The Outcasts: A Thousand Dreams of Redemption

By Lidija Stankovikj

The Outcasts is a story of loss, running away, hope and return. Three protagonists boldly confront a tradition-driven and repressive world. Through a series of serendipitous encounters, and against all odds, their paths intertwine at a time when each stands at a personal crossroads.

Tabu is a rebellious young Muslim woman, who speaks her mind under the guise of jinn influence. Santan, an aging Hindu man, in the face of a near-death experience, suddenly discovers a new spark for life. And Chameli, a dazzling but emotionally fragile transgender woman, is forced to leave the community which had once provided her with safety and identity. Together, they embark on a transformative journey, laced with doubt and danger. They are forced to re-examine their values, renounce their old risk-averse selves, and face a dark night of the soul.

Set in contemporary India, a land of dichotomies, the novel challenges the notions of gender, feminism vis-à-vis spirituality/religion, and culturally appropriate romantic expression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9789352016945

Lidija Stankovikj

Lidija Stankovikj has embraced diversity and multiculturalism throughout her life. Born in former Yugoslavia, of a Serbian father and a Macedonian mother, she has lived, studied and worked in Macedonia, Switzerland, