Copyright by Beverly Taff. 2011.

This chapter explores the issues surrounding hijras in India. (Kolkata) and the steps Paul and Beverly take to help a few of them.

The Rescue 3

Characters.
Beverly Taff. Transvestite
James or Jamie Transgendered kid.
Candice Jamie’s Younger Sister.
Sergeant Williams Hate crime police officer
David Evans Knife-boy. (Son of Dewi Evans.)
Margaret Beckinsale. Jamie and Candice’s mum. (AKA Madge.)
Sandie Beverly’s best Transvestite friend.
Elizabeth Todd Beverly’s next door neighbour.
Jennifer Todd Elizabeth Todd’s daughter. A barrister.(QC.) Beverly’s best female friend & ‘girl next door’ through childhood.
Rastus Elizabeth Todd’s cat (Now owned by Beverly.)
Dewi Evans Bent politician and criminal.
Paul. Beverly’s transvestite Boss.
Calista Paul’s Transgendered girlfriend.
Stephanie Jenny and Beverly’s daughter.
Phoebe Paul’s Sister.
Rachel. Jennifer’s new girlfriend. (After Stephanie was born.)
Jalina Sha. Indian Engineering graduate (Now Hijra.)

Preparations for the holiday/operations took up most of early July. Candice and Jamie had finished their final year exams while Phoebe’s younger daughters were just six and eight years old; still in primary school. There is a hiatus in Welsh schools between finishing the last exam and waiting for the results. This is the time of idle summer days for the older pupils except for sports competitions and such like. Living immediately next door to the school enabled Jamie, Candice and a bunch of their closest friends, to regularly come home during class hours to consider what the girls were going to wear and do on the holidays. Meanwhile in Swansea, Phoebe’s daughters simply got more and more ‘cited’ at the idea of an elephant ride through the jungle.

Paul was also using the trip as a business opportunity. He had some ideas surrounding his own factory that would mutually benefit both his own factory and any entrepreneur in India who was prepared to share investment. India was a growing market and Paul could spot an opportunity. Even Paul’s father had confessed before he died that his wayward transvestite son had a better business head on his shoulders than anybody else in the family. Paul could spot an opportunity and most importantly, Paul could sell! He could sell snow to the Inuit and sand to the Bedouin.

The busiest of all however, was Jenny who had to advance some casework whilst retarding others to fit her holidays into the allotted month, yes, month not fortnight. Paul had been generous with the holiday funding and it was his way of saying thank you to all of us who had so helped him with his transvestite life. We were to spend a month in India part of which would be the start of the monsoon. This was just to let those who had never experienced a genuine monsoon downpour, get the opportunity to experience one. That meant all of us, for none of us had ever been to India before except Paul.
Eventually after much anticipation and some successful exam results to boost Jamie’s hopes of university, a crowd of excited, eager travellers found themselves at Heathrow Airport.

The flight seemed to take forever with a stop-over at Tehran and we finally arrived in the bright early morning sunshine at Calcutta. The heat hit us like a furnace and the girls squealed as they immediately removed their fashionable jerseys and dashed for what they hoped was the air-conditioned arrivals hall.

It wasn’t, or at least it hadn’t been switched on yet. After asking, Candice discovered that it wasn’t yet deemed hot enough to waste electricity on the air conditioning. That would come on automatically at eleven o’clock.

“We’ll be through and gone by then,” Candice gasped, “I hope.”

“Not by the looks of this crowd, there must be thousands!” Observed a travel-worn Calista who had shared the main burden of baby Stephanie’s care during the flight.”

After an interminable couple of hours queuing in the sweltering heat we finally got to the immigration booths. Calista and Jamie got some long looks from the immigration because their appearances did not match the gender on their passports. They were invited into a side room to explain but the doctor’s letters finally settled the immigration officer’s concerns. India’s a pretty tolerant country anyway and the girls later expressed their relief.

“We thought they were going to give us medical examinations,” Calista declared, “but they didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Jamie added boldly, “I’m used to flipping doctors poking around me these days. There’s not much to see anyway.”

