by Anosh Irani
The beam lit gurumai’s face.
“May I come in?” she asked.
Madhu shook so violently, he feared he might cause cracks in the floor.
“Who are you?” his father asked. Madhu could detect the tremor still in his voice, but now there was a new note of hardness.
Gurumai refused to answer.
“May I come in, please?” she asked again.
She was cordial, gentle, and confident. She was so centred, Madhu felt as if a towering presence was standing at the threshold. It was his mother who confronted gurumai first.
“You have the wrong house,” she said. “There is no newborn here.”
Gurumai looked straight into Madhu. Even though it was dark, even though the flashlight in Madhu’s hand was only lighting parts of gurumai’s sari, his mother’s face, and his father’s hands, he knew gurumai had homed in on him.
“I’m here for him,” said gurumai. “I’m here for Madhu.”
Just then, their widow neighbour opened her door, and Madhu’s father hurried gurumai in. His need to keep face tricked him into letting a hijra into his home.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“How do you know him?” asked Madhu’s mother.
Then gurumai uttered the line that would seal Madhu’s fate.
“I know him because he is one of us,” she said.
In the short pause between these words and her next ones, Madhu’s childhood disappeared. In that short space, a vacuum opened up and swallowed his future. Then he remembered what gurumai had told him almost a year ago at the chai stall: I will take care of things.
“You need not worry,” she told Madhu’s mother. “I am not here to claim him. It is against our code to do that.”
“If you ever touch my son…,” said Madhu’s father, his hand trembling, his face fuming.
But gurumai did not move. She became even calmer.
“That is not your son,” she said. “That is your daughter.”
Then she turned away and went out the door ever so gently. Madu saw her walk back through the corridor and turn right, toward the stairs, but he heard no footsteps.
Vijju had slept through it all. For a child who shrieked all day, who was a hyena in the wind, he was too silent, too content, Madhu thought.
That night, Madhu’s father drank his cheap liquor in silence while Madhu shivered. When the power came back on, Madhu’s mother turned off the lights. The truth was too bright to behold. No questions were asked of Madhu. His mother lit incense sticks and circled the picture of Shiva, clockwise and anticlockwise. The incense sticks were the only source of light, a dotty red glow, but even they were too bright for his father, who got a headache and swallowed his pills. Madhu pretended to go to sleep, afraid that the questions might begin at any minute.
He had been right. As soon as he feigned sleep, the questions did begin. He could hear his parents whispering, not out of concern for him, but because what they were discussing was so private and shameful, they were worried that the wind might carry it to their neighbours.
“I don’t know what to do,” said his father. “We can’t even afford to send him to boarding school.”
“It’s okay,” his mother replied. “It’s okay. God will help us. He will change.”
“Forget him. What will happen when our younger one is older? No one will marry him. They will see Madhu and decide that both brothers are effeminate.”
“I will pray harder.”
The next morning, the neighbours came with their questions and concerns. They came as though someone had died. Where was the watchman? How does the hijra know where we live? This is a decent building. We may live next to the red-light area, but our lights are white.
These were not questions, but veiled condolences for a failed son, and thin threats. With their clean eyes, they scanned the flat and made Madhu’s father feel even smaller. He never let anyone enter his home, and now they had not only entered the flat but had taken a peek into the worst moment of his life.
Madhu was in his school uniform already, so he left. But he did not go to school. That was the day he went to Hijra Gulli, to the narrow lane that would liberate him and make him reborn.
Gurumai took him in and told him that there were two conditions a person had to fulfill to become a true hijra. One, he had to be accepted as a chela by a hijra guru. That condition would be easy to meet since gurumai was more than happy to accept Madhu as her disciple. Two, Madhu would have to be sculpted. Only a hijra who was emasculated was truly liberated, and she enjoyed a higher status in the hijra hierarchy than one who was not.
“A hijra is one because of the soul,” gurumai told Madhu.
