Calling Chanda

“Dayya re dayya re charh gayo paapi ... haye Chanda baji kesi ho?” Thirty year old Chanda was startled by a slap on her back. Her anxious face formed a weak smile which gradually strengthened at the sight of Haryalee.
“Haryalee ki bachhi, tu ne tou meri jaan hi nikal di.” Chanda hit Haryalee with her purse, while putting her hand on her heart.

“Allah! Baji, esi bhi kia baymurawwat ho, chaar din se nukkar ki chaye peenay bhi nahi ayeen?”

In her early twenties Haryalee, like Chanda, was a eunuch or more commonly known as the hirja or the third sex member of another hijra community residing in Nagin Chowk.

“Chal hat pagli,” Chanda slapped Haryalee’s face, over done with mascara, foundation and lipstic, playfully. “Kabhi khud bhi mil liya kar apni baji se.”

Haryalee’s eyes distracted to a passing-by pedestrian as they stood on the footpath. She clapped the traditional Hijra clap by slapping her wide open palms together and teased the walker:

“Kidhar ko chalay ho Shahrukh Khan baboo, apni Kajal ko ek ruppaiyya tou detay jao.” She turned back to Chanda, slightly disappointed at her call being ignored.”Jhoot boloon tou saanp kaatay, baji ek minute ka time nahi tha.”
Chanda hit her shoulder, “Nagin chowk wali ko saanp kaatay to marjaye.”

The metal shutters of the Choori bazaar to the opposite end of the busy main road opened all at once and Haryalee’s eyes lightened up.

“Haye haye, baji mein chaloon? Mehboob Bhayya ne kaha tha ke bachi hui reshmi chooriyaan aj mujhe deinge!” Haryalee’s young face reddened with excitement and she ran off as the traffic lights turned red, waving her dupatta and singing: “Gori hai kalaaiyyan, pehna de mujhe lal hari chooriyan.”

Chanda screamed out words of caution after her, scratching her chin where a carelessly undone patch after the morning’s shave was giving her an itch. She sighed as she stared after Haryalee, who was a team of two a week ago. After her friend Nasreen was hit by a car driven by reckless teens, she died on the same road ahead of her. Seeing that it was a Hijra who had been hit, no one volunteered to touch the body of the innocent youth and she had bled to death. Chanda had been begging for money at another one of those huge cars at the other end of the main road and she had left the few notes of paan-stained ten rupees that the woman in the car had held out to her. She had raced across the road to Haryalee’s side who was bent over crying hysterically over Nasreen’s limp body which was going cold by the minute. Chanda had not wasted a minute in calling Shamima, the Guru (master) Hijra of Nagin Chowk for help as it was useless to summon and ambulance – no one would touch a Hijra. There was no use rushing to hospitals and put the paramedics in a dilemma about which ward – the male or the female – to put Nasreen in. Shamima had sent for the hakeem sahib who worked voluntarily for hijra communities but Nasreen didn’t not hold up till he arrived. She was avenged by both communities, the Nagin Chowk and Madhumati Nagar which was Chanda’s residence. She was buried secretly in a far off site outside the city near factories and industries.
As the last memory of Nasreen’s bloodstained face came back to her, Chanda shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye, then wiping her finger on her hair to clean off the kajal that had stained her.

That was to be the fate of a helpless creature like a Hijra. She had wanted to question a lot of entities: God for bestowing hatred and disgust upon people of her third kind, fate for having played around with them so brutally and the teens who hit Nasreen whom she had for second assumed wanted to know whether a Hijra would bleed if a car hit her or him – as per their jokes.

“Haye kesi hai meri Chanda?” her thoughts were interrupted by Subhani sahab’s mischievous tease. He was hurriedly laying out beef patties on a huge oiled platter, for his famous bun kababs, at his thaila which read boastfully “MashAllah Bun Kabab”.

