Prasanti had stopped spitting into people’s food a long time ago. She did not feel any satisfaction in her victims not knowing what she had done to their food, so these days, she threw stones into their rice. Choosing these pebbles was an art, for she had to pick out barely visible, tiny white stones and hide them in mounds of rice only after the food had been apportioned onto the plates. She couldn’t throw the stones into the rice cooker because they would swim everywhere when the rice boiled, and those people she didn’t want assaulted by her weapon of choice would inadvertently end up crunching on one.
A foil to this otherwise foolproof tool of revenge was not knowing which seat and plate the recipient of her evil designs would select. Prasanti, thus, set aside the pebbles for second helpings. When someone she wanted dead demanded more rice, she’d serve this person a mound with the tiny bowl she sometimes used as a ladle and into which she would have already introduced a few pebbles.
Prasanti usually stuck to a plan. She would not follow through with her plot the very night someone ill-treated her but wait a day or two, play nice with this person, pretend she had forgotten everything about the mistreatment meted out on her, and then strike. Today, though, she wasn’t going to delay her payback. Her cheek still stung, and the humiliation of a slap at this age was too painful to swallow.
After the showdown at dawn, Prasanti had disappeared into the darkness, retreated beyond the garage, and cried. The encounter with Manasa gave rise to one unpleasant memory after another. She, therefore, did what she always did when she felt defeated: she had her dialogue with God.
“How dare she treat me that way?” she asked God.
“You shouldn’t have made fun of her,” Prasanti answered as God.
“But she is horrible. Treats me like I am a servant.”
“You are a servant, and you have to put up with her only for a few days. She will be gone.”
“I hate her.”
“And she hates you.”
“Why am I made this way?” she asked God.
“Because you’re special,” God replied.
“Is this how special people feel?” she demanded of God.
“Yes, sometimes even special people feel misery,” God answered.
“Why couldn’t I be one—man or woman?”
“Because you’re special.”
“Sometimes I feel you say that only to make me feel happy.”
“Think of it this way—how many people in the world can claim to be like you? How many people in Gangtok are like you?”
“Yes, of the lakhs of people in the city, it’s just you and the dancer who has run away to Siliguri.”
“And she’s the butt of all jokes.”
“That she is,” God replied.
“Why are we such jokes? Why do they always laugh at us? Why does no one take us seriously?”
“You could be serious. They’d take you seriously. But you are always laughing, always dancing, always jumping. You want to be taken seriously, behave differently.”
“I try doing that. Sometimes, I never smile. But it makes me miserable. I want to be my own self again. Am I really special?”
“You are special. I wanted you to experience life as very few humans can. You are living a good life.”
It was a mechanism that had always worked. It would work forever.
Today, the day of the worship of dogs, Prasanti would give that little bitch called Manasa the best meal of her life.
Manasa was a light eater and seldom asked for second helpings, so Prasanti would have to slightly tweak her regular plan of action. The tiny stones the eunuch had picked up were so delightfully shaped, sized, and colored that they didn’t look very different from grains of rice. They wouldn’t even jangle on the plate. All she had to do now was figure out where Manasa would sit.
Manasa was the first to arrive when Prasanti let everyone know with a squeal that lunch was ready. As her mistress’s daughter turned to the sink to wash her hands, Prasanti surreptitiously sprinkled some stones into the rice on the plate closest to Manasa’s back. Feeling more self-congratulatory now because she was certain Manasa would perch herself at her usual spot, right in front of which was the stone-laden plate, the eunuch stirred the stones into the rice a bit. They blended perfectly with the grains.
Manasa sat in her usual chair, made a face at the barely disassembled cauliflower florets in the curry, studied the plate in front of her, and asked Prasanti if she had portioned out rice for elephants and not humans. She moved the plate to the place to her left and ladled a tiny amount of fresh rice from the cooker into an empty bowl. Aamaa, who had voluntarily exiled herself to her bedroom for breakfast with no resistance from her family members, came in at the same time as Agastaya and sat next to Manasa.
“How was it?” Aamaa asked, adding cauliflower and daal atop the hill of rice on the plate intended for Manasa. “The monastery? Did you find God there? What do you find in monasteries that you don’t find in temples? This daal looks too thin.”
“I go to monasteries to look at paintings, Aamaa,” Agastaya said as he scooped out some yogurt and added it to a mix similar to Chitralekha’s. “Buddha, Kaali—I believe in no one.”
“That’s how I brought you up—to question your own religion and be cynical about everything, marriage included.”
Bhagwati trailed in after Agastaya as though still unsure of her place in the dining room. Prasanti was unbearably uncomfortable. She had never subjected Chitralekha to a stone treatment. Her mistress didn’t deserve it. Worse, she had once admitted to Chitralekha—in one of those moments of mistress-servant bonding—that she had mixed some pebbles into the food of the minister next door when he came to discuss with Chitralekha his plans of vertically expanding his building. Aamaa had lightly reprimanded her but seemed more amused than offended at the breach of hospitality. Chitralekha would probably know what was going on.
