11

The next morning was the most silent that Madhu had ever lived through.

Gurumai’s bed was empty. Her crumpled bedsheet was still warm, and for a second, Madhu almost convinced herself that gurumai had gone to the toilet to relieve her bladder. But the sheet was just a piece of cloth, a reminder that a cheap wooden bed could outlast a human being.

Madhu was confronted with the mess of the previous night’s gathering: empty chai glasses, whisky bottles, steel plates with mutton crumbs, chewed-up chicken bones, and cigarette butts strewn over the floor like a holy offering. This was all that remained of the last night of gurumai’s life. Madhu and her sisters were part of that debris.

After taking their baths, Madhu and the others put on white saris and walked through the rooms, sipping chai, picking up cigarette butts and sweeping the floor. When it came time to clean up gurumai’s bed, Madhu could not bring herself to do it. That crumpled bed was gurumai’s last imprint on earth. If she straightened the sheet out, she would wipe the slate clean. She ran her fingers along the sheet again, lightly, not erasing its texture in any way. It had felt gurumai’s skin more than any of them had. If gurumai’s spirit was contained in there, Madhu wanted to access it.

But then, suddenly, she moved away. The sheet was reminding her of how gurumai had looked the night before, with eyes closed, facing the ceiling. Madhu had never seen her so soft, almost childlike in her nakedness. The more she tried to push gurumai out of her mind, the less successful she was. Gurumai’s face kept appearing before her—her face and neck, as though they were the two most vital parts of her body.

And that is when it dawned on her. How could Madhu have been so stupid?

There had been no key around gurumai’s neck last night. Who had the key to the safe? Someone had taken it.

“Bulbul,” she asked, “where’s the key?”

Bulbul was slumped on her small stool, staring into the mirror.

“Where is gurumai’s key?” she asked again.

Bulbul did not answer. Her mind was somewhere else. Her mobile phone was on the dressing table. Madhu picked it up. Bulbul had taken a photo of herself. The whiteness of her sari had added a spectral hue to her already silvery skin.

“Bulbul?”

“He wants me to send him my photo…”

“Who?”

“He sent me word after so many months…I finally got a message from him…I’m so relieved…”

Madhu glanced over at the radio on the window ledge.

“He wants to see what I look like now. He wants to show me to his parents.”

If only Bulbul could see herself now, with her eyebrows arching in the middle, twitching with hope, then diving downward into total misery. Today of all days, Madhu had to tell her the truth. Today, she had to shatter the illusion and tell her there was no way Bulbul’s man could send her messages through the radio, because the radio was not even on.

“The radio is not working,” said Madhu. “See…there aren’t even any batteries in it.”

She opened the small hatch where the batteries were normally placed and showed it to Bulbul, who took the radio in her hand and caressed it.

“It’s been good to me,” said Bulbul.

“Bulbul, you have to listen to me,” said Madhu. “Please. I’m your friend, your sister who will never lie to you.”

“I thought you would understand.”

“I do…”

“You’re just as bad. You stand on a bridge for hours…”

“What?”

“You stand on that bridge…where you lived…”

“What are you talking about?” Madhu’s voice rose. “What would I stand on a bridge for? Do you think I’m mad?”

“No,” said Bulbul. “I don’t think you are mad at all. Neither did gurumai.”

Madhu stared at Bulbul, but she was not even looking her way. She was trying to find comfort in her own reflection. Madhu felt dizzy.

“Gurumai knew?” she asked, more to herself than Bulbul.

“We saw you one night, standing next to the banana seller…You were looking at your old balcony.”

Bulbul got up from her stool and put the radio back on the ledge.

“You believe your family will take you back. The same way I believe my man will come for me.”

“Why…why didn’t you tell me you knew?” asked Madhu.

“It was not the right time,” said Bulbul. “But it is now.”

“What do you mean?”

“One mother is dead,” said Bulbul dully. “Maybe it’s time for you to return to the other.”

Madhu thought about that wisp of air she had felt on her forearm last night when she touched gurumai’s body. She had no doubt now that it had indeed been gurumai’s last word. She had not imagined it. And now she was able to grasp what the last word had been.

Return.

