The Parcel (15 page)

At least Salma's son would get an education. He would not grow up to become a pimp. He came crawling to Madhu and tugged at her sari. Madhu wanted to pick him up but she couldn't. Something stopped her. Seeing that, Salma gave her son a loud, splashy kiss on the cheek.

The parcel reappeared, wearing Salma's gown. It was so long for her that she had to hold it up from the sides to walk. Salma took the edge of the parcel's dress and covered her son's face with it. Then she uncovered it again and played hide-and-seek with him. The little one was delighted.

“Where's Guddu?” she asked. “Where's my Guddu?”

Guddu gurgled from underneath the parcel's dress.

“Come on,” Salma said to the parcel. “Don't you want to play with him?”

The little boy crawled out from the folds and looked up at the parcel. Madhu could tell that she wanted to lift the boy up; he would be something to hold, something that could not harm her. Maybe she had a brother the same age. Even if she didn't, she needed to feel skin that was warm—the opposite of Salma's and Madhu's.

Madhu wondered how much longer innocence would stay within this boy. It had to leave at some point. But while it was there, everyone fed on it like hyenas—Salma, Madhu, even the parcel. Without realizing what she was doing, the parcel would suck it out of the boy and keep it for herself, store it for the nights to come.

In the afternoon, Madhu left the brothel to allow the parcel to bond with Salma. The parcel needed to be comfortable with Salma; a rapport had to be forged between the two. In case of a raid, the parcel would have to follow quick directions and, more important, once she had settled into her new line of work, Madhu would no longer be there to guide her. Salma would take over.

Madhu needed a break. She had no qualms about who she was now—she had come to terms with her life—but starting this parcel work again had taken a toll on her. On the one hand, she felt she was doing a spark of good—or a particle of good even smaller than a spark—in that she was breaking
the parcel as gently as possible, trying to find something to salvage in the gutter.

If Madhu refused to do this work, she would be dishonouring her gurumai. She would be expelled from the community and treated worse than a pye-dog. To re-enter, she would have to pay a fine to the jamaat, the council of hijra elders, which she could not afford, and knowing gurumai, she would ask Madhu to do parcel work again, just to teach her a lesson. The only other option for her was to run away. But where could she go? She could live in a slum. On Tulsi Pipe Road, there used to be a line of hijra dwellings along the railway tracks. Four or five hijras lived under one tin roof. One day, the municipality trucks came and demolished their hutments—just like that, in one shot.

After being displaced from Tulsi Pipe Road, the hijras had to spend weeks without a roof over their heads. This was when the Mumbai rain was more merciless than a Mumbai cop. Some hijras got wet in the rain and never woke up. Madhu did not want to sleep under an open sky, nor did she want to be rat food.

When her brain rattled this way, with thoughts of old age and homelessness, it was a sign that she needed time off. She longed for Gajja. She wanted him to hold her hand. Nothing more. She just wanted to feel the man's roughness against her. She called his mobile, but there was no answer. He must be tending to a patient at the hospital. But what about
this
patient? She could feel it coming, one of those dizzying bouts of self-pity that were so hard to ward off. Even malaria was more bearable. At least with malaria, only the body shook.

She tried him again. No answer. Around her, mobile phones were everywhere. Hearts, brains, and mobile phones—the human body could not function without them. Madhu noted
sadly that even the footpath bookseller had a new title,
SMS Se Love
, about a couple who fall in love via text messaging. At the bookseller's feet was an old weighing scale. Some of the pojeetives had weighed themselves on it before they knew they were pojeetive, and wondered if the scale was wrong.

Madhu watched a goat trying to wriggle underneath a parked taxi. It struggled to get into the small spot, but finally succeeded. Madhu wanted to join it: she wanted to snuggle up next to it under the car and nuzzle her own beak against its nose. They were both going to be slaughtered at some point. The goat was lucky to go first.

Madhu felt herself sliding deeper and deeper into a hole. The water tank beckoned. Unlike the parcel, Madhu would sink into it and not emerge. The police would find a dead bloated parrot floating on the surface, its beak filled with water, its irrelevant banter gone once and forever.