If the soul truly wanted to be a woman, wouldn’t it naturally reject the penis? It was a natural progression, the falling of the penis and testes, like leaves when seasons changed, except that this change was permanent. Gurumai had known hijras who lost their minds because the operation had not been done. They went mad, literally, and became obsessive about objects. One hijra, she told Madhu, had started stealing hair from the slums of Dharavi, where they hung hair to dry in the sun so they could export it to foreign shores to be used as wigs and hair extensions. This hijra stole the hair and brought it all to her small hut, where she chewed on the strands and tied them around her waist and neck. Until the poisonous blood was removed from her through the operation, she had continued to behave in this manner.
Even now, it was hard for Madhu to think about her operation. As she stood on the bridge, she could smell the disinfectant that had been applied. One hijra performed the operation, while another hijra was assigned to take care of Madhu’s every need afterwards. That was Bulbul. She had been through it herself. But in Bulbul’s case, even after the operation, she continued to behave irrationally, and gurumai said that perhaps all the poisonous blood had not seeped out of her.
What Madhu recalled about her operation was culled from her own hazy memory and from Bulbul and gurumai. It was important for her to take these bits and pieces and weave a tapestry for herself, because this had been the moment of her transformation. Her own memories about the event came in sudden convulsions, much like the physical convulsions she continued to experience long after the operation, when she’d suddenly wake up and her body would remember a thing or two.
About a month before the operation, Madhu was asked to stop wearing male underwear. He was given two pairs of panties instead. Bulbul made him tuck his penis between his legs and wear both panties at once so that he would get used to not having anything down there.
He was told not to look in the mirror anymore.
“You must forget the old face,” Bulbul said.
A week before the surgery, he could have no spicy foods, no booze, and no drugs. Bulbul would have ganja once in a while because she was just as nervous as Madhu was. He was put on a healthy diet and all expenses were taken care of by gurumai.
“No problem,” gurumai said. “You’re my child now.”
During this time, Madhu often thought about his parents. On the one hand, he was glad that he had run away from them. It was clear that he and they needed to be apart. But it hurt him that he had not been found. He was only a short distance away from his home, and he wondered if his family had even bothered to search for him. Was his disappearance the answer to his mother’s prayers?
Thank God for Bulbul. She was the one thing in life that gave him joy. In those early days and nights, their friendship kept on blossoming, and she showered Madhu with praise about his skin, his eyes, his thighs—what a feast men would have. She said she was jealous. Madhu was jealous too of this person Bulbul was referring to, because Madhu couldn’t see her. He was still a boy, still his father’s son.
When Bulbul was high on ganja, she was funny. She would talk about the law, which she had a great interest in, particularly as it applied to the hijras.
“Madhu, Madhu, Madhu,” she would say—she always said Madhu’s name three times after she had swall
owed her golis. “Do you know that castration is a criminal act under the Indian Penal Code?” Then she’d giggle. “To become who I am, I had to break the law.” She laughed so much she fell to the floor, and lifted her sari to show Madhu how empty she was. All that remained was a small fleshy hole. Madhu laughed too—out of terror.
The day was approaching. Then the night was coming. Then it was the midnight hour. And then it was 3:00 a.m.
Madhu’s pubic area was shaved. After her bath, she was asked to remain bare and to step inside the secret room. Four hijras were waiting in that room, and one of them had the key to Madhu’s future: gurumai.
She was one of a dying breed, a dai-ma, a midwife who had performed more than a hundred operations. She was the gatekeeper who delivered Madhu from one life to the next, from humiliation to freedom. Only one person had died under her knife. “He did not have the will to live,” said gurumai. “He was weak.”
Madhu could not afford to be weak. There was no turning back.
Did he have second thoughts? Of course he did. He fluctuated between yes and no, went back and forth, up and down, shivered the way a tube light shivers just before coming on to full brightness. He thought he was making a mistake.
What Bulbul had said scared him—he did not want men to feast on him. Yes, by then he was well aware of what happened in the brothel, but the thought that his body was going to be tasted bothered him. He wanted love, to be acknowledged, to have someone run his fingers through his hair, or kiss his cheek. He told gurumai he could not go through with it.