That’s what gurumai wanted Madhu to do. Gurumai’s last wish had not been for herself; it had been for Madhu. She did not want her child to be an orphan. Of all people, it was Bulbul who had confirmed this. Madhu felt a tenderness for Bulbul rise within her suddenly, like it had when the two of them first met.

“You really think I should go back?” Madhu asked.

“Will standing on that bridge bring you peace?”

“But what if…what if they…” Madhu struggled to finish her sentence. She could not bring herself to ask the question. So she decided to ask a question that Bulbul would be able to answer. “What did gurumai say? When she found out?”

“She said nothing,” replied Bulbul. “Neither of us spoke about it.”

Until now, thought Madhu. Until gurumai’s final breath.

Madhu decided she would return to the one who had brought her into this world. And she would have to do it now. If she thought about it too long, she would lose the courage to take this step. Yes, it would have to be now, in this moment of despair and madness brought on by gurumai’s sudden passing.

Madhu’s mother was old now, but still breathing. Madhu was certain that she had kept her mother alive by standing on that bridge for hours. She had stalked her mother with her love. All those nights she stared at the balcony, she had been providing oxygen to a woman who had made the mistake of holding her breath and spitting her child out of her womb and her life.

Now she would have the chance to take Madhu back.

It was a Monday afternoon. Because it was a public holiday, the family would be at home to witness the reunion.

Usually when Madhu exited the red-light district, she felt like she was doing something illegal, like crossing a border without a passport, or breaking quarantine while infected. Today, however, she felt nothing of the sort. She was no longer a hijra; she was no longer Madhu Chickni. She was a boy in short pants again, and a girl caught inside that boy, like a parrot in a cage. When she passed by Underwear Tree, she noticed a row of new underwear, freshly washed and hung out to dry. This was a good sign: newness. A sign of prosperous beginnings. In the little hut below Underwear Tree, she caught a glimpse of her face in a small mirror and was shocked to see something rare: a smile. Perhaps gurumai herself had etched it there with her crafty old hands.

Apart from that smile, gurumai had also given Madhu clarity. Madhu’s naked hatred for her father had blinded her to the real person she needed to make amends with: her mother. Her father could be excused for not understanding her, she thought. But wasn’t her mother the true custodian of Madhu’s soul? Gurumai had merely done a touch-up on Madhu’s body, to keep it in sync with the soul—the hijra soul that lived in the womb for nine months. Madhu’s mother had to have known who Madhu really was.

Madhu thought of going to the forty-seventh step to calm herself. But no—there was no need for that. She told herself to believe, to not be a coward. Bulbul had made her believe, and gurumai was giving her the strength to race toward the ones she loved, the ones who would take her in. She would enter their lives again the way a humble ray of light enters a dim hallway.

At last she was face to face with the building she had once lived in, the concrete of her youth. The footpath was still the same shambles it had been back then; the only difference was that new holes had appeared. She stood at the entrance, astonished that she had made it this far. The long corridor that led to the elevator was unmanned; the watchman’s stool was empty. She gathered her wits and went straight to the elevator. She would have preferred to take the stairs but her legs were jelly. She hoped she would not collapse when her brother opened the door. Or would it be her mother? Or, even better, him?

Her father, who had spent many sleepless nights on account of her, she would forgive with the might of saints. Even if he had become a jibbering-jabbering lump of flesh whose mind was gone and whose eyes could barely see, she would sit by his side and feed him. She was used to caring for the dying.

If her brother was married, she would get along famously with his wife, and if there was a child, she would be in a unique position to be both uncle and aunty.

The door was the same, with the same brass nameplate. Nothing had changed.

Her heart was so unabashed in its excitement that there was no need to ring the bell. The way it thumped was announcement enough. But she rang the bell anyway. Perhaps her family would think it was the butcher or the vegetable vendor or the postman. In a way, she was a postman delivering good news of love lost and found. Her sari was the white envelope, and she herself the letter, her eyes the ending and the beginning.

Come on. She had waited too long. The time was ripe. Gurumai had died so that Madhu could come here.

The door did not open.

She cursed herself for not bringing gifts. She should have brought something, some token.

Maybe no one was home.

That was fine. It was providence: maybe she was meant to buy each member of her family a present. She was a sailor who had returned from the wild seas. Of course she should bring them something from her travels.

