The Parcel (6 page)

Madhu took the stairs and was greeted by dour-faced Sona. Gurumai always teased Sona that she must have been a wrinkle in her past life, specifically a wrinkle on someone's arse, which is why she always made that stinky face. But it was not a past life that Sona could not shake off; she was trying to forget her brothers in this life and how they had treated her when she was Suresh. She had run away from a small town in Gujarat when she was sixteen. Her brothers had followed Suresh to drag him back home, but when gurumai told them that he had already been castrated, they spat on the ground and left without even meeting with him. Suresh hadn't been castrated. It was gurumai's way of showing Suresh that family ties meant nothing. “See how quickly they turned,” she told him. To this day, Sona could not get over it; she was always replaying some stupid reconciliation scene in her movie-projector mind.

In the hall, the TV was on but no one was watching. Tarana and Anjali were stuck together as usual, glued to each other by a common bitchiness. They whispered all day and night, bringing bits of gossip from all corners of the city and churning them out after adding their own giddy bile. Tarana and Anjali were among the lucky. Their progression from man to hijra had served them well. Their lips were full, their lashes long, and there was hardly a trace of hardness in their faces. As well, their breasts had grown, and for this more than anything, Madhu wished them slow, painful deaths. Anjali had taken hormone injections and was now reaping the benefits. Tarana didn't need injections. Her breasts just grew with the randomness and unreasonableness of tumours. Madhu too had experienced growth. After her castration, it had surged through her like a beautiful promise and had enervated her. But somewhere down
the line her breasts had failed to fulfill her as she had thought they would. Madhu believed that the reason they had never fully come into their own was her own disappointment. It had stopped them from flowering.

The others had just finished eating dinner. Madhu had already eaten with Gajja, but she did not want to tell them that. Her sisters were jealous of her friendship with Gajja. It was rare for a man to devote himself to a hijra even after their relationship had ceased to be sexual.

Besides gurumai, the only fellow hijra whom Madhu could confide in, the only one she had real feelings for, was Bulbul. She had been Madhu's friend since the day they met, but she never listened to a single piece of advice that Madhu gave her. Tonight Bulbul was seated solemnly on a chair in front of a mirror, combing her hair. Madhu had told her not to do that in front of the others, because they sniggered at her. As if to prove her point, when the comb became stuck in the frizz of Bulbul's locks, Anjali pounced on her.

“Traffic jam in your hair?” she asked.

Bulbul was getting old—nearing sixty now—and the more she combed her hair and put makeup on, the easier it was for her to look like a mistake. Madhu had tried explaining this—subtly at first, then with the audacity of a truck horn—but Bulbul just didn't get it. Her name itself, Bulbul, now seemed cruel. She loved to sing, but the voice that had once been passable was now hoarse, no longer fit for singing at weddings and childbirths. It was more for selling pots and pans at cheap prices. “Comb your hair when it's wet,” Madhu had told Bulbul a hundred times, but Bulbul was so afraid of catching a cold, she continued to make her hair desert dry. It always looked as
though it had taken the wind as prisoner. She had become fragile and paranoid, but vanity had not left her. She was obsessed with her looks and loved to pose for tourists. She never took money for a photograph. “I will lose my looks if I take money for this face,” she said in earnest, another admission made aloud that had become a catchphrase for the others in her absence.

Bulbul lifted her chin in an attempt to tighten her skin, but the only result was the tautness of another jibe from Anjali. Madhu shot a glare in Anjali's direction and she cooled down, but it was too late: Bulbul was hurt and made a dash to the toilet. She would urinate, no doubt, but she urinated tears—that's how sensitive she was.

Tarana and Anjali went over to where Bulbul had been sitting. They smiled naughtily at Madhu, as if to say, “Allow us at least this much.” When Madhu nodded, they quickly grabbed Bulbul's mobile phone and started going through her photo gallery. These were photos Bulbul had taken of herself, and she thought no one else knew about them. Now even Sona rushed to the phone to join in, and the giggles began.

