Size: twelve chapters under 300
We had a classmate in our school who wasn't exactly like the rest of us. He acted more like girls. I didn't know what being so was called, but what I did know was that he didn't choose to be that way - he was born that way. Although he was teased constantly for being different from the rest of us, he had become indifferent to it - and so had our attitude towards him. Despite his unavoidable difference, he was still our classmate, one of us.
However, the hijras in our society are not accepted nor treated as a part of the society. While my classmate, who I'm still friends with on Facebook, continues to live as a boy, most of the people born between the two genders, are forced to become a hijra. The word 'Hijra' means to travel, and the hijras are always in transit between the genders - yet they do not arrive at either end. I've heard of their prostitution, I've seen them begging, and on the other hand, I've also heard about them having jobs and being allowed to attend madrasas. But the latter stories are rare to come by. Transgenders of the South Asian countries are often up against harsh realities no matter what they do - and Irani gives us a visceral insight into their world in this book.
The Parcel, set in Bombay India, is a story of hijras and child prostitution. The premise of this book alone might cause uneasy reactions from some people, but Irani makes sure that this book is endearing in what it aims to achieve. It is at times a very challenging book to read due to the cold-heart details of the world hijras live in and the case of how child prostitution is done. Irani not only unveils these heard-of yet remote, alien worlds to us but through his unflinching prose forces the readers to witness the ugliness and despair without providing any sort of comical or sympathetic relief. And for this reason, The Parcel triumphs to be one of the most realistic portrayals of real life, bringing the readers face to face with the hidden world of a most degrading living.
The story follows Madhu, a transgender in her early thirties, yet already past her prime days of beauty and income, forced to live on begging at the traffic lights. The story is so well told that Madhu alone becomes the only lens through which the readers shall uncomfortably see all the obscenities of this story unfold. In well-structured flashbacks throughout the book, we come to know about Madhu's family and childhood, and also about her gurumai and other sister hijras. The world of hijras in Bombay is run by seven hijra leaders all of whom have a house of their own, with their own areas to preside and do business in. Madhu's house operates in Kamathipura district of Bombay, a red-light area resembling a slum where hijras and prostitutes work late into the nights and slumber during the hot days. Irani's knowledge of this world is deeply impressive because of how detailed and well documented the becoming of a hijra and their lifestyles are written in this novel.
Adjacent to their gurumai's building, is Padma's business: a lady prostitute leader in her sixties who deals with 'chhoti batthis' or 'the parcels', a name for virgin girls between ages of eight to twelve. These girls are sold and brought from surrounding countries like Nepal for prostitution, in the fake name of providing them with well-paying and respectable jobs. The parcel in this story, Kinjal, is handled by Madhu, who has taken it upon herself to prepare these girls for prostitution with as less of a pain as possible. On the other hand, there's a real-state war going on where businessmen are trying to buy out Kamathipura and turn into a profitable market, where they can earn heaps of return. Gurumai, however, is stubborn not to sell her property, since it's not only a home to her and her disciples, but also 'their eventual graveyard'.
All of these narratives, woven through Madhu, converge to become a haunting and unforgettable story. Just Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' or 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' Irani's The Parcel has a similar shocking and lasting effect on the reader as they enter in an unknown world and are unraveled by what they witness again and again. Irani doesn't shy away from the grotesqueness of what he's writing about; if anything, he amplifies it through his beautifully structured sentences and incredible metaphors. The prose in this book does justice to accurately and profoundly convey the story and living of the hijras and the young girls going through a literal hell.
There's a paragraph towards the end of this book which briefly accounts a 13-year-old girl's prostitution journey since she was 10: 'the only movement she had been allowed during that time was from cage to brothel bed to toilet. Hundreds of clients later, when she was finally offered daylight, she trembled. But what no one expected, or perhaps even cared to think about, was what would happen when she saw her face in a mirror. After three years, she had become someone else. She was all of thirteen, and three of her front teeth were broken, and her scalp showed through thin strands of hair. She started screaming at the mirror, begging to know where she had gone.'
Lastly, I want to talk about the ending. Most good books are at the mercy of their ending, which either makes them great reads or merely dismissive. It'd be fair to say that a good book as good as its ending. The Parcel, I'm glad to say, remained a great read. While any reader would easily be able to hint at the ending some hundred pages before the novel ends, the way it ends wraps the book in a fittingly sentimental and consoling manner. During the book, I time and again felt how unhelpable the whole messed up circumstances in the book were, where change was only not impossible but discouraged. Irani, by telling us these stories big and small, wants the reader to feel that defeat; the characters in this book abhor effort, since every effort and hope they've ever summoned have only made their lives more unlivable. Yet the ending, while not dismissing the ugliness and despair of the story which I believe was the point of this book, shows how change may be possible for one, yet at the cost of many - that there's hope but only if it's snatched from God or fate by doing the unthinkable.
The Parcel has everything a
good novel needs: an engaging and vivid prose, well built and interwoven
characters, a central conflict and a resounding resolve to that conflict. Where
Irani succeeds even further is by bravely choosing the story of this book and
triumphantly writing about it by doing justice to the hijras, 'the third world'
as gurumai called themselves, and the stories of the misfated girls in the
world. The hijras will continue to live a level below the two genders, and many
Kinjals will be given into prostitution, what Anosh Irani has done is to force
us into their worlds and witness that such lives exist alongside ours. I give
The Parcel an emphatic five stars.
August 26, 2024.