“That’s fine, my child,” she said. “You can go home anytime you wish.”
No one stopped him. No one tried to cajole him into staying. Even Bulbul seemed relieved. She told him he could come visit her whenever he wanted, even if he chose to remain a boy. That was enough for Madhu. At least he had made a friend. He decided to leave before they changed their minds.
He ran to the stairs, and even though he knew he would get the beating of his life from his father, he kept going. But then, something happened. Not a riot or bomb blast or gang fight—nothing of that sort. Bombay hadn’t yet become its savage sister. It was bubbling and brewing toward its new avatar, but hadn’t fully imploded.
What happened is that Madhu slipped.
On his way down the stairs, in his confusion and fear, he slipped. He did not even make it to the street. His ankle did not break, but it was swollen.
He waited at the bottom until Bulbul came down to go to the laundry.
Madhu could barely walk. He could not even rest his foot on the ground. Of course, Bulbul could not take him home to his parents, or she’d get into trouble. Madhu would have to stay there until his ankle healed; then he could leave. But he knew what everyone else knew: this was meant to be. He had not even made it to the street. The ice on his ankle only proved the fact that his fate was locked and frozen. There was such a thing as destiny, and it came—like an angry, forgotten ancestor it came—to remind Madhu of his future.
A week later, he found himself in the operating chamber with gurumai, Bulbul, and two other hijras. They were the same age as gurumai but looked much older. They were in that room because of their physical strength. They were the manliest hijras Madhu had ever seen.
Gurumai offered a prayer to Bahuchara Mata. She held the knife before the picture of the goddess and asked her to bless it. Madhu tried not to look at the knife, but he could not help himself, so gurumai held it behind her back.
There was a small stool in the room. Madhu took his place, with Bulbul behind him. When Bulbul had been on that stool years ago, she had been made to bite her own hair. Madhu’s hair was not long enough yet, so he was given another, more effective, option. Gurumai placed the picture of Bahuchara Mata before him. In the picture, she was riding her rooster, as always, and the trident in her hand was shining.
“Hold her,” said gurumai.
Madhu waited for someone to hold him. Bulbul was behind him, but neither she nor the two old hijras moved.
“Hold the Mata,” said gurumai.
Madhu realized that gurumai was talking to him. She was not referring to the Mata as a picture. Bahuchara Mata was here and gurumai wanted Madhu to hold her. As soon as Madhu took Mata into his hands, two of the hijras tied a thick nylon rope around his waist and pulled hard from either side until he could barely breathe. This was done to prevent the blood from flowing to his groin.
Anaesthesia was for the weak. Madhu would have to depend on the goddess.
“Is she smiling?” gurumai asked.
Three days earlier, Madhu had been given a picture of the Mata and asked the same question. Now, if Madhu found she wasn’t smiling, the operation could not proceed. It would be fatal. It was not up to gurumai to make the call. It was up to Madhu.
Madhu thought of his father as he looked at the picture. He could not see Mata’s face; only his father’s face appeared. His father already knew Madhu’s life would amount to nothing—and perhaps he was right.
“Yes,” said Madhu. “He’s smiling.”
No one questioned why Madhu had called the Mata a “he.”
Gurumai then took another string and tied Madhu’s penis and testes with it. The two old hijras spread Madhu’s legs from either side and held him down.
Gurumai began chanting in a low, guttural whisper, “Mata, Mata, Mata, Mata, Mata…”
The two old hijras joined in. Their voices were just as hard as gurumai’s. They were building a tempo; they were in harmony with each other. Bulbul completed the mantra. Her voice, even though it was much higher than the others, merged seamlessly. But above them all, Madhu heard another voice. It was distinctly male and it was not chanting Mata’s name. It was a wail coming from the outside, from the street. Madhu thought he was hallucinating.
He started chanting, “Mata, Mata, Mata…”
He stopped looking at gurumai. He knew what she held in her hand. Madhu felt something. A bite. Something bit him. Hard.
