In a state roadways bus

 

The state roadways bus is lurching with archetypical languor. There is someone who catches one’s eye with conjecturing vivacity. A wrinkled, flabby old man is gawking at the person with open-mouthed, gap-toothed leer. His pinched, shriveled wife watching with repugnance. A skinny, bony adolescent boy is caught in a motley of hormonal storms. He seems curious and seeking answers to the questions that will plague him during this build-up of youth regarding sexuality, gender and more in the domain.

The bus conductor up-heaves his effort; he denounces the melodramatic passenger’s denial to pay the bus fare. ‘We’re entitled to travel free!’ the adamant passenger rebuffs in a bristling, vagrant tone. The tone has effulgence to drown the conductor’s stern professional pitch. ‘No! You have to take ticket and pay!’ the conductor is sticking to his point.

The passenger has the artifice and classical eloquence to catapult the arrows of maidenhood from behind subtle masculine ramparts. The passenger is a handsome-pretty eunuch clad in a yellow and orange shimmering shrara. The uncouth notes in the conductor’s voice don’t appear to be considerate enough to give her a free ride. She strikes her palms accompanied with a little bit of oratorical violence. The gestural escalade fails to perturb and slim down the conductor’s  rotund demand. He is a Muslim man. She greets him with ‘salaam aalekum’ to make some friendly bridge over the torrid flow of his duty. He is unfazed. She again gets into a rebuking tempest. ‘I will take off my clothes and turn naked here in the bus!’ she threatens. The kinnars view this act as the hammer of revolt against all social prejudices against them. ‘Do it if you want,’ he isn’t repulsed by the threat.

Despite all the male-female interpolations and undulations in her persona, there is an imperturbable streak of friendliness in her. She is young, her face an exquisite mix of handsomeness and prettiness. She has hennaed hands; bangles on masculine wrists; lovely, gentle, big eyes under boyish eyebrows; the jaw-line is manly but lips are lovely like a young girl; the hair having feminine elements of style on masculine girth. She turns coquettishly cheeky and cuddles him on the cheek. All this while she looks at other passengers and involves us for a sort of free entertainment. I am sitting across the aisle from her seat. She winks at me after making a mischievous comment.

She is no abashed wretch. She is joyful. Such setbacks—like the conductor insisting on taking the bus fare—are easily taken in a playful stride. After all, one has to trample such tiny heartburns to survive in a world structured on male-female binary; where all possibilities of love, profession, education and social standing are customized in the routine gender duality. It’s a calamitous contingency to have an off-beat gender. The mainstream society takes them to be foredoomed from the beginning. They have to claw their way into the main thoroughfare to survive.

She won’t allow him the entire way. ‘I’ll give only hundred rupees,’ she relents, calculating the conductor’s defensive portals. The fare is 120 rupees. ‘Twenty rupees on you raja,’ she teases him. She gives him 100 rupees. While he is making her ticket, she looks back at the passengers, makes a face and says, ‘I’m his wife. See, how unkind he is to me.’ The passengers laugh. She feels the malignant notes in the old woman, the wife of the oldie who has been leering at her with drool in his mouth. ‘Radhe-radhe mataji!’ she greets her. The old woman can barely shake her head in greeting back.

She has already won many hearts with her banter and friendliness. ‘O raja, I’ll reimburse the loss within no time,’ she defiantly says to the bus conductor and sets out on making up for the loss. I give her ten rupees and she affectionately pats my cheek because I have been nodding and laughing in support of her. She collects 80 rupees within two minutes from the moving bus. ‘Lost just 20 rupees,’ she says almost triumphantly. She goes to the conductor and asks his share of donation. He angrily shakes his head in a firm no. She pats his cheek. The passengers laugh.

She has two smartphones. Her Instagram account is full of her luscious photos and vibrant musical videos. She plays them for the young man by her side to watch. Then turns back to show them to me. ‘You look like a heroine,’ I compliment. ‘I was in Bombay for three years,’ she says with nostalgia. Photos and videos in sunshades, strappy bras, revealing tops, sexy leggings. She opens the keypad of her phone and moves it to me, asking me to dial my number. She has mistaken my support for her cause as my interest in off-beat sexuality. I look at her with a straight face and then smile and gently say no with respect. She understands that my interest in her is born of respect, curiosity and sympathy and not sexuality. And then she smiles a normal smile.