The Parcel by Anosh Irani Page A

Madhu had left her with: “Now think about what you’ve done.” It disoriented the parcels completely, made them think they were here because they had done something wrong. They would recount the last few days that they had spent with their mothers and fathers and look for signs of anger or disappointment from either parent that would help them identify why they were being punished to such an extreme. But they had done nothing, and when they could not find a reason, it drove them crazy, and they could not hold down the smallest morsel of food because their bellies were so full of guilt.
    The parcel was holding the cage bars, shaking them, and for a second she looked like a possessed little thing. Human beings were all the same, reflected Madhu, no matter where they came from. Under duress, all were animals, trying to flee with the same clumsiness. The begging and pleading had begun. Madhu did not look at the parcel’s face; she didn’t have one as far as Madhu was concerned. As the parcel’s voice rose, Madhu stayed completely still. But in staying still, in trying to block out the parcel in front of her, the only place available to Madhu was the past.She remembered her first parcel, and the second, and how they had come to her, and why she agreed, rather
chose
, to do this work.
    She thought of it as an act of compassion.
    In her heyday, when she was put on display in Hijra Gulli on the veranda of the brothel, lit up like a bird in a cage, her skin smoother than anything in the vicinity, she’d had a young cop as a client. He was a junior constable who paid her on time, was respectful, and had a wife. Madhu took a liking to him because he never fucked her in anger. He did not treat her arsehole as a complaint box for his furies and failures, as most men did. But then one night he blew her apart, which was fine—once was okay—and she was getting paid, so who was she to talk about quality control? It was what he did after the sex that got to her. He sobbed.
    He had been asked by his superior to conduct a raid on Padma’s brothel. And so he had, swift and silent as a knife in the night. His superior told him he was not to harass Padma; the raid was simply a formality, for there was “pressure from above.” But what he found there made him faint in rage: a girl, about nine years old, talking to herself, locked up in a cupboard. He took her back to his station, and his superior said, “Good work. I will handle it.” So the girl was fed and the young cop was told to go home. The next day, he found the girl in the lock-up. She was in a cell by herself so no one could harm her. But why were they not trying to find out who she was?
    The answer came in the form of Padma, who walked into the station as though she was the girl’s grandmother and took her back to the brothel. No reports were filed, nothing. The young cop received his share of the bribe, which he had to take if he wanted to keep his job. “This girl, she has gone mad,” saidthe young cop to Madhu. “They even know her name: Nilu. She used to be able to read and write. Now she has lost that. The whole time in the lock-up, she kept scratching the wall. I have a daughter. She is only one year old, but I wish she had never been born.”
    For the first time, Madhu did something without gurumai’s permission. She went up to Padma and introduced herself. She looked like she was on fire and her reasoning was just as searing. “We are all women,” said Madhu. This made Padma sneer, but that was okay. “Each time a man rapes a girl, she is raping you, she is raping me,” said Madhu. The facts were simple: Almost every brothel madam had been raped in the past. That is why they were able to do this work. It had happened to them, they had survived, so there was no reason the girls would not. Rape was like the common cold. You had to catch it at some point.
    “What do you want?” Padma asked.
    “I want to take the power away from the men.”
    “Without men,