Land Where I Flee

by Prajwal Parajuly

  While Sumitra was resettling into her natal home, her son was dancing to a radio song.

  Prasant was sent to Rockvale, an English-medium school, unlike his sisters.

  He refused to wear shorts to school. His stepmother and he reached a compromise with pants, which he soiled with enduring regularity.

  Prasant wouldn’t write a thing when asked to.

  Prasant wouldn’t hop when asked to.

  He wouldn’t run when asked to.

  He wouldn’t jump when asked to.

  He wouldn’t skip when asked to.

  He wouldn’t stop dancing when asked to.

  Prasant couldn’t be promoted to Lower Kindergarten because he hadn’t learned how to write a single letter of the alphabet.

  The priest wondered if the mother’s slow brain had somehow been passed on to the son.

  Prasant refused to go back to Rockvale the following year. He went to the village school with his sisters.

  At the threading ceremony, in which he was required to shave his head, Prasant wouldn’t allow shears to come near him. He spat at, pinched, scratched, and bit any hand that tried.

  It was the first Bratabandha ceremony the priest had overseen whose participant was not tonsured.

  The white cloth that would be girdled up around his son’s loins as a dhoti, his son quickly improvised into a baby sari. Everyone said the poor boy was so used to females in the house that his child’s mind hadn’t gathered that a sari was meant only for women.

  At eight, Prasant came home from school with all his nails painted.

  The Sanskrit shlokas the priest tried shoving down his son’s throat Prasant converted into a song and danced to.

  When he was nine, a group of older boys at school thrashed Prasant, threatening to beat him up even more if he called himself Prasant.

  Very agreeably, Pundit Acharya’s son, from then onward, called himself Prasanti.

  He wouldn’t answer to Prasant, happily saying that his face would be punched if he answered to Prasant, so everybody called him Prasanti.

  At ten, he dressed himself in his sister’s green dress, much too short for him, and walked around the neighborhood.

  Some said he was insane, like his mother. The Brahmins said it was because he was an offspring of two sagotris.

  At eleven, when his uncle—the father of the naked babies who had taunted Pundit Acharya—died, Prasant disappeared from the funeral in the small town of Melli.

  A year later, Pundit Acharya died in his sleep. His twin nephews cremated him. They were naked only from the waist up.

  Prasant-Prasanti got on a bus to Siliguri. Siliguri was only three hours away, but it was big—far bigger than Kalimpong—and it was in the plains.

  “Where have you come from, my sweet boy?” the conductor asked.

  “Kalimpong.”

  “And your parents?”

  “They put me on the bus. My brother will pick me up in Siliguri.”

  “Where in Siliguri?”

  “The station.”

  “You talk like a girl.”

  “I know,” Prasant said. “I am a girl.”

  “I thought you were a boy. Your clothes.”

  “People make those mistakes.”

  “What can we do?” the conductor said to the other passengers. “It’s the age. Girls look like boys and boys like girls.”

  “Your hair is like a girl’s.”

  “What is your name, chori?”

  “Prasanti.”

  “What caste?”

  “Baahun. Prasanti Acharya.”

  “Are you related to the pundit of Pudong?”

  “No, I am from Lava.”

  “That pundit ate so much kheer when he came for a puja to our place,” the conductor said to the other passengers. “He just wouldn’t stop eating.”

  The others laughed at Prasanti’s father. She felt an odd satisfaction.

  Prasanti had been to Siliguri a few times before but never on her own. When the bus pulled into the Tenzing Norgay station, she waved at an imaginary figure.

  No one suspected her lack of a brother.

  She wandered the streets, took in the sounds, and absorbed the sights.

  Some people looked Nepali. Many did not.

  The honking was perpetual. The cars went by faster than they did in Kalimpong.

  The crowds were bigger—much bigger than on Haat Day in Kalimpong. Perhaps today was Siliguri’s Haat Day.

  It was hot, really hot. No April in Kalimpong was this hot.

  She’d now put her Prasanti-ness to the test.

  At a small store that sold sweets lodged in glass bottles, she said, in Nepali, “Aamaa asked me to ask you to give me Lacto-King worth ten rupees.”

  The shopkeeper didn’t care who she was, didn’t balk when she handed him a hundred-rupee bill.

  “And that nail polish.”

  “Anything else?” he growled in Bengali.

  “Do you have any eyeliner?”

  “No, this isn’t a cosmetics shop.”

  “Why do such young girls wear eyeliner?” a disapproving woman said, in Hindi. “You’re naturally beautiful.”

  Prasanti blushed a happy blush.

  She wanted to hug the woman and narrate her life story to her, but the woman picked up her heavy bags and tried crossing the street. The traffic wouldn’t allow her to.

  “Where are you going?” Prasanti boldly asked.

  “I have to cook at a wedding,” she said.

  “At Pradhan Nagar?” It was the only Siliguri address Prasanti knew of.

  “No, just there.” She pointed.

  Across the street stood a big house decorated with colorful lights. The lights hadn’t yet been lit.

  Weddings served food. Weddings played music. Weddings were so full of people that no one would know whose daughter Prasanti was.

