The Green Rose

by Sharmila Mukherjee

  Dhuniya and Shumati seemed to have walked straight out of a lesbian utopia that Laadli Chaurasia dreamed of establishing on the soil of mother India one day. ‘They are almost like the lesbians we see in America,’ she told Vinnie. She was convinced that when rumours would circulate about Dhuniya and Shumati’s wedding, the masses of ordinary Indian lesbians—and Laadli believed there were millions of them in the nooks and crannies of the cities and villages of this nation—would receive an upliftment. ‘If they can do it, so can we,’ Laadli’s millions, suffering under the yoke of enforced heterosexual existence, would think in their minds.

  Truth be told, it was for the redemption of the lesbian masses in India that Laadli was primarily concerned. For that reason, she could not, at any cost, allow Dhuniya’s and Shumati’s morale to sag. She could not simply stand and do nothing when the couple, shell-shocked from their close brush with death, said that they wanted to renounce their love for each other and go back to leading normal lives. No, Laadli couldn’t lose the membership, as it were, of two of the most authentic Indian lesbians she had met in recent years!

  Thus was conceived the plan for a gala party to celebrate the conjugal love of the two working-class Indian leshbins, Shumati and Dhuniya.

  This would be the second time they would be married to each other, Charu thought. How lucky the couple was! And here she was dying to get married and not even once was she destined to avail of that sacred opportunity.

  The venue for the party would not be Laadli’s house for that would draw negative attention and incite the possibility of gate-crashing by rabble-rousers from the enemy side, like the Sugreeb Sena and the colony RWA, two notoriously Hindu-chauvinistic outfits whose objective was the preservation of male-centric Hindu values in India.

  Were a big gathering with shamiyanas, marigolds and music to be organized in Laadli’s house, then Laadli was certain that the Hindu chauvinist goondas would cry ‘orgy’ and unleash some sort of an anti-lesbian riot in the neighbourhood, which then would spread into the city. There would be unnecessary violence, in the course of which a few Muslims would be killed too.

  The Hindu chauvinists’ hatred of what they called (in Hindi) the lesbian imperialist bitches of Laadli’s house (the GKSS once issued a press release claiming that the building was actually the headquarters of Indian lesbians, manned by foreign-educated lesbian bitches who got money from the CIA) was so virulent that sometimes it was hard to tell whom they hated more—the Muslims or the lesbians.

  ‘They hate us more than they hate those others,’ Shalini said philosophically to Charu.

  Charu mulled over the question of being hated more for sexual preference than for religious ones, and concluded that the Muslims at least had a religion, a religion for which they could die. Lesbians, on the other hand, were perceived to not have any exalted ideals to live and die for. They were worse than Muslims because they didn’t have any religion other than the worship of the thing that the righteous-minded Hindu blushes to name.

  There were no Hindu lesbians or Muslim lesbians; there were just lesbians. They were as godless as the Communists, but the communist parties of India disavowed any commonality with lesbianism. For they too, albeit, covertly, were enemies of lesbians.

  Seen variously as irreligious, unnatural, anti-patriarchal, and monstrosities of human nature, lesbians of India—shunned by many and loved by few outside of their community of fellow lesbians—were a frightfully beleaguered lot. Laadli Chaurasia’s vow was to unbeleaguer Indian lesbians; give them a place as normal and rightful citizens of the nation. For her own fate as an Indian lesbian was tied up with theirs.

  13

  Tirelessly, Laadli planned Dhuniya and Shumati’s marriage. Mrs Vaikundeshwari proposed that the wedding take place in her house instead of Laadli’s house. To avoid inciting unwarranted attention, she would host the party in the name of a pool party.

  Mrs Vaikundeshwari was famous for throwing parties at her house. While most of the parties were thrown for the sake of her husband’s career advancement in the Department of Taxes and Revenues, she also threw exciting pool parties in the fashion of pool parties in America. A pool party in a government official’s bungalow would be the perfect front for the celebration of a lesbian nuptial! Mrs Vaikundeshwari experienced a thrill in proposing it, for she was a secret sympathizer of the lesbian cause. By virtue of being the wife of a well-placed IAS officer, Mrs Vaikundeshwari saw beautiful women every day, be they daughters and wives of other IAS officers or of foreign dignitaries.

