Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Dr. Nabi prided himself on being a straight-talking man of precise and scientific temper. After examining Aftab he said he was not, medically speaking, a Hijra — a female trapped in a male body — although for practical purposes that word could be used. Aftab, he said, was a rare example of a Hermaphrodite, with both male and female characteristics, though outwardly, the male characteristics appeared to be more dominant. He said he could recommend a surgeon who would seal the girl-part, sew it up. He could prescribe some pills too. But, he said, the problem was not merely superficial. While treatment would surely help, there would be “Hijra tendencies” that were unlikely to ever go away. ( Fitrat was the word he used for “tendencies.”) He could not guarantee complete success. Mulaqat Ali, prepared to grasp at straws, was elated. “Tendencies?” he said. “Tendencies are no problem. Everybody has some tendency or the other…tendencies can always be managed.”

Even though the visit to Dr. Nabi did not provide an immediate solution to what Mulaqat Ali saw as Aftab’s affliction, it benefited Mulaqat Ali a great deal. It gave him coordinates to position himself, to steady his ship that was pitching perilously on an ocean of couplet-less incomprehension. He was now able to convert his anguish into a practical problem and to turn his attention and his energies to something he understood well: How to raise enough money for the surgery?

He cut down on household expenses and drew up lists of people and relatives from whom he could borrow money. Simultaneously, he embarked on the cultural project of inculcating manliness in Aftab. He passed on to him his love of poetry and discouraged the singing of Thumri and Chaiti. He stayed up late into the night, telling Aftab stories about their warrior ancestors and their valor on the battlefield. They left Aftab unmoved. But when he heard the story of how Temujin — Changez Khan — won the hand of his beautiful wife, Borte Khatun, how she was kidnapped by a rival tribe and how Temujin fought a whole army virtually single-handedly to get her back because he loved her so much, Aftab found himself wanting to be her.

While his sisters and brother went to school, Aftab spent hours on the tiny balcony of his home looking down at Chitli Qabar — the tiny shrine of the spotted goat who was said to have had supernatural powers — and the busy street that ran past it and joined the Matia Mahal Chowk. He quickly learned the cadence and rhythm of the neighborhood, which was essentially a stream of Urdu invective— I’ll fuck your mother, go fuck your sister, I swear by your mother’s cock —that was interrupted five times a day by the call to prayer from the Jama Masjid as well as the several other smaller mosques in the old city. As Aftab kept strict vigil, day after day, over nothing in particular, Guddu Bhai, the acrimonious early-morning fishmonger who parked his cart of gleaming fresh fish in the center of the chowk, would, as surely as the sun rose in the east and set in the west, elongate into Wasim, the tall, affable afternoon naan khatai — seller who would then shrink into Yunus, the small, lean, evening fruit-seller, who, late at night, would broaden and balloon into Hassan Mian, the stout vendor of the best mutton biryani in Matia Mahal, which he dished out of a huge copper pot. One spring morning Aftab saw a tall, slim-hipped woman wearing bright lipstick, gold high heels and a shiny, green satin salwar kameez buying bangles from Mir the bangle-seller who doubled up as caretaker of the Chitli Qabar. He stored his stock of bangles inside the tomb every night when he shut shrine and shop. (He had managed to ensure that the working hours coincided.) Aftab had never seen anybody like the tall woman with lipstick. He rushed down the steep stairs into the street and followed her discreetly while she bought goats’ trotters, hairclips, guavas, and had the strap of her sandals fixed.

He wanted to be her.

He followed her down the street all the way to Turkman Gate and stood for a long time outside the blue doorway she disappeared into. No ordinary woman would have been permitted to sashay down the streets of Shahjahanabad dressed like that. Ordinary women in Shahjahanabad wore burqas or at least covered their heads and every part of their body except their hands and feet. The woman Aftab followed could dress as she was dressed and walk the way she did only because she wasn’t a woman. Whatever she was, Aftab wanted to be her. He wanted to be her even more than he wanted to be Borte Khatun. Like her he wanted to shimmer past the meat shops where skinned carcasses of whole goats hung down like great walls of meat; he wanted to simper past the New Life-Style Men’s Hairdressing Salon where Iliyaas the barber cut Liaqat the lean young butcher’s hair and shined it up with Brylcreem. He wanted to put out a hand with painted nails and a wrist full of bangles and delicately lift the gill of a fish to see how fresh it was before bargaining down the price. He wanted to lift his salwar just a little as he stepped over a puddle — just enough to show off his silver anklets.

It was not Aftab’s girl-part that was just an appendage.

He began to divide his time between his music classes and hanging around outside the blue doorway of the house in Gali Dakotan where the tall woman lived. He learned that her name was Bombay Silk and that there were seven others like her, Bulbul, Razia, Heera, Baby, Nimmo, Mary and Gudiya, who lived together in the haveli with the blue doorway, and that they had an Ustad, a guru, called Kulsoom Bi, older than the rest of them, who was the head of the household. Aftab learned their haveli was called the Khwabgah — the House of Dreams.

At first he was shooed away because everybody, including the residents of the Khwabgah, knew Mulaqat Ali and did not want to get on the wrong side of him. But regardless of what admonition and punishment awaited him, Aftab would return to his post stubbornly, day after day. It was the only place in his world where he felt the air made way for him. When he arrived, it seemed to shift, to slide over, like a school friend making room for him on a classroom bench. Over a period of a few months, by running errands, carrying their bags and musical instruments when the residents went on their city rounds, by massaging their tired feet at the end of a working day, Aftab eventually managed to insinuate himself into the Khwabgah. Finally the day dawned when he was allowed in. He entered that ordinary, broken-down home as though he were walking through the gates of Paradise.

The blue door opened on to a paved, high-walled courtyard with a handpump in one corner and a Pomegranate tree in the other. There were two rooms set behind a deep verandah with fluted columns. The roof of one of the rooms had caved in and its walls had crumbled into a heap of rubble in which a family of cats had made its home. The room that hadn’t crumbled was a large one, and in fairly good condition. Its peeling, pale green walls were lined with four wooden and two Godrej almirahs covered with pictures of film stars — Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman, Nargis, Dilip Kumar (whose name was really Muhammad Yusuf Khan), Guru Dutt and the local boy Johnny Walker (Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi), the comedian who could make the saddest person in the world smile. One of the cupboards had a dim, full-length mirror mounted on the door. In another corner there was a beaten-up old dressing table. A chipped and broken chandelier with only one working bulb and a long-stemmed, dark brown fan hung from the high ceiling. The fan had human qualities — she was coy, moody and unpredictable. She had a name too, Usha. Usha wasn’t young any more and often needed to be cajoled and prodded with a long-handled broom and then she would go to work, gyrating like a slow pole dancer. Ustad Kulsoom Bi slept on the only bed in the haveli with her parakeet, Birbal, in his cage above her bed. Birbal would screech as though he was being slaughtered if Kulsoom Bi was not near him at night. During Birbal’s waking hours he was capable of some weapons-grade invective that was always preceded by the half-snide, half-flirtatious Ai Hai! that he had picked up from his housemates. Birbal’s choicest insult was the one most commonly heard in the Khwabgah: Saali Randi Hijra (Sister-fucking Whore Hijra). Birbal knew all the variations. He could mutter it, say it coquettishly, in jest, with affection and with genuine, bitter anger.