She shook her head to clear it and picked up her pace. The afternoon heat made snakes of sweat crawl on her back. A gust of burning wind helped her glide through her neighbourhood. When she passed Firdos Milk Bar, the Afghan men barely noticed her. She was so nimble, so desperate to get home. By the time she had reached the kitchen and lit a beedi, gurumai was calling out to her from her bed.

“What's the matter?” asked gurumai.

“Nothing.”

“Madhu, how long have I known you?” asked gurumai. “Come.” She sat up, feebler today than the past couple of days, and patted the mattress, indicating where Madhu should sit. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“Nothing's wrong.”

She put her hand to Madhu's chin, just as she had when Madhu was a boy, and raised an eyebrow. It didn't help.

“Where is everyone?” asked Madhu.

The place was strangely empty, given that it was still afternoon. Someone was always lounging around, reading movie magazines or oiling their hair, or tweezing eyebrows and bleaching their stupid face.

“They're all out,” said gurumai. “I sent them on errands. There's a jamaat in three days.”

The mention of the gathering of the city's hijra leaders increased Madhu's anxiety. “But we just had one,” she said.

“I got a call from Bindu nayakji this morning. It's important.”

“Is there a problem?”

“She said it was an emergency.”

Madhu could tell that gurumai did not want to talk more. When Bindu nayakji wanted something, it got done. She was one of seven nayaks, the most powerful hijra chieftain in the city, and her word on the hijra kingdom was final.

“It's good that we are alone,” said gurumai. “There's something I need you to do.”

Gurumai removed the key that hung around her neck and handed it to Madhu. This was the first time that Madhu, or anyone else, had been handed the key to gurumai's safe. Gurumai wore it around her neck like a talisman, even went to sleep with it. When she bathed, she took it with her. To see her remove it made Madhu uncomfortable.

“There's an envelope in the safe. Take it out,” said gurumai.

The envelope was right on top, old and brown, stiff, almost cardboard-like, as though water had been dropped on it and hardened.

“That is my will,” said gurumai.

Madhu tensed and clenched her teeth.

“Relax,” said gurumai, noticing Madhu's uneasiness. “I'm not going anywhere. I want you to give this to Padma.”

“Padma? What for?”

“I know you don't like her. But liking someone and trusting them are two different things. Things are getting dirty in this real estate race. I want to make sure that my will is solid and cannot be disputed. Padma is going to show it to the same lawyer who has made her will. I'm doing this for all of you.”

“Yes, gurumai.”

“Do it now. And try not to read it. You'll be disappointed.”

Once again, gurumai lifted Madhu's chin.

“See? I made you smile after all,” she said.

On the way to Padma's brothel, Madhu noticed that a crowd had gathered—labourers, shop owners, pimps, mothers with children in tow who were going home after school. As Madhu pried through the sweaty mass of people, she heard wailing. About ten prostitutes were standing at the entrance to a brothel. Some were sobbing hysterically, one was lying down on the street itself, while the others were babbling away to anyone who would listen.

“Where will we go?” wailed one. “Where will we go?”

It was a mantra that the woman kept on repeating, with eyes half closed, cheeks dirtied with tears, betel juice at the corners of her cracked lips.

Salma was there too, trying to lift the one who had prostrated herself on the ground in a form of protest. Madhu was
shocked: Salma was supposed to be looking after the parcel and bonding with her. What the hell was Salma doing here?

“Where's the parcel?” she asked.

“Resting,” said Salma. “Relax, she's safe,” she continued, sensing Madhu's agitation. Then she quickly shifted her focus back to the prostrate woman. “They've been evicted. Last week, they were told the building would collapse if repairs were not done, so the landlord gave them money to stay somewhere else for a week. Now they've come back and the brothel is locked up. Choothiya banaya!”

