Aavarana- The Veil

by S L Bhyrappa

  I had tried very hard to fathom the actual reason behind Ijaz Ahmad’s nightly outrage on my body during the stay in his camp outside Devagarh. A battle engagement meant either severe shortage or absolute unavailability of women. Ijaz Ahmad had sated his lust using me as a substitute for a woman. But nothing prepared me for what I underwent at his enormous mansion in Delhi. There, his dual propensity for pleasure became a confirmed fact. Indeed, Delhi was where I learnt for the first time that there existed men who sought and found pleasure in both men and women. My existence in that mansion suddenly reminded me of the ones who were dearer than life to me and who were now in the Other World, while I, the coward, lived on this earth in despicable slavery. My dream of appealing to the badshah’s mercy to grant me an honourable position, even if it was that of a lowly foot soldier, was cruelly shattered. I preferred to die as a warrior bearing arms rather than this fate that was forced on me. It was several days later that I realized that it was unimaginable to even fantasize that a slave like me would have an opportunity to step outside the mansion.

  But my real humiliation was just beginning. Another incident occurred that multiplied my disgust a thousandfold. Mansabdaar Ijaz Ahmad used to parade me with great pride before his friends who visited his mansion. I could see unclothed lust in their eyes the moment they saw me. In no time, they began conversing with Ijaz Ahmad in Farsi, Arabic or Turkish. By then I had picked up enough of these languages to understand the conversation. After this, Ijaz Ahmad used to order me to go into a room with his friend. As a slave, I had no freedom to question my master’s order. In the room, my duty was to follow my master’s friend’s instructions and I did so faithfully. He made me do things that drove him to a febrile pitch. I’ve constantly wondered how, when two people come together to seek pleasure in each other, they are aroused naturally and there is little or no need for forced stimulation but…but…this was profane, against nature. And it was just not him. Every friend of Ijaz Ahmad wanted me to titillate him in his own way—there are as many perverted ways of stimulation as there are perverts. Over time, I got used to this and got over my disgust, performing my duty with the detachment of a doctor who treats even the worst of diseases. There was no alternative. Escape was out of question.

  When I was brought into the city, the census officer entered my name as the slave of Mansabdaar Ijaz Ahmad in his register. The rules for getting in and out of the city were very stringent. Everybody had to obtain a permit. In case anybody got out without a permit, word would be sent at lightning speed to every single census office in all cities, towns and villages surrounding Delhi. Horsemen would swiftly hunt down the man and once caught in that manner, there would be no hearing in any court. The man’s legs would be amputated.

  I often thought about the real reason Ijaz Ahmad’s friends fancied me. Was it my age? I decided to find out. By then, I had gained a valuable insight about people like Ijaz Ahmad and his friends. The long wake after satisfying my host-of-the-moment’s desire was the best time to ask questions—questions, which in ordinary times would have infuriated him. That wake was the period when my enjoyer was in a state of extreme benignity. Equally, I had learned the trick of asking a touchy question, which would be interpreted favourably. But there was one question that I knew was pointless to ask: no matter how pleased any friend of Ijaz Ahmad was with me, he would never accede to release me from slavery. And so, on one such occasion, I asked Abdul Khaadar, an amir, in a very soft tone, ‘Is your love for me really that intense? Really? I…I…I could feel it today.’

  His face instantly showed the ecstasy he must have felt upon hearing my words. He replied, ‘Why do you think it isn’t? Why do you think I came here three times? For you…only for you! The very vision of your delicate face drives me delirious with love. For you. Today I was engaged in an important matter and you suddenly entered my thoughts and lo! I jumped on my horse at that instant and hurried here. Do you know how tough it is for me to be in your master’s obligation when I ask him the favour of being in your pleasurable company? But I don’t care.’

  ‘But why? I…I don’t understand…I mean, I’m also a boy and I have manliness just like you.’

  ‘Now, you must not remind me of that. Not all boys have your ability to kindle such tender love in me. You are special. Your beauty is one in a thousand…you…you…you’re a perfect combination of the delicate beauty of a woman and the rough hardness of a man. You will remain as beautiful even after your sprouting hair becomes a full-grown moustache.’

  I stood before a mirror and looked at myself for a long time. It was true, I was handsome. My good looks were the subject of much adoration since childhood. My sweet Shyamala had confided on our wedding night how her friends and even older women had told her how lucky she was to marry a handsome lad like me. But…but they were women and it was natural for them to find me attractive, in the way a woman finds a man desirable. How could men find me attractive in the same way? With that, my feeling of disgust towards these people’s culture and tastes was now mixed with confusion.

  ~

  One day, a powerful sardar named Moinuddin Turani came visiting at Ijaz Ahmad’s house. He was aged about forty-five. He had a sharp nose. His white-and-black beard stood pronounced on his milky fair complexion. He spoke with Ijaz Ahmad for some time and then I was sent for. I respectfully did salaam aleikum. He acknowledged it with approval and looked at me. I was dressed in a pyjama, and wore a gold-coloured half coat over an embroidered shirt. A black topi sat on my head. After about two minutes, Ijaz Ahmad ordered, ‘Get back to your room.’

  After some time, he sent for me again. Looking at Moinuddin Turani’s direction, he said, ‘He is the most esteemed mansabdaar of ten thousand, Moinuddin Turani. Perform mujra and show that you respect him. I have sold you to him for one thousand rupees. From this instant, you are his slave. Although you don’t have the freedom to know the price, I have shown great mercy upon you and told you your price so that you’re aware of your standing among slaves. Male slaves of your age are worth between fifteen and twenty rupees in the market. So you see! The mansabdaar is as generous as he is merciful.’

  It was his command and that was that. I had no recourse to…forget protesting, I couldn’t dare tell Ijaz Ahmad that I liked his house. The past one year had taught me many more things, but this was one fundamental lesson I had imprinted on my soul—I could be bought and sold like cows and goats and horses and I had the same freedom as they did. I had to go with Moinuddin Turani sahib and I had to continue performing the same duty. I would please his friends and my living conditions would be better than the slaves worth fifteen or twenty rupees. Another realization struck me right then—these slaves would do torturous work, slogging in sweltering heat all day till their skins turned permanently black. But I would suffer no such torture. He would keep me indoors. I looked at both men and then went back to my quarters without paying obeisance to my hitherto master, Ijaz Ahmad.

  ~

  I was taken to Moinuddin’s stable, which housed more than two hundred horses. There I was led to the room of the stable’s caretaker and treated to a sumptuous meal. Many minutes after the meal, I was given a round pellet.

  ‘Swallow this,’ the two gigantic men barked roughly.

  I knew it was opium.

  ‘But why?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Do as you’re told! Sardar’s orders!’

  I hesitated for a while, thinking. Everything was new to me. I knew nothing about these people. It was unsettling. I decided to obey. I swallowed the pellets and drank the full glass of water they gave me.

  ‘Follow us.’

  I followed them. They took me around the entire stable once and then we returned to the caretaker’s room. Now they asked me to sleep on the place where the caretaker slept. As I lay down, my vision began to grow hazy. The opium was taking effect. Till today, I cannot clearly remember what happened next. Everything had slowed down. One of the men held wooden tongs a cubit long. It appeared like a toy in his
hand. Suddenly two burly men appeared from nowhere…now they were pressing me down farther and farther back on the ground with their feet. I was looking up, trying to understand exactly what they intended to do with me. In the next instant, I felt two heavy, powerful feet, one on each shoulder, plastering me to the ground. They were very heavy, like iron, but I felt no pain. And now I sensed somebody removing my pyjamas and then felt a blast of air from the surroundings. I realized, hazily, that I was naked waist down. And then I felt something else. The man with the strong wooden tongs was moving them towards my testicles and before I could apprehend what he was about to do, I felt my testicles grappled in the tight grip of those tongs. Sheer terror shook me out of my haze. I emitted a hysterical shriek, not concealing the pure horror I felt and repeatedly entreated them to stop, now weeping like a child. I tried to writhe in order to loosen the clench of the tongs on my testicles, but it seemed as if my whole body was impaled to the ground. Sweat flowed from my pores in a continuous stream, as if in tandem with the sound of the pitiful moan of my own voice. ‘No, no no no no…please…please…please, no no…please please…please, no!’ The deadly embrace of the tongs was more precise now and it grew tighter with every moan that escaped my now-numb lips. Then it happened in a fraction of a brain-shattering fraction. Phat! Phrrrrratt! was all I heard before the unimaginable explosion of intense agony that erupted in my loins charged forth towards all ends of my being at the speed of a hundred thousand horses. Followed by blackness.

  I remember almost nothing of what happened next. I don’t recall how many days or weeks of suffering I underwent. Or how long I remained in a state of semi-consciousness. Or how long my testicles were swollen. Or how long it took for the swelling to subside. When I reached the state where I could understand what people spoke, I was with an old man who was wearing very loose white pyjamas and an equally loose white shirt. He sported a very long and very white beard that he repeatedly stroked when he spoke. ‘You are now in a state where your pain has reached a tolerable level. I can see that from your face. You’re very, very lucky to be alive. I sat by you night and day and treated you and ensured that you did not die. But you must know that three out of four who undergo this treatment die.’

