Beautiful Thing

by Sonia Faleiro

  Although Leela had been fairly careful since, it would do no harm to get tested. But yes, why hadn’t anyone told her HIV could be transmitted through unprotected oral sex?

  Since the previous year Leela had learnt more about HIV from an NGO that parked its mobile clinic down the road from Night Lovers. The first few times one of the didis, as the women who worked there were known, approached Leela with the suggestion of a check-up, Leela batted her away: ‘I’m not those types,’ she said, loudly bustling off.

  ‘I was “proudy” with her,’ Leela admitted. ‘As though it made a difference! Sister’s name was Baby, and Baby knew what I was. She would roam outside Night Lovers and every week she would walk up to me all smiling-like and say, “What’s the harm, come meet our doctor. If you don’t have time for a check-up, at least take some chocolates. They are free! And paan flavoured! Please?”’

  The word ‘free’ did the trick.

  ‘I liked the idea,’ Leela admitted. ‘So I went in. The doctor was nosy-like. “How many kustomers do you take? Do you have a husband? Is he your regular or does he go with his other wives?” But he wasn’t writing this info down for the police. Only to understand how many chocolates I needed.’

  Leela got checked for gonorrhoea. She was clean. Then Baby suggested a blood test for HIV. Leela agreed and went ahead. But in the weeks that followed, she avoided Baby.

  ‘Your results are ready,’ Baby would say, hurrying alongside Leela as Leela scooted into Night Lovers. ‘Keep them!’ Leela would hiss. ‘Throw them away!’ she said, another time.

  ‘She became my shadow,’ Leela recalled, resentful. ‘Arre, if I didn’t want the results I didn’t want the results! What went of her father’s?’

  Why didn’t you want to know? I asked.

  ‘Some things are best kept secret,’ Leela said. ‘Some knowledge isn’t worth the price you pay for having it.’

  Shortly after the Lonavla trip, Leela was forced to reconsider her decision. It happened after one of the dancers at Night Lovers, a teenager called Ameena, fell mysteriously ill. Ameena was famous for her ability to dance with a pyramid of three tumblers balanced on her head. ‘You could switch on any song,’ raved Shetty, ‘classical, disco, Jana gana mana! She wouldn’t break one tumbler. She couldn’t if she tried! Three years that girl was with me and not one crash, imagine it! She was a jewel, an angel. That first time I saw her dance I said to myself, “Purshottam Shetty, ready to be crorepati?”’

  About six months prior to the incident Ameena started skipping work. When she did show up she was skinny, skittish and always coughing into the crook of her arm. Leela wondered if Ameena had tuberculosis. If that was the case, she hoped Ameena would have the decency not to dance next to her.

  While performing one night, Ameena became visibly disoriented. She fell on to a table. It was embarrassing; she looked a fool. Shetty didn’t make trouble. It was a one-time slip and he personally apologized to the customer into whose lap Ameena had spilt a quarter and several chicken legs. The incident would have been forgotten after a few nights of make-up room taunts, had it not been for the fact that, citing exhaustion, Ameena stayed home the next evening. And the evening after that, and then for a week until Shetty, who had a soft spot for his jewels, phoned her personally.

  ‘Her husband picked up, of course,’ Shetty said to me. ‘“Where’s Ameena?” I asked. “Unwell,” snorted that scoundrel. “But don’t you worry Shetty sahib, I’ll send her to you soon. This is just natak, you know. Sometimes my wife likes to do drama.” This is how these men talk! And what does he do for a job, you may ask. Answer? Nothing! I bet you five hundred rupees had I visited their chawl that evening I would have found Ameena sweating from her tips to her toes, washing the floor, cooking food, feeding the baby while that useless nothing fellow would have been sprawled in front of their Sony TV yelling, “Ameena chai la! Ek peg de! Khana khila!” Kameena rascal! Idiot maderchod!’

  One of the responsibilities Leela had taken upon herself as Shetty’s ‘wife’—unasked by Shetty—was to keep a tab on the other bar dancers. She would phone when they skipped a night of work. If they failed to answer she would ‘take insult’. She would send off furious text messages, lashing out at their caste, character, the colour of their skin. When she needed a boost of confidence or wished to remind herself that she was better than her job, Leela would stand with a fierce face and folded arms by the back door from which the girls came in to work and rifle through their handbags for what she claimed was contraband.