“Uuhhm, I think that’s enough information thank you,” Madge advised her daughter, “onwards to baggage recovery."

We arrived to get our first experience of an Indian baggage scrum and shook our heads at the mayhem. Paul and I had to literally fight our way to the belt while the girls had to literally form a circle to guard our cases as Paul or I recovered them and fought our way back to our little corner of India.

Jenny smiled at our brave efforts as I emerged from the ‘pack’ like a scrum half fighting for the rugby ball.

“We could do with one of those elephants the little ones are so keen to ride.” She grinned as we stuffed the case into our ‘human fort and I returned to the battle. Meanwhile Candice and Jamie had located a couple of trolleys. A dozen women, babies and transvestites don’t do ‘travelling light’. We finally cleared customs just as the air conditioning started to whirr into life nearly an hour late.

You have got to admire the patience of the Indians and their courtesy. Our hotel minibus had been waiting since the plane first arrived and he had brought some tasty titbits to assuage our hunger. We loaded the minibus and nibbled on the sweet pastries and mint tea as he picked his way through the traffic.

Did I say ‘Pick his way’?

Boudicca in her chariot could not have cleared a way through the jam; it would have taken a ruthless general with a division of tanks to do that. That general may have been our driver’s father for he used the minibus more like a battering ram than a car. I realised now why the thing had ‘bull-bars’ back and front not to mention scratch bars on the sides. There’s only one rule for traffic in India or more particularly, Calcutta, ‘If it’s bigger than you, give way to it’.

Eventually after a deafening cacophony of horns and shouts sometimes followed by shaking of fists and the odd curse, (not all Indians are courteous and they often have good cause not to be,) we finally made it to the Grand Great Eastern hotel on the corner of Old Courthouse street and British India Street. Candice and Jamie couldn’t believe that the same old street names existed but their eyes widened at the hotel. It had recently been extensively renovated and we found it to be a superb base in the centre of the bustling city. Well not so much bustling as log-jammed and manic. It’s impossible to see how the city actually works.

An excellent example was the journey from the airport to the hotel.

The aircraft landed just after dawn about sevenish but we did not get to hotel until mid afternoon about fourish. How can a society function like that?! We concluded that even the suffix ‘ish’ did not really convey the chronological chaos that was business appointments in India or at least, down-town Kolkata. By the time we got to the hotel foyer and settled into an Oasis of peace and calm (but not much silence because of the all intrusive traffic noise,) we were hysterical with amusement and incredulity at the nature of the ‘traffic’. (If you can call a solid column of static metal, ‘traffic’.)

As Jamie observed when she turned to Paul and me in one of the interminable traffic jams.

“One thing’s for sure Auntie Bev. Whoever invented the wheel, it wasn’t the Kolkatans. Where would they use it?”

“Well not on their cars,” I replied as we stared incredulously at a huge limousine trying to hack its way through a wall of ‘duk-duks’. It had absolutely no hope. The taxis, duk-duks, and motorcyclists refused to yield to some rich bugger in a chauffeur driven limo. At least everybody on the streets was equal; they all suffered equally from the permanent traffic jam.
Yes, our introduction to India was to say the least, frenetic and we were supremely glad to finally reach the calm of the hotel. We were also more than pleased that the best rooms had been triple glazed to keep out traffic noise as well as the insufferable heat. Paul had booked three suits of several bedrooms and taken over virtually a quarter of one floor. We had what was virtually a whole multi bed-roomed apartment to ourselves. Candice and Jamie were beside themselves with delight and we adults were pretty chuffed as well.

Even Calista was able to relax once she and Jenny had assured themselves of the quality of the baby-minding service. Baby Stephanie probably had the best deal of all.

After luxuriating in our showers and changing to more suitable light cotton clothing, we met for dinner then decided to go for a stroll in the nearby bazaar and Muslim souk. We decided Shanks’s pony was the best form of locomotion and we left baby Steph with the baby-care service. Eleven people would have just sat all night in the traffic jam if we’d taken taxis. Additionally, such a large party of pale-skinned Europeans would have been an open invitation to all the street traders in Kolkata to pester us. At least by moving on foot through the crowds we managed to ignore the constant attentions of the street traders. We weren’t trapped in the back of a static, traffic jammed taxi!