She took the stairs down. Rather than being disappointed, she was still delirious with the thought of her return, her newfound bravery sparkling inside her.

As she left the dimness of the corridor and entered the street, she came to a sudden halt. A short woman was limping toward the entrance of the building. Madhu was hit by a force greater than any strong wind. There was a rush of memories, a warm smell, a voice singing to Madhu when she was little. The woman was clutching a small grocery bag that contained vegetables, her arm wrinkled with age.

It was her. And she was with her son, the one she cared for.

The son walked right behind her, talking on his mobile phone. Madhu froze. She quaked with love, was filled with the desire to rush into her mother and take that grocery bag from her hand. She almost screamed out, “Ammi, Ammi, Ammi”—three times, as if she had won a prize. But before the words could leave her mouth, her mother looked right at her, and Madhu’s mind careened out of control.

Her feet staked roots in the ground out of terror. Then her mother moved past Madhu, as did her brother. They moved past, but then her mother looked back. She stared at Madhu’s face. Madhu could hardly believe it. After more than twenty-five years, their eyes were meeting again. Her mother came to Madhu, stepped forward, and placed something in the palm of Madhu’s hand.

Then she turned away and entered the building.

Madhu stared at her palm. It held a five-rupee coin.

—

The coin throbbed in her palm, pulsating like a mistake, shivering with the truth. She had been mistaken for a beggar, and that fact shot through her belly, the shame of it trickling down her legs as she ran home.

Kamathipura took her back without so much as a whimper. What a fool she had been to think she could abandon it. But this time as she stood outside Hijra House and looked up at the building that was her abode, she recognized it for what it truly was. The balcony where she was once put on display, with jasmine in her hair and fake jewels around her neck, was diseased in daylight. Hijra House had given her asylum, but it was not her home. She was a patient there, much like Bulbul and the rest of her sisters. Over the years they had stood outside, like clothes on a laundry line, hoping that the wind would take them away, whisk them to a better future. They were delusional. And she was the most delusional of them all in thinking that her mother would take her back.

She did not feel like climbing the stairs. She felt like going down, descending into the earth. She walked away from the building, without any aim at all, the stray dogs reminding her that even they had someone to lick, unlike her. A blind beggar was limping next to her, his silver eyes deep within their sockets. He had his arm on another man’s shoulder, a begging partner who sang praises of Allah into a flower-shaped microphone and urged the faithful to give alms. Even the blind beggar had someone to guide him and speak on his behalf. But not Madhu. She was truly alone. As she walked, she remembered the scent of someone who was just as alone as she was, someone who, like her, had no mother any longer, no family. No one. Her cage was the only place Madhu could be right now. She needed its history, the cries of past parcels stuck on the walls, their dainty feet thrashing against the cage bars.

She climbed the ladder that led to the loft and lay down beside the parcel. She did not mimic the parcel, but she saw that they were two bodies in sync, both wanting to curl into a ball and disappear into oblivion. The coin was still in Madhu’s palm, a reminder of how unrecognizable she had become.

In a year or two, no one would be able to recognize the parcel either.

Madhu remembered another parcel who had been held captive in the brothel for three years. The only movement she had been allowed during that time was from cage to brothel bed to toilet. Hundreds of clients later, when she was finally offered daylight, she trembled. But what no one expected, or perhaps even cared to think about, was what would happen when she saw her face in a mirror. After three years, she had become someone else. She was all of thirteen, and three of her front teeth were broken, and her scalp showed through thin strands of hair. She started screaming at the mirror, begging to know where she had gone.

How wise she was. Unlike Madhu.

Madhu had stared at the mirror every single day and tried to beautify herself, and in doing so had masked the person she had turned into. If she had not looked at herself for a year or two, she would have been shocked into seeing exactly what her mother had today: a dilapidated face struggling to retain the slightest form of dignity. A body and face that had emerged from her mother’s womb was now worth five rupees in pity. Madhu would have seen that.

The foolishness of her act made the silence in the cage unbearable.

“Do you think your mother sold you?” she asked the parcel.

As the parcel’s body moved a little, it gave off a strong odour, but Madhu knew it was the cage itself that reeked.