  ‘No drinks!’ she would snipe, confiscating bottles of cola spiked with rum.

  So when Ameena ‘took off’ once again, and four weeks later still hadn’t returned Shetty or Leela’s calls, Leela decided to do her duty.

  Ameena lived in Malvani, a cramped, congested suburb a local doctor once described to me as a ‘dumping zone of people’. Malvani is overrun with chawls, prayer halls and dhabas you can smell from up the road. And its residents had demarcated its numerous enclaves as strictly as national borders, each with its own customs and characters. There were streets of working-class families and streets populated by hijras. In some streets lived bar dancers. In others immigrants operated brothels out of the tin-roof constructions they called home.

  Malvani’s most arresting visual, however, was not its colourful and varied communities of human beings. It was its population of goats. On entering the neighbourhood you might see just one and wonder what the big deal was, but before long you would know, because another goat would saunter into your path, and then another, and then you would, most likely, see a family—babies and parents dozing in the sun amidst a confetti of fresh green leaves, and then without warning it would appear as though you had stumbled into an enchanted city whose only residents were goats. There were dozens of them and they were of all heights and girths, and shades of chocolate, white and grey; they had silky, wispy hair and grand-daddy beards and collars they wore like necklaces as they promenaded unattended, knobbly kneed and elegant as can be past the very butchers at whose hands their lives would come to an end.

  The chawl Ameena lived in was packed with people and goats and smelt of cleaning fluid and freshly cut grass.

  ‘I couldn’t see very well,’ Leela recounted. ‘Someone had strung clothes across Ameena’s door and they blocked out the light. Pushing the clothes to a side I peered through and to the little girl sitting on the floor I said, “Baby, where’s mummy?”’

  ‘What mummy?’ giggled Ameena.

  ‘I jumped!’ said Leela. ‘That little girl, who I mistook for Ameena’s child, was Ameena herself! How can I describe to you what she looked like? I saw death.’

  Ameena confided she had HIV.

  A few weeks previously, Baby had chased her down and because mild-tempered Ameena never could articulate a negative, even to a stranger, she had agreed to an HIV test.

  Now she was grumbling at the inconvenience her charity had caused her.

  ‘It’s bad enough that they admit us through a separate line, like we’re of a different caste,’ she said, of South Bombay’s Jamshedji Jijibhoy (JJ) Hospital, where she had gone to receive treatment. ‘Or that the ward for HIV patients is infested with mosquitoes. On one hand they say this is a disease of the blood and on the other, just imagine this, Leela, the place is full of mosquitoes sucking our blood and doing delivery service from one patient to the other! Accha, the last time I was there I saw policewomen in the ward, three of them. “What are they doing here?” I wondered. “Do they have HIV?” But no, they were with a prisoner and to make sure she wouldn’t escape they had handcuffed her to the bed and were sitting on the floor beside her, holding on to her chains. They were police, what can you expect? They couldn’t take the heat even for a few minutes! By the time I was ready to leave all three were snoring, loud as trains! I knew exactly what that woman was thinking—given half a chance she would have scrambled out of there, patli gali se!’

  ‘Chalo,’ Ameena smiled, ‘at least I’m having n
ew experiences!’

  ‘So how do you think you got this HIV?’ Leela asked.

  ‘The doctor said galat sambandh.’ Promiscuity.

  ‘And your mister? What did he say?’

  ‘Oh, isn’t he my heera-moti?’ beamed Ameena. ‘Straight off he said, “Whatever my wife may do, she’s never done galat kaam. I have full faith in her, don’t say another word.” Vicky is a hamal, coolie, you know, and he works so hard some nights I hear him talking to himself—“side dena side! Madam thoda right!” Just the other day he was saying we should move into a flat. Enough of this chawl bijniss, he said. How long are we going to live like the labouring poor? He may be a labourer, but wasn’t I Malvani ki shaan, the most famous bar dancer in the line? “Why not?” I replied. “Our little princess should grow up better than we did. Do we want her playing with the daughters of pimps and the adopted sons of hijras? With dirty Banglas who teach their children-log to feed their goats at breakfast and to then eat them for dinner?” Of course not! Every parent wants what’s best for their child, am I right or wrong? Well, maybe not my parents. And I guess yours neither! But we are different, isn’t it so, Leela? Our children-log will have the sort of life we only dreamt of. What do you say? Don’t you agree?’