  ‘But for what disease was I treated?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh! So, you haven’t yet understood what this was about! I have made you a hijra by completely taking out your masculinity. After you’ve fully healed, you’ll be put in the service of a zenana. You can be allowed to freely mingle with the most beautiful woman in the zenana. I will tell you a secret: if you earn the trust and liking of the women in the zenana, you will have no trouble in leading a life as rich as that of those women. You can eat the best food and live in the finest of quarters.’

  Then I understood. The wooden tongs that I had seen through my opium-induced haze was incomprehensible back then. In Devagarh, farmers and cowherds used to tie the legs of bulls and use similar wooden tongs to castrate them. I was merely a boy and I had blushed when I heard that castrated bulls were bereft of any desire to jump on cows, or if they were forcibly made to climb on a cow, they wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  Then I recalled another piece of information I had heard in Ijaz Ahmad’s mansion. These people hunted down and castrated mostly healthy and virile young men for the sole purpose of serving in the zenana, because natural-born eunuchs were very rare to find. I had no idea how they would actually carry out the castration. Moreover, I had not the faintest inkling that it would happen to me. After becoming Ijaz Ahmad’s slave, there were occasions when I used to want a woman but I could count on my fingers the number of times the desire arose—Ijaz Ahmad, and later his friends, had killed it almost completely with their perverse, beastly enjoyment of my body. Now that I no longer had my manhood, I realized the possibility existed that they might still enjoy me.

  The old man—he was a doctor—said, ‘Mansabdaar Turani Sahib has been most merciful in your case. He paid a thousand rupees before you were made a hijra.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘I told you earlier that three out of four men who undergo this treatment die. If you had died, his money would have gone waste. But the loss is still fine because the mansabdaar had decided that you were the fittest to serve in his zenana. That in itself is a rare honour, and it shows his special affection towards you. Does it or doesn’t it?’

  I vaguely nodded my head. I was half dozing by then and fell into a deep sleep, not understanding what exactly he meant. Gradually they reduced the quantity of opium they used to give me. I still spent my days in stupor but in moments of complete comprehension, I contemplated on whether it was just for one man to enslave another. Which god would be pleased by such an act? At other times, I thought about whether there were any limits to slavery. What kind of god permitted a victor to destroy a man’s manhood and if it was a woman, to ravish her body at will and enjoy any number of women?

  ~

  A few more days later, the doctor minutely examined my privates to see if they were completely healed and confirmed that I was indeed a hijra. I was appointed as a slave in Moinuddin’s zenana. Moinuddin’s mansion was almost eight times bigger than Ijaz’s. Why, it even dwarfed the palace at Devagarh!

  I realized how we used to follow a different notion of kingship at Devagarh. Everything in the kingdom was not subservient to the pleasures of the king, as it was here. This was strictly in order with the Sanatana or the eternal principles of kingship. A king was bound by the decision of his council of ministers and noble and distinguished citizens of his kingdom. Every decision—even the most basic matters of revenue and expenditure and taxes—had to compulsorily have the approval of these people. Irrespective of whether it was a man, woman, child, girl, boy, cripple or blind, a king had to tend to them as if he was their father. This meant that there was a limit and a check on the luxury permitted to the palace.

  But this Moinuddin was a ten-thousand mansabdaar. I learnt that this didn’t mean that he always had a contingent of ten thousand war-trained soldiers at his disposal. It simply meant that it was his responsibility to marshal this number of men whenever the badshah ordered for such a contingent. The mansabdaar had to maintain these many people from the revenue he earned from the land grant, the jagir, which the badshah had allotted him. Equally, he had to maintain a lifestyle that suited his rank. And so when the mansabdaar urgently needed money, he would increase taxes and sometimes together with it he would introduce newer and hitherto-unheard of taxes. Farmers who were unable to pay these new taxes were rounded up and auctioned in the slave market. In this way, a mansabdaar was a feudal chieftain. He had direct access to the court, and a mansabdaar’s rank was determined by the number prefixed to his title.

  Moinuddin’s mansion had an expansive garden in the front. It had two tall storeys built in accordance with the Farsi style of architecture that was the fashion in Delhi. The zenana was located in the centre after one got past the main door and crossed two massive verandas. Until then, I had never seen a zenana—not even in Ijaz Ahmad’s mansion, where I was used like a woman.

  From the time I was caught and made prisoner, I had only seen a particular class of women—wives of the poor farmers or women who worked on the streets or in fields as labourers. They were dressed in tatters and wore no jewellery. They had no flowers on their coarse, unoiled and uncombed hair. They sported nothing to protect their feet from the blistering Delhi sun, and the same sun had charred their skin. They were slaves and they all looked like slaves—it was difficult to tell whether they were male or female. My heart broke whenever I saw these joyless people. There was no way I could look at them as women and feel any desire.