NOTE TO A PROSTITUTE: When you date a banniya*, use your own saliva
Her name is Rani Devi, 48. She looks much older than her age as her profession makes her work every night. You may think she is in police or press? No one knows what her work is and where she works. She never tells anyone her exact profession.
To some she tells she is a nurse at the Jaypee Noida hospital. To others she says she is a dishwasher at the Ambani’s new five-star hotel in Delhi’s upscale chic commercial district. Yet to others she says she is an Uber driver. She vividly recalls that wintry night in her village in Rajasthan. It was 1988. She was the lone daughter of a man who always said he was a trader who does cross border trading in Rajasthan with Pakistan, transporting Old Monk whiskey. The whiskey brand was highly popular with Sindh’s feudal lords. But since Pakistan officially had prohibition only Hindu locals in Tharparkar could buy it and then sell it to the Muslim waderas, who got debt free when the British created Pakistan.
Her father was away on his usual business tour to Pakistan. One day in the evening when Rani Devi was watching TV she saw her father’s image flash on the television screen, with a statement by the Indian foreign secretary KPS Menon Jr, son of independent India’s first foreign secretary with the same name. The foreign secretary was saying that the Indian government denies knowing anything about Major Bhairon Devendra, who Pakistan government claimed was sent by India to create unrest among two of the poorest Sindhi Hindu tribes in Tharparkar district, called Kohlis and Meghwars. Rani Devi hugged her mother Anjali Devi and both began crying.
General Ziaul Haq’s government sentenced Major Bhairon Devendra, swiftly within one month in a Shariah Court, and carried out the execution in Hyderabad jail. Still the foreign secretary Menon Jr said India has absolutely no knowledge who Devendra was. The US State Department in Foggy Bottom when asked about the issue said it has no say in the matter between two sovereign states. Menon reiterated the government of Premier Rajiv Gandhi believes in cordial relations with Pakistan, just like his grandfather did in 1947, and there will be no lessening in trade between the two South Asian neighbors. Anjali Devi went to her Lok Sabha member and took some government issued IDs with her that showed her husband Bhairon Devendra, 40, was a liquor trader but the Congress member said the documents she provided was fake.
Seeing no help coming from the government in New Delhi nor the local Hindu community, Anjali Devi was left with no option but to go to the Deobandi mosque Medina Masjid cleric Maulana Asifullah Khan, 66. Maulana Khan said every Hindu woman was welcome in his mosque’s special section for widow women and orphan girls, run with support of a Saudi prince. But though he will never force it, he told Anjali Devi real salvation lies in accepting the fact that there was no God but Allah. Deserted by her government and her co-coreligionists, Anjali Devi accepted Islam. She was now Ayesha Siddiqa, the legally married, fourth wife of Maulana Khan.
But for Rani Devi the religion of Islam had no attraction. She was much disturbed as during her primary school years, Maulana Khan’s loud azan would wake her up early each morning, even on Sundays. And in the evening too when it was time for her favorite cartoon show again the mullah’s call to prayer would not let her listen to what Popeye the Sailor and Olive Oil were discussing about the bearded and tattoed villain, Brutus.
She had dreamed that once she grows up she will marry an Indian Popeye, maybe some handsome Rajput man named Raj Chauhan. For many years, much before that day when she felt embarrassed to tell her mother that she had come of age, she had hated Maulana Khan. She had told the young man Bharat Gupta, the local rice merchant’s son from the banniya community whom she used to see at the Kaali Maa Mandir, that Maulana Khan was making rather amorous moves when her mother went to the local shop to buy beef. She could not stand the sight of beef, but was surprised her mother ate it with great relish and flirted with Maulana Khan, giggling that it was stupid of her not having tried beef most of her life.
“Yes have beef, heaven belongs to you Ayesha,” Maulana Khan would embrace Ayesha, and say triumphantly, while looking straight into Rani Devi’s eyes as he massaged his fourth wife. Bharat Gupta used to tell Rani Devi he was studying philosophy at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “But that was five years ago?” Rani Devi asked Bharat Gupta. “True I am doing my PhD,” Bharat Gupta shot back. He told her he could help her get a job in Delhi if she liked.
“What job?” a curious Rani Devi asked. “There are hundreds of jobs in Delhi. Don’t you know Bharat is the world’s largest democracy and Delhi is her capital? We are the fifth wealthiest nation in the world,” Bharat Gupta shot back. “The only thing I will need from you for success in Delhi is your mouth should always be full of saliva, specially in the evenings and late nights,” he said with a meaningful smile. “But what has saliva in my mouth in the evenings and late nights has to do with my success in Delhi?” Rani Devi asked, bewildered. “Now don’t ask me too many questions ahead of time,” Bharat Gupta said. “You will know when we reach Delhi.”
(*Banniya is a member of the Hindu merchant class, infamous in Greater India region for being quite miserly)
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