The Parcel

by Anosh Irani

  She climbed the ladder that led to the loft and lay down beside the parcel. She did not mimic the parcel, but she saw that they were two bodies in sync, both wanting to curl into a ball and disappear into oblivion. The coin was still in Madhu’s palm, a reminder of how unrecognizable she had become.

  In a year or two, no one would be able to recognize the parcel either.

  Madhu remembered another parcel who had been held captive in the brothel for three years. The only movement she had been allowed during that time was from cage to brothel bed to toilet. Hundreds of clients later, when she was finally offered daylight, she trembled. But what no one expected, or perhaps even cared to think about, was what would happen when she saw her face in a mirror. After three years, she had become someone else. She was all of thirteen, and three of her front teeth were broken, and her scalp showed through thin strands of hair. She started screaming at the mirror, begging to know where she had gone.

  How wise she was. Unlike Madhu.

  Madhu had stared at the mirror every single day and tried to beautify herself, and in doing so had masked the person she had turned into. If she had not looked at herself for a year or two, she would have been shocked into seeing exactly what her mother had today: a dilapidated face struggling to retain the slightest form of dignity. A body and face that had emerged from her mother’s womb was now worth five rupees in pity. Madhu would have seen that.

  The foolishness of her act made the silence in the cage unbearable.

  “Do you think your mother sold you?” she asked the parcel.

  As the parcel’s body moved a little, it gave off a strong odour, but Madhu knew it was the cage itself that reeked.

  “Tell me,” said Madhu.

  “No,” said the parcel.

  “How do you know?”

  “She was my mother…”

  If Madhu had had the strength to smile, she would have. Her work was complete. The parcel spoke of her mother as though she was in the past. The fact that she believed in her mother was irrelevant. Why could Madhu not work that same magic on herself? How could she have fallen for the very illusion she had protected the parcels from?

  “You shall meet the man tomorrow,” said Madhu. “You are ready.”

  She wanted the parcel to react; she wanted her to cry. Then Madhu could be of some use—and she desperately wanted to be of service to another human being. But the parcel gave her nothing. The girl was silent, and in her breathing there were no signs of panic. Her breaths were even, while Madhu’s were fast and sour. She could not console anyone. She was left gripping the coin again. She scurried out of that hole and down the ladder, a rat on the run.

  —

  Back at Hijra House, Madhu sat in a corner, dazed, watching Bindu nayak opening gurumai’s safe, and wondered how she had allowed Bulbul to talk her into such madness. But it was not Bulbul’s fault. She was just a sound, a sudden, startling noise that frightens a person into pulling the trigger on their own gun. The gun had always been in Madhu’s hand and it had always been pointed at her own temple. Bulbul was just the sound.

  “Stand up,” Devyani whispered to Madhu. “Bindu nayak’s getting angry.”

  Madhu did not care about the hijra chieftain. She rose not to appease the nayak, but because gurumai’s safe had finally been opened. Bindu nayak had taken the key from gurumai’s neck while cleaning the body the night before and had brought it back to Hijra House. She wanted to open the safe in front of all the disciples so there could be no accusations later on.

  A list was made of gurumai’s bangles, jewellery, and cash. There were also some photographs. But no will.

  “There’s no will,” said Bindu nayak. “Do you know if she made a will?”

  Madhu was careful not to speak. This afternoon she had acted without thinking and it had cost her everything. Her last ounce of self-respect had fled from her. She was determined not to falter again. If she told Bindu nayak about the will, that it was with Padma’s lawyer, Madhu would be offering the information in blind trust. She would stay silent and let the consequences play out. Later, she would get hold of the will, and if it was in favour of her and her sisters, she would bring it to the table.

  “If there is no will, then everything has to be distributed equally,” said Bindu nayak. “I leave it up to you to do that. As the senior-most hijra in this house, Bulbul will be your new guru.”

  “But Bulbul…she’s not…,” said Anjali.

  Madhu respected her for not completing the sentence.

  “She’s not capable?” asked Bindu nayak. “Even if that is true, I will be overseeing the matters of this household now. She will report to me.”

  Bindu nayak kissed Bulbul on the forehead, placed her palm on Bulbul’s head, and blessed her. Bulbul remained unperturbed, neither happy nor sad. She might as well have been anointed as a fly on the wall.

  Bindu nayak took Madhu aside. “As you know, nayaks cannot condone sex work. It is unfortunate, but that’s the way things are. You are closest to Bulbul. I will stay in touch with you. I am counting on your co-operation.”

  Then Bindu nayak, a royal guest who had graced their home and touched their weary foreheads, left. Madhu did not know why her co-operation was needed. What did Bindu nayak mean when she said she could not condone sex work? Did she expect Hijra House to become a beauty parlour?

  Madhu shook her head. Her more immediate concern was the contents of the safe. There was one item she especially wanted, that would be hers and hers alone. It was wrapped in a cream cloth, but she could see its shape. It was pushing through, wanting to be uncovered.

  She reached out and felt the cold grey metal of the knife in her hands. This had been the instrument of deliverance for her and many other hijras from far corners of this land. It would be hers now. From now on, it would always be with her wherever she went. Just as a rooster carried Bahuchara Mata through the heavens, this knife was gurumai’s vehicle. Gurumai would have wanted Madhu to have it because she was her most successful patient.