  Leela nodded.

  ‘Well,’ said Ameena, ‘that’s what we tell ourselves now. Accha, anyway, that’s why my Vicky isn’t home today. He’s searching for a new place for us.’

  Shortly after, Leela said goodbye to Ameena and, hugging her tightly, promised to return soon. As she walked out of Malvani, she happened to see Baby, who was on her way to Ameena’s. They discussed their friend’s health and then Leela, because of how things like these mattered to her, said, ‘At least she has her mister.’

  ‘Mister-twister!’ mocked Baby. ‘Her husband is keeping that woman!’

  ‘What woman?’ asked Leela, confused.

  ‘Shehnaz, you know Shehnaz? Arre, Shehnaz from Rhythm Palace who lives with Ameena, cooks her food, washes her clothes. She moved in when Ameena was no longer able to, you know . . . She sleeps on the bed with Ameena’s mister and Ameena and the baby sleep on the floor. Oh yes, that woman is sharp, sharper than the sharpest edge! Twice I’ve caught her with Ameena’s mister, twice my dear, and you know what I mean when I say “caught”. They weren’t praying to Allah that is for sure!’

  ‘Surprised?’ Baby laughed at Leela’s expression. ‘Why, Leela? This is your line. These are your people. This is how it is, you know best.’

  Baby proceeded to Ameena’s house, leaving Leela alone with her thoughts.

  ‘I had to sit down, right there on the side of the road,’ she said to me. ‘“God,” I asked, “what is this line you have condemned me to?” But Baby was right. Who was I to show surprise? I know how things work. Ameena couldn’t have sex so her husband took it from her friend. And her friend gave it to him not because she loved him, but because she had to. He would pay her rent, protect her from goondas. My head began to spin. I began to think. I want to get tested. And I want to work on my relationship with PS. Because if something happens to me, who will I turn to? If I fall, who will accept my hand? And if my pain is so great the only language I can speak is the language of tears, who will lend me their ear? Tell me? Oh, this line!’

  The following week Ameena was back in hospital. Leela wanted to visit her and she asked me to come along. We were quickly lost. The reception was crowded and impossible to access. Even the stairs had been taken over by patients. Men, women and children slept on newspapers; they shook feverishly under shawls. The ones more able passed the time eating from tiffins, drinking tea, playing cards, reading aloud from newspapers and paperbacks. The hospital smelt of sweat and food and drink. It droned with conversation.

  We finally found Ward No. 10 and spied Ameena lying on a bed next to a window. Although the ward was overfull, it was cooled by a lightly scented breeze.

  Ameena was lying with her eyes closed.

  Leela was right. She was so small, so rickety, she could have been mistaken for a child.

  She must have been beautiful once. She had full lips and her thick, black plait coiled all the way down to the floor. But her skin was scaly and covered with a film of sweat and the pouches under her eyes were the colour and fullness of ripe plums.

  Leela touched her shoulder. Ameena’s eyes snapped open. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ she beamed, heaving herself up. ‘Visiting hours are almost over and you are my first visitors today.’ Ameena reached under her pillow and withdrew a tube of Odomos mosquito repellent cream. ‘The mosquitoes will kill me if the HIV doesn’t,’ she whispered. She smeared her face and arms and handed the tube to Leela. ‘Take some,’ she said. Thanking her, Leela squeezed the tube into her palms and began rubbing the cream vigorously on her face, neck and cleavage.

  I looked around for someone to talk to. A young doctor in a lab coat and jeans was standing a few feet away, leafing through some paperwork. Walking up to him, I introduced myself and asked about Ameena. He glanced over at her, ‘She’s come very late. Why didn’t she come to me before?’ I followed his gaze. Ameena and Leela were whispering to each other.

  She’s been here before, I said.

  The doctor shrugged. ‘She has HIV Wasting Syndrome,’ he said, tucking the paperwork under his arm. ‘She should have come earlier.’

  HIV Wasting Syndrome is considered ‘Clinical Stage 4’, a late stage in the staging system designed by the World Health Organization. Other listed symptoms, as many as twenty, include Kaposi sarcoma and pneumonia, constant fever and diarrhoea. A patient with the syndrome could expect to lose more than 10 per cent of her body weight, which explained Ameena’s startling thinness.

  The doctor walked over to Ameena’s bed. ‘We need to get started on ART,’ he told her.

  ART, or standard antiretroviral therapy, is usually a combination of at least three antiretroviral drugs that inhibit the replication of HIV. They have to be taken every day for the rest of a patient’s life.

  Switching to Hindi, the doctor repeated himself to Ameena.

  ‘It will help you,’ he said. ‘It’s good medicine. You’ll feel better as soon as you start taking it. Before we start though, we must run some tests—blood tests, X-rays, etc. It’ll take a few days. Once the results are in, we can move on.’

  ‘I haven’t walked in weeks,’ Ameena snapped. ‘And you want me to wait “a few days”!’

  ‘Counselling is mandatory,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Why? Why is it so? Is it because ART is something precious, something you cannot trust me with?’

  ‘Is it a diamond?’

  ‘Is it your wife’s mangalsutra?’

  The doctor patted Ameena’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get started as soon as possible, don’t you worry. I promise it won’t take as long as it sounds.’ He turned to another patient, lying on the floor near Ameena’s bed.

  I consoled Ameena. It’s not a diamond, I said. But it’s important, it’s a big thing. It’s a medicine you’ll have to take for the rest of your life.

  ‘Just a few more days,’ Leela said, patting Ameena gently.

  ‘It is a diamond!’ Ameena whispered, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Hear that, Leela? It’s a diamond; that’s why they won’t give it to me.’

  We left Ameena and shortly after that Ameena left the hospital.

  She couldn’t afford to stay, she told Leela when Leela called.

  ‘PS is paying,’ Leela said. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be on you.’

  ‘Not on me?’ snapped Ameena. ‘Do you know how much the old witch next door charges to look after my child? Sixty rupees! Per day! And money doesn’t fall from heaven, Leela.’

  ‘Why can’t your husband look after her?’ Leela asked.

  ‘How many things do you expect one man to do? He’s with Shehnaz looking for a new place for us; I told you that before, do you never listen? He says now that I’m sick, I should stay somewhere better. No, you shut up! You and your finger-poking! When you have a man
like my Vicky then you can start distributing gyaan. Until then, keep quiet!’

  Perhaps Ameena was right; Vicky had been out searching for a flat, something away from their ‘chawl bijniss’. But she would never know because he never came home and neither did Shehnaz. When her next hospital visit was due, it was Baby who took Ameena, while a friend of Ameena’s looked after her daughter as a favour.

  Only a few days later things took a turn for the worse. Baby phoned Leela to tell her that Ameena was being transferred out of JJ hospital.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Leela.

  ‘Where do you think?’ replied Baby.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a home, Leela,’ Baby said.

  ‘She’s going to Trombay.’

  In Trombay was a hospice for the destitute. Ameena would go there to die.

  So what will happen to her child? I asked, after Leela recounted this conversation to me.

  ‘What will happen?’ Leela said. ‘I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Someone has the child for now,’ she said, as though to herself. ‘But soon they will realize that a child is not a table, it is not a chair. It must be fed, it must be clothed, it needs toys. One day the child will go to school. What will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen, because I have seen it with my own eyes. One day I happened to pass a kachre ka dabba and in it, not even deep inside it, I saw a dead baby. What had been a dead baby. “I’m losing my mind,” I said to myself, “I need to get some sleep.” And so I rushed off. It happened again. Another kachre ka dabba, another baby. “I’m drunk,” I said to myself, running away as fast as I could. But I was not sleepy that first time, nor drunk the second. Because this is what I learnt, and I learnt it soon: a woman, if she has to, can bang her baby’s head on the wall, dhar! She can bang it dhar! Dhar!Dhar! And once she has reduced it to bharta, she can walk to a street far from where she lives and throw it into the garbage. The stray dogs will eat her child. What they leave, the birds will eat. What they leave, is kachra. If a mother can do something like this, can you expect less of a stranger? We can pretend all we want, but ultimately the world sees us, why, our parents see us, as pieces of meat they can buy and sell, meat they can consume, meat they can throw away when it starts to stink.’