Mumbai Noir

by Altaf Tyrewala

  One of the hijra women pressed a button on a large, portable sound system and, as soon as the music started, she and the other eunuchs began their dance, sexually suggestive to the point of burlesque, even going so far as to include audience members, whom they coaxed with come-hither gestures and forced hand-holding. They danced with abandon—hairy, muscular arms waving about in a frantic and jubilant display.

  One hijra teased the small group that had gathered by grabbing the front of her sari and lifting it ever higher, grinding her hips to the music, the motions seductive enough to make me forget what she was.

  Most people in the gali stood—this was a place to transact business, not sit and rest. In every square meter, prostitutes competed with street vendors and shops for their share of visitor money. Eunuchs, dressed in only what was necessary to advertise their wares—jeans and cropped tops, ghagras and dupattas, saris barely disguising the absence of a blouse— called out to the passing men, promising unheard-of delights available only in Kamathipura.

  When we arrived at Peela House, we were greeted by the head of the commune, Rekha Devi herself, who was wearing a white sari and little makeup. I guessed her age to be about forty-five.

  “Come with me,” she said, leading us toward a small shack outside.

  We walked along a dirt path behind Peela House, watching eunuch women in various stages of transformation. Two of them sat laughing, grabbing at each other both playfully and sexually. In another spot, a eunuch sat on a stool holding a hand-mirror, plucking out her facial hairs one at a time; others along the way brushed their long hair in the open air; painted their nails, examining each one as they finished; and gossiped.

  I watched as a large, thick woman pushed two balls of cloth down a young boy’s blouse and shaped the clumps into breasts. Her hands massaged the area under the boy’s shirt, caressing what was in there. When she was done, she drew her hands out slowly and cupped the boy’s face.

  “These will do until the medicine starts to work,” she said. “Then you will grow your own.” She was almost maternal in her touch—maternal and sexual, at the same time.

  “Inspector,” the guru said.

  I looked away and found that we had arrived at the shack.

  Once inside, we sat on folding iron chairs—the guru’s in the center of the room, my havaldar’s and mine across from her. In the corner, several hijra women sat in a cluster, listening.

  “None of my chelas would do this, inspector,” she said, indicating the women. “They are all my daughters. They are not involved in what you’re investigating.”

  “A witness saw several men in the gali outside your hamam, taking orders from a hijra,” I reminded her.

  “Anyone dressed like us could have entered the gali,” she countered.

  “Are you suggesting that hijra imposters castrated Subhash Mehta? Why would they do that? Putting you in a bad light puts them in one too!” I resented her quiet confidence, her silent ridicule, her unspoken certainty that I couldn’t touch her.

  Rekha Devi summoned one of the hijra women to her. The chela sat at her feet and placed her head in Rekha’s lap. Her face was covered with knife cuts, the red color suggesting they had been made recently.

  “What happened to her?” I asked the guru.

  “She tried to run from one of the nakli ones, one who was trying to sell her to his friends. So he made sure she couldn’t work for anyone else. She stays with me, but she does not talk of the incident. He cut out her tongue, called her a whore, told her she was good for nothing else.”

  She rubbed the chela’s head with slow strokes. The two women sat in quiet misery, eyes closed, the guru rocking them back and forth. Then, as if remembering I was there, she resumed our conversation.

  “We are not the zenanas, inspector, homosexual men who join our ranks only to enjoy relations with other men, or to profit from their own deviance. We are true ascetics, who survive so we can carry out our divine charge. Many men come to us—old and young, married and unmarried, fathers and those with no children—because God has given them a taste for what only we can give, so hijras can survive, so we have a way to earn a living.”

  “Doesn’t carrying out your charge mean growing your numbers, creating others like you?” I recalled what had been done to Subhash in the gali and found myself shouting at her.

  “Those who come to us come of their own accord. They undergo the nirvan, the emasculation, by choice.”

  “You have hundreds of daughters …” I hesitated at my use of that word, “in the city. How can you be sure none of them were involved?”