  She held the knife on the edges of her forefingers. It had perfect balance. There was not a single blood stain on it—a sure sign that gurumai had had no blood on her hands when she castrated young men. It had never been polished in all those years and it still had a shine—not the way gold or silver gleamed, but there was a hint of brightness, as though the blade had been dipped in a full moon and remembered the taste.

  Madhu now had something from both mothers. A knife and a coin. But she did not know what to do with either.

  12

  The night before a parcel was to be opened, Padma always performed a small puja. It was to ask for forgiveness for what was about to ensue. It was also a plea to the gods to provide the parcel with fortitude. Madhu surveyed Padma’s office. There was a menu of Hindu gods on the wall to choose from—if Padma was out of favour with one, she could turn to another. She had been silent for a long time, her eyes closed, and it was making Madhu edgy.

  Suddenly, she asked Madhu a question: “Why do we need men to protect us?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at Madhu, waiting for an answer. But Madhu knew she was not supposed to give one. They were not equals. If Padma had asked gurumai that question, it would have been different.

  “All of this has happened because of one man,” said Padma, indicating her brothel as she circled the incense stick around the small idol of Ganesh. “After my father died, I was looked after by my neighbour, who cared for me as her own. Then her husband decided it was better that I become a prostitute. Everything that has happened to me since, has happened because one man failed to think I was worth anything.”

  Madhu thought, but did not say, that one man had failed to accept Madhu too, and the effects of that were beyond what she could have imagined. Her future, and Padma’s, had been decided by men. The two of them were not so different from each other.

  “I was spared from TB, only so that my cunt could be put to greater use,” said Padma. She said it with a sting that made
Madhu sit up straight. “Even when a good thing happens, it happens for the greater bad. Remember that.”

  The incense stick in Padma’s hand was shivering.

  The opening of the parcel, Madhu realized with new clarity, was just an excuse to perform the puja. The puja was not for the parcel, it was for Padma herself. She was crying for her own peace, battling against the things that had been done to her.

  “My husband was a good man…” Padma started coughing, perhaps because her throat was not used to speaking well about someone. “He asked me once how I could deal in underage girls when I had been through the same pain.”

  Padma looked around the room, and Madhu recognized in her a lost soul scanning her surroundings for answers, trying to find them anywhere, but fully knowing the futility of her undertaking. A tube light, or a rickety wooden chair, or a cracked tile in the floor, or the peeling paint on the ceiling could not provide answers. The only thing on offer was the abject emptiness of those objects. They were just as empty as Padma and Madhu.

  “The thing is,” Padma continued, “I couldn’t answer my husband’s question. You see…you do it once and something dies in you, and then you keep it…that feeling…from growing back again, until you have won. And what can I say? I’m Padma—I always win.”

  Padma’s nose wrinkled, the incense smoke tickling her nostrils. “I think he passed away because he realized he could not change me. After he died, I gave my girls away. I don’t even have photographs of them. Sometimes I remember their faces.”

  Her daughters must be grown women now, with children of their own, and here was Padma trying to recall their faces as little girls. But so what? Everyone in Kamathipura was holding on to a good memory, something that made them feel human and gave them pain beyond measure. Madhu steered the conversation in a different direction.

  “I need gurumai’s will,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Padma.

  Madhu was relieved that Padma didn’t seem to view Madhu cutting her short as disrespectful. If anything, Madhu was humbly reminding the old doyen that sharing private moments, opening up to others, only brought you more misfortune.

  “The lawyer has gone out of the city. He’ll be back in a week,” said Padma.

  “A week? Can you tell me where his office is? I need the will.”

  “I will call in the morning and find out,” said Padma. “Now let’s focus on the parcel.”

  “I need that will. Bindu nayak is capable of anything.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The leader of Bombay’s hijras.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Padma. “Your gurumai was a special soul. I will make sure her final wishes are fulfilled.”

  “Thank you,” said Madhu.

  “Now make sure the parcel is ready by eight tomorrow night. And don’t decorate her. Just make sure she’s clean.”

  “No flower in her hair?”

  “No,” said Padma. “There will be a priest at hand to perform rituals. He’ll do it.”

  “A pundit? What for?”

  “The man who’s buying her, he’s very rich. He’s also a pojeetive. His pundit told him that if he takes a young virgin, he will be cured.”

  “The client told you this?”

  “He had to when I asked why he wanted a photo of the parcel. It was for the pundit to see if the match was good. People will believe anything their pundit tells them,” she sneered.

  Once again, Madhu’s mind was spinning. In all her years doing parcel work, this was a first. The belief about virgins wasn’t new; it was an ancient one, from long before the pojeetive existed. The idea was that disease was an impurity, a curse thrust upon a man’s soul, and it could only be cured by purity, by a man locking himself upon a young one, sucking up her energy, using her as an antidote. But Madhu had never seen it being put into practice.

  “What about a woman pojeetive? Does she get to fuck a young man?” Padma asked bitterly. “Once again, the woman is being sacrificed. Things will never change.”

