Hijra Dreams

Ratnagiri, India, 1967

Hands are spaces of relation, undeterminable from the present reality. Fingers are digits of imagination, capable of creating realities of possibility. What happens when I tell my story of forsaken worlds that were a breath away from being?

My life began in the fields of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. My family were farmers who consumed what they produced. In a way, they consumed me in their denial of my truth. From the age of four, I had a peculiar tendency to enjoy only what I desired, whether lipstick, fried foods, or my mother's saris. The fabric would emblazon me, making my hands like songbirds chanting in mornings.

I vividly remember the night, not because of my trauma, but because it was impossible for me to foresee. The first time my father beat me was when I was dreaming of another world. A purple sari wrapped around my body, imagining I was Meena Kumari dancing on a sound stage to a Lata Mangeshkar song. She fell off the stage when my father barged in, tore off the sari around my body, and dragged me out of the house for good. He muttered under his breath that no child of his would shame him in this way as a slam named the rotten wooden gate closed behind us. The latch echoed and squealed as it hit the lock. That was the last sound I heard before I lost everything I had known.

A woman was standing there in front of the gate, wearing a black dupatta embroidered with white flowers covering her eyes. My body became a garden statue, frozen tending to blossoms in front of my house.

My father took bills from his pocket and handed them to a woman before me. She took it gladly and gestured for me to grab her hand. My father looked at me nervously, as if his slightly bulging eyes were considering the reality of what he had done.

Madam Azana took my hand, and we walked down the street. A man in a white cut-out shirt was peddling his bike, pools of salt stuck to his violet cheeks. Women in purple and green shalwar kameez walked in a line towards us. A woman wearing Western clothes entered a rickshaw near us. I felt numb, unable to realize what had happened. My father has paid this woman. That money was for his honor. That money was to deny me my family, my power. It was a dowry to banishment.

The sky took on a blue I need never seen before. I was staring at trees as banana blossoms grew in strange directions around me, reflecting green light here and there. The tears welled in my eyes, and a tsunami of emotion overwhelmed me. I slammed onto the ground, heaving for air. Azana quietly grabbed my hand in silence. "Aja, Bheti." Come, sweetheart. I arose to my feet, but I could feel nothing. My heart was louder than all the trains in India as they arrive in the station. I could feel nothing because I knew everything now.

After what seemed like an eternity, the woman took a turn into a bustling bazaar. Stalls lined the walls, and women in saris wrapped in hijab bartered with each other about the price. We maneuvered through the crowd as she took my hand in her own. Her clutch was tight and clammy, but there was something gentle and tender about the way it felt. We turned onto a dusty street with a row of brick buildings. We passed two cows chewing sod on the sidewalk as we walked in a four-story home, a fourth-floor walk-up flat.

The room itself was smoky, the walls barely visible. All I could hear was the guttural laughs and brusque notes of an accented Hindi I had never heard. I heard thirty voices darting from the invisible walls. The woman I was with clapped her hands, and everything came to a halt.

I did not see who opened the door, but my nostrils fluttered as the cigarette smoke hit them. An elderly round woman came before me. She was almost my height. Gazing at me, she passed her hands next to the top of my head to vanquish the evil eye.

"We have a new member amongst us. Today we welcome a new sister. Her name is Devata Shakunthala."

Someone turned on a radio in the corner, and Disco Deewane began blaring from its small speakers. Someone opened a window, and as the smoke cleared, my aunties began dancing around me, clapping their hands, singing along to the words. They held me, and we danced in a circle around the room as the smoke billowed out through the window. I knocked into an ashtray, someone shouted for someone else to clean it up, and we continued our precious movements.

Something profound happened being with my sisters. I understood how flowers grow and how seas converge. I understood something ephemeral that day about the universe beyond words.

"I am Mathu Guru. I am the woman of the house here."

Gesturing for me to enter the room clouded thick by incense smoke, I enter I world I had never seen before. Women sat on two couches, smoking cigarettes, bellowing hoarse laughter as their gossip reached its climax. Pictures of women who looked like them line the walls haphazardly. Each is emblazoned with shiny carnation garlands, with lit incense sticks emanating wails of smoke from the recesses of the picture frames. The women were wearing housedresses, and one was putting on makeup that was two shades too light for her skin.

I watched as Madam Azana took out a small black book from a shelf and wrote something down. She gestures for me to come to her.

"You see all this? This is yours. You are out hijra sister now, and I am your guru."

We walked into the dining room, where three women in emerald saris shining with silver to blind me sat before three worn leather chests of money. These were the chests I had seen in old films, the ones the Britishers used in their travels through the subcontinent. All three were filled to the brim with one-thousand rupee notes. It was the most cash I had ever seen in my life.

Madam Azana called everyone to attention: "We have a new member amongst us. Today we welcome a new sister. We shall call her Devi."

Knowing something now, the floor looked closer than it seemed. I could feel my mind going silent. I was one of them now, and nothing would change that.

"You stop the game for this. Muthu, came take a seat. She can start work in the kitchen."

"She's not the maid," Azana yelled. "Come sit, my love."

I tried to move a chest, but it was too heavy.

"Do not worry about that, my love. This is all yours too. This is what your sisters have been working for. I promised myself in 1947 to make twenty thousand American dollars. I knew after the war that would be the smartest money to desire. And here it is. All our hard work and blessings is the result." She threw the money my father had given her into the pile.

Someone turned on a radio in the corner as I lowered myself into a chair at the table. Disco Deewane began blaring from its small speakers. A woman opened a window, and as the smoke cleared, my aunties began dancing around me, clapping their hands, singing along to the words. They held me, and we danced in a circle around the room as the smoke billowed out through the window. I knocked into an ashtray, someone shouted for someone else to clean it up, and we continued our precious movements.

I felt something profound happen being with my sisters. I understood how flowers grow and how seas converge. That day, I understood something ephemeral about the universe. I was a hijra. Mera sat, my truth, arrived.