“Tell me,” said Madhu.

“No,” said the parcel.

“How do you know?”

“She was my mother…”

If Madhu had had the strength to smile, she would have. Her work was complete. The parcel spoke of her mother as though she was in the past. The fact that she believed in her mother was irrelevant. Why could Madhu not work that same magic on herself? How could she have fallen for the very illusion she had protected the parcels from?

“You shall meet the man tomorrow,” said Madhu. “You are ready.”

She wanted the parcel to react; she wanted her to cry. Then Madhu could be of some use—and she desperately wanted to be of service to another human being. But the parcel gave her nothing. The girl was silent, and in her breathing there were no signs of panic. Her breaths were even, while Madhu’s were fast and sour. She could not console anyone. She was left gripping the coin again. She scurried out of that hole and down the ladder, a rat on the run.

—

Back at Hijra House, Madhu sat in a corner, dazed, watching Bindu nayak opening gurumai’s safe, and wondered how she had allowed Bulbul to talk her into such madness. But it was not Bulbul’s fault. She was just a sound, a sudden, startling noise that frightens a person into pulling the trigger on their own gun. The gun had always been in Madhu’s hand and it had always been pointed at her own temple. Bulbul was just the sound.

“Stand up,” Devyani whispered to Madhu. “Bindu nayak’s getting angry.”

Madhu did not care about the hijra chieftain. She rose not to appease the nayak, but because gurumai’s safe had finally been opened. Bindu nayak had taken the key from gurumai’s neck while cleaning the body the night before and had brought it back to Hijra House. She wanted to open the safe in front of all the disciples so there could be no accusations later on.

A list was made of gurumai’s bangles, jewellery, and cash. There were also some photographs. But no will.

“There’s no will,” said Bindu nayak. “Do you know if she made a will?”

Madhu was careful not to speak. This afternoon she had acted without thinking and it had cost her everything. Her last ounce of self-respect had fled from her. She was determined not to falter again. If she told Bindu nayak about the will, that it was with Padma’s lawyer, Madhu would be offering the information in blind trust. She would stay silent and let the consequences play out. Later, she would get hold of the will, and if it was in favour of her and her sisters, she would bring it to the table.

“If there is no will, then everything has to be distributed equally,” said Bindu nayak. “I leave it up to you to do that. As the senior-most hijra in this house, Bulbul will be your new guru.”

“But Bulbul…she’s not…,” said Anjali.

Madhu respected her for not completing the sentence.

“She’s not capable?” asked Bindu nayak. “Even if that is true, I will be overseeing the matters of this household now. She will report to me.”

Bindu nayak kissed Bulbul on the forehead, placed her palm on Bulbul’s head, and blessed her. Bulbul remained unperturbed, neither happy nor sad. She might as well have been anointed as a fly on the wall.

Bindu nayak took Madhu aside. “As you know, nayaks cannot condone sex work. It is unfortunate, but that’s the way things are. You are closest to Bulbul. I will stay in touch with you. I am counting on your co-operation.”

Then Bindu nayak, a royal guest who had graced their home and touched their weary foreheads, left. Madhu did not know why her co-operation was needed. What did Bindu nayak mean when she said she could not condone sex work? Did she expect Hijra House to become a beauty parlour?

Madhu shook her head. Her more immediate concern was the contents of the safe. There was one item she especially wanted, that would be hers and hers alone. It was wrapped in a cream cloth, but she could see its shape. It was pushing through, wanting to be uncovered.

She reached out and felt the cold grey metal of the knife in her hands. This had been the instrument of deliverance for her and many other hijras from far corners of this land. It would be hers now. From now on, it would always be with her wherever she went. Just as a rooster carried Bahuchara Mata through the heavens, this knife was gurumai’s vehicle. Gurumai would have wanted Madhu to have it because she was her most successful patient.

She held the knife on the edges of her forefingers. It had perfect balance. There was not a single blood stain on it—a sure sign that gurumai had had no blood on her hands when she castrated young men. It had never been polished in all those years and it still had a shine—not the way gold or silver gleamed, but there was a hint of brightness, as though the blade had been dipped in a full moon and remembered the taste.

Madhu now had something from both mothers. A knife and a coin. But she did not know what to do with either.