Ruthwa swaggered in and sat opposite Aamaa. It would be nice if the tension between grandson and grandmother made Aamaa forget that she had food in front of her.
“The entire family is here,” Ruthwa said.
No one else said a word.
“Silence?” Ruthwa continued. “That means I am forgiven. Ah.”
For a while, things worked as Prasanti hoped they would. Aamaa would make little balls out of the rice, cauliflower, and daal and then break them. She repeated the process a few times. She was too distracted by Ruthwa’s presence to eat.
“For no fault of mine, everybody stopped talking to me,” Ruthwa said. “Now, everyone seems fine with me. Aamaa, I have missed out on a few years of your life. Fill me in—what has happened since the prodigal grandson elevated this family from obscurity to fame?”
Prasanti heard Manasa laugh. The fool would have been grimacing had Prasanti’s plans not been foiled.
Bhagwati cast a look at Manasa and asked Prasanti for a glass of water.
“Do you still eat rice for all three meals, Aamaa?” Bhagwati asked. “What a bhaatey you’ve always been.”
“All Nepalis love their rice,” Aamaa said, suddenly chirpy. “All Brahmins love their rice. Doesn’t your family love it, too? Bhutanese and Damaais don’t? I thought they did.”
“Bhagwati will become an American soon,” Manasa said. “She will then eat bread—did you know that’s what they eat in America, Aamaa? How would you? You haven’t been outside India, yet you think you know everything.”
“Yes, I know,” Aamaa replied. “I know what it is like to be the grandmother of a thirty-three-year-old who’s yet unmarried.”
Prasanti stood at the threshold of the kitchen, praying that Chitralekha would toss her plate at Manasa in fury. That would take care of two things: the stones and Manasa.
Manasa took a sip of water and placed it on the table not very gently.
“Soon, we will have . . .” Aamaa said. And then it came—the first crunch.
“A pebble?” she said to herself. “That hasn’t happened to me in a long time.” She spat out the food on the table and moved her plate to conceal the goo. “What would we old, dying people know?” she continued. “Our opinions don’t matter.”
Another crunch. This one was slightly louder than the last. Chitralekha spat it out and hid the debris with the steel glass.
“One grandson and unmarried.”
“Shut up, Aamaa,” Manasa said. “You have two grandsons, and both are here right now.”
“No worries if she doesn’t consider me one,” Ruthwa said. “I always knew I was adopted.”
“Just one,” Chitralekha said, before taking a mouthful. A second later came a loud crunching. “Did some blind person cook the rice today? How can one get three pebbles in three bites?”
“Oh, is that your way of denying that you have two grandsons?” Manasa said, more hostile than she had been up to that point.
“Who cooks food here?” Chitralekha spluttered. “Prasanti, three pebbles? Come here, you idiot.”
Prasanti forced her feet to move forward. “I think I need to see the eye doctor,” she sheepishly said.
“I know what it is.” Chitralekha got up, overturning the plate and causing it to clang to the floor, its contents splattering as far as the walls. “I know what it is. Yes, the minister—you did this with the next-door minister, too. You are angry with me because I asked you to mind your own business, you witch.”
“No, it was a mistake. It really was.”
“Shut up. I know. She was defending this Damaai. The Damaai has probably weaved some kind of black magic on this hijra. She kept supporting her. You give me half-caste great-grandchildren and dissolve this family’s name in mud and then recruit my loyal servant to win over my affection. I am surprised I even let you inside my home.”
“No, it wasn’t her,” Prasanti said. “It wasn’t her idea.”
“Shut up. You’re a servant,” Chitralekha hissed. “You’ve probably forgotten it because of the good life you have here. One more mistake, and you will be out begging in the streets. This does not work at all. Everybody takes advantage of me, even a good-for-nothing hijra. Tell me, you kukkurnee, you did it because I told you I didn’t need your opinions yesterday, didn’t you? What will you do next? Poison me? I should call the police. You’ll probably poison me.”
Police wasn’t a good word for Prasanti. It brought back memories, the same that surfaced when she had her conversations with God.
“Sorry!” she sobbed. “It was for Manasa. Manasa slapped me this morning. It was for her. Ask her. Please ask her. She ate out of that stupid bowl today. She slapped me—slapped me like I was a child. I am a woman in her thirties who gets beaten. How bad is that? I did it to teach her a lesson.”
By the time Chitralekha stormed upstairs and the others finished eating and rinsing their mouths in silence, the film of tears obscuring Prasanti’s vision cleared, and her eyes met Manasa’s, where she spotted sheer disgust. Desperate for sympathy, she turned to Bhagwati, who sat frozen in a chair, her eyes on the plate Chitralekha had thrown on the floor.
Even a dialogue with God wouldn’t solve this problem. She was an idiot to throw away all the goodwill she had built. Her mistress—the one person she had always made happy—couldn’t stand her now. Manasa knew of Prasanti’s hatred for her. Given how the dynamics in the family had changed, Manasa would easily be able to convince her grandmother to get rid of Prasanti. What was she but a servant? Easily disposable, with no onerous duties to perform, a hijra with a skill level so low that those clueless Adivasis from Doars could easily do her job with a day’s training. All these years of injecting laughter into the house had been quashed with the humiliation she’s just inflicted on Aamaa.