  “Perhaps you need to see the nirvan to understand. Come back in two days’ time, and you will know.” With that, she stood and left the shack.

  My havaldar and I made our way back to our Qualis. Outside, we passed three hijra girls sitting across from an older eunuch. They watched intently as she explained the proper use of a condom, using a wooden dowel.

  I returned to the Azad Maidan police station to file my report, such as it was. My team had worked nonstop since the discovery of Subhash’s body three days before. Despite eyewitness testimony, extensive lab work, expert analysis, and test identification parades, my investigation had turned up nothing. With no hard evidence, no way to identify the author of the crime, I had yet to file a single charge sheet.

  The next day, with no other leads to follow, I set about the task of cleaning out Subhash’s desk, reducing his career to the contents of a plastic bag. His keys and other personal effects sat in an envelope on the top of his desk. I pulled out the small chain that had been on Subhash’s person from the time he joined the crime branch. Only one drawer was locked, the big one at the bottom.

  I reached in and removed its contents—a sheaf of papers with columns of writing, four wads of thousand-rupee bills, and a stack of about twenty eight-by-ten full-body shots of eunuchs in various stages of undress, posed to attract a certain audience. On the backs of the pictures, in Subhash’s handwriting, were notations: Rs. 6,000, 4 hours. Rs. 15,000, full day, multiple visitors.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. Names I recognized— Bollywood royalty, political kingpins, even members of our own crime branch—crowded onto three pages from a school composition book, each announcing their preference: Vaginal tattoos. Two at a time. Children. The pictures fell to the floor as I tried to process the clashing images before me: a decorated police inspector, a trusted colleague, a willing felon.

  By the time I arrived at Peela House, the sun had already been up for four hours. Groups of young men were gathered across the road, casting surreptitious glances at the house, likely hoping for glimpses of what happened behind its infamous walls. Next door, two men stood by a movie banner under the sign for the Alfred Cinema and shared a cigarette. Nearby, a bicycle waited for its owner at the VD clinic offering 100% cures for AIDS.

  I made my way along a dirt path on one side of Peela House lined with cages, where fifty rupees would rent you a sweaty bed and a eunuch for fifteen minutes. The path ended at a locked, wrought-iron gate, where two hijra women granted me access to the main compound. I ducked under a rough canopy of neem trees into a small courtyard, hidden from the prying eyes in the bazaars along the roadside.

  Rekha Devi and her chelas were assembled there, awaiting my arrival. They were dressed not in ceremonial clothing, as I had expected, but rather in everyday salwar suits and saris, in muted colors and modest styles. Rekha Devi nodded, and a group of hijras started their dance, moving in a circle, chanting the name of their mother goddess, Bahuchara Mata. One man stood naked in the middle, his head lolling from side to side, as if he was drugged. A woman stood before him, a dark metal object in her hand, a knife whose blade had lost its glint many nirvan ago. The chanting grew louder, and I watched the knife wielder sharpen her instrument on a large stone. She did not clean it before she used it. In one quick motion, she grabbed the penis and testicles of the man before her and swiped at them with the blade. One precise cut removed all
the genitalia. The body parts fell to the ground, and the women moved around them in a frenzied state. Two of them clutched the arms of the newly emasculated man and walked him around. Blood poured out between his legs. The chanting reached a fever pitch, and I turned and vomited till there was nothing left inside me.

  When I came back up for air, they were still walking her around, shouting for all the maleness to bleed out.

  Rekha Devi took a slow, deep breath. “My daughter,” she whispered. After several moments, she turned to me. “You see, inspector. Our cuts are clean. No one will look at Subhash Mehta and believe we had anything to do with his death.”

  She smiled and reached her hand out to me. She knew.

  A SUITABLE GIRL

  BY ANNIE ZAIDI

  Mira Road

  To understand food, you have to eat out in the Petrol Pump area. The city is mostly dead to food. Bandra-Versova is all sho-sha. I lived there, so I know. Most people go to restaurants because they don’t know what else to do when they go out. They sit on hard chairs and keep calculating whether or not the bill will be worth it. Do film stars eat here? Has anybody said in the papers that this place has good food?

