If horses, carts, and palanquins borne by slaves stumbled into startling sights, a motorbike is just as good, though considerably recalcitrant when broken down. Especially when stuck within the damn sight and its awesome fear. Now why did I have to learn driving then? Why didn’t I remember that Neutral is essential if the bike shouldn’t be neutral to your frenzied kicks? And why is development in
West of a magnificent suburban colony in Thane, Mumbai, and in the funereal side of midnight, linger hijras (eunuchs) for husbands back from night duty. Walk past the Mulund Check Point (the entrance to Mumbai from Thane and further north) and you get to their …chawl….but…chawl is too lavish for a four by four square defined by a few rags, like those card houses one built while young. The rags double as clothes. I looked at the vague distance with my bike heading for the sludgy moonless sky, still going on and on, and me holding on and trying to hold it back, and finally I managed.
They stood or slouched, freelancing lust.
Never stop a bike when you expect to see hijras start up like so many disturbed fiends at the sight of you. Their painted faces and strong, healthy arms repulsed me. A few seconds later I made out their cheeks and elbows. Not a single grin, no slumping maleness. The bike slowly, cumbrously tilted earthward. Crash. Panicking, I hove from the bars, the shin could wait, but the hijras were too fast for me. They were plunging toward me even before I fell, and of course they were going to castrate me. It was all very dull and predictable.
Rude voices asking me if anything was wrong, grating hands dusting me, I took care to look dazed, so that there would be some pity. Then it struck me that they had no scalpels. I exhaled, and felt the adrenaline pump. Thinking about it made it slow down. For one small second, a great, fundamental revulsion sucked my muscles dry and brittle and stiff with the grace that a male has. That got me sane again. I don’t quite know what I did then, but the circle of hijras looked mildly hostile, with no real menace. I smiled, and that generally works. Thaynks, Thaynks, I said, shaking my head like a Tanjore Doll. I drank in the pungent sight.
Finally some brow muscles bunched back and I had a face again. I grinned, begging forgiveness for the insult that I had just spat at them with just my face. I declared lifelong services, like all good Indians do. One of them held my wrist, and a good deal of that service was done, far as I was concerned, in the second I didn’t jerk my arm back.
Haan? (yeah?) I asked, letting my arm go slack.
Hamko help karega? ( help us: tapori,
Avanayen kekara? (why ask him? Tamil). The distraction got me my arm back.
Ho, ho, tyachya thond bagithla ka? (got a look at his face? Marathi)
Nahi, theek lagtha hai. (looks fine, back to Hindi again)
Understanding each other across different languages makes for a strong, healthy hijra community, engaging in prostitution, scare tactics; and even dancing in ages now rotten away.
A polyglot always gets an immediate laugh with his trick, and I rustled the languages around a bit. ‘kya chahiye? Enna kelunga, mala bhai nahi vatthe, haan mein theek hoon.’ (What is needed? Ask me? I am not afraid).
They led me inside the foursquare, into a recess veiled by a piece from the rag/wall, with a computer that had conked, a battered Dell. It was given by some hijra up Bhandup side, and was to be returned soon. It was like some philosopher’s stone for hijras, containing a database of all homosexuals in the city. They needed that information pretty badly for blackmail reasons. I offered to get it repaired. Least I could do. They nodded. Just in case, I asked them why they weren’t getting it done by some professional. They (sigh) knew about hackers and didn’t want the info misused. Why couldn’t I be a hacker? They were taking a chance, used to it. This was getting all dull and predictable.
I repaired it, and got to know some of them personally. They were quite interesting, but that’s another story.
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