Naturally poor old Calista, Jamie and Candice got the most attention. In the souk, western women with pale skins, uncovered heads, bare arms and legs were still something of a novelty; especially when the legs obviously went ‘all the way up’.
Miniskirts and hot pants were still something of a rarity in the more conservative areas of Kolkata and the Grand Great Eastern is pretty close to the business quarter.

We didn’t buy anything and we didn’t eat anything because we had deliberately left all our money and possessions in the hotel safe. That way we couldn’t be tempted to buy and we couldn’t be robbed. We just toured the souks and bazaars with jaws agape and fixed grins wrapped across our faces. We would return at the end of the holiday to buy when we were marginally more au-fait with the city and its customs. Kolkata comes alive with the cool of the evening.

On the Saturday morning Paul and Jennifer had their first appointment with the selective insemination service at the fertility clinic. The specialists explained the risks and probabilities then invited them to return on Monday. We spent the weekend on our first tour. A short circuit of temples and old colonial buildings while the driver described the history of Calcutta newly returned to its old Indian name of Kolkata. Candice and Jamie expressed regret that all the old British Street names were being changed making it ‘harder to remember names and find their way about’ as they explained it. Strangely the post-war Soviet street names had in some places stuck despite those same names having lost credibility in Russia. We returned to the hotel on Sunday afternoon, where the adults lounged around the pool while Calista, Jamie and Candice went back into the souk. They had inexhaustible supplies of energy.

They had arranged to be back for dinner and we were secretly relieved to see them returning on time. However, we were perplexed to find them with a couple of very pretty Indian girls in tow. Being all of the LGBT spectrum ourselves except for Phoebe and Madge, we all eventually ‘read’ the girls but still we welcomed them to our group and after a brief conversation to reassure the hotel night manager, Jamie and Calista invited them to join us at a hastily re-arranged dinner in a private room just off the main dining room. The hotel was terrified that other guests would be scandalised by seeing hijras dining in the main dining room. A large folding screen was stretched across the alcove and one of the hotel doormen was placed to prevent any nosey snoopers seeing behind the screen. We westerners were shocked by the maltreatment handed out to the two Indian girls.

That night, the conversation flowed like a river as the girls told us their life stories and we told them ours. They were stunned and excited to learn about Calista and Jamie and they insisted that the girls accompany them around the city for the days that Jenny, Paul Rachel and I were being sorted by the ‘fertility clinic’.

I smiled at the expression ‘fertility clinic’ in India; - judging by the birth rate, what they really needed was an ‘infertility clinic’. They had them actually. There are many government sterilisation and vasectomy clinics in India to try and reduce the explosive population growth.

Madge, Phoebe and her daughters went to various tourist venues suitable for children while baby Steph was spoiled rotten by the carers in the hotel crá¨che.

Each evening the girls came back with the Hijras to join us at our extended meal table. Paul and I noticed that the hijras had risen to four but the ‘girls’ were amusing and intelligent so we savoured their attendance at our table. They were discreet and courteous for they realised they had their work cut out to convince the hotel staff that they were not a threat or a security risk. The hotel staff knew that Paul was there in India on business so they treated him with respect; - money talks.

It was whilst chatting to the hijras that we learned of their backgrounds which were as varied and distressing as one could ever wish to hear. Calista described her distressing childhood while I could vouch for the hurt and abuse that Jamie had suffered. There were many mutual tears around the table during those evening meals but it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Jalina was the prettiest of the four beauties and the youngest, that’s why she spoke last about her origins and that’s why I was so late finding out about her childhood. Even then it was during a private chat, not a general discussion around the dinner table. Jalina was painfully embarrassed by her former life and she only revealed it to me in private.

