Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (15 page)

So instead I said, you look beautiful.

She beamed, ‘And you, you are top-looking!’

Stopping briefly to wash her face and reapply her make-up, Maya led Leela, Priya and me to an attic-size room on the fourth floor. It was clear from her expression of pride as she twirled around that she, and all of Gazala’s hijras, had given it their fondest, most earnest attention. In the light of a single grimy bulb I saw streamers and on a stool a luscious cake fat with cherries. Placed neatly on the floor in order of height were paper plates, packets of savouries, bottles of Pepsi cola and Kingfisher beer and an Eiffel Tower of plastic glasses.

There were a dozen of us to start with and as Priya got busy with a beer, Leela was pleased to make the introductions. ‘This is my friend,’ she said of me importantly, emphasizing ‘my’ and ‘friend’. Then pointing to an acquaintance, she would say in all seriousness, ‘And this randi is called . . .’

Someone switched on Gazala’s twin deck and the sound of tapping feet immediately filled the air. Leela whooped her way to the middle of the room and with a gorgeous smile began to thrust her breasts in and out. She jumped up and down, she twirled around and she was so full of joy, the other guests yielded to her. Leela leaned back, her t-shirt rode up, from her dark-chocolate stomach dangled a silver heart pendant that said LOVE. She stuck her thumbs into her waistband, she whooped louder and louder, and now she could have been a teenager anywhere, pleased with herself and with the attention she was getting.

The hijras looked on admiringly, but they didn’t care to be upstaged on their own turf. They waited long enough to seem polite and then, catching one another’s eye, agreed to make a play for the floor. Three of them, including Maya, spread themselves out and without seeming to edged Leela off the centre of the room and up against a wall.

‘Arre arre!’ pouted Leela. But before she could start a fight, Priya walked over and reined her in. ‘Competing with hij’s?’ she scolded. ‘Behave yourself!’

Gazala strode in.

I had never seen anyone like her. She was over six feet tall and covered in gold jewellery. When we wished her a happy birthday, she curtsied like we were royalty and boomed her thanks in the voice of a middle-aged man. As she turned to greet new guests I saw that the back of her sari blouse was stapled with streamers that fluttered, tentacle-like, all the way down to her ankles. Any other party and I would have wondered whether the theme was fancy dress. In her brothel though, it must be said, Gazala fitted like wallpaper.

Leela whispered that Gazala wanted only gifts of cash on her birthday. Other than the daily fee she charged her hijras for rent and food—breakfast wasn’t included and lunch was a boiled egg—they had also paid for the party. That explained the hijras I’d seen idling at the corner of the street. One of them had said to me, not unkindly, ‘
Pyari
, the money for Gazala’s gift didn’t pop out of my arsehole!’

In these hours, however, no one begrudged Gazala her joy. Leela’s ‘mother’ Masti, who had entered with Gazala, started singing
Happy Birthday
. She had a voice like a trombone. We joined in, jostling each other and clapping all the way to ‘many boyfriends to you’ and ‘you were born in a zoo!’ Bursting with pride, Gazala blew out all forty-eight candles. She plunged a knife into the cream cake and we exploded with whoops and cheers.

As we sat on the floor eating cake with bendy spoons and sharing bottles of beer, I felt like I was among old friends. Of course, even my oldest friends have never displayed the transfixing curiosity hijras are known for. When they are comfortable with a woman, they sit real close and stroke her hair. They peek into her blouse to inspect the foreignness inside. In any other circumstance I would have left. That night, the pinching and prodding by Maya and her friends made me feel on the in. In time, I came also to recognize this communal trait as a compliment. Hijras may call themselves the ‘third
sex’ but they want nothing more than to be womanly. Their curiosity about the female form is an example of this naked urge and expressed most unabashedly with people they like, and wish to be like.

Apropos of nothing, Maya, who was sitting to the left of me, murmured, ‘
Hijron mein himmat hai
.’ Hijras have courage.

I agreed. It was as much part of their identity as long hair and saris.

‘I was born in Kamatipura,’ she said, placing her arm companionably around me. ‘Why should I lie? I was born next door, in gully no. 4. My mother fucked men. Perhaps they were low-quality men? Who knew? But we hardly ate. I had to look out for myself. Who knows if I smelt? Bad people always found me. My teacher raped me. Then I was raped again. When I was ten years old, old enough to make my own decisions, I decided that if this was going to keep happening to me then at least I should profit from it, I should eat from it. So I stood outside the theatre, that one’—she gestured towards the window—‘and I waited for men. That’s when the hijras came for me. They said, “
Tum admi ko gaand marte ho, hamare saath kyun nahin aate
?”’ You fuck men. Why don’t you join us?

I had become accustomed to such confidences. My friendship with Leela convinced her friends to warm to me and, with their familiarity, they also honoured me with trust. Since so many of their friends had suffered similarly it wasn’t often that they found a listener. So they were delighted to be heard and never reticent about sharing deeply intimate, even self-incriminatory details. Although I was shaken by their stories, I tried never to be discouraging. Sometimes it felt that simply by listening I was helping out.

Maya took my hand in hers. ‘I cut my chilli,’ she said, gesturing below her waist with a slicing motion. ‘I was sixteen. It cost me thirty thousand rupees and robbed me of forty days
of my life. For forty days, a dai applied hot oil bandages on my wound.’

How much did it hurt? I grimaced, putting aside my plate of food.

‘If you live, you live,’ Maya shrugged. ‘If you die, you die. It’s all God’s mercy. You have to be strong, you have to be brave. The dai waits for the cock to crow four times and then brings the knife down with a
kachak
! I fainted! Later she sprinkled oil over me; she painted my blood over my body. Then she pushed my bottom into a stone.’

