Megha Majumdar

“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm. 

“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.” 

“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply. 

Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.

Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says. 

We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.” 

Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
 
“Go down,” she says. 

When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.” 

I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.

Sunday morning! Time to go to acting class. With my hips swinging like this and like that, I am walking past the guava seller.

“Brother,” I am calling, “what’s the time?” 

“Eight thirty,” he is grumbling, because he is not wishing to share with me the fruits of his wristwatch. Leave him. I am abandoning my stylish walk and running like a horse to the local railway station. On the train, while I am touching my chest and forehead, saying a prayer for those poor people who were dying a few days ago at this very station— 

“Who is pushing?” one aunty is shouting. “Stop it!” 

“This hijra couldn’t find a different compartment to hassle?” the peanut seller is hissing, as if I am not having ears. 

Nothing is simple for a person like me, not even one hour on the train. My chest is a man’s chest, and my breasts are made of rags. So what? Find me another woman in this whole city as truly woman as me.

In the middle of this crowd a legless beggar is coming down the corridor, sitting on a wheeled plank of wood which he is rolling on everybody’s feet. 

“Give me one coin,” he is whining. 

People are yelling at him. 

“Now you need to pass?” 

“No eyes or what?” 

“Where will I stand, on your head?” 

Now he is also shouting back, “Let me cut off your legs, then you see how you manage!”

It is true to god making me laugh and laugh. This is why I am liking the local trains. You can be burning one train, but you cannot be stopping our will to go to work, to class, to family if we have them. Every local train is like a film. On the train, I am observing faces, body movements, voices, fights. This is how people like me are learning. When this train is swaying, picking up speed, wind whipping my hair, I am putting my fingertips on the ceiling, making my body straight and tall for Mr. Debnath’s acting class.

AT HOME, AFTER DINNER, PT Sir sits back in his chair, gravy-wet fingers resting atop his plate, and tells his wife, “Strange thing happened today. Are you listening?”

 His wife is thin and short, her hair plaited such that it needs no rubber band at its taper. When she looks at him from her chair, it appears she has forgiven him for the forgotten tomatoes. 

Something has happened at the school, she thinks. A man teaching physical training to a group of girls, all of whom are growing breasts, their bellies cramping during menstruation, their skirts stained now and then. A bad situation is bound to arise.

“What happened?” she says fearfully. 

“There was a Jana Kalyan rally in the field behind the station,” he begins, “then one man climbed on a car—understand? Climbed on top of a car—and took out. . .Tell me what he took out!”

 “How will I know?” she says. When she bites into a milk sweet, white crumbs fall on her plate. “Gun, or what?” 

“Dagger!” he says, disappointed. The truth is always modest. He goes on, “But Katie Banerjee was there—” 

“Katie Banerjee!” 

“Then Bimala Pal also was there. Say what you like about her, she is a good orator. And she was saying some correct things, you know. Her speech was good.” 

His wife’s face sours. She pushes back her chair and its legs scrape the floor. “Speech sheech,” she says. “She is pandering to all these unemployed men. This is why our country is not going anywhere.” 

“They are feeding a lot of people with discounted rice,” he says. “And they are going to connect two hundred villages, two hundred, to the electricity grid in two years—” 

“You,” says his wife, “believe everything.”