While the rest of the girls were chattering away in main living suite Jalina was talking softly to me as we lounged in the comfortable armchairs of the smaller annex up in our vast suit of rooms. She described her home life in Kolkata before she finally resolved to leave the oppressive and humiliating climate of her numerous siblings. Despite being the eldest son, she had been bullied and beaten for being small and effeminate. Her father had disowned her a couple of years after her university graduation as an engineer because she had been caught ‘cross dressed’. Her father had taken into the garden and publically whipped her in front of all her younger siblings.

I listened with revulsion to a familiar tale and gave her a hug as tears started to run down her cheeks. Finally I released her as the sobs eased and asked Candice to bring us a cup of tea. Candice was about to suggest I not be so lazy and to come and get my own tea, then she saw Salina’s tear stained face and quickly realised there had been another epiphany. Later, as we sipped our teas Jalina fondled the luxurious material of the arm chairs and sighed.

“I remember these; we had chairs like this at home.”

“Oh, they’re good quality chairs and look pretty expensive to me. You must come from a fairly prosperous family then.”

“Yes, I did. I ran my father’s business for a couple of years after university and I was supposed to inherit until I finally had to ‘come out’ as Hijra. I couldn’t live a lie anymore. Despite all the work I did modernising the factory and winning more orders for the business in these hellish times, he still disowned me and sacked me. That’s when he whipped me in the garden in front of my brothers and sisters. From successful factory manager to slum-bitch in a few unbelievable minutes. Now my younger brother runs it and he’s already incurred losses. But he’s a ‘proper man’," Jalina continued bitterly, "and that counts with my father. He cast me out for being Hijra and I’ve never been back.”
I wagged my head not in disbelief but disgust. The whole sorry saga was so-oo, so-oo familiar. Jalina continued.

“My father owns a small machine tool factory. While I managed it the factory made a reasonable living until my stupid brother took over. He’s not even an engineer, he’s a bloody lawyer. That’s why he can’t sell in the engineering field.”
My ears pricked up at the word ‘machine tool factory’.

“Oh. What company is that?”

Jalina gave me the name of the company and her father’s name, Pradjit Sha.

It immediately rang bells in my head for I was sure I had heard Paul mention the company name and Pradjit Sha whilst coming over on the flight. For a moment I fell silent but my brain immediately went into overdrive. I stood up and told Salina to stay put and stay silent as I hurried from the suite.

I went to find Paul who was down in a business conference meeting some representatives of the local round table. He was looking for a potential partner in India to open his new factory in Kolkata supplying electronic control components to the main factory in the UK. The business would be quite high-tech so the local business community were dancing attendance like sycophants. Every man attending was hoping to get a slice of the action.

Jalina’s father’s name ‘Pradjit Sha’ kept ringing in my head as I remembered the conversation on the plane. I rushed from the lift and dashed across the foyer into the conference room where Paul was meeting with the Indian round tabler’s. I walked in unexpectedly and all faces turned to study the casually dressed European who had just invaded their meeting. One well dressed ‘suit’ approached me.

“Excuse me sir. I’m sorry, this is a private meeting.”

I answered as courteously as I could.

“I understand that sir but I know the gentleman with whom you’re having discussions. Mr Paul Whitworth, the British manufacturer looking for a partner firm in Kolkata.”

The ‘suit’ hesitated uncertainly at my having mentioned Paul by name but Paul had already heard my voice and recognised me across the room. He turned from the group he was talking to and excused himself.

“Hello Bev. What’s up?”

“I think we need to have a chat Paul.”

“What about?”

“About one of the potential business partners you mentioned on the flight over.”

“And which one would that be?”

I looked around and whispered.

“One called Pradjit Sha. The machine tool manufacturer.”

“Oh yes. He looks like one of the most likely candidates. I opened the sealed bids before the meeting. His was probably the best. It offered the most opportunities and his factory obviously has the scope to handle the technology. It was doing extremely well over the last three years but the last year they’ve hit a few temporary problems. Mr Sha assures me the issues are purely temporary.”

I hauled Paul by the arm into a small private room for a chat.