  No wonder they call it the “Maharog,” thought Madhu. The mother of all diseases had forced people to practise a “cure” as violent as the disease itself. It forced Madhu to see the parcel in a completely new light: she was now a bottle, a pill, a potion to be consumed.

  But Madhu said nothing and made her way home, her heart heavy, her mind reeling from the senselessness of it all.

  —

  Madhu and her sisters’ first night without gurumai was spent listening to the radio. They all lay in the dark, not speaking, just crying. Gurumai’s empty bed had a fresh sheet on it. It looked so cold, without any creases at all, until Bulbul could take it no longer and threw herself on the bed as though she were plunging into water. No one pulled her away. She stayed there until her nose and lips were deep into the mattress, her muffled groans of anger a reflection of how all seven disciples were feeling. She left her tears there the way an angry animal leaves piss, marking its territory, telling whoever is around to stay the fuck away. Then she walked to the windowsill, plugged the cord into the socket, and fumbled with the knob on the radio. The occasional sound of static was a reminder of the current disturbance in their lives. She finally found a channel that had no interruptions from ads or a radio jockey—the music just leaked into the room from the radio, as though a gas was stealthily entering in the night, and made everyone’s eyes go red.

  After a song ended, Madhu went to the floor above, to the room where the pojeetive lay. The pojeetive was in her last stages. If there had been a bet on who was going to go first, gurumai or the pojeetive, Madhu would have put all her money on the pojeetive. She returned downstairs to rejoin her sisters, but the more she tried not to think of the pojeetive, the more the poor soul’s dry lips appeared in front of Madhu’s eyes and prevented her from sleeping. Here was a human being who had spent her life battling one illness—her hijra-ness—and as though that was not enough, now she had to contend with another, deadlier foe. The very things that made one human—love, hope, health—had been ripped from her calmly and precisely, the way a syringe extracted blood. The parcel would find herself in the same state, thought Madhu. The girl had been betrayed by all, her faith in human beings was gone, and once the pojeetive worm entered her, ruptured its way into her being, her weight would drop and drop, and she would be abandoned, left to rot and dry under a bridge somewhere, or in an alley soaked in garbage. Even rain would hurt her skin.

  Madhu wanted to take a pill, to induce a coma for at least an hour or two, but it would be insensitive of her to switch on the light and rummage through her drawer for medicine. Besides, this wakefulness was part of the mourning, a musical lamentation far more truthful than what the hijra elders had offered gurumai the night before. That had simply been a ritual. This was something else, a stirring so deep that nothing needed to be said.

  No sooner had Madhu drifted into sleep, than a jerky buzz made her eyes open. It was her mobile phone, a number she did not recognize.

  “Madhu,” said the voice. “This is Bindu nayak.”

  “Yes, nayakji,” said Madhu.

  “I can’t get in touch with Bulbul. Where is she?”

  “She’s asleep,” whispered Madhu.

  “I need Bulbul to come meet me first thing in the morning.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  The radio was still on. Madhu got up and switched it off. All the sisters were asleep. She went outside to the balcony.

  “Our landlord has asked us to vacate Lucky Compound,” said Bindu nayak.

  “I’m sorry,” said Madhu. “I…but what do you need Bulbul for?”

  “If Bulbul agrees to sell Hijra House to the builder, our landlord will reconsider.”

  “But…”

  “The builder and landlord are in business together. As the new leader, Bulbul can make that happen.”

  “But what about us?”

  “You will be looked after,” said Bindu nayak.

  “What guarantee do you hav
e that we will not be on the road?”

  “You have the word of all seven nayaks. Do you understand?”

  Yes, Madhu understood. It was so convenient for Bulbul to be the new leader. It was in accordance with hijra law, but it was also convenient. Unlike gurumai, Bulbul was meek, born not to lead. Her arm could easily be twisted. In the face of the seven nayaks, Hijra House would wilt.

  It was only after Bindu nayak said goodbye and Madhu stared at the mobile phone in her hand, that she realized the extent of Bindu nayak’s reach. The phone Bindu nayak had called Madhu on was the one Padma had given Madhu for parcel work. Madhu replayed in her mind how, only hours earlier, Padma had feigned ignorance when Madhu mentioned Bindu nayak’s name. When Bulbul hadn’t answered her phone, Bindu nayak must have asked Padma for Madhu’s number, and Padma had forwarded the wrong number—the one that was only to be used to discuss the parcel.

  —

  The early morning temple bells rang in Madhu’s ears like warning bells. In a few hours, Bulbul would be forced to sell Hijra House, with the promise that the hijras would receive fair accommodation in the new building. It was a joke.

  But what was even funnier was how easily gurumai had fallen for the trap laid by Bindu nayak. Madhu could understand Bindu nayak’s motivations. There was no love lost between her and gurumai anyway, and if it was a question of protecting Lucky Compound, then Hijra House could easily be pawned off. The old reptile had played gurumai and Madhu like dholaks, drumming them the way she wanted. That was why the hijra elders had agreed to come to Kamathipura: to get rid of gurumai. As she thought of gurumai’s death and the possibility of foul play, she felt sicker and sicker.