The small ones were so her voice wouldn’t crack.
The medium ones were so her facial hair wouldn’t grow fast.
She took to wearing bras.
Her voice cracked, grew bigger, hoarser, manlier.
The hair on her face grew fast. She once tried shaving it and received a beating from her housemates. She could only tweeze her facial hair, they said. Only men shaved.
She learned how to drape a sari.
She learned how to eat meat—only Halaal.
She learned how to tweeze her unibrow.
There’d be some elaborate puja before she and her fellow hijra Kalyani would be sent off to some town in Karnataka to get their penises removed.
The hijra god, Pothiraj Maharaj, would be worshipped. Surprisingly, he was a Hindu god.
There’d be dancing, singing, and merrymaking in the house. Hijras from the neighboring houses would be invited.
Prasanti was fond of her penis.
She enjoyed her penis.
Her penis was a part of who she was.
She liked her rapidly growing breasts, and she liked her penis.
But a penis was unwelcome on a hijra’s body.
So, she did what was expected of her. She and Kalyani took the train to Bangalore, on the outskirts of which was the hospital where they’d have their operations.
The surgery wasn’t painful. She was fully conscious, enthralled by the doctor who conducted it and anxious about what life would be like memberless.
Two hours after the operation, she awoke every patient in the secret clinic. She screamed that where her penis had been burned, itched, hurt. Kalyani held her friend’s hand and tried covering her mouth to muffle the screams. Kalyani forced black tea down Prasanti’s throat. A cup. Two cups. Three cups. Nothing worked. Finally, after hours of shrieking, she slipped into an uneasy sleep.
When she awoke, Kalyani was packing up her belongings.
“I can’t stay,” her friend said. “I can’t have the surgery.”
Prasanti couldn’t lie to her. She wasn’t going to tell her friend the surgery was life-changing. It wasn’t. When Kalyani looked at her for reinforcement, there wasn’t any forthcoming.
It hurt when Prasanti peed into the catheter. It hurt when she moved.
Kalyani-less, she learned to walk. She had peed sitting down even when she had a penis, and she continued sitting on her haunches. But it was different now.
No one would forgive her for Kalyani’s breakout. Her hijra friends would say that Prasanti could have talked her into the surgery.
Prasanti didn’t belong with the hijras even if she was one. In the house, they came from everywhere—from Madras and Hyderabad, from Lucknow and Nagpur—some trying to get as far away as they could from where they were born. Among all these people, she wished to find one person who spoke Nepali. Her guru spoke a little Nepali, but the guru was mostly away, getting drunk and getting raped by men who didn’t pay.
The sense of community that had so impressed Prasanti was now suffocating.
She longed to be an individual. She craved the mainstream, even if the mainstream was determined to shut her out.
So, Prasanti ran away. She left behind her saris in the clinic and took with her the one she wore. With the little money she had managed to save, she got on a train, unconcerned about where it would take her.
The train was going to Guwahati. Of the hundreds of trains she could have taken, she found herself on the one heading to her part of the country.
At Howrah, she got bored and went from compartment to compartment to solicit money.
A group of schoolgirls laughed at her but wouldn’t give her money.
A group of old men paid no attention to her.
A scared, good-looking man gave her ten rupees, and she blessed him even though she laughed at his naïveté.
A beedi-puffing woman scolded her co-passenger for giving Prasanti money.
“Yes, give them money and spoil them,” she admonished. “That’s why they don’t work.”
She spoke as if Hindi wasn’t her first language. She spoke as if she struggled with the language. She spoke as if Nepali was her first language.
So, they got talking—eunuch-beggar and beedi-smoking woman.
Prasanti told her everything. The woman listened.
Prasanti told her who her father was. The woman puffed on her beedi and said she knew him.
Prasanti cried. The woman consoled.
Prasanti—penis-less, homeless, hijra-membership-less—said she needed protection. Chitralekha, my grandmother, took her home.
•
Manasa barges into the room of my yesteryears, where I venture today because Prasanti has benevolently cleaned it.