  The party was unlike any Prasanti had seen before.

  She had been to many ceremonies in Kalimpong over which her father presided, but this was grander than all of them. They served Coke and Fanta and Sprite.

  Sikkim Supreme orange juice was as extravagant as it got at the weddings she had attended.

  Prasanti guzzled one fizzy drink after another as she swayed from side to side to the songs blaring from the loudspeaker.

  A group of boisterous women who looked like men arrived in a procession that could rival the groom’s party in loudness.

  They had long hair, wore saris, donned makeup, and danced with abandon. Yet most of them had the faces of men.

  One of them played a drum that was tied around her neck with a red cloth while her friends danced to Hindi songs.

  The groom gave them some money. They asked for more.

  He gave them some more money. They asked for more.

  Some wedding attendees cheered. Others jeered.

  “Who are they?” Prasanti asked a couple who looked Nepali.

  “Hijras,” the husband replied. “Whose daughter are you?”

  “My mother cooks here. I came to attend the wedding.”

  The explanation sufficed.

  “Are they men or women?” Prasanti asked.

  “They are both,” the irate husband replied.

  Prasanti knew what she’d do.

  At first the hijras tried sending her back to the wedding house. She wouldn’t let go of the sari of the prettiest one.

  “I want to be like you,” she said in Nepali.

  “What about your parents?” someone asked.

  “They are dead.”

  “We can’t take you. How old are you?”

  “Thirteen,” Prasanti lied.

  “Are you a boy or a girl?”

  “A girl,” Prasanti lied.

  “Liar,” the pretty hijra said, staring at the outline of her soo-soo.

  “I am a boy, but I want to be a girl.”

  “Like us,” a hijra sadly said.

  “I can dance,” Prasanti said. She danced the way she had seen them do. She freq
uently clapped with the flat of her hands. All the hijras smiled. Soon they all laughed.

  “We still can’t take you,” the pretty one said. “You’re too young—you will attract too much attention. What about the police?”

  “I could be your daughter,” Prasanti said to her.

  “She could be my chela,” the pretty one said to everyone else.

  “Too dangerous,” the oldest-looking in the group said. “You have to go back.”

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  She trailed them to their shack, where she saw more like them.

  “How was it?” an elderly woman asked.

  The dancing hijras ignored her questions about the wedding and told her about the curious little boy they had found.

  “We can’t risk having him here,” the elderly man-woman said. “The police are always accusing us of abducting young boys and forcing them into being hijras. This one is too young, and look at her hair.”

  “But I can grow it,” Prasanti said in desperation.

  “She can be my chela,” the pretty one said.

  “You’ve barely been here a month,” the leader said. “It’s much too early for you to be taking on a disciple.”

  “Don’t forget, this little boy is like us,” the pretty one said. “He’s going through what we went through. Look at how fair and pretty he is.”

  “Are you Nepali?” the leader asked.

  Prasanti didn’t know what the safe answer would be, so she said, “Yes.”

  “From Nepal?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  Again, she didn’t know what the safe answer would be. “From Siliguri,” she lied.

  The look of concern that came to everyone’s face suggested it was the wrong answer.

  “From Siliguri,” the leader repeated. “Did you hear that? His family will come looking for him here. We will spend the rest of our lives in jail. You have to let go of him.”

  “At least let him stay the night,” the pretty one said.

  “What if they come looking for him tonight?” the leader asked. She recruited the pretty one to take the boy back.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Prasanti cried.

  “You have to.”

  “I want you to be my mother,” Prasanti said to the pretty one once they were out in the open.

  “Okay,” the pretty one said. “You can be my chela. I will be your guru.”

  “But what about them?”

  “Don’t worry about them.”

  She gave Prasanti a wig to wear. It was the prettiest Prasanti had ever felt.

  Prasanti and she boarded a train.

  “Where are we going?” Prasanti asked. It was the first time she had been on a train.

  “Somewhere far—where they will never find us.”

  “I have some money,” Prasanti said. She handed her new mother, her new guru, a fifty-rupee bill.

  “We will make enough money,” the guru said. She sat down on the floor by the toilets. Prasanti followed suit.

  The train started. “Are you hungry?” the guru said.

  “No, I ate a lot at the wedding.”

  “Clever girl.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Who knows? Delhi? Bombay? You will be safe with me wherever you go.”

  “What will we eat there? Will my fifty rupees be enough?”

  “We are hijras—we will make money.”

  Those walking by them to go to the toilets looked at them warily, cautiously.

  “They think I have kidnapped you,” the guru said.

  “What if they steal me from you?”

  “They won’t,” the guru said with confidence. “They won’t do that.”

  A man with a threatening mustache and a threatening name-tag asked them to show him their tickets.

  “Aye, saahab, you should be ashamed to ask a hijra and her sister for tickets,” the guru said somewhat amicably. “We are here to bless the passengers. We’ll start soliciting tomorrow morning. Right now, I am tired and need to sleep.”

  “Who is she?” the man asked.

  “My sister.”

  “Your hijra sister or your real sister?”

  “She’s my real sister who’s also a hijra.”

  “You look so much darker than she does.”

  “She took after my mother. I took after my father.”

