—
The driver’s cabin was as big as a small hotel room. Neeraj Kumar the driver and Saddam Hussain were old friends. Saddam (master of forethought and attention to detail) placed a wooden fruit crate near the door of the truck. A makeshift step. Comrade Laali jumped in, followed by Tilo and Miss Jebeen the Second. They sat at the back, on a red Rexine bunk bed that truck drivers slept on during long-haul drives when they were tired and the standin driver took the wheel. (Municipal garbage trucks never went on long-haul drives, but they had the bunk beds anyway.) Saddam sat in front, on the passenger seat. He placed the puppy sack between his feet, opened it up for air, put on his sunglasses, rapped the passenger door twice, like a bus conductor, and they were off.
The yellow truck blazed a trail through the city, leaving the stench of burst cow in its wake. This time, unlike the last journey Saddam had made with similar cargo, he was in a municipal truck in the capital of the country. Gujarat ka Lalla was still a year away from taking the throne, the saffron parakeets were still biding their time, waiting in the wings. So temporarily, it was safe.
The truck rattled past the row of car-repair shops, the men and dogs covered in grease, still asleep outside.
Past a market, a Sikh Gurdwara, another market. Past a hospital with patients and their families camped on the road outside. Past jostling crowds at the 24x7 chemists. Over a flyover, the street lights still on.
Past the Garden City with lush, landscaped roundabouts.
As it drove on, the gardens disappeared, the roads grew bumpy and potholed, the pavements grew crowded with sleeping bodies. Dogs, goats, cows, humans. Parked cycle rickshaws stacked one behind the other like the vertebrae in a serpent’s skeleton.
The truck stank its way under crumbling stone arches and past the ramparts of the Red Fort. It skirted the old city and arrived at Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services.
—
Anjum was waiting for them—an ecstatic smile shining out from among the tombstones.
She was splendidly dressed, in the sequins and satin of her glory days. She wore make-up and lipstick, she had dyed her hair and pinned on a thick, long, black plait with a red ribbon woven into it. She enveloped both Tilo and Miss Jebeen in a bear hug, kissing both of them several times.
She had organized a Welcome Home party. Jannat Guest House was decorated with balloons and streamers.
The guests, all splendidly dressed, were: Zainab, a plump eighteen-year-old now, studying fashion design at a local polytechnic, Saeeda (soberly dressed in a sari, in addition to being Ustad of the Khwabgah, she headed an NGO that worked on transgender rights), Nimmo Gorakhpuri (who had driven in from Mewat with three kilos of fresh mutton for the party), Ishrat-the-Beautiful (who had extended her visit), Roshan Lal (who remained poker-faced), Imam Ziauddin (who tickled Miss Jebeen with his beard, and then blessed her and said a prayer). Ustad Hameed played the harmonium and welcomed her in Raag Tilak Kamod:
Ae ri sakhi mora piya ghar aaye
Bagh laga iss aangan ko
O my companions, my love has come home
This bare yard has blossomed into a garden
Saddam and Anjum showed Tilo to the room they had readied for her on the ground floor. She would share it with Comrade Laali and family, Miss Jebeen and Ahlam Baji’s grave. Payal-the-mare was tethered outside the window. The room was festooned with streamers and balloons. Unsure of what arrangements to make for a woman, a real woman, from the Duniya—and not just the Duniya but the South Delhi Duniya—they had opted for a hairdressing-salon type of décor—a dressing table from a second-hand furniture market fitted out with a large mirror. A metal trolley on which there was a range of bottles of different shades of Lakmé nail polish and lipstick, a comb, a hairbrush, rollers, a hairdryer and a bottle of shampoo. Nimmo Gorakhpuri had brought her lifetime’s collection of fashion magazines from her home in Mewat and arranged them in tall piles on a large coffee table. Next to the bed was a baby cot with a big teddy bear propped up on the pillow. (The controversial subject of where Miss Jebeen the Second would sleep and who would be called Mummy—not “badi Mummy” or “chhoti Mummy,” but Mummy—would be raised later. It would be easily resolved because Tilo conceded to Anjum’s demands quite happily.) Anjum introduced Tilo to Ahlam Baji as though Ahlam Baji were still alive. She recounted her accomplishments and achievements and listed the names of some of Shahjahanabad’s luminaries that she had helped bring into the world—Akbar Mian the baker, maker of the best sheermal in the walled city, Jabbar Bhai the tailor, Sabiha Alvi, whose daughter had just started a Benarasi Sari Emporium in the first-floor room of their house. Anjum spoke as though it was a world that Tilo was familiar with, a world that everybody ought to be familiar with; in fact, the only world worth being familiar with.
For the first time in her life, Tilo felt that her body had enough room to accommodate all its organs.
The first ever hotel that had come up in the small town she grew up in was called Hotel Anjali. The street hoardings that advertised this exciting new development said Come to Anjali for the Rest of Your Life. The pun had been unintentional, but as a child she had always imagined that Hotel Anjali was full of the corpses of its unsuspecting guests who had been murdered in their sleep and would remain there for the rest of their (dead) lives. In the case of Jannat Guest House, Tilo felt that that tagline would have been not just appropriate, but comforting. Instinct told her that she may finally have found a home for the Rest of Her Life.
Dawn had just broken when the feasting began. Anjum had shopped all day (for meat and toys and furniture) and cooked all night.
On the menu was:
Mutton Korma
Mutton Biryani
Brain Curry
Kashmiri Rogan Josh
Fried Liver
Shami Kebab
Nan
Tandoori Roti
Sheermal
Phirni
Watermelon with black salt.
The addicts and homeless people from the periphery of the graveyard gathered in the yard to partake of the feast and merriment. Payal snuffled up a substantial serving of phirni. Dr. Azad Bhartiya arrived a little late, but to great applause and affection for having coordinated the escape and homecoming. His indefinite fast had entered its eleventh year, third month and twenty-fifth day. He would not eat, but settled for a deworming pill and a glass of water.
A few kebabs and some biryani were kept aside for the municipal officers who would surely come by later in the day.
“Those fellows are just like us Hijras,” Anjum said and laughed affectionately. “Somehow they smell a celebration and arrive to demand their share.”
Biroo and Comrade Laali feasted on bones and leftovers. As a matter of abundant caution, Zainab sequestered the pups in a place that was inaccessible to Biroo and spent hours delighting in them and flirting outrageously with Saddam Hussain.
Miss Jebeen the Second was passed from arm to arm, hugged, kissed and overfed. In this way she embarked on her brand-new life in a place similar to, and yet a world apart from where, over eighteen years ago, her young ancestor Miss Jebeen the First had ended hers.
In a graveyard.
Another graveyard, just a little further north.
And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.
—JAMES BALDWIN
9
THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF MISS JEBEEN THE FIRST