  Being the sensitive soul that she was, she couldn’t help feeling deeply stirred in the spiral pit of her navel. It was as if unbeknownst to her there was a thick growth of palm fronds inside her navel and upon seeing pretty women, the fronds, as though touched by a strong breeze, would sway this way and that. The sensation Mrs V felt inside her navel upon seeing beautiful women was in sharp contrast to the sensation she felt every time she beheld the bespectacled, pot-bellied, hairy Mr V. It was a sensation of revulsion mixed with pity—revulsion for him and pity for herself, a pity that she had been complicit in the production of two children with the help of this man. By having a lesbian nuptial on her premises she would enact a symbolical erasure of that unpleasant memory.

  Besides, the party would give her a chance to see Charu with whom she had distinctly fallen in love. What a breathtakingly beautiful woman that Charu, the daughter of her so-called best friend Mrs Guha, had turned out to be! The last few times she saw Charu, Mrs V’s heart skipped a few beats. But for the darwaan-like presence of Mrs Guha, Mrs V would have, on any one of those occasions, taken Charu into her arms, run her fingers on her sweet face, traced the shape of her nose, pushed apart her lips, grazed the tip of her tongue, and followed the curve of her chin down to her throat. When she reached her neckline, the girl would coo, ‘Stop, what are you doing!’ thereby meaning, ‘Please don’t stop at my neckline!’

  But whenever she met Charu, Mrs Guha was there like a protective fixture preventing the ravishment of a valuable jewel like Charu. To be honest, Mrs Guha was capable of perceiving Mrs Vaikundeshwari as a potential ravisher.

  It was strange—this selective protective attitude of Mrs Guha towards her daughter. Of course, every mother is protective of her daughter, especially if the daughter is as beautiful as Charu. She herself was very protective of her daughter Alia, but like normal mothers, Mrs V was concerned about Alia’s safety when she went out on dates with boys. She didn’t trust the spoilt, rich sons of New Delhi’s noveau riche families—they just wanted to get into the girls’ pants, put their hands under their skirts, and brush up against their small, late-developing breasts, tipped with tiny, blooming nipples.

  Mrs Guha, on the other hand, mistrusted Charu with girls. There was a saying in Greater Kailash that the nature of Mrs Guha’s maternal vigilance smacked of sexism. Mrs Guha got ferociously vigilant, like the ten-headed dog Cerberus, when Mrs Vaikundeshwari was around Charu. Her eyes would dart out here and there like sharp little missiles emitted to penetrate a thick invisible veil of mystery that enveloped a woman-to-woman encounter, when Mrs V would sit next to Charu on the Guhas’ sumptuous leather settee and ask, ‘So what are you up to these days, Charu? Seeing someone new?’ Mrs Guha’s body would tense up no sooner than Mrs V would shuffle closer to Charu with the intention of initiating a skin-to-skin contact, and the tension, Mrs V noticed further, would be sucked out from her body, like air that escapes from a pin-pricked balloon, when Mrs V would collect her sari together and begin to move away from Charu.

  Mrs Guha’s squinty little squirrel eyes, shifting all the while she was there, irritated the hell out of Mrs Vaikundeshwari. ‘Get a life, woman!’ Mrs V often found herself on the verge of exploding forth into the popular American utterance. ‘We are in the 21st century, and New Delhi is changing!’ Mrs V would want to scream at Mrs Guha. During these moments, the one word that would stand at the tip of Mrs Vaikundeshwari’s tongue, ready to pop out if she were called upon to descri
be Mrs Guha, was ‘anachronistic’.

  Mrs Guha’s name sat like a blatantly anachronistic entity on the e-list of invitees that Laadli, Mrs Vaikundeshwari and Shalini Mahapatra drew up for the lesbian pool party. But Mrs Guha had to be invited because Charu would not be allowed to attend the party alone. As it were, Mrs Guha, as everybody in Laadli’s house knew, was against Charu attending parties period; on top of that if she got wind of the fact—after sufficiently interrogating Deepti, that maidservant in chief of the Guha household who had a tongue that wagged like a well-oiled machine when the switch was turned on—that the party was an all-woman’s party at Mrs Vaikundeshwari’s house, then chances were that Charu would be forbidden from going to the party.