“That tallies up exactly with what I’ve heard. This is not a temporary glitch, the man they’ve got running the factory is not the man who made those profits before. The man running the show now is Pradjit’s second son. A lawyer.”

Paul knew all about family values out in Asia and he raised a curious eyebrow.

“So what happened to the first son?”

“That’s just it; the first son was a brilliant engineer. But the boy is a hijra. It’s Jalina sitting upstairs as we speak. You know what these families are like; - shame on the family and stuff.”

Paul nodded as I described Jalina’s story and he frowned thoughtfully. Being a transvestite himself, Paul knew all about such family issues. He’d walked a virtually identical walk himself though the final outcome had not been so brutal. He smiled conspiratorially as he assimilated my information.

“Leave it with me Bev. I’ll dig out the facts. His bid includes the company figures for the last five years to enable my accountants to access the risk of investing over here. I’ve had a brief look at them and what you say seems about right. His bid is on the table next door. I’ve got to sort a short-list and come back to the Department of commerce meeting in this same room on Thursday. Most of these guys will also be there, it’s just like back home, all about networking. When I’m out of here in about half an hour, we can run these figures by Jalina and if she’s what she says she is, she can prove her story. I hate bigots!”

“Amen to that Paul,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “Besides, Phoebe can check the figures can’t she. That’s her job on the board isn’t it?”

“Well she’s very sharp on that side of things but she and I will still have to run the figures by Arnold the company accountant back in the UK. What I want is Jalina’s explanations of where things started going wrong in the last twelve months."

We separated again, me back up to the top floor and our extensive suite while Paul returned to the conference. He rejoined us later that evening where Jalina and I were agog waiting for the news. In his briefcase he had the three best bids as he thought. All the other bids were in a larger cardboard file that would not fit into his overstuffed briefcase but Paul had taken them with him nonetheless to avoid raising any false hopes or fomenting undue speculation.

Once ensconced in one of the comfy armchairs he went over Pradjit’s bid with his hijra child Jalina. She came up trumps. Time and again she gave valuable insight into some figure or contract or order that had been lost as she explained often angrily as red spots grew in her cheeks.

“Look. This order for lubrication rings and rotor shafts for the alternators in the new Plata cars. I won that, it was one of my first successful bits of expansion. The review and renewal date was six months ago. Six months after I was sacked. They’ve lost the order and I know why! The team I dealt with were primarily engineers, I could talk to them, - in our own language; - they were sick and tired of being fed bullshit by accountants and salesmen who didn’t know shit about engineering. I knew they were planning on upgrading when we first won the order.

I would have kept on top of that order because Plata cars are doing well, they were expanding and upgrading and that meant bigger alternators. I would have kept in touch with the boys in their back-room to follow up on the improvements required. I even had a provisional plan to manufacture the whole alternator and they were listening to me!

My stupid brother didn’t and it’s obvious they’ve lost the order. His heart isn’t in the manufacturing, he really just wants to ponce about in wig and gown and make theatre in some high-falutin courtroom. The company’s going bust just look at the monthly bottom lines. I give it a year before the Bank pulls the plug. Daddy will be bankrupt but he refuses to see it.”

Jalina slumped on the settee and sighed then started crying. Between the sobs she explained in halting words.

“I was — b-building the — the business up; i—it was growing, n-now look at it. That fucking stupid Sanji, he’s, - he’s useless with anything mechanical.”

I gently massaged Jalina’s slender back while Paul double checked the accompanying bank statements. Jalina was right, the company was heading downhill and it was hurting the girl. For all the abuse she had suffered at her family’s hands, she didn’t want to see her family destitute. She was already there and knew fully of the bitter cup of poverty in India.

Paul set out his plan without telling Jalina. It would be a wonderful surprise for her.

We put the four hijras into a taxi and that very night Paul went to work. All Wednesday morning he spent telephoning the UK then he studied all the favoured bids in depth. Every which way he looked at it, despite the balance sheet, Pradjit Sha’s factory looked the best bet. By the Thursday Paul had his plan set up.

