A Burning(33)

A lot of people are looking outside, to the fields of their country, the soothing green outside the window. The fields of paddy and coconut trees, the endless green of the rural parts. Oh, fantasy! They are actually looking at the ugly suburbs. Banners are hanging above a lane, advertising cold cream. The cloth of the banners is poked with holes for letting the wind through. In quiet towns, two-story houses painted such colors like you may never see in the city—bright blue and yellow! pink and green!—are jutting up from dust, some with flags of the local political party, and one with a stray man on the roof, sent up to fix the satellite dish, scratching his head at the sky.

All this I am seeing through the windows of the train, like they are a kind of television.



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THE INVITATION CARD IS arriving one morning, passed from hand to hand because there is no address on it except Lovely Hijra, near Kolabagan Railway Station. I am opening the card as if it is a flap of my heart. I am reading the words so many times I am knowing them like a song. Opening and closing the card, opening and closing the card—I am ready for my heart to be tearing at the fold.

    On the given day, I am shampooing in the cold water of the municipal tap, oiling my elbows, putting some rose water on my face, putting a garland around the thick bun high on my head, and then I am setting out for the event hall where Azad is going to marry a woman. A real woman, with whom he is someday having children, just like I was pushing him to do. His days of being with a he-she like me are over. In my armpit I am holding a nicely wrapped box with a small European-looking statue inside.

The hall is having a flower-and-leaf gate spelling out in front: Azad weds Shabnam. A lady standing over there is giving every guest a cup of cool rose-flavored Rooh Afza.

I am slurping it down, so thirsty I am suddenly feeling. Still my tongue is feeling thick, my throat is feeling dry. Inside, Azad and his bride are sitting on matching thrones. Behind the thrones there is a heap of big wrapped boxes—must be they are toasters, blankets, dinner plates. Azad is smiling with all thirty-two teeth and shaking some old uncle’s hand. Then he is seeing me, and we are going on looking at each other. We are having no words.

I was the one who was telling Azad to move forward and marry a woman, am I not remembering? But now Azad is looking handsome. His hair is nicely combed, and he is wearing an ivory dhoti kurta. His bride’s face is powdered white like a ghost, and her lips are red like a tomato. On her neck she is wearing at least five–six gold necklaces. I am not caring about gold, but I am caring, with my empty Rooh Afza cup in my hand, that Azad was buying these for her with love. Wasn’t Azad once telling me that he could not live without me? So why was he not marrying some ugly one-eyed person?

    Anyway, I am having to be noble now. I am going up to the bride and groom with my gift.

“Lovely,” Azad is saying uncomfortably, “good that you came.”

I am feeling like I will cry. While my heart is bouncing like a Ping-Pong ball inside my chest, I am saying to them, “Long married life to both of you.” The girl is bending low, wanting to be blessed, and I, Lovely, am feeling like a kind of goddess, a kind of saint, believing when you love him let him go.

In the dinner line, one eye on the biryani and one eye on the Chinese chili chicken, I am not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Look at me, waiting for the feast at my husband’s marriage. With my plate and napkin in one hand, chomping chomping, I am looking around at the hall, decorated with plastic flowers, a small fountain in one corner. Isn’t this life strange?

My love for Azad, I am telling myself, is existing in some other world, where there is no society, no god. In this life we were never getting to know that other world, but I am sure it is existing. There, our love story is being written.

At the end of the night, when I am walking down the lane, all the shops are shuttered other than a welder’s shop where a masked man is working. From the machine, bright sparks are falling on the road. In the hands of this tired man, it is like Diwali.



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MR. DEBNATH IS TELLING me to have a demo video prepared so I can be showing my reel to his movie’s producers, and starting to get small, small projects on my own also. At one demo office, the front desk man’s mouth is hanging open, and he is poking inside his mouth with a toothpick. This is the cheapest place I could be finding, so I am having to make my demo video here, no question.

“Which level,” the man is saying dully.

“What?”

“Which level demo video you are wanting? Basic level six hundred rupees, better variety a thousand rupees, deluxe package twenty-five hundred rupees.”

I am gulping to hear the prices. Then I am choosing basic level. When he is filling out a form on a clipboard, he is asking, “What is your name?”

“Lovely,” I am saying.

At this he is snorting like a horse.

When I am looking at the form, I am seeing that he is writing next to my name: B.

“Why you are marking me B already?” I am demanding. “I didn’t even perform.”

“Calm down, madam,” the man is complaining. “Why are you looking at what I am writing? It’s just lingo, nothing personal about you.”

    But he is not telling me what it is meaning. I am learning later, on my own. B-class. An actor who is not having the pretty face or light skin color for A-class roles. B-class actor is someone who is only playing a servant, a rickshaw puller, a thief. The audience is wanting to see B-class actors punched and slapped and defeated by the hero.