  Laadli didn’t want to invite Charu.

  But both Mrs Vaikundeshwari and Shalini were crazy about Charu’s beauty and to please them Laadli had to invite Charu, for Laadli could not afford to earn either Vaikundeshwari’s or Shalini’s displeasure; both were her allies from the world of straight, married women who also liked to dally with women on the side, and both had husbands who held clout in the government. If ever someone from Laadli’s house was in trouble with the authorities then Vaikundeshwari would pull strings to save that person’s behind, while Shalini would ensure that the poorer residents of Laadli’s house would receive good quality treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences if they needed.

  So even if Laadli personally didn’t care for Charu, she compromised on the issue of inviting the mother and daughter. Oh that most obnoxious of all homophobes, Mrs Guha! was the thought that went through Laadli’s mind when she put down the names of the duo.

  True, Charu was a very pretty woman, but something about Charu—perhaps her overtly prissy concern for her looks, her physical vanity (which one can be sure is a mere reflection of an inner vanity, as most things external and physical are) that is—told Laadli that she would never make it as an unambiguous hardcore pussy-grinding lesbian. Laadli had heard from others that Charu enjoyed male attention. Like Priyanka and Shaheen she too perhaps was a cosmetic lesbian, who would jump ship if a good matrimonial offer came her way from a suitable groom. No lesbian academy worth the salt (in Laadli’s Indian lesbian utopia there were lesbian academies, intended to nurture bearers of nascent lesbionic tendencies into full-fledged lesbians) would admit Charu for Charu had something about her that was unmistakably redolent of a dormant heterosexuality.

  If it was possible for a veteran lesbian like Laadli to smell out the inner lesbian in an otherwise heterosexually mounted woman, it was just as easy for her to pick up on the hetero vibes that a spurious lesbian emitted.

  Charu, Laadli figured, was probably one of those high femme types or whatever it was that American lesbians called women who were invested in the aesthetics of their physical appearance.

  Charu sensed she wasn’t well-liked by Laadli Chaurasia but she was put up with because, like a pair of ageing, love-smitten Jupiters, Vaikundeshwari and Shalini wanted their Ganymede to be by their side always.

  Truth be told, Charu was inordinately pretty and Laadli didn’t like pretty women that much, for pretty women were magnets for trouble. She herself was never in the league of the ‘pretty’ and the ‘hot’ of New Delhi, but her reasons for having strong reservations about pretty lesbians were entirely impersonal. She sincerely believed that the traditional definition of feminine prettiness in India was really a masculine definition. An Indian woman, who is thought to be beautiful, is really a woman who is stamped as beautiful by Indian men. Simply put, Laadli could never be beautiful in India because men of India would never see her as a beautiful woman, while Charu would be celebrated as a ‘classic’ Indian beauty because she fulfilled all the criteria that men of India through the ages have set for women of India to meet in order to be considered comely.

  Laadli scorned the female subservience in India—even where their own physical standards were concerned, Indian women would not be creative but would imbibe uncritically that which had been set in motion by patriarchy. What a pity! More the pity when Indian lesbians strutted around like female Adonises! So, it was on principle that Laadli Chaurasia didn’t quite like beautiful Indian lesbians like Charulata Guha.

  14

  Nobody but Shalini could tell this: Charu disliked Laadli back with the full force of her diminutive yet ultra-pretty being.

  ‘The beauty and the beast story in redux,’ Shalini declared one day mysteriously, for whose ears no one could tell. For there were the women and then there was Vinnie, Laadli, Mrs V and Charu. They were lolling on a mat laid out for the lesbians’ afternoon siesta in Laadli’s house. Refreshments were being served, among others, by Dhuniya.

  ‘But there is hatred between the beauty and the beast; no love is predicted here,’ Shalini was tickled by the idea of inverting the moral of a fairy tale. As long as the toppling was done by lesbians, Shalini didn’t mind. Whatever was the handiwork of lesbians was fine in Shalini’s book.

  ‘Lesbians can do no wrong; wherever our Cleopatra Charu goes, she creates sexual mischief, hee hee.’ Shalini was drunk, Charu could tell.