“Salam chacha, nashta tou kara do, Chanda ko kia hona hai. Saneechar ki chhutti ke baad phir kaam pe.” Chanda replied, sitting down on one of the chairs the old man had set out for his early morning breakfasters. Subhani was a kind old man who willingly fed Chanda whenever she called for his bun kabab.

“Aree ja, tu chacha ko bhool hi gaee, kab se nahi ayi bun kabab khanay.”

Chanda laughed, “Haye Allah, chacha, ese sang dil bhi na bano, roz anay lagi Chanda tou lut jaoge. Chanda tou moqay se ati hai.”

She pulled her plait to her front to rest in her lap. It had been made longer by a colourful paraanda and started humming to herself. She was known for being well mannered and civilized in Hijra communities and those who knew of her treated her well. She knew that it was her reputation and the happiness of being well-accepted by warm hearted normal people and people of her kind who exalted her to a noble position which kept her going.

“Kis moqay se ayi hai aj Chanda?” Subhani sahib turned the patties over to fry them from the other end.

Chanda smiled and looked around to see if any customers were coming. She did not want Subhani’s business to suffer because a Hijra was eating at his kiosk. Seeing that there was no one around, she relaxed a bit. “Chanda ka jab chacha se milne ka dil chahay, wohi Chanda ke liye bun kabab ka moqa.” Subhani laughed at her good wit.

She smiled and stared at her feet. She was usually quiet around people she knew, but as a beggar she had to be vibrant and lively as Haryalee. She did that, too, in her own style. Some people were intimidated by her and her kind, others gave money because they had heard that refusing or hurting one of them would bring them bad luck. She laughed at the thought for she considered her kind the worst struck by misfortune.

“Chacha, Shabbo kesi hai? Uska result agaya ke nahi?” Chanda inquired of Subhani’s daughter who was studying in tenth grade.

“Kahan Chanda?” Subhani said as he sprinkled salt and pepper on the patties. “Har maheenay kuch hojata hai. Koi leader agay tou hungama hogaya result nahi nikla, koi hartaal hogayee tou result nahi aya, kia bataayen?”

Chanda nodded and looked at the cars that came to a hault as the lights turned red again. Some people pointed out from the windows of their car in her direction and she looked away. She had grown accustomed to the pointers who were fascinated at sighting a Hijra as if they had spotted a rare animal at an animal safari and would point out from their vehicles.

Her gaze fell on a car where a lady was combing her son’s hair. The boy was about seven, exactly the age when ...
Chanda was drowned in another nostalgic thought. She had been a normal boy, back then, seven years of age in Lucknow. His mother used to comb his hair just like that. She used to call him Chanda in a manner of affection while his real name was something she could not recall anymore. She would talk to him of great things that were to life, of great leaders, of great achievements, of happiness and of dreams. And then, the seven year old’s life had become submerged in agony as fate took a violent turn. She recalled the night, some men had broken into their house with guns and in a blink of an eye the bullets had silenced the heartbeats of her mother and father over an undecided matter. “Chandaaaaa!” they had called to her through blood sputtered mouths.

The men had dragged him off to an unknown place where he was physically harmed to an unimaginable extent of castration and dressed up in female clothes from the next week. Did she remember the pain? Maybe, the details were vague. She had fainted during the process and was revived after seven days. They had asked him his name and he had said Chanda, because that was all a seven year old recalled.
They decided to continue calling him the same, only that his clothes were no longer those of a boy. He was dressed in chooridaars and duapattas and his wrists were decorated with henna and adorned by bangles. His nails were painted with colours, his lips were kept soaked in lipsticks. Layers of facial powders and foundations were patted on to his cheeks and his eyes were blackened by mascara and kajal. He grew accustomed and gradually, fond of the pampering. But then came the beatings – spanking and demand for beggary money from a woman-like man who was called the Guru. It became an uneasy and unhappy life.

“Kahan kho gayeen Chanda?” Subhani’s sudden voice startled her. She managed a smile.

