Epiphany

There were tears in my mother’s eyes, my father was silent and appeared completely nonchalant about the whole situation; whereas my brother tried to console my mother.

“It’s only a train journey Maa, in less than 3 hours he will be at his hostel”, my brother tried his best to console her; my mother’s inconsolable weeping hardly put me at any sort of comfort. So much for the perfect overture.

The blaring siren marked the beginning of the train journey, as the train chugged its way out of the station, that particular moment, I felt at peace. But this is also the moment my father chose to break his silence; with the swagger of man with nothing to lose, he spat out the red remains of the pan he was chewing, walking alongside the slow moving train, he started off on the dos and don’ts of train journey.

“Don’t get too friendly with strangers; Always chain your baggage to the underneath of your seat; don’t accept anything edible from your fellow passengers; you are bound to meet beggars on the train, don’t encourage them”. All this he said while neatly evading the throngs of people standing in his way, the grace and guile displayed by him there was enough to make Zinedine Zidane stand up and applaud.

I nodded in obedience, my nod is my yes, I closed my eyes and waved at my still weeping mother and my father, my brother was now standing over at the tea shop, he smiled and waved at me. I sank back to my seat and was met with the gaze of the middle aged couple seated before me, I looked to my side and saw an old man, eating ‘jhal mudhi’; the lady sitting in front of was the first to speak, “Is this your first time on a train?”.

“Second time” I replied, trying to be as discrete as possible, then without thinking I blurted out “first time on my own”.

What was I thinking?

*****************************

An hour had passed, nothing out of the ordinary had happened, for me nothing out of ordinary was ever going to happen anytime soon. I was about to be proved wrong this time.

The TT came up to me, and to my surprise it turned out to be a friendly face, my uncle Bimol.

“Anirban, is that you?” I looked up and saw his name tag where his heart was, the black and white attire and a clipboard in his hand; he stood there with a smile on his face.

“It’s so nice to see you Bimol Da” I started off. In reality I was jealous of him, jealous of his black and white attire, his clipboard, his name tag, how I wished it was my name on that tag, not his. I always wanted to travel, see faraway places, meet new faces, and learn new stories.

“Your parents are very proud of you, so am I, you realize that I hope”. He said

Damn, more responsibilities, now I’m the poster boy of the family, getting into IIT isn’t such a big deal, but for them it was, they looked up to me, I was going to be the role model for the number of cousins, who are brain washed into dreaming what our parents want us to dream. Now the joke is I don’t even know half of their names. This is a joke, not a Haha joke, but it’s a joke.

For me IIT was supposed to be the ticket out of my personal hell, little did I know, getting out of hell takes a lot from you, it leaves you drained, drained like the rickshaw puller lying outside the whorehouse, The w***e gets what she wants from you, your bodily fluids and your money.

*************************************

The train stopped at a station. Fresh faces started replacing the old, the train was scheduled for a 10 minutes stop, so I took the liberty of getting out and stretching my legs. It was then I noticed a group of eunuchs, they looked they were about to get on the train. Now I’ve heard about them, read about them, it was only last week that I read extensively about them, found an article on them in a dirty magazine.

Thanks to the internet, i've come to know about different lables by which people address them, transexuals, tranny, ladyboys, etc. Hijras is what they are called over here in India. Sometimes I wonder about them, are they simply men masquerading as women to earn their daily bread, or are they born that way?

I read a few stories about them, one of them was about a kid called Rajesh, his parents died of cholera, leaving him to his grandmother, who struck with insanity chopped off the kid’s manliness, and offed herself. A nurse took pity on the poor kid and brought it to the red light district and handed it over to a colony run by eunuch’s, that was the story of how Rajesh became Rajini.

Another bizarre tale I heard was about a school kid, who was sodomized by his uncle, he complained to his parents, and his parents abandoned him, left to fend for himself, he befriended an eunuch and went on to become one.

A wave of unevenness struck me the moment I laid my eyes on the eunuch bunch. There was something about them that disturbed me, the way they laughed, their attire, their walk, the songs they sang, the rhythmic gyrations attached to their singing.

They were begging for money, no begging isn’t the right word here; it’s more like an exchange. An exchange, involving cash and blessings. My mother once told me that, eunuchs are blessed by god himself and we should never look down upon them as freaks.

Now before I could know it, they were here.

“Babu, god will bless you” was the first thing I heard. Followed by “you are fine handsome lad, care to give us something”, before I knew it they were all over me, they had no problems in keeping their hands to themselves, I pushed my hand into my pocket and handed over the first note that I was able to dig out, it was a 500 rupee note.

The look on their exfoliated faces said it all; I certainly had no intention of handing out that big an amount. They blessed me, and I felt odd, odd in the sense that it all felt genuine, their voices had changed, it seemed as if they really mean what they were saying.

And with a smile they left; now I had missed something here. There was one person in that group, who kept quite all the time, and she did not even remotely looked like a transsexual, she was pretty, for a minute she seemed like a Barbie doll. A Barbie with a dick might be the apt thing to say here.

Wait a minute; I thought to myself, “How am I supposed to address them, he or she?”

I had this urge to go ahead and talk to her. No, I was not looking to sodomize someone or get sodomized.

I took a swig from my bottle and looked out of the window, the scenery has changed now, instead of paddy and sugarcane fields, I can see is warehouses and factories, all of this seems so redundant.

My fellow passengers, travelling from point A to point B. Travelling to be with their families or earn bread for their families. All of this is such a cliché. They have been prepared by their parents. Sheep is what I call them.

Even I’ll be soon joining this brand of sheep. I’ve been prepared well, got all my training from my family. I did everything I was asked to do. I studied hard, I helped my dad with the bakery, tutored my younger brother, but when it came to having fun, the only friend I had, was my collection of books and magazines.

By now the wave of epiphany has started striking me, and has left me spitting out sand in its wake.

The urge to go out there, and have a decent one on one with her was strong now. I looked around, I got up and started off in their direction, I glanced around and saw faces, faces immersed deep in what they were doing. By now I was sure that this current wave of epiphany has knocked me off my feet. Just then I stumbled over some swarthy guy’s luggage, he started swearing, I paid no heed, uttered an incomprehensible apology and continued on my search.

The train has started to slow down. I noticed my uncle checking tickets in the next compartment, I tried to avoid him; I avoided him. The train was crawling by now. Kharagpur is still an hour away, so I got time on my side, I pushed further, few passengers were getting ready to get down, I kept moving pushing people out of my way. The train had stopped now, passengers were getting down, and fresh wave of passengers came in. I finally managed to spot one of them eunuchs.

By now my mind was clouded with thoughts of how am I going to start a conversation? What will others think of me? What if my uncle catches me? But I was determined to talk, now only I needed was to get my opening line together.

There she was, her untied hair, stretched up to her waist, I wondered if it was a wig or it’s for real? Her pink colored top and her colorful plastic bangles were hardly in symmetry with one another.

My chase is over I thought, the quest is complete, we exchanged glances, and she smiled.

The train was at a standstill now, she and her group are about to get off the train, my quest is about to meet a premature ending.

I had reached the door, and she was there, standing with the bunch. The train now started moving, I waved at them, and they waved back, the one I sought, smiled and waved at me.

I stood by at the door until the train had left the platform, there was nothing more to see, and I headed back to my seat; I have this feeling that from now things will be different.

And I’m looking forward to it.