  Indeed there was dissension in the ranks of Laadli’s house’s lesbians. Some of the women in the house—the aggressive, ‘manly’ ones who got an ego booster out of fussing over delicate-looking pretty women—started competing with each other for Charu’s favour, while others got envious of the attention that she received because of her looks. Also, outside the house, men were line-maaroing her, and that was an additional irritant for Laadli.

  The girl was pretty and Laadli felt sorry for her. Simply imagining the pretty girl’s plight brought tears to Laadli’s eyes.

  ‘Get fat,’ she told Charu, ‘and stop taking so much care of the intricate details of your body. Look at the amount of time you take just to dry and then moisturize the teeny places between your toes! In that time, I could marry off three of my women to three others.’

  ‘Oh paleeze, Laadli!’ Charu would seethe inwardly. ‘You are just jealous, good old-fashioned girl-jealous.’

  But Laadli wasn’t jealous; from her years of experience of living in this world, she had culled a clichéd yet unavoidable truth: no man or woman, straight or gay, would ever lust after a plain-looking woman. Perhaps Charu knew that and Laadli suspected that she secretly enjoyed the fact of being lusted after.

  Charu had balked at Laadli’s suggestion. She said that maana ki she was an Indian lesbian but that didn’t mean she had to be plain and fat. Her beauty, she said, was god’s gift, and consequently the one prized jewel she could call her own and would not part with under any circumstance.

  ‘Laadliji, looks are a part of a woman’s identity and a woman is not truly a woman if she doesn’t take care of her body just as a purohit who doesn’t take care of his temple-deity is a fake purohit. My beauty, Laadliji, is intrinsic to who I am. Can’t I be a lesbian and pretty? Do lesbians have to look like jharudars to be real lesbians?’

  With what impudence the woman speaks! Laadli thought. How dare she insinuate that the women of her house resembled jharudars? And the impertinence to suggest that being a woman was greater than being a lesbian; that a woman’s primary loyalty is to her femininity!

  Charu was in effect saying, ‘You take me as I am and don’t ask me to become like one of you.’ So fiercely protective of her femininity was the pretty Indian lesbian that it made Laadli tremble with derision.

  Under pressure from Vinnie and the butches, Laadli, albeit begrudgingly, let Charu continue with her special member status in Laadli’s house. But she was always looking to grab an opportunity to deface her.

  Where there is a crow and a nightingale living under the same roof, there tension is bound to grow, especially if the crow happens to be the king of the domain in which the nightingale is but a mere whit of a subject. The tension would escalate if, oblivious of its subject position, the nightingale starts to question the very foundation of the king’s beliefs and other subjects jump on the nightingale’s b
andwagon because she has a very pretty voice, in sharp contrast to which the crow’s crowing sounds hoarser and cruder than ever before.

  So, a grave tension ensued between Laadli Chaurasia and Charu. Neither was heard to say anything obviously offensive to the other, but the crow’s visceral dislike for the nightingale and vice versa, was writ large on one another’s faces. The sight of Laadli’s large, significantly hirsute, triple-chinned facial frame and manly gait grated on Charu’s nerves; her lips curled up guarding against the egress of the phrase ‘So singularly unattractive!’ that would form reflexively on the tip of her tongue.

  Likewise, the egregiously girlie apparition that was seen flitting around her frill-less house of lesbian worship, a house she had built with her bare hands from scratch, provoked in Laadli a gargantuan irascibility, and a strong impulse for the following imprecation: ‘Hypocrite bitch! Bloody servant of patriarchy!’

  Well, Charu was girlish. The usual girlie things like wearing matching clothes and accessories, varnishing toenails by stuffing the web between her toes with cotton wool to prevent smearing, going gaga over Shah Rukh’s metrosexual looks and John Abraham’s six packs, excited her. The daily lectures of Laadli Chaurasia bored her to death. Forced to listen to Laadli’s endless babbling on patriarchy and its hydra-like tentacles that held everybody’s neck in a vise-like grip, Charu would blow gigantic bubbles out of her gums on which she masticated relentlessly, and visualize the fatso as Surpanakha, the demoness sister of Ravana, who roamed the earth alone, terrified of her loneliness, and angry because Laxmana had rejected her by cutting off her nose in admonition of her daring to ask for his hand in marriage.