Six Suspects

'Where do you live?'

'Not too far from Dal Mandi.'

'And what is this?' Eketi pointed to the brown packet in her hand.

'Oh this? This is the medicine which I have found with great difficulty. There was only one pharmacy open at this hour. This is for my friend Rekha. Her daughter is extremely sick.'

'What's the matter with her?'

'She has malaria. For ten days she has had a high fever.'

'Malaria? I can cure malaria.'

'You?' She appraised him from head to toe. 'You five-foot joker, you now say you are a doctor?'

'Believe me, I am. A pretty good one, too. On my island I once saved a boy who was going to die of malaria.'

' Island? Now which island is this?'

'Kujelli!' Eketi exclaimed and, to cover up his blunder, quickly opened his canvas bag and took out a bunch of dried leaves. 'This plant can cure malaria. If you will take me to your friend, I will treat her daughter.'

'Is that so?' Dolly thought for a moment and then nodded her head. 'OK. No harm in trying you out. Come with me.'

Eketi resumed following her through the twisted by-lanes of the city. They went down a couple of alleys, crossed a stinking open drain, and suddenly Eketi found himself in the enclave of the eunuchs. Even at this time of the night, they were up and about, dressed in saris and salwar kameez, with painted faces and outrageous hair-dos. They greeted Dolly and watched Eketi curiously, more friendly than hostile.

The houses here were small and austere, mostly one-room shacks built with brick and cement. Dolly stopped in front of a house with a yellow door. A hinjra wearing an orange-and-blue sari with a bunch of jasmine flowers woven into her braid ran out of the door, clutched Dolly and began to weep. 'Tina is going to die. My poor Tina,' she wailed.

Dolly spoke with some of the other eunuchs before turning to Eketi. 'The doctor came to see Tina a little while ago,' she told him. 'He says the girl cannot be saved, the fever has reached her brain. My trip to the dispensary has been useless.' She let go of the medicine packet, which dropped limply to the ground, and smothered her face with her hands.

Eketi stepped forward and pushed open the yellow door.

He entered a small, crowded room. There were pots and pans in one corner, clothes in another. But his eyes were drawn to a mattress on the floor, on which lay a small girl in a frock, surrounded by blankets. She was no older than eight or nine, with a round face and almond-shaped eyes. Frail and thin, she seemed to have been drained of vitality. Her face was pale and there were large red blisters on her neck. Her eyes were closed, but from time to time she mumbled incoherently in her sleep.

Eketi unzipped his canvas bag and got to work. He took out the bunch of dried leaves and asked the girl's mother to grind them into a paste and heat it. Then he mixed the red clay with pig fat and smeared the girl's forehead with horizontal stripes. As Dolly watched sceptically, he applied some yellow clay to the girl's upper lip and rubbed a hot mash of the dried leaves on her stomach. Finally he took out a necklace of bones. 'This is the chauga-ta, made of the bones of the great Tomiti. It will heal the body and keep the eeka away,' he announced and draped the necklace over the girl's neck.

'Are you some kind of witch doctor?' Dolly asked with a worried look.

'I am only trying to help.'

'Now what should we do?'

'We wait till morning,' he said and yawned. 'I am feeling very sleepy. Is there a place I can lie down?'

'Don't you have your own place?'

'No.'

'I thought so,' Dolly sighed. 'Come, I will take you to my house.'

Her house was the biggest in the area, with two rooms and a tiny kitchen. The painted walls were adorned with framed pictures of gods and goddesses. There was a faded carpet on the floor and even a small folding dining table with metal chairs. A wall clock showed the time as quarter to three. Eketi flopped down on the floor and within minutes was fast asleep.

When he woke up the next morning, Dolly was already up and about. 'You have worked a miracle,' she beamed at him. 'Tina's fever has disappeared. She is feeling much better.'

Tina's mother Rekha came in shortly afterwards and fell at Eketi's feet. 'You are an angel sent from heaven,' she cried, clutching the tribal's hand. 'My daughter and I are forever in debt to you.'

She was followed by another eunuch, who blinked at him coquettishly before extending her arm. 'I have blisters on my forearm. Do you have a remedy for this as well?'

'No, no. I am not a doctor,' Eketi grumbled.

'You must be hungry,' said Dolly. 'I am going to make breakfast.'

Later that day, as Dolly sat at the table chopping vegetables, Eketi sidled up to her. 'My curiosity is killing me.'

'What do you mean?' She arched her eyebrows.

'I am still confused about what you told me last night. How can you be neither man nor woman?'

With a grimace, Dolly dropped her knife, stood up and lifted up her sari. 'See for yourself.'

Eketi gasped in horror. 'Were you… were you born this way?'

'No. I was born a man like you, but always felt like a woman trapped inside a man's body. I was the youngest of three brothers and two sisters. My father was a well-to-do clothes merchant in Bareilly. Growing up was sheer torture. My brothers and sisters always taunted me. Even my parents treated me with derision and contempt. They realized I was different but still wanted me to behave like a boy. So the day I turned seventeen, I stole money from my father's shop and ran away to Lucknow, where I met my Guru and got the operation done.'

'What kind of operation?'

'It is excruciating, but they keep you on opium for a number of days, which takes away some of the pain. Then the nirvana ceremony is performed.'

'What is that?'

'It means rebirth. A priest cuts off the genitals with a knife. One stroke and my organ was gone.' Dolly made a chopping motion with her hands. Eketi gasped again.

'Once the operation was over, I was deemed to have become a woman. Then my Guru took me under his wing and brought me to Banaras. It was here that I discovered an entire community of eunuchs. I have been living here for seventeen years now. These eunuchs are what I call my family, this is where I belong.'

'So you are actually a man?'

'Originally, yes.'

'Don't you feel strange without your… er… dick?' Eketi asked hesitatingly.

She laughed. 'You don't need a dick to survive in this country. You need money and brains.'

'And how do you earn money?'

'We sing at weddings and childbirths, housewarmings and other auspicious occasions, and give blessings. People believe that hinjras have the power to take ill luck and misfortune from them. I also work occasionally for a bank.'

'What kind of work?'

'Very often people borrow money from the bank but fail to return it. Then the bank asks us hinjras to land up at the defaulter's doorstep. We sing bawdy songs and generally create so much nuisance that the man pays up.'

'That sounds like fun! So are you happy being a eunuch?'

'It is not about being happy, Jiba,' she said grimly. 'It is about being free. But enough about me. Tell me, what has brought you from Jharkhand to our Uttar Pradesh?'

'I ran away from my village. I came here to get married.'

'Wah, that's a new reason to migrate. And have you found a girl?'

'No,' Eketi smiled shyly, 'but I am looking all the time.'

'Have you decided where you will stay?'

'Can't I stay in this house, with you? You have plenty of room.'

'I don't run a charitable guesthouse,' she said tartly. 'If you stay here, you will have to pay me rent. Have you got any money?'

'Yes, a lot,' he said, and took out the notes given by Inspector Pandey.

Dolly counted them out. 'This is only four hundred. I will treat this as a month's rent.' She leered at him and inserted the notes inside the mysterious confines of her blouse. 'You also need money to eat. I cannot give you free meals every day.'