The mobile phone's flash had made Bulbul look grotesque at times, with the dip of her lip trying to twist into a smile, one eye slightly smaller than the other, wrinkle upon wrinkle showing itself through layers of pancake makeup. Each image was that of a human being deluding herself, and it made Madhu feel wrinkled as well, shrunken and spurned. Then Anjali flicked to a new photo, one Madhu had never seen before, of Bulbul with a fake cockatoo on her shoulder. Sona was the first to burst. She tried not to be so shameless in her laughter, but all of them, including Madhu, began to break like eggshells. Anjali barely had the strength to put the phone back in its place before
Bulbul returned from the toilet. They tried to control themselves but instead collapsed to the floor in a cackling heap, and Madhu knew then that Bulbul would give her an earful that night. She'd know that they were laughing at her and would want to know why, and Madhu would have to make something up. But for now the photographs had served their purpose: they gave Bulbul the illusion of beauty and the rest of them a chance to be children again—brash and hurtful, in love with laughter.

There were two types of moans in Kamathipura.

First, the obvious ones, from customers shivering above bodies on rent, letting go for a few seconds with one
aaah
. Second, the
aaah
s of suffering: voices rising in pain, softer than the ecstasy of customers but more fevered. Because Madhu slept on the floor at the foot of gurumai's bed, it was the second type of moan she had to contend with. Tonight, gurumai was trying to clear her throat of phlegm and was calling out Madhu's name. But she was not awake. Gurumai clutched a small pillow, gripped it in her sleep. Madhu rubbed gurumai's feet. The warmth of her palms on the soles had always soothed gurumai, and now the contortions on her face eased slowly, until it was time for another dream to own her.

On the floor, Madhu's phone blinked and vibrated. It was Gajja.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Home,” she whispered.

“Come to Lund Ki Dukaan.”

“I can't…”

“You have to. The Mary's here and Salma's in top form.”

The mention of the Mary lifted Madhu. Every so often, a female Samaritan came from the calm meadows of the middle class with free condoms and advice. These were well-meaning women, but it was hard for them to understand that when you have lived in Kamathipura for as long as Madhu had, there were things more fearful than becoming a pojeetive. Still, along with a minor dose of empathy, they offered major entertainment. They had good Christian hearts and their attempts at helping allowed them to sleep well at night. This was consoling to Madhu: most of the time the existence of people like her tended to disturb others; at least she managed to help these Marys get some sleep.

She gave gurumai's feet a final rub.

It was well past midnight now, and Madhu thought of Tarana and Anjali, the two young stars of the brothel, on duty right now in another section of Hijra House, sucking and cooing like ravenous doves. They were always the last to sleep, at four in the morning, after they had been taken “royally,” as they liked to say. But the less lucrative hijras, the ones gurumai thought of as charity cases, had already called it a night and were sleeping around gurumai's bed as though she were a planet pulling them toward her. Sona was snuggled up to the corner of a wall, mistaking it for the nook of a lover's underarm. Sona did not take clients or lovers. She only performed at weddings and knew in her heart that with her bushy eyebrows and guttural voice, she was too unattractive for sex work. Bulbul was facing heavenward, her hair split on either side of the pillow in uneven streams. She'd gladly snuggle up to anyone who would have her, but takers were few. The bodies of Devyani and Roomali lay contorted on the floor, as on most nights. They
thought so much about the past that it took them a long time to fall asleep, only to wake up exhausted, singed by their own recollections. These were the seven chelas of gurumai, who were allowed to serve their mistress by staying in Hijra House. They were lonely disciples whose destinies were stitched together by the thread of being born different—and what a life they had made, all runaways landing in each other's arms. Madhu left them to their sleep, grateful to her sisters and gurumai for providing some familiarity, some cement, in a life that would have otherwise been a mudslide.