She understood Aamaa, and Aamaa understood her. She knew that the key to Aamaa’s heart was raunchy humor. Anything that entailed sex, sexual characteristics, excretion, and flatulence made her mistress’s day. She could titillate her mistress. She knew Aamaa as well as she knew herself.
Prasanti’s life had been different from the dancer hijra’s—all because of Aamaa. She was so far removed from her past in Bombay, when she lived in a koti, danced at people’s homes, and was expected to eventually prostitute herself. The hijras she’d lived with were lying when they promised her that, in them, she’d eventually find companionship, in their lifestyles, acceptance and society. Now she had a roof above her head, a nice, strong roof, good food to eat—the same food her mistress ate—and good clothes to wear.
Yet, she took her life here for granted.
The hijras of her past, in an effort to feel better about their sorry lives, invented naïve stories. They claimed that they were blessed by Lord Rama and were his chosen ones. In one of the many ridiculous versions of the tale they had a penchant for repeating—as though the retelling made it more truthful—the eunuchs brayed that their ability to jinx people’s fates was bequeathed to them by Rama himself. It was some silly story dating back to when Rama was sent into exile. His subjects followed him to the forest, and Rama, the benevolent prince, asked them all to return, to allow him to serve penance alone. Fourteen years later, on the way back to his kingdom of Ayodhya, he discovered that people were waiting for him outside the forest.
“Why are you still here?” Rama asked.
“Well, Lord,” one of the people said. “You asked all men and women to go back. We are neither men nor women, so we stayed.”
Moved by their devotion, the god gave them the power of the curse—anyone who crossed them would be destroyed.
That’s what the hijras believed. Prasanti, as hard as she tried, couldn’t bring herself to accept the story.
She had given up that life for this, and this was a far better life.
Her room was right below the stairs, which made the ceiling slant—it was low toward the entrance and very high at the other end. She had spoken to Aamaa about moving the door to the end with the higher ceiling, but Aamaa put it off, saying she’d promote her to an actual room—one of the grandchildren’s rooms—if she behaved. Prasanti couldn’t pace the area without hitting her head at some point. And yet, as she looked around her space, she couldn’t help wondering if she should complain about the construction quirk. She had a nice bed. She didn’t sleep on the floor. On the bed was a soft mattress, different from the rags she’d put together in the hijra house. The sheets were clean and had no holes. She had no memory of sheets from the hijra house—they had most likely been absent, like dignity and self-respect. She had so many clothes—new and hand-me-downs—that she was sometimes tempted to discard some of them.
Prasanti couldn’t cry anymore. It was as though she had exhausted her last teardrop.
The Godrej wardrobe, which she had obtained without permission from one of the rooms upstairs, rattled as she opened it. She inspected the contents of her safe-deposit box: an envelope with a thick stack of 500-rupee bills, some earned, some stolen; three pairs of gold earrings, one gifted, two stolen; a dozen gold bangles, half presented, half stolen; and a stolen necklace. Prasanti ran her hands over the crispness of each bill, as though she were examining a fine piece of cloth, and counted. She had accumulated more than Rs. 40,000.
She wasn’t a poor woman. She was worth more than all the servants she knew. Even if she were thrown out of the house, she had enough in cash and gold to be able to live. If she chose to move to a village, she’d even be considered well off. Then the cold reality of this alternative life set in: she couldn’t live outside the house. She wouldn’t get a moment’s peace beyond the compound. She would be taunted, beaten, and destroyed, all because she had more of an organ than some and not enough of one as others. She had to live here. She’d have to live here. She couldn’t risk an altercation like the one that had just occurred.
Prasanti made up her mind. She would do her job. She would please everyone—even Manasa, impossible as it would be not to fight with her. She would stir up no trouble. In fact, she would start now. She would hang marigold garlands around the windows. It didn’t matter that Bhagwati had said she’d do it. It didn’t matter that Aamaa had confided in Prasanti that she wanted Bhagwati to do it with Agastaya, so Bhagwati could goad Agastaya into seeing some woman. Prasanti would do everything around the house. She wanted to show everyone she could work hard, that she was irreplaceable.
In the sitting room was the basket that contained the garlands she and Bhagwati had sewn together in the morning. Prasanti grabbed a garland and proceeded to deck the main door with it. Ruthwa asked if she needed help. Her condition had moved this brainless, heartless, selfish devil to take pity on her. She didn’t need his assistance but said nothing.
“Is everything all right?” Ruthwa said. “Are you okay?”
This display of concern—insincere as it may have been—brought back the flood of tears.
“I have work to do,” Prasanti said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
She couldn’t go back to living alone as a hijra. She couldn’t go back to living with other hijras.
She couldn’t return to her old life—any of her old lives.