“Not a good time,” I say.
“Like I care,” Manasa replies.
“My editor finds everything I’ve written irreverent, tongue-in-cheek.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“Apparently so. He doesn’t want my nonfiction book to be a joke.”
“Poor Ruthwa. Always the victim.”
“Oh, thanks for the Naipaul book, by the way,” I tell Manasa without looking up. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
She does not acknowledge my gratitude. “What was that about?” she asks.
“What was what about?”
“I am talking about the devil-may-care attitude at the lunch table.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Creating trouble?” she asks, as though she’s unsure.
“Whatever. You have way too much free time on your hands now that there’s no father-in-law to pick up after.”
“Why is your room so clean?”
“I cleaned it.”
“She did it, didn’t she? The eunuch cleaned the room. That little scoundrel will get another slap from me. Is that why you helped her hang the malas?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
“Liar—you wanted something else. What is it? Tell me.”
“What would I want from her?”
“I don’t know. How would I know? You’re a promiscuous beast—you probably want to sleep with Prasanti—who knows?”
“She’s more attractive than you.”
Manasa looks at me to qualify the joke. When she sees I am serious, she examines herself in the closet mirror and sighs. “That Prasanti creature has even wiped your mirror spotless,” she says.
“She does a job well when she wants to.”
“What are you working on?” Manasa tries reading the contents of the computer screen.
“Bhagwati thinks I should write about Gorkhaland, about what the movement is doing to its people with the strikes and mandatory this and mandatory that.”
“I like the idea.”
“You do?”
“All right, enough Ruthwa talk. I can’t handle it.”
Bhagwati walks in and asks if I was drunk at lunch.
“Where would I find alcohol in this house?” I ask.
“I don’t know—you must have brought some from Kalimpong or somewhere.”—Bhagwati.
“The sale of liquor is prohibited in Kalimpong—some Gorkhaland rules,” I reply.
“What about those Nepali cultures that require alcohol to be a part of their celebrations?”—Bhagwati.
“Blah, blah, blah, I am bored with this Gorkhaland talk. By the way, what were you doing in Kalimpong?”—Manasa.
I let her know that a blast from the past, a pretty thing with bad teeth from Scotland, was volunteering at Dr. Graham’s Homes, and the trip to Kalimpong was to surprise her.
And to fuck her, but that is understood.
“You’re creepy.”—Manasa.
“Well, glad that answers your question,” I say. “I have some serious writing to do. My cunt of an editor, who thinks I don’t know how to write nonfiction, has spoken to a friend of his at the Kolkata Telegraph to get me some column space in the hope of rebuilding my career as a serious writer. Looks like a Gorkhaland column
is coming your way.”
Bhagwati stays quiet. Manasa scowls.
“If each one of you would get the hell out of this room, I’d appreciate it,” I say.
They both walk out quietly.
An Open Letter to Gorkhaland Leaders
At the outset, I’ll tell you this: I am from Sikkim, but I believe in the cause of Gorkhaland.
I see no reason a Nepali-majority region should be under the regime of a Bengali-majority state.
I feel for you. Yes, I may have been brought up in Gangtok, with its many abundances, but growing up, I spent every winter break in Kalimpong, which is my grandmother’s natal home and where she owns her biggest factory. We aren’t very different, after all. It’s just that we in Sikkim lucked out; you didn’t.
I have seen your hopes rise. I have seen them ebb. I get warm and fuzzy when I see the proposed Gorkhaland map—it’s so colorful and full of hope.
But enough is enough.
You know we need to go through your roads to get to the airport in Bagdogra. Yet, you declare the roads closed.
You force boarding schools to shut down for days, affecting so many of our children studying there.
Inconveniencing us will get the central government’s attention—understandable. Bringing the hills to a standstill is the best way to make yourself a squeaky wheel—I get it.
But now you’re taking things too far, and we won’t stand for it. In fact, even your people won’t stand for it, you see.