What for?

‘Menstruation. When the stone pierced my anus I became a woman.’

And what about your . . .? I pointed, as she had.

‘Some people like to keep it,’ Maya said. ‘But not me, chee! I said put it in a museum for everyone to admire, or throw it away so no one can. And that’s what they did. They threw it in the water, safe from the stray dogs.’

You’re very brave, I said.

‘Agreed. Why, that morning itself, I remember it so well, my testicles were tied with twine and when it was time the dai asked her assistants to step back and she raised her hand and as I looked up at her do you know what I saw? A kite, same colour as the sky, and would you believe it, as the dai brought down her knife the kite wagged its tail and said to me, “Goodbye.” And then it said, “Good luck!” Can you believe it?’

Yes, I said truthfully. I’d heard stranger things.

‘Of course,’ Maya added, thoughtfully, ‘just a minute earlier my mouth had been washed with opium. That might have had something to do with it.’

Guests continued to stream in, they brought presents and good wishes, they drank and danced, and Gazala’s outfit received unanimous approval.

Maya whispered introductions into my ear.

‘That one,’ she whispered, pointing to a young man walking
in with two women who looked like sisters. ‘He has the best-looking girls in the bijniss. How does he manage, tell?’

How?

‘He feeds them only tea and Gold Flake!’

‘And that one,’ she pointed to the elderly hijra, ‘oh, hers is the saddest story, the saddest story you will ever hear.’

Sadder than your story? I thought to myself with wonder.

‘She used to be a man!’ said Maya.

So were you, I said.

‘She used to be a proper man, I tell you! Not like me at all. I always knew there was something off about my . . .’ she pointed to her groin. ‘It was like having a monkey hugging my waist!’

‘Not that one,’ she pointed again. ‘She was a man, a real man, up and down and back to front. And he knew it and was proud of it and was in love with a girl who lived next door to him. He loved her so much—
uske pyar mein goonga ho gaya
. He became dumb in her love. Their parents had spoken; the date had been set. But one day he discovered his girl was having an affair and he grew angry, oh so angry, angry like a thunder-cloud about to burst; and he warned her with the palm of his hand to never again stray or he would prove to her, he said, that his anger could discipline her as passionately as his love had freed her. But the girl wouldn’t listen and, instead, she complained to her lover and they hatched a plan to get rid of this one forever. So one night the girl mixed something in this one’s drink and after he fell asleep she took a knife and . . .
kachak
!’

I shivered. She was castrated by her own lover?

‘At first I too felt sorry for her.’

And then?

‘No more. If I embrace the sorrows of other people, even if they are people I care for, people I love, how will I live, you tell? There are too many of us, too many like us! I would suffocate!’

So she joined the hijras? I said.

‘Not because we’re wonderful people!’ snorted Maya. ‘Her
family must have thought, “No chilli? Might as well be dead!” So they dropped her off at medical and disappeared. That’s where Gazala found her. Gazala has contacts, you know—in medical, at the police station. She can sniff out a potential hijra like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Gazala,’ said Maya, glancing over at her madam, ‘we are so proud of her.’

Later that night, Gazala asked if anyone had a final request. There was a mad rush for the shoebox of audio cassettes. Once the party ended, whispered Maya, Gazala would retire her precious Sony twin deck and no music would be heard in the brothel until the following year, on her birthday. If you wanted music before that, Gazala would say, you might want to learn to sing.

One hijra brought out the soundtrack of
Bunty aur Babli
. Another yelled, ‘
Just chill
.’ But before any more claims could be made, Masti slipped a cassette into the player. She silenced us with a finger to her lips and striding over to the door switched off the light. The hijras put down the cassettes and quickly retrieved their spots on the floor becoming immediately still, shadowy figures in the pale light of the moon.

Asha Bhosle began to sing
Dil cheez kya hai
from the soundtrack of the film
Umrao Jaan
, a favourite with bar dancers, for Rekha, as the courtesan, was their icon.

In the song, Rekha performs a sensuous mujra to potential customers. As they are drawn into the web of her beauty and nakhra, the brothel madam, chewing betel leaf and sucking on a hookah, watches with a smile of lazy triumph. In a voice at once tragic and soothing, Rekha asks, ‘
Dil cheez kya hai, aap meri jaan lijiye. Bas ek baar mera kaha, maan lijiye
.’ She pleads, ‘
Is anjuman mein aap ko, is anjuman mein, is anjuman mein aap ko aana hai baar baar, aana hai baar baar
. . .’ The heart counts for nothing, you can take my life. All you have to do is
agree with me just this once. In this gathering you have to return time and again, time and again . . .

I looked around and nothing I had seen before prepared me for what I saw then: everyone in the room was crying. Even Gazala. Gazala, her head on the shoulder of the hijra beside her, was sobbing.

To my left, Maya was crying. Next to her, Leela.

I assumed they were moved by the song, by memories of the film perhaps, for its poignant storyline was one, I imagined, everyone in the brothel could relate to.

Umrao Jaan
is the supposedly true tale of a young village girl called Ameeran, who is kidnapped from her family by a vengeful neighbour and sold into a brothel. Renamed Umrao, the girl is trained in music, dance and poetry and becomes a courtesan. Over the years, she is successful, earning riches for her madam. Although she works hard to please, she misses her family and longs to be loved. But she’s thwarted at every turn—the man she loves marries another woman and her attempt to escape ends in tragedy. When Umrao finally finds her way back to her village, she is shunned by her family. She has no choice but to return to the brothel, where she knows she will die a courtesan, alone and unloved.