“Chacha, Shabbo ko kehna do lafz angreji ke Chanda ko bhi sikha de.” She piped up her voice to keep the conversation going but the thought-pull was too strong and the chapters of her life that she had opened were demanding to be read again.

“Aree Chanda rani ...” Subhani’s voice faded away as a huge bus rushed past them sending smoke and dust to the bun kabab cabin. The sound, in Chanda’s mind, became the chuk chuk of a train. Eighteen year old Chanda had snuggled in the livestock bogey of the train. She had buried herself between sleeping buffaloes while the train had crossed the Indian border and entered Pakistan. It had been the greatest escape of her life and back in Lucknow, the managers of the lowlife Hijra community had called to her when they had found her bed empty.

“Chandaaaaaaaaaa”

“... Aur mehengayi itni hai Chanda, kitabein kahan se khareedun?” Subhani was complaining. Chanda remembered something.

“Array chacha, Rukhsana begum ne mujhe kal hazaar ka note dia tha unke betay ke aqeeqay pe dhamaal daala tha.” She withdrew a bill of thousand rupees from a knot in her dupatta, hitting her head at how forgetful she had been. “Ye Shabbo ko dena.”

Subhani denied the money and held back his hands. “Ab na kaho tou tumhe Chanda ki qasam.”

Subhani gave up and accepted the note grumbling about how Chanda was doing him a favour and in return offered her everyday’s breakfast and lunch. But Chanda’s mind had drifted off again.

She recalled how she had made her name with her exceptional conduct even in a derogatory world. She had come to Lahore where a wreckloose Hijra community with a kind guru called Dilshad had adopted her. She grew up there and gave twelve years of service to the Madhumati chowk community. She became known in other communities for her fine character and was given the job to train other hijraas. This was not a hostile community and there were no forced kidnappings. The ones brought in were defective by birth or were left to die on garbage heaps by cold hearted parents who are the fire starters to rejected communities like these.

“Payal kesi hai, Chanda?” Subhani asked about the 17 year old new trainee given to Chanda a month ago.

Chanda smiled boastfully, “Ab tou Quran bhi parha rahi hun usay Chacha, sochti hun, parha likh ke kuch banaoon usko, zaheen hai bohat.”

Subhani smiled and unpromising smile which Chanda understood completely. She knew that no school would accept Payal, the kids would run away or the parents would complain. But she wanted to keep the child’s spirits alive for everytime she called upon Chanda in a manner of respect:

“Chanda kaakee”

She had been called so many times by so many people. But how many times were her calls answered? She couldn’t recall.
Her calls had gone unanswered as if they reflected off everyone while she always absorbed their calls. No one heard when she had called for help through the kidnapping and the mutilation. She lay helpless for days when she fell ill and screamed in pain when no hospital could be approached. No one attended to the husky voice coming from a man cum woman body that also had a heart. But she continued to hear them, whenever they called out to her.

Suddenly, her heart leaped to her throat when there was a huge explosion and ear splitting screams echoed from everywhere. At the other end of the road, the Choori bazaar was on fire, there had been a blast. She could already see corpses and pieces of flesh. She couldn’t move while Subhani’s panic struck voice echoed through her head in the background. The death scenes of her parents were flashing through her mind and she wanted to flee from the scene to escape. She put her feet back in her chappals that she had eased out to enjoy her bun kabab. The peaceful scene was now a dooms day climax. She got up to run in the opposite direction when she heard something familiar:

“Chanda bajiiii ...”

It was an earsplitting, heartbreaking scream which had emanated from Haryalee’s throat. Clutching her heart, Chanda turned around and saw the words coming from a limp, fragile body covered in blood. One arm had blown off and the other still had the reshmi green bangles, half glistening and half broken, shard clinging to the bloody wrist. Chanda blinked and then sighed, bracing herself to repeat the ritual, the ritual of picking up another deadbody ... the ritual of answering the call, the call for Chanda.