Punchline: Part 2 of 3

[NOTE: I had originally intended this to be the concluding part of a two-part story, but I changed my mind. The story has come out slightly longer on paper, so there's another epilogue-ish part left after this.

If you're new here, read part 1 here before this. Thanks!]

Jokes have never been my thing, I’ll tell you that.

The first time I remember being truly frightened of what others my age found funny was during a trip to McDonald’s. I remember how the one-way opening doors at the entrance swung open on my way out and I first noticed the figure of Ronald McDonald sitting alone on the bench. I’d seen all sorts of clowns in my day, but there was something singularly sinister about a full-grown man, with a snow-white face and blood-red splotches around his mouth, sitting all by himself on a lonely bench and smiling maniacally at onlookers. The other kids loved to snuggle into his lap and pose for photographs, but I’d stiffen up at his very sight or mention.

From that day on, the KFC versus McDonald’s debate was a one-sided affair in my head. I would happily sacrifice a happy meal for a good night’s sleep free of murderous and bloodthirsty clowns haunting my dreams; thank you very much.

To my 7-year old self, that fear was as real as the time I encountered The Hijra. 

I must have been 17, unaware of my growing youth and the onset of societal expectations from a ‘grown up woman’. I didn’t feel a lot of pressure to perform or behave a certain way at home. Papa was the absent dad type, and ma let me be on my own as long as my grades were not an issue. I had always held a sense of muted pride in calling myself, or having myself called an ‘army brat’. It was a tag that I wore proudly on my sleeve, which probably made me look a tad uppity outside the army circle. I was also something of a ‘siren’ in high school, with my premature puberty (and what comes with it) the subject of many hushed exchanged among the boys in my class. As a result, I was taller than most boys and bouncier than most girls of my age. Of course, I appeared to be blissfully unaware of all this, and that worked to my benefit.

I had a gang of girls to call my own, all of them army brats just like me. There was the neighbourhood bimbo, Ananya, colonel Gill’s iklauti beti (only daughter), who thought herself to be my ‘bestie’, but knew deep inside that she was, at best, my sidekick. Then there were the inseparable Tanushree and Shonali, the Bengali Seeta aur Geeta of our vixen-pack. Both were distant cousins whose families had served the country through generations. Shonali was the cleverer of the two, but not as endowed in the sharp Bengali features department as her voluptuous cousin. Tanushree was drop dead gorgeous, but also drop dead dumb to strike a conversation with. As a result, all the mindless ‘hunks’ of our batch would make a beeline for her, and we all gossiped, sometimes jealously, about her more-than-active sex life.

Fun times, in short.                                   

That winter afternoon, our quartet was haunting one of the endlessly meandering bylanes of Pune’s Camp area. If you are familiar with the city, you’ll know that the cantonment area houses the Southern Command Headquarters of the Indian Armed Forces, which is sort of a big deal; a lot of army officers’ residences also lie in the vicinity.

As you enter the snug, uncluttered boulevards of this urban retreat, you are bound to be bowled over. The sights and sounds here are quite unlike the rest of the city: the constant honking of angry horns is replaced by the early morning singing of the mynah. The one-way roads, invariably jam-packed with vehicles of all shapes and sizes (and their drivers, of all shapes and sizes too), give way to narrow, pedestrian friendly pathways, sheltered against the sun by a thick canopy of overhead trees. If Jehangir had found paradise in Kashmir, I’d found my own here, in the heart of Pune, the city of ‘punya’ (virtue).

If there’s one more thing this area is famous for, it’s its safety. Women and girls feel absolutely free and safe to venture out during odd hours on these army-occupied roads. I wasn’t wise enough to appreciate it then, but I lived a sheltered life there, liberated by a sense of security and unrestrained mobility.

It was one of those harsh winter afternoons when the sun was absent and the overcast skies seemed to cut off all daylight, drenching everything in a blanket of grey. While others preferred the indoors to the roads, my gang of girls would have none of it: we were out there for an untimely loitering-session in the open. That’s when we met Him/Her/It.

The Hijra was walking towards us from the far end of an alleyway which, curiously enough, tapered in a dead-end. I knew this not because I could see its end, which in fact sort of devolved into darkness, but because I knew the geography of this place by heart. I was, naturally, the first to suspect.

“Hey, that guy-“

The others didn’t need to be told; they had stopped in their tracks already. The Hijra stumbled towards us in a zig-zag pattern, probably under the influence of questionable substances. It had draped its bulky frame with a flashy pink coloured sari, a shade that hurt the eye and stuck out like a light bulb in darkness. The densely growing trees sheathed the lane from any overhead sunlight, instantaneously giving it an even eerier appearance.

“We better get going,” suggested Ananya, already backing off.

Tanushree agreed. Shonali stood her ground and turned to me. I didn’t know why, but I stood rooted to my spot, despite my heart filling up with a strange anxiety. Something about the Hijra was off – maybe it was the way it walked, or the way it wound the pallu of the sari around its shoulder or his very presence at the dark end of a narrow alley at midday. I looked back and Shonali and found myself smiling at her with a look of anticipation.

She nodded back at me, coiling her lip up ever so slightly.

“Don’t be fucking pansies,” I said to Ananya and Tanushree. “It’s harmless.”

The Hijra was now only about 50 metres away from us. From this distance, we could begin to make out a strange singing sound.