  In Petrol Pump, I know people who go out to eat because there is nothing to eat in their houses. Or because it is somebody’s mother’s birthday. These are sensible reasons to eat out.

  No place has good food in Petrol Pump, yet all the restaurants have people eating in them. This is the great thing about Mira Road. Great cities are built of this quality—the necessity of being here and people’s grudging acceptance of situations. If you fuss too much about how bad it is, you will not survive it. And if you don’t survive, what does?

  Daddy wasn’t so hard to deal with before he started rationing. I always thought that after Mom died and I left the house—I wonder why I was so sure it would happen in that sequence— he’d go to pieces. He’d drink too much. His liver would go bust. He wouldn’t eat. The maid would see all that food choking up the fridge and she would stop cooking. I might drop by unexpectedly and scream at her. Some day, I imagined, I’d make Daddy eat well—fruit, salad, steamed carrots, boiled halwa for dessert. He might even eat it, nostalgic for what we meant to each other, and missing Mom’s scolding about his health.

  But things never work to a plan, do they? Mom died and Daddy grew afraid of dying. Now he carefully measures out a generous shot of rum and drinks it slowly, a sip at a time, mixed with warm water. He’s begun eating sprouts for breakfast. He even exercises in the balcony. Pranayams and surya namaskars. I can’t stand it.

  One Sunday morning, I gave him my practiced speech. I said I wanted my own property. Property needs watching, so I’d have to leave for a while. I’d still come by every other day. I wanted to do my own thing. So I needed a home-office type of place.

  I wasn’t looking at him while I spoke because I thought he’d get senti and start saying stuff like, But where’s the need? or he might offer to let me use the guest room as my office. I had an excuse ready. I was going to say that I couldn’t possibly put him through it—strangers visiting, ringing the bell all day. Besides, he was allergic to fur.

  But Daddy didn’t get senti. He just said I should find a man quick, that was my only hope.

  I would have packed my bags that Sunday. But there was nothing under thirty lakhs on either side of the Western Express Highway. Brokers heard my budget and they all said the same thing: Mira-Bhayandar.

  I was resigned to staying on at home for another year and starting my business slowly but then Daddy upset my plans again. Last week, he said it a second time: “Find a man, then do what you want.”

  This time I snapped back. I said I wanted to live on my own terms, not exchange one bully for another.

  His brows went up but the hand holding his bottle of Old Monk didn’t shake. He poured a little into the glass, added warm water, took a sip. Then he asked: “Where are you off to? Mira-Bhayandar?”

  She is always forgetting. The first time we met she forgot her umbrella in the bucket outside Ruff Ruff. I called after her. Four times. Madam, madam, oh madam, hello madam. But she walked straight on.

  Then there was the day I sat beside her. I thought it would be easy. Everyone joins the line, calling out their street names. Petrol-Petrol-Petrol Pump? Sheetal-Sheetal-Sheetal?

  When three people have said it, they point to each other, fall into the pact of a shared ride, and wait to find an auto. All three squeeze in, thigh against thigh. One of the team barks “Sheetal” to the driver. The auto jiggles, swerves, bumps along. Three people rub shoulders, elbows in each other’s waists, thighs aligned, riding in total silence for ten minutes. Then we fumble for five rupees, and then it is over. It should have been easy.

  But in life, nothing is easy. I waited outside the station for six days, between nine p.m. and midnight. I had already noted that I never see her in Mira Road before nine. Train after train went past that day, and for four days after that. But I didn’t see her. On the sixth night, I finally spotted her. I rushed forward, got in line ahead of her, and began calling: “Sheetal-Sheetal?”

  She just stood there, sullenly staring at the big round eye of oncoming autos, blinded. My heart sank then. She wasn’t willing to share!

  There are such people in Mira Road too. They don’t share. I have been here thirteen years and everything was okay until five years ago. Now, some girls are too sensitive. They glance around wild-eyed, worried about who they might have to share an auto with. What’s the worry? A man will not eat you. But such women will not respond when you call out. They wait for other women to start calling—Lodha-Lodha-Lodha, Sheetal-Sheetal.