Then he felt hot blood trickle down his legs. His first period.
The blood gushed and he wailed. But he had been trained to stay conscious. This was where Bulbul came into play.
“Look at Mata,” she reminded him. Under no circumstances was he to close his eyes or fall asleep. But Mata’s picture slid from his hands. Now the fight was on—a wrestling match between Bahuchara Mata and her sister, Chamundeshwari. One sat on a rooster and the other on a lion. One sister gave life while the other terminated it—at least that’s what the other midwives believed. But not gurumai. She was in complete control of the situation.
It was all about letting the right amount of blood flow out of Madhu’s body. Making the correct slice was just part of it. That was why those who wanted to get castrated preferred gurumai to doctors. The doctors of Nagpada and Madanpura would perform the operation, but terrified of losing the patient, they immediately stitched the wound up. They failed to grasp the significance of the ceremony, whereas gurumai knew how much blood to drain out. She could see the impure blood leave the body, every trace of it, while the hijra balanced between life and death. To ensure that all of the poisonous male blood was expelled, Madhu had been willing to risk death. He had tasted death more closely than any other human being alive.
“When you are no longer scared of death, only then are you liberated,” gurumai had told him. Nirvan, the ultimate liberation, was a state of mind.
When gurumai thought it was time, she stopped the flow of blood. Hot oil was poured over Madhu’s absent genitals and a small stick was placed there to keep a hole open so he could urinate. He knew he would not be urinating anytime soon because he had sweat pouring down every inch of his body. The smell of antiseptic pervaded the room as the two old hijras wiped the blood from the floor.
More hijras from the household streamed in. Madhu’s life was in the balance. They started clapping loudly, chanting Mata’s name with a fever that made the room boil. They ensured that Madhu did not slip into a coma. Bulbul kept opening M
adhu’s eyes again and again. There was an army in the room.
To this day, however, Bulbul maintained there was no one else in that room besides her, the two other hijras, and gurumai. She insisted that the four of them had done all the clapping. To Madhu, it had felt like there were thousands there.
Madhu’s forty-day period of healing began. His wound was not stitched closed. More sesame seed oil was applied by Bulbul. All she did in those initial days, the poor thing, was make the oil hot and apply it. Madhu was given black tea and told not to force the urine out. He was so weak a fly could have crushed him.
He lay in bed all day and night. He was forbidden from looking into a mirror. He had forty days to forget the old face. The most important dictum of all was that he was not to see a man during his healing period. So he could not look outside his room. On the third day, or it could have been the tenth, he was given rice, which he threw up instantly.
“Good,” said Bulbul. “Whatever impurity did not leave through the blood is leaving through the mouth.”
He was bathed, but to do this, Bulbul made him sit on a stool, propped him up against the wall, and poured water over him. He could not bear the feel of water on his skin. There were days when he cried bitterly, cursing himself for being born. In addition to his own cries, he repeatedly heard the cries of another, the same wailing from outside that he had heard above the sea of chants during his operation. Now that Madhu was more lucid, he could decipher a name in that cry: Hema.
A man was shouting out a woman’s name, stretching it out for kilometres, making it the longest name in the world. There was so much anguish in his call that Madhu simply had to ask Bulbul who he was.
“That’s Gajja,” Bulbul said.
And that was how Madhu fell in love for the first time. He was fourteen years old and he fell in love without even looking at the man’s face. It was the wanting in Gajja’s voice that did it, and what he learned of Gajja’s story.
Gajja had been in love with a prostitute named Hema and had been ready to marry her, to take her away from Kamathipura. He would give her respect and had promised to never bring up her past. There was just one problem: the girl had been bought by the brothel madam for a reasonable sum and had yet to pay out that amount, which was beyond Gajja’s reach. But he sold his little hutment and offered the madam something close to the actual amount, promising to pay the remainder, and the madam agreed. It was a miracle. The act of kindness would perhaps give her a seat in heaven—not a front row seat, just a tiny spot somewhere.