Down the stairs she went with the excitement of a child, and before she knew it, she was stepping in the potholes and dog shit of her locality with abandon, toward the Dick Shop. The name was Gajja's invention. He had wanted to paint a sign that said “Lund Ki Dukaan,” but the management preferred a low profile. Still, they appreciated the gesture. The Dick Shop was an old Irani restaurant that had been converted into a small cinema. It was no substitute for the Alexandra, but at least it lived. It was illegal during the day and grew even more illegal at night. Starting at noon, for fifteen rupees only, the shop screened the latest blockbusters on a large TV. Most of Kamathipura had seen
Don 2
before most of Mumbai, and when
Don 2
was released,
Don 2
was all that played—from noon to three, three to six, six to nine, and from nine to midnight. The afternoons and evenings might have belonged to King Khan, but the nights went to the porn stars. At the stroke of midnight, flies opened and cocks emerged, on screen and off. Sometimes it was foreign porn, white men and women glowing like aliens, so clean, so hairless, so pink. Sometimes the South Indians took over, the dusky bodies and hairy vaginas having
their own draw. Madhu had never understood porn. It was like watching the same news item over and over.

The owner of Porno Parlour—its other, English, name—had an understanding with the NGOs and cops. Once in a while, they would allow the Marys—in Kamathipura they were all called Marys—to hold workshops and address the audience, because the crowd that came here would ordinarily never attend an NGO gathering. At the moment, some poor Mary, a new recruit, would be getting the fright of her life, because Salma was in gear. A new Mary, with her broken Hindi, hiding behind her cross, was always a sight to behold.

“Come on!” said Gajja. “You're missing everything.”

He dragged Madhu inside so forcefully that Madhu almost missed a step in the dark. The room stank of sweat and Dettol. The sermon was on. Gajja had saved a seat for Madhu on the wooden bench closest to the entrance, one of many that had been stolen from the convent school nearby. The benches were perfect for Porno Parlour because they had desks attached to them, which served as a cover for masturbating men and prevented them from squirting the person in front. When the school complained about the theft, the owner of Porno Parlour offered to return them, but not before casually mentioning to the cop on duty that the desks had been “spoiled due to excitement.” The school suggested that the owner consider the benches a donation.

Thankfully, the new Mary was not demonstrating the proper way for a woman to make a client wear a condom. Everyone in the audience had been taught that a hundred times, but still someone from the crowd, a gent usually, would say, “Show me, show me!”

Madhu spotted Salma two rows ahead of her. She was ominously quiet.

The Mary was showing a short video, and with every frame, Madhu could tell Salma's fuse was getting shorter. Gajja had already filled Madhu in: Salma had been asked to calm down by the Mary and her male colleague, and had been on the verge of being thrown out, but Salma had apologized, which she always did, especially when she didn't mean it.

As statistics poured onto the screen, a man's voice emphasized the numbers in a cheap, theatrical tone:
A decade ago, there were one lakh prostitutes in Kamathipura alone. Now there are only twenty thousand
.

Salma clapped for that one, dwindling numbers, but it was still her moment, after all. The Mary glared at her.

On average, each sex worker services ten men in one night
.

Salma nodded her head vehemently. “Corr-ect,” she said, in English, to the Mary. “This phillum is showing the reality.”

Madhu did not understand why they were being forced to watch the statistics. Such things were a showcase for outsiders to induce pity and donations. Maybe she had missed something earlier.

Kamathipura is the second largest red-light area in Asia
.

“What?” said Salma. “We are not first?”

As the facts continued to parade across the screen, the audience grew bored—cows chewing on grass. Madhu felt further and further removed from the video the Mary was playing for them. Thankfully, the voice soon faded away into the even more humiliating sound of a sitar wailing.

“Any questions?” asked the Mary. “Any questions about precautions? It's your life. It's worth fighting for.”

Salma put her hand up like a good schoolgirl. “If a client hates to use condoms and starts slapping me around when I insist, what should I do? Do you have any precautions against that?”

“Well…,” said the Mary. “You can come and speak to us privately about that.”

“But I'm asking you now. If my cunt is public, why should my questions be private?”

“We can counsel you accordingly,” said the Mary. “We can—”

But the man in the first row interrupted her. “Put on the triple X, yaar!”

Fed up with the sermonic turn the night had taken, he wanted to skip the previews and go straight to the hard-core porn. Madhu was not surprised. In single- and double-X movies, there was a storyline and no intercourse. That was for amateurs. Even Gajja found single- and double-X films redundant. “What's the use of a story?” he had asked Madhu. “We know where the cock ends up!”