  This girl is worse. She doesn’t want to share an auto even with other women. For a moment, I was very angry. But I didn’t give up. That is one of my good qualities. I don’t give up easily. Because I know how life changes you. Everything that was impossible yesterday will become possible tomorrow.

  I kept watching her, kept waiting for her at the station. Since the monsoon started, the roads are worse and people don’t form the unwritten pact-of-three to share a ride back home, nor do they patiently wait in line. Everyone lunges at the gleaming eye of autos juddering up. They grab the metallic skeleton of the auto and almost hurl themselves in. Even the buses aren’t spared. There is always someone else—stronger, fatter, more aggressive—who cuts into the line ahead of her. Someone like her doesn’t stand a chance.

  Poor girl. I feel sorry for her. She stands in the rain, biting her lower lip, tears rising to her eyes as auto after auto gets hijacked by packs of commuters who bring a ferocious urgency to their hunt for transportation. She cannot bring herself to race against them, or elbow aside the competition.

  For a week after the rains began, I let her suffer. When I thought she had learned her lesson, I decided to try again. I joined the line and called out loudly: “Sheetal-Sheetal!”

  Small as a mouse, her voice struggled over my shoulder. “Sheetal?”

  I turned and looked at her face closely for the first time. She was standing less than a foot away. I nodded and we stood side by side, waiting until another man called out: “Sheetal?” A white-cap man with a beard. He climbed into the auto first. She hesitated and glanced at me. I got in ahead of her, then she too bent her head and climbed in.

  We rode together for ten minutes. Her hips were warm against mine and so were her arms as they gathered up her chest. She did not turn to look at me though. She didn’t remember seeing me at Ruff Ruff. But everything has its time and place. She will have time to remember afterward.

  I often step out with the feeling that something is missing, or about to go wrong. Doesn’t that happen? You pause at your door, keys in hand, waiting. For the phone to ring perhaps. Or you suspect you are forgetting something. Umbrella? Glasses? Wallet? Tiffin? Chewies? Mobile? Hair band?

  It happens a lot to me these days. I peek into my tote, check for items I cannot afford to forget. Then I shake my head vigorously and pull the door shut. I have
to stop being paranoid. It isn’t like I have to swipe in at work. If I forget something, I can always turn around and go home. Nobody’s going to e-mail an office memo. My KRAs won’t slide.

  It’s brilliant. I don’t have to worry about leave or promotions. As long as I can find even two clients a month, I’m okay. But the salary mentality doesn’t disappear so easily. I tell myself, Daddy’s there, worse comes to worst. But Daddy has the most terrible job in the world. No hope of promotion or raise, no holidays. Still, I can always go back to the house. And he wouldn’t let me starve if I returned.

  If only I could work from Juhu. Mira Road makes everything harder. Just getting out and coming back crushes the sanity out of me. Like last night, when I tried getting on the 10:21. The crowd was manageable, but one aunty tried to push past me. I got up on the footboard and blocked her with my arm. Other women scrambled on and off, but I stood obstructing half the doorway until the aunty swung her bag at me and boarded, screaming, “Where are you from, man? Where do all you people come from?”

  I occupied the fourth seat, turned my back to her, but she kept at it, all the way to Mira Road. As she was getting off, ahead of me, I stuck my foot in her path. She tumbled onto the platform and lay there panting in a heap. I ran up the stairs but stood watching her from the overpass. She lay there for a good two minutes before someone hauled her to her feet.

  I found her outdoors, buying carrots. I was standing in my usual place near the laundry. She did not recognize me.

  I don’t mind. Why should she remember a man she shared an auto with? She didn’t even turn her head to look at me, not once. But I like her more for it. It is a sign of character. It is a good sign.

  Or maybe she is farsighted. I think I would like it if she was. I can imagine her being fifty-five years old and picking up a letter from the doormat, squinting at it helplessly. I could then take it from her and read it out loud.