  “I still need to fine you. How about some money for tea for me?”

  The guru sprang to her feet and shouted: “Everybody, hear me, this man is asking me for bribe money. Cursed be your family. Cursed be your children.” She lifted her sari up to her knees and clapped her hands the way she and the other hijras had done at the wedding.

  But then, there had been a lot of laughter. Right now, there was aggression.

  People from nearby compartments thronged to inspect the scene.

  “He takes bribe money from the poor,” the guru said. “Cursed be these babus who serve our nation.”

  She let her sari go farther up. “Okay, don’t make too much trouble,” the man with the mustache said. “Don’t make too much noise.”

  Embarrassed, he left, and the passengers tittered and went about their ways.

  The guru procured some eggs from one of the salesmen.

  “Here, eat this,” she told Prasanti.

  “I can’t. I am vegetarian.”

  “Not even eggs?” the guru asked in wonder.

  “No. I am a Brahmin.”

  The guru laughed bitterly. “You aren’t Brahmin anymore. You aren’t Hindu anymore. You’re a hijra. We hijras are Muslims.”

  Prasanti kept the egg balled in her fist and threw it away when her guru wasn’t looking.

  When they reached Bombay three days later, they had made 1,100 rupees between them. The master—the guru—embarrassed men who weren’t ready to part with money by touching them, pinching them, and threatening to lift up her sari.

  The disciple—the chela—collected money in a black purse. She learned to return fifty-paisa coins by the fifth compartment.

  With families that had children, the guru blessed the babies by touching their heads with both her hands. The chela smothered their cheeks.

  With the elderly, the guru sat for a while and asked them if their age troubled them. The chela touched the old people’s heads with both her palms.

  With the traveling salesmen whose wares she fancied, the guru asked for free bindis, lipstick tubes, and key chains. The chela demanded the same things the salesmen gave her guru.

  Guru and chela bypassed female compartments. “They aren’t worth our time—they are difficult,” the guru said.

  They spent the most time in a compartment of teenage boys. Prasanti figured they were barely three to four years older than she was.

  “We will give you more money if you show us where you pee from,” one of them said.

  “From here,” the guru said, pointing at her butt.

  The boys laughed.

  “Show us, show us,” the boys chorused. “Hurry up now before our teacher comes back from the bathroom.”

  “Don’t you know you will be cursed if you see a hijra’s pee-pee?” the guru asked.

  “We don’t care,” one of them said. “Show us. Show us. Show us.” The others joined in.

  “Okay—you twenty rupees, you twenty rupees, you twenty rupees, you twenty rupees, and you fifty rupees,” the guru said in English.

  “Why should I pay fifty rupees?” the loudest among them asked.

  “Because you’re sexy,” the guru said. The boys cheered. “Money? Now.”

  The boys gave the cash to Prasanti, who pecked each one on the cheek as she collected it. Loud cheering followed each peck.

  The guru lifted her sari. Prasanti saw a soo-soo-less man for the first time. Just roots where a tree had once been.

  “Can he touch it?” The loud boy pointed at his friend and laughed.

  Everyone laughed.

  “What did you do with
it?” the loud boy asked.

  “Had an operation.” The guru let her sari slide down. “More answers for more money.”

  The boys deliberated among themselves and said they had seen and heard enough for the day.

  “Wait until our sir comes back,” the loud boy said. “You should harass him and ask him for a hundred rupees.”

  “Teachers have no money,” the guru said, and she went her way. “Don’t do naughty things with your laro after what you have seen today.”

  “Yuck,” the loud boy said.

  “Yuck,” the others said.

  Prasanti was the happiest she had ever been.

  Two years later, Prasanti ran away from her house in Bombay.

  She and her guru had become members of a new house near the Dadar railway station.

  Her guru now had a new guru, who introduced her to the world of prostitution.

  “I owe it to her,” the guru said to Prasanti. “I don’t like doing it, but I owe it to her because she paid off my debts to the old hijra house. She also allowed me to keep you as a chela although I am new here. I should be grateful.”

  Prasanti’s guru was to pay Rs. 150 a day to her new guru, irrespective of how good or bad the day had been.

  “Earlier, I was a badhaai hijra—I was vital to people’s celebrations,” the guru grumbled to Prasanti. “Now I am a whore. What have I done with my life?”

  Prasanti was sent off with the other hijras to solicit money from shops around the railway station.

  The men often remarked on how beautiful she was.

  Prasanti knew she was fair—mountain fair. Fair was beautiful here. She thought her guru was far more attractive than she, but her guru was dark, so not many people in Bombay found the older woman as gorgeous.

  “The house will get your nirvanan done soon, and then no ugly stick sticking out of your body,” her guru said. “Then you can have customers like I do.”

  Prasanti had heard a lot about the operation.

  All hijras respected those who had undergone it.

  A few months after Prasanti’s arrival, the nayak, the leader of the house, had declared that she should be circumcised.

  “We are Muslims,” the guru said. “We can’t keep turtle-like foreskins.”

  It had been painful.

  Prasanti’s guru gave her many pills to swallow.

  The big ones were so her breasts would sprout.