“Abhin na jaao chhod ke, ke dil abhi bharaa nahin…”

The situation was undoubtedly absurd, but it’s hard to reproduce the sense of dread it came with. The singing was off-key, off-tune and screechy, but there was a mystical attraction in the quality of its voice. The baritone reverberated across the empty street, seeming to amplify it without any electronic equipment. It left all four of us entranced, like the Mughal court during Tansen’s alaaps. It was when the Hijra was close enough to spot us that it stopped singing and the spell was broken.

“Hey, girls!” It scampered towards us emphatically.

Ananya and Tanushree edged further back but we held them by the wrists. My fingernails dug into Ananya’s hand and she didn’t try too hard to prise away.

The hijra broughts its palms together, producing a crisp, dry clap that the Indian trans-community is famous for.

“Hello, ladies,” it spoke as it sauntered towards us, still clapping. We could only look on.

“What do you want,” asked Shonali.

The Hijra encircled us and stared us up and down, clicking its tongue a few times.

“Haaye wallah, what curvy city belles! I’d die for one of these.”

It stared at its own waistline, which was wider and rounder than all ours put together. Maybe not really, but you catch my drift.

“What’s stopping you,” I ventured.

The Hijra stopped in front of me and drew closer, probably taken aback at my impudence. Its mouth stank of ruminated paan masala and tobacco.

“Your tongue stings, like your eyes,” it taunted as one of its spindly hands held up my chin to have a better look. I recoiled in reflex.

“Ah, Ms. Touch-me-not!”

“Enough,” I said, “Let’s go.” Being adventurous with a stranger was one thing but being physically accosted by them, quite another. I had had enough.

“Not so fast, ladies!” It held back my arm. I jerked it free.

“Won’t you like to hear a joke before you leave?” It smiled evilly at us. I cannot be sure now, but I’m positive I had sensed a weird desperation in its eyes. It was the face of a person who had bottled a story in their heart for too long and couldn’t wait to spill it to someone. In that moment, some of my anger vanished and I almost pitied it.

“No, thank you,” I spoke, betraying my instincts. “Let’s go girls.”

We began to walk away from the Hijra and the dead-end and the impasse.

“Are you sure,” it shouted back at us, “you’ll be inviting the wrath of a Hijra, afterall, and the ill-will of a chhakka is very potent.”

I did not want to, but Ananya held me to a stop. I saw that Tanushree had forced Shonali similarly to a halt.

“What do we do,” Ananya asked under her breath.

“I-I think we should like him finish his fucking joke and get going,” said Tanushree, shuddering from fear.

“Yes, let’s,” suggested the fucking fountainhead of wisdom Ananya.

“What happened,” the Hijra prompted, “in a fix? A joke’s just a joke, I promise.”

I swore to myself and turned about. We walked towards it for the joke it was dying to tell. How bad could it be, I asked myself?

Oh hell yes, it was bad. It was overlong and stretched on for a solid five minutes, but we listened intently to a voice that commanded to be heard. It had its fair share of twists and turns, but the one in the end stole the cake: it was an autobiographical joke, and a scary one at that. In fact, it was so unfunny that it was funny to me; out of all four, only I braved a sarcastic laugh.

“Why don’t you laugh, you ungrateful bitches,” it demanded of my friends in a sudden fit of anger.

“Because it wasn’t funny,” spoke Shonali with characteristic bluntness. I was proud to call her a friend.

“Oh, it wasn’t? We’ll see who’s laughing the last.” It said, spitefully. Its eyes were back to their furious, glistening glory. It glared at the three of them with wide eyes and then turned to me.

“You’re lucky you laughed.”

Its voice changed and dropped into a coarse, ethereal whisper as it turned to my friends and said, “You have been warned, ladies.”

It laughed the most beastly laugh I have ever heard and walked backed into the dark dead-end while singing the wretched golden oldie.

"Abhi abhi toh aaye ho, bahaar banke chhaaye ho..."

Tanushree and Ananya were cowering and huddling together, as if to shield their bodies from cold.

“What did it mean?” asked Tanushree, her face taking a pale hue.

“Gah, probably nothing,” I said, dismissing her fears. “Just a lot of bullshit. That’s what they survive on: fear and manipulation.”

Years later, I tried to shake the memory of the creepy experience off my back, but my mind kept returning to the strange Hijra and its autobiographical joke and the manic laughter. I guess we all tried to, and superficially brushed away the unpleasant incident to some success.

But I’m sure it would still have haunted Ananya, Shonali and Tanushree to this day – had they been alive.

You see, barely a week later, Shonali was comically struck on the head by a falling coconut while ona family vacation to Kerala, and died instantly. Her death was featured in the ‘That’s Bizarre’ column of the local tabloid, probably becoming the laughing stock of many readers.

Seven months after Shonali met her maker, Ananya followed suit after suffering from an untimely cardiac arrest, triggered by a prank played on her by her kid cousins. Her family thought she was only playing dead as part of a double-prank, thereby literally laughing while she breathed her last.

Oh, and Tanushree had her head sliced clean from her torso in a freak accident involving a kite-thread. A FUCKING KITE THREAD!

As poetic justice would have it, the three people who had found the Hijra’s joke too unfunny to be graced with laughter had died funny deaths.

The joke was about a childless queen who’s cursed with a transsexual kid by an angry sage. And now, forty-two years later, the joke was on me again.

[To be concluded]