It was a villa-type brothel. The number on the archway was 007, but there was no Bond, no second-grade agent even, to come to anyone's aid. The main door had a shiny new lock on it and wooden panels had been nailed across the windows to prevent anyone from getting in. All the prostitutes' belongings were stacked up neatly outside the main door: steel trunks, one on top of another; three wooden cupboards with so many scratches you'd think they belonged to cats; cooking vessels; plastic bags full of chappals; and makeup kits. One of the cupboards displayed a poster of Shah Rukh Khan, and even he gave a doleful smile. Some of the women already seemed to have resigned themselves to their new fate; they were going through their belongings silently. But the one on the ground was refusing to get up. Salma yanked her arm, but she repeated the same phrase for all to hear: “Now we have nothing…”

Salma bent down and whispered something in her ear. The young woman's histrionics began to fade. Slowly, she gathered herself and went to one of the steel trunks.

“Let's leave,” said Salma. “Slip away quietly.”

“But I need all my clothes. I need—”

“If they see you go with me, they won't let you leave.”

“Let me take something…please.”

Madhu saw how it was breaking the woman's heart to leave behind what had taken her years to accumulate. She pulled herself together and quickly rummaged through her belongings.

A cop arrived, and the crowd slowly receded into their own lives. Nothing was ever their problem anyway; this was just an unexpected piece of entertainment on a sweltering afternoon, Madhu thought. But then, a surprise: the prostitutes were not going to let them off the hook so easily.

“It's bhadwas like you who are doing this!” an older whore screamed, pointing to a couple of middle-aged men who were on a cigarette break. They were part of a small unit that manufactured umbrellas. “You madarchods are fucking us!” Madhu guessed that the men had no clue what she was insinuating. Still, the whore might be old but she was not mad. Gurumai was right: the brothels were being shut down by landlords, and small-scale industrial units were being set up instead. It was impossible to get such cheap rents elsewhere in the core of the city, and so the sex workers were being tricked into leaving.

Madhu watched as the men gingerly threw away their cigarettes and climbed up the stairs to their little workshop, which had once been a brothel. But the old whore would not let them go without a fight. She picked up one of the chappals from the plastic bag, a fat green rubber one, and flung it at the man. Her anger had sharpened her aim: it landed straight on his neck. The man began to abuse her but knew better than to inflame an already injured soul, and slunk back to his umbrellas.

Madhu turned to leave. It seemed that Salma would be occupied for a while, and Madhu was concerned about leaving
the parcel unsupervised for too long. But then, a new group entered the fray: Marys armed with pamphlets and good intentions.

“Yeshu ban jao,” said one of the Marys to the old prostitute. “Embrace Jesus.”

The Mary was accompanied by a South Indian woman, a former brothel madam named Aruna, who had converted to Christianity. The Marys had taken many prostitutes into their fold, and a few of them were “cured,” while many still worked. Christianity was the latest craze in Kamathipura. Madhu likened it to the fervour with which bell-bottoms had grabbed the red-light area's thighs in the late 1970s and early 80s. Back then, every young Nepali sex doll in the district owned bell-bottoms, which made her burn hotter in the eyes of men.

Now it was the message of Christ that everyone was wearing. And what a perfect opportunity to convert people into the religion, to help them get acquainted with Yeshu, when they were jobless and homeless and hurling obscenities at the police.

“Don't touch me!” said a prostitute to a cop who was trying to calm her down. “Cowards! You are working for my landlord!” she screamed, pointing to the umbrella factory. Madhu knew she had meant to point to 007. Then, probably anticipating that if she continued to abuse the cop she'd get a tight slap, she became docile: “Please help us. Only you can save us!”

At last, Salma was done waiting. She ordered the young woman to march. She slung a bag over her shoulder, but Aruna stepped in and blocked her path.

“It's not a bad thing that you have lost your home,” she told the young woman. “Maybe it's a sign that you must do something else.” She held out a pamphlet.

Now that she could see the young woman up close, Madhu understood why Salma had chosen her. She was pretty and would be an asset to Padma's brothel for sure. Salma's intervention was business mixed with a pinch of compassion.

“Take this,” Aruna told the girl.

There was a photo of Jesus and a lamb on the pamphlet. A bright light shone from Yeshu's head, radiating in the general direction of the lamb and falling on the hay instead. Madhu wondered why the hay needed light.