedsheet was still warm, and for a second, Madhu almost convinced herself that gurumai had gone to the toilet to relieve her bladder. But the sheet was just a piece of cloth, a reminder that a cheap wooden bed could outlast a human being.
Madhu was confronted with the mess of the previous night’s gathering: empty chai glasses, whisky bottles, steel plates with mutton crumbs, chewed-up chicken bones, and cigarette butts strewn over the floor like a holy offering. This was all that remained of the last night of gurumai’s life. Madhu and her sisters were part of that debris.
After taking their baths, Madhu and the others put on white saris and walked through the rooms, sipping chai, picking up cigarette butts and sweeping the floor. When it came time to clean up gurumai’s bed, Madhu could not bring herself to do it. That crumpled bed was gurumai’s last imprint on earth. If she straightened the sheet out, she would wipe the slate clean. She ran her fingers along the sheet again, lightly, not erasing its texture in any way. It had felt gurumai’s skin more than any of them had. If gurumai’s spirit was contained in there, Madhu wanted to access it.
But then, suddenly, she moved away. The sheet was reminding her of how gurumai had looked the night before, with eyes closed, facing the ceiling. Madhu had never seen her so soft, almost childlike in her nakedness. The more she tried to push gurumai out of her mind, the less successful she was. Gurumai’s face kept appearing before her—her face and neck, as though they were the two most vital parts of her body.
And that is when it dawned on her. How could Madhu have been so stupid?
There had been no key around gurumai’s neck last night. Who had the key to the safe? Someone had taken it.
“Bulbul,” she asked, “where’s the key?”
Bulbul was slumped on her small stool, staring into the mirror.
“Where is gurumai’s key?” she asked again.
Bulbul did not answer. Her mind was somewhere else. Her mobile phone was on the dressing table. Madhu picked it up. Bulbul had taken a photo of herself. The whiteness of her sari had added a spectral hue to her already silvery skin.
“Bulbul?”
“He wants me to send him my photo…”
“Who?”
“He sent me word after so many months…I finally got a message from him…I’m so relieved…”
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Madhu glanced over at the radio on the window ledge.
“He wants to see what I look like now. He wants to show me to his parents.”
If only Bulbul could see herself now, with her eyebrows arching in the middle, twitching with hope, then diving downward into total misery. Today of all days, Madhu had to tell her the truth. Today, she had to shatter the illusion and tell her there was no way Bulbul’s man could send her messages through the radio, because the radio was not even on.
“The radio is not working,” said Madhu. “See…there aren’t even any batteries in it.”
She opened the small hatch where the batteries were normally placed and showed it to Bulbul, who took the radio in her hand and caressed it.
“It’s been good to me,” said Bulbul.
“Bulbul, you have to listen to me,” said Madhu. “Please. I’m your friend, your sister who will never lie to you.”
“I thought you would understand.”
“I do…”
“You’re just as bad. You stand on a bridge for hours…”
“What?”
“You stand on that bridge…where you lived…”
“What are you talking about?” Madhu’s voice rose. “What would I stand on a bridge for? Do you think I’m mad?”
“No,” said Bulbul. “I don’t think you are mad at all. Neither did gurumai.”
Madhu stared at Bulbul, but she was not even looking her way. She was trying to find comfort in her own reflection. Madhu felt dizzy.
“Gurumai knew?” she asked, more to herself than Bulbul.
“We saw you one night, standing next to the banana seller…You were looking at your old balcony.”
Bulbul got up from her stool and put the radio back on the ledge.
“You believe your family will take you back. The same way I believe my man will come for me.”
“Why…why didn’t you tell me you knew?” asked Madhu.
“It was not the right time,” said Bulbul. “But it is now.”
“What do you mean?”
“One mother is dead,” said Bulbul dully. “Maybe it’s time for you to return to the other.”
Madhu thought about that wisp of air she had felt on her forearm last night when she touched gurumai’s body. She had no doubt now that it had indeed been gurumai’s last word. She had not imagined it. And now she was able to grasp what the last word had been.
Return.
That’s what gurumai wanted Madhu to do. Gurumai’s last wish had not been for herself; it had been for Madhu. She did not want her child to be an orphan. Of all people, it was Bulbul who had confirmed this. Madhu felt a tenderness for Bulbul rise within her suddenly, like it had when the two of them first met.
“You really think I should go back?” Madhu asked.
“Will standing on that bridge bring you peace?”
“But what if…what if they…” Madhu struggled to finish her sentence. She could not bring herself to ask the question. So she decided to ask a question that Bulbul would be able to answer. “What did gurumai say? When she found out?”
“She said nothing,” replied Bulbul. “Neither of us spoke about it.”
Until now, thought Madhu. Until gurumai’s final breath.
Madhu decided she would return to the one who had brought her into this world. And she would have to do it now. If she thought about it too long, she would lose the courage to take this step. Yes, it would have to be now, in this moment of despair and madness brought on by gurumai’s sudden passing.
Madhu’s mother was old now, but still breathing. Madhu was certain that she had kept her mother alive by standing on that bridge for hours. She had stalked her mother with her love. All those nights she stared at the balcony, she had been providing oxygen to a woman who had made the mistake of holding her breath and spitting her child out of her womb and her life.
Now she would have the chance to take Madhu back.
It was a Monday afternoon. Because it was a public holiday, the family would be at home to witness the reunion.
