A Burning(26)

    PT Sir strolls casually out of the courtroom, unbuttoning his blazer. His neck prickles as he anticipates how the lawyer will reappear and challenge him. He waits for the judge to call him into chambers and demand to know who he really is. As he passes by guards patrolling the courthouse grounds, he expects an arm to shoot out and bar his way.

But, in a moment, he is on the street, where nothing more distressing happens than this: A pigeon pecking at the ground takes flight and flaps away from him, its wings nearly brushing his face.



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*

IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING, when Bimala Pal’s assistant calls PT Sir and gives him a case, he prepares by purchasing a tube of antiperspirant and applying the white gel in his armpits. He carries a bottle of water and sips from it. He goes to sleep early the night before. Perhaps it is these measures, but PT Sir finds, by his fourth time at the courthouse, that there is little that agitates him.

At the doors to the courtroom, the guard greets PT Sir familiarly.

“All well?” he says.

“All well,” says PT Sir. “Has my case started yet?”

    “Going a bit late today,” the guard says. “Not to worry. You go sit in the canteen, I’ll send someone to call you.”

For the first time, as he wanders down the familiar corridor, past the law library and to the canteen, PT Sir wonders if the guard is paid by the party too. For that matter, how about the courtroom clerks, and the judges, and the lawyers? Not one of them has ever said: “This man is really something! Everywhere there is a robbery, a domestic problem, a fight between neighbors, this man happens to be walking by! Is he Batman or what?”

But now is not the time to think about such things.

An hour and a chicken cutlet later, PT Sir takes the stand, opposite a man in a check-patterned lungi, knotted below a thin, hard belly.

PT Sir says, “This is the man I saw on the road. He was eve-teasing a lady. Making some disgusting gestures. Don’t ask me to repeat them.” He puts his teeth on his tongue in a gesture of shame and shakes his head. “God knows what would have happened to the lady if I wasn’t going that way.”

The accused looks bewildered. He opens his mouth to speak and is reminded by the judge to be quiet.



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THIS IS HOW BIMALA PAL explained it to him, and this is how he explains it to his wife. All these cases are instances in which the police are one hundred and ten percent sure that the accused is guilty. They don’t have that much evidence, is all. But the accused are known in their neighborhoods. They have reputations. Should these dangerous men return to the streets on a technicality? Much better to fill the gap with a witness and make sure the guilty party lands in jail.

    PT Sir cannot disagree. It is true that there is a lot about life that the law misses. And it doesn’t hurt that each assignment comes with a “gift,” delivered to him every month by an assistant, perhaps the assistant’s assistant, who drives to the house on a noisy motorcycle and offers a pristine white envelope.





LOVELY


TODAY, WHEN MR. DEBNATH is giving us a scene where we are having to express tears, many of us are looking concerned.

“I have heard,” Rumeli is saying, “that on real sets they are using some burning eye drops—”

“Burning eye drops!” Mr. Debnath’s voice is booming. He is seeing red.

“If you want to be a C-level actor you can use all those cheap things!” he is saying. “Real actors cry from the heart. Real actors are reaching into their own selves, and not imagining a false sad moment, but returning to a true sad moment in their own life. That is how you are crying real tears in a made-up scene.”

We are all nodding seriously then. Mr. Debnath is saying such deep things.



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UNTIL I WAS THIRTEEN–FOURTEEN years old, I was living with my parents, who were both working in the local post office, and my grandparents, two uncles, their wives and children, all of us stuffed in a four-room apartment with a small balcony where we were sprinkling puffed rice for sparrows to eat. We were neither rich, neither poor. Once a month we were going to the movie theater after eating rice and egg at home. The popcorn counter was not existing for people like us.

    In the outside world, I was wearing boy’s shorts and a boy’s haircut, and playing cricket. But secretly, at home, I was trying lipstick. I was wearing my mother’s saris once, twice, thrice. The fourth time my uncles were persuading my father to kick me out of the house. “What dignity will we have with this unnatural boy in the household?” they were shouting. “Our children are normal, think about them!”

My cousins were hiding in a bedroom, peeping out at me with big eyes.

My mother was fighting to keep me at home. She was saying I could be going to a special school! I could be seeing a doctor! But how long can a mother be fighting against the laws of society? So I was leaving.

In my heart I am knowing that my grieving mother must have been looking for me for years. Maybe she is still searching for me. I am not thinking about her anymore.

When I was first finding my way to the hijra house, I was learning singing and dancing, the art of charming strangers and persuading them. In classes run by an NGO, I was continuing my studies of Bengali and arithmetic, until their funding ended. So I was never learning a lot from books. When I was a child, I was being taught that school was the most important thing in the world—my exams and my marks would make me successful! These days, I am seeing that’s not true. Was Gandhiji spending his time sitting on top of a book? Was Rakhee, the greatest film star in history, spending her time saying no, please, cannot make films due to I am having to study a book? No. Me, I am learning from life.