I was in Kalimpong recently. I am not going to complain about the once-glamorous town, a must-stop on the Silk Route, being reduced to a shell of its former self. Or of the water scarcity.
A group of yellow-clothed young boys stopped my cab near the famous Munnu paan shop. They were teenagers—some barely—and polite. They wanted to check the taxi’s trunk.
“What for?” I asked, in English, to intimidate them.
“For alcohol. The Gorkha Jana-shakti Morcha forbids the consumption of alcohol these days.”
“We are Nepalis—drinking alcohol is part of so many of our tribes’ cultures,” I countered.
My Gorkha policemen were soon joined by a bunch of young women dressed in their gunyu-cholos. So many beautiful women in their traditional outfits—it was a great sight.
But the feast for my eyes soon turned sour. One of the women asked me why I wasn’t dressed up.
“Well, I am,” I somewhat cheekily replied.
But jeans and T-shirts weren’t what they were looking for. They wanted daura-suruwals and Dhaka hats on all males. It was apparently mandated.
Aha, what?
Yes, compulsory.
The Gorkha Jana-shakti Morcha had declared that everyone in the district of Darjeeling, soon to be Gorkhaland (soon, soon, soon . . . since the eighties), a separate state from West Bengal, should wear traditional costumes on that day.
I could have told them I was from Sikkim, but my curiosity was aroused.
“What happens if I don’t want to wear it?”
Before they could answer, a prepubescent pseudo-policeman jubilantly cried out, “He has a bottle of Teacher’s whiskey.”
My alcohol was confiscated, and I was casually asked to buy daura-suruwal.
“If you can afford to reserve a taxi, you can afford to buy the clothes,” said one of the women, seizing my whiskey.
Before I could say good-bye, I asked them to empty the bottle. After some hesitation, the leader of the pack threw the whiskey onto the pavement.
The alcohol flowed out, directionless. Like the movement. No one made an effort to contain it. Like no one made an effort to contain this movement.
Tomorrow you will ask us to wear underwear with your party colors on it.
People won’t stand for it, Mr. Moktan. This is just not the way. This is Gorkhaland, not Hitlerland.
FIVE
Fireworks
Bhagwati was at her pious best on Lakshmi Puja. Although the goddess of wealth blessed her faithful devotee with abundant financial hardship in return, the oldest Neupaney’s fondness for the festival didn’t dwindle a bit.
There would be fireworks in Gangtok—rocket-shaped crackers, miniature atom bombs, and onion-like explosives—and there would be fireworks at home. Bhagwati only hoped that the inevitable accusatory conversation between the wronged grandmother and the erring grandson wouldn’t happen today. It was a relief not to be the biggest villain in the house for once, yes, but the spectacle could be postponed until Lakshmi Puja was over. The plate-throwing pandemonium yesterday was rough. Prasanti and Aamaa, two members of the same team, had split up unceremoniously. Ruthwa and Aamaa’s interaction today would result in more turmoil.
People worshipped cows today, but because the Neupaneys had no cows of their own, they would participate only in the evening ritual. They would invite the goddess of wealth into their lives as a family—the five-member family they were trying hard to become again. They’d light earthenware lamps and perch them on windowsills. Prasanti and Ruthwa, the unlikeliest of allies, had already decorated the doors and windows with marigold garlands. The worship space, which was a room in itself, needed a thorough cleaning. Prasanti’s slapdash mopping of the floor and sloppy wiping of the marble statues of various gods and goddesses wouldn’t do today, so Bhagwati set to work. All the while, she compared her altar in America to the one here. Her husband must have already tidied up their apartment in Boulder in the hopes that Lakshmi would finally include him in her altruism this year. When surrounded by gods and religious paraphernalia, any memory of Ram, even after all these years, was entwined with the cold, hard truth of his caste, so Bhagwati determined that Aamaa might not like her playing this active a role in the puja. She was, after all, not a Neupaney anymore. She would instruct Prasanti to do the cleaning while she stood watch. It was a fate Bhagwati was resigned to.
Prasanti was not in her room, but her personal altar, which contained spotlessly wiped diminutive statues of Ganesha, Shiva, and Lakshmi, was fragrant with incense. Curious whether the servant’s negligent cleaning efforts extended to her personal space, Bhagwati did a quick survey and was struck by the neatness of the room. The eunuch wasn’t unskilled. The sheet on Prasanti’s bed was fresher than the sheets on theirs. The floor had been swept and mopped. In the Godrej wardrobe, the clothes were neatly folded. Some were even ironed. In the trinket box was a stack of 500-rupee bills. Deeper in it were jewelry pieces—earrings, bangles, and a necklace.
If Prasanti and she were to compare their net worth, the eunuch definitely had more money. To be made aware of this wide gap in income between her and a servant on a day like today was cruel. Yet, Bhagwati’s faith in the goddess of wealth did not waver. She would pray even more fervently this year than she did previous years.
Ruthwa was puttering around the kitchen in pajamas and a torn T-shirt. They were his sleeping clothes, his house clothes, and his going-out clothes. Her brother did not believe in being impeccably turned out.
“Good morning,” Bhagwati said.
“Oh, hey, you’re up early.”
“So are you.”
“Is it so we can have our alone time like we did yesterday morning?”
“It’s my favorite day of the festival.”
“Yeah,” Ruthwa said, slathering Amul butter on a piece of bread. “Just thought I’d take a walk around town or go to some of the viewpoints.” He made a face before spitting the bread out into an overflowing trash can.
“This early?”
“Why not? I want to experience Gangtok’s beauty in the morning.”
“When will you be back?”
“Back for what?”
“It’s Lakshmi Puja. Please tell me you knew about it.”
“Oh, yeah, it is Lakshmi Puja,” Ruthwa said in a tone that suggested he could have been mocking her. “I’ll probably be back in the evening for the actual puja.”
“Wasn’t the purpose of your visit to make amends with Aamaa? Go talk to her in private.”
&nbs
p; “Nah, I saw her at lunch yesterday. You don’t expect me to wait around all day so I can have a glimpse of the queen, do you?”
“Just saying. It’s Lakshmi Puja today. I hope there are no fights.”
“Like the one between mistress and servant yesterday?” Ruthwa laughed.
“Yes, it wasn’t pretty.”
“How nice it feels not to be at the center of these family feuds.”
“I feel exactly the same way. I am glad I’m not the cause of all these fights.”
“Now that Aamaa is running out of people to have fights with, she’s quickly crossing over to picking them with nonfamily members,” Ruthwa said.
“Prasanti is hardly nonfamily.” Bhagwati boiled water for coffee. “She’s probably more family to Aamaa than I am.”
“Or I am,” Ruthwa said.
“You’re a bully. Bullies are afraid of bullies. She’s scared of you.”
“So, I thought Aamaa didn’t want you in the kitchen. Are you allowed in?”
“I don’t know what the rules are. I have to admit I thought of cleaning the puja room but then stopped myself because I have no knowledge of the rules.”
“The one who married the outcaste touched the gods—what nerve,” Ruthwa said.
“It’s a shame. I just love Lakshmi Puja.”
“And the goddess has been so good to you.”
“She will be soon.”
“You need to let one of them help you. You probably won’t accept my financial support because I am, you know, Ruthwa. Not that I have very much.”
She wouldn’t talk about money today. “And I am, you know, Bhagwati—worse than you are. You simply portrayed Aamaa in an unflattering light, and very few people outside the family even know it was her life you wrote about. People who know us barely understood the book. They said all the big words drove them to the dictionary from page one itself.”
“The way you spoke to me yesterday—with all that talk asking me to stay away from Prasanti’s story—I’d have thought the book had a far bigger impact than that.”
“What I am trying to say is that in the pyramid of the unforgivable, I am higher than you are, and Aamaa talks to me, so she will talk to you, too. Just make an effort.”
Land Where I Flee Page 16