Usually when Madhu exited the red-light district, she felt like she was doing something illegal, like crossing a border without a passport, or breaking quarantine while infected. Today, however, she felt nothing of the sort. She was no longer a hijra; she was no longer Madhu Chickni. She was a boy in short pants again, and a girl caught inside that boy, like a parrot in a cage. When she passed by Underwear Tree, she noticed a row of new underwear, freshly washed and hung out to dry. This was a good sign: newness. A sign of prosperous beginnings. In the little hut below Underwear Tree, she caught a glimpse of her face in a small mirror and was shocked to see something rare: a smile. Perhaps gurumai herself had etched it there with her crafty old hands.
Apart from that smile, gurumai had also given Madhu clarity. Madhu’s naked hatred for her father had blinded her to the real person she needed to make amends with: her mother. Her father could be excused for not understanding her, she thought. But wasn’t her mother the true custodian of Madhu’s soul? Gurumai had merely done a touch-up on Madhu’s body, to keep it in sync with the soul—the hijra soul that lived in the womb for nine months. Madhu’s mother had to have known who Madhu really was.
Madhu thought of going to the forty-seventh step to calm herself. But no—there was no need for that. She told herself to believe, to not be a coward. Bulbul had made her believe, and gurumai was giving her the strength to race toward the ones she loved, the ones who would take her in. She would enter their lives again the way a humble ray of light enters a dim hallway.
At last she was face to face with the building she had once lived in, the concrete of her youth. The footpath was still the same shambles it had been back then; the only difference was that new holes had appeared. She stood at the entrance, astonished that she had made it this far. The long corridor that led to the elevator was unmanned; the watchman’s stool was empty. She gathered her wits and went straight to the elevator. She would have preferred to take the stairs but her legs were jelly. She hoped she would not collapse when her brother opened the door. Or would it be her mother? Or, even better, him?
Her father, who had spent many sleepless nights on account of her, she would forgive with the might of saints. Even if he had become a jibbering-jabbering lump of flesh whose mind was gone and whose eyes could barely see, she would sit by his side and feed him. She was used to caring for the dying.
If her brother was married, she would get along famously with his wife, and if there was a child, she would be in a unique position to be both uncle and aunty.
The door was the same, with the same brass nameplate. Nothing had changed.
Her heart was so unabashed in its excitement that there was no need to ring the bell. The way it thumped was announcement enough. But she rang the bell anyway. Perhaps her family would think it was the butcher or the vegetable vendor or the postman. In a way, she was a postman delivering good news of love lost and found. Her sari was the white envelope, and she herself the letter, her eyes the ending and the beginning.
Come on. She had waited too long. The time was ripe. Gurumai had died so that Madhu could come here.
The door did not open.
She cursed herself for not bringing gifts. She should have brought something, some token.
Maybe no one was home.
That was fine. It was providence: maybe she was meant to buy each member of her family a present. She was a sailor who had returned from the wild seas. Of course she should bring them something from her travels.
She took the stairs down. Rather than being disappointed, she was still delirious with the thought of her return, her newfound bravery sparkling inside her.
As she left the dimness of the corridor and entered the street, she came to a sudden halt. A short woman was limping toward the entrance of the building. Madhu was hit by a force greater than any strong wind. There was a rush of memories, a warm smell, a voice singing to Madhu when she was little. The woman was clutching a small gro
cery bag that contained vegetables, her arm wrinkled with age.
It was her. And she was with her son, the one she cared for.
The son walked right behind her, talking on his mobile phone. Madhu froze. She quaked with love, was filled with the desire to rush into her mother and take that grocery bag from her hand. She almost screamed out, “Ammi, Ammi, Ammi”—three times, as if she had won a prize. But before the words could leave her mouth, her mother looked right at her, and Madhu’s mind careened out of control.
Her feet staked roots in the ground out of terror. Then her mother moved past Madhu, as did her brother. They moved past, but then her mother looked back. She stared at Madhu’s face. Madhu could hardly believe it. After more than twenty-five years, their eyes were meeting again. Her mother came to Madhu, stepped forward, and placed something in the palm of Madhu’s hand.
Then she turned away and entered the building.
Madhu stared at her palm. It held a five-rupee coin.
—
The coin throbbed in her palm, pulsating like a mistake, shivering with the truth. She had been mistaken for a beggar, and that fact shot through her belly, the shame of it trickling down her legs as she ran home.
Kamathipura took her back without so much as a whimper. What a fool she had been to think she could abandon it. But this time as she stood outside Hijra House and looked up at the building that was her abode, she recognized it for what it truly was. The balcony where she was once put on display, with jasmine in her hair and fake jewels around her neck, was diseased in daylight. Hijra House had given her asylum, but it was not her home. She was a patient there, much like Bulbul and the rest of her sisters. Over the years they had stood outside, like clothes on a laundry line, hoping that the wind would take them away, whisk them to a better future. They were delusional. And she was the most delusional of them all in thinking that her mother would take her back.
She did not feel like climbing the stairs. She felt like going down, descending into the earth. She walked away from the building, without any aim at all, the stray dogs reminding her that even they had someone to lick, unlike her. A blind beggar was limping next to her, his silver eyes deep within their sockets. He had his arm on another man’s shoulder, a begging partner who sang praises of Allah into a flower-shaped microphone and urged the faithful to give alms. Even the blind beggar had someone to guide him and speak on his behalf. But not Madhu. She was truly alone. As she walked, she remembered the scent of someone who was just as alone as she was, someone who, like her, had no mother any longer, no family. No one. Her cage was the only place Madhu could be right now. She needed its history, the cries of past parcels stuck on the walls, their dainty feet thrashing against the cage bars.