Yes, eunuchs drive my days this week. They were here last Saturday, when I was partway-sleepy partway-high (on Bhang), and we had a really incoherent communication, with me trying to explain there is no ‘Boss’ in the office, and offering them Rs. 10 to make peace, which they mocked, and left with threats to visit the coming week. They expect at least a few hundred, I assume (I was off-mark in my assumption, as explained below).
Got into a conversation with the cleaning guy, or Baba as I refer to him (Baba is what you call any elderly person), about these ‘Hijras’. With great hostility (as should be of a person who works like a dog round the year to barely make it to the next, as against these eunuchs who earn the same amount in a matter of minutes) he explained their modus operandi: These folks stay in some village (I forget the name) in the nearby Sec 44. Around such festivals they would methodically sweep all establishments, arriving in cars, splitting the buildings/neighborhoods among themselves, working in twos or threes. “They extorted 6000 from the Sardar in that adjacent office,” I was told. “If they will come to know you have started with a new office here they won’t leave without 10000.” I could only imagine how someone, with a jubilatory grace about their new startup, or their newly-born, would also sit in fear of being heckled by these assholes. Yes, assholes, because the sympathy ends when you find how they act like the Mafia, and have complete immunity from the law. Their bungalows are also underway construction now (in that case is it the role of us non-hijras to go and heckle them?)
Also gained some detail into the Baba’s life, who gave away the fact of his annual location shifts while explaining how these Hijras heckle people even on the long-distance Kolkata/Mumbai trains.**
Baba's life: Baba originally hails from Kanpur. His wife, the cleaning lady (a complete inversion of the image of ‘Dirty Latina Maid’, as me and Rafal would jokingly refer to her), belongs to Mumbai. How they - two folks of modest means and diverse geographies - met was ‘fate’, as Baba explained: they got in a romantic interlude while her parents were visiting Kanpur. Turns out her family wasn’t of that modest means as I imagined - her family had a more affluent background, them being employed in the railways in smaller but stable jobs; several hands to feed makes for a complete meal. “Mere paas to unke saamne 1 paisa bhi nahin hain,” which summed it neatly.
I remember coming to tears in laughter, with four other friends in our hotel room in Manali, watching Mohabbat ki Arzoo. Baba here made that seem small here; human condition itself is divine comedy.
PS: For every comment to this post, Baba gets a INR 50 bonus for this Diwali.
* I couldn't find a vile enough eunuch photograph, but here's the ritualistic wikipedia page, and a a youtube video
** I contributed to the discussion of eunuchs in trains by recalling Parth's travel account of how once on his Orissa-Delhi journey, a Sardarji on the opposite berth was grabbed by the scrotum as he tried to fake sleep in front of these eunuchs, and not let off without handing them some money. I, personally, have never been grabbed by the nuts on my train travel.
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