At the board of commerce meeting he finally declared the three favourites to their committee and reserved his final decision for another three months. His explanation was he had to run his figures by his board and then visit each Indian factory in turn to study the set up. That Thursday night, Paul briefly explained what I already suspected but he was too tired to explain. On the Friday morning he elaborated.

“The Sha enterprise is by far the best fit but I spoke to Pradjit’s son Sanji last night after that Board of commerce thing. Sanji’s a total twat and doesn’t know the first bloody thing about engineering, he’s all pomp and bloody law. When I go around his factory I’m going to give it to the old man straight. D’you fancy another trip out to India?”

“What? Me!”

“I’ll want another supposed ‘expert’ to look as though we’re inspecting the factory minutely. You know your way around machinery, and I know you do, - bloody well as a matter of fact. I’ll be too busy organising my other strategy.”

“And that is?” I added half knowing the answer.

“Put a competent person back in charge, an engineer.”

I nodded and smiled.

“Jalina.”

Paul returned my smile.

“We’re on the same wavelength darling. Now to find Jalina.”

“It’ll be best to speak to the girls about that.” I observed.

He nodded then called Calista,and Jenny into the annexe.

The girls appeared with curiosity writ large on their faces.

“Can you go and find Jalina darlings.”

Calista nodded eagerly they had planned on meeting her and the other hijras that afternoon anyway. Picking up Jamie and Candice they sped off purposefully into the slums. Paul and I returned to our sheep while Madge, Phoebe, Rachel and the little ones lounged by the pool.

At one o’clock the girls returned with Jalina and we lunched by the pool. Jalina looked beautiful in her best royal blue sari. Calista and Jamie envied Candice her freedom to wear the skimpiest bikini while they could not yet dare to reveal their secrets to the other bathers. However Calista was too busy working with us under the large parasol as we explained the deal. Paul had checked with the Indian bank and confirmed Jalina’s story, she had dealt with the bank before descending into disgrace. The signatures on the cheques for the previous two years confirmed Jalina’s successful control of the company during her stewardship.

As we sat under the huge parasol with documents and briefcases all over the table, Jenny, Calista, Paul, Phoebe, Jalina and I looked every inch the business group doing exactly that. Striking a deal that Paul explained.

“Now Jalina, we have already put you on our books for a modest wage just to tide you over until we sort this business out. The plan is this.

Your father’s factory exactly matches what I’m looking for. I couldn’t have found a better fit. It jigsaws into our factory just perfectly. Jenny, Rachel, Phoebe, Beverly and I will be coming out again around November and we will strike the deal then but with one major provision, that is the old manager who ran the company before your brother, namely you of course, will have to be re-employed.”

Jalina smiled and was invited to ask questions. Her questions were deep, searching and demonstrated that she really was a shrewd operator and gave us some wonderful tips to progress our ideas. She also explained the best strategy to shoe-horn a hijra, one of the ‘despicables’ (Possibly even lower than an ‘untouchable’.) into a position of such power and responsibility. It would involve some tremendous culture shocks for many of the current employees. Jalina hoped she would be able to ride that particular storm but she warned us there might be objections. We promised her all the support we could offer.

She also pointed out that the new manufacturing process would be more high-tec and involved much clean, sterile bench work. Work ideally suited to women (and hijras).

Paul and I just smiled knowingly and Jalina’s eyes widened with hope.

“You mean I will be able to employ hijras?”

“On merit, yes,” Paul confirmed as Jalina gave a whoop of joy.

Being a hijra she then gave us a spectacular, celebratory dance exhibition that brought the pool area to a standstill. Jamie, Candice and Calista sat gob-smacked then immediately demanded to be shown the moves after Jalina finally calmed down to a deafening round of applause. We finished lunch on a high with Jalina bound to secrecy. She left with her temporary contract of employment held tightly to her newly developing bosom and ecstatic with delight. For the rest of the month, the four hijras treated the three girls to the most delightful stay in Kolkata. Rachel finally fell pregnant to me by artificial insemination, but more importantly, Jenny was made pregnant to Paul. It only remained to confirm the baby was a boy and this was done successfully when we returned in November.