A Burning(13)

“Give, mother,” we are calling so that our voices can be heard deep within the big house. When nobody is coming, I am stepping back and looking up at a window. It is a big house, and the window is covered by a lace curtain.

“Mother!” I am calling. “Let us see the baby, come.”

Finally the door in front of us is opening, and the mother, wearing a nightie that goes only to her calves, her oily hair sticking to her scalp, her eyes looking like she has seen battle, is holding the baby and coming out. Poor woman is yawning like a hippopotamus. I am feeling that maybe I can make the mother cheer up, along with the baby.

    So I am taking the baby in my arms, inhaling the milk scent of his skin. My eyes are falling in love with those soft folds in his wrists, the plump inside of his elbows. The others are clapping above the baby, singing, “God give this child a long life, may he never suffer the bite of an ant! God give this child a happy life, may he never suffer a lack of grains!”

The baby is looking surprised, with those big eyes. Maybe he is never coming out on the street before, never feeling the smoke and dust. For sure he is never seeing a group of hijras in our best clothes! He is screaming. His little mouth is opening to show pink gums and pink tongue, and he is screaming in my arms. He is a little animal. We are laughing. He is going to be fine, I am thinking, because he is having no defects, unlike myself.

The mother is looking harassed, and taking the baby inside. We are waiting for the sound of a drawer opening, some cash being counted by mother and father. But what is this, she is going inside a room, where a tap is running and water is falling. From here, over all the sounds of the street, I am hearing one sound clearly: She is washing her hands. She is washing her hands of us.

Meanwhile, the father is coming out in shorts and giving Arjuni Ma, our hijra house’s guru, three thousand whole rupees. He is sliding his glasses down his nose and looking at us from the top. One of my sisters is flirting with him for an old microwave or old TV. He is looking unhappy and pleading, “Where am I having so much, sister? Look at me. New baby and all.”

    Me, I am only trying to see what the mother is doing behind him, in the dark corridor, her hands so, so clean.



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*

IT IS NOT NEW, this insult. But it is not old. I am leaving the group and hurrying to the sweet shop down the street. Inside there is running a long glass case holding trays full of sweets. The pyramids of sweets, some dry, some soaking in syrup, are tempting me. There is brown pantua, fried and syrupy; there is white chomchom, so sweet your tongue will be begging for salt; there are milky and dry kalakand; and there is my favorite, kheer kodom. I am smelling the whole case from where I am standing, believe me. I am feeling the flavor of the flies buzzing over the sweets, and how some of the old sweets are beginning to sour in the hot day.

“How much is this?” I am saying. “And how much this one?”

The man behind the counter is grumbling. He is unhappy that he is having to serve me, I know. Finally I am getting one small roshogolla, ten rupees. The man is giving it to me in a small bowl woven with dried leaves. I am lifting the bowl to my forehead. I am giving thanks. It is no small thing to buy a sweet, and that is enough today. That is how my life is going forward—some insult in my face, some sweet in my mouth.

    Someday, when I am a movie star, that mother will be regretting that she washed me off her hands.



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*

IN THE EVENING, when my sisters are coming to my house, wearing nice saris for their outing, mosquitoes the size of birds are flying in happily also. One of my sisters is saying, “Did the police ask you anything?”

It is true that Jivan was teaching me English, so for sure the police will be coming to interrogate me. How come they are not coming yet?

In the corner of the room, hanging from a nail, is a coil of cables. One of my sisters is pulling a line and plugging it into the boxy TV on the floor. After she is slapping the top of the TV, it is waking up. That classic movie A Match Made by God is starting.

While the songs are playing, Arjuni Ma is raising her notebook close to her old eyes and reading what we have earned this week. Five thousand for a marriage, three thousand for a baby blessing. A few hundred rupees from the train.

My mind is somewhere else. Who is liking the police? Nobody. But I am also hoping that they are coming and I am getting a chance to tell them that Jivan was teaching me English. Impossible that Jivan is a criminal. Cannot be. I am wanting to tell the police this.

    “When they come,” Arjuni Ma is telling me later, “be careful when you talk to them. Maybe it is better that you try to avoid them.”

We are all knowing what is happening to hijras who are displeasing police, like Laddoo, our young hijra sister who was going to the police to report harassment from a constable, and was herself put in the lockup. There she is staying for days and days. Many years ago I would have been asking why is this happening? But now I am knowing that there is no use asking these questions. In life, many things are happening for no reason at all. You might be begging on the train and getting acid thrown on your face. You might be hiding in the women’s compartment for safety and getting kicked by the ladies.

I was almost being arrested one time also. A constable named Chatterjee was catching me when I was begging near the traffic light. He was saying to me, “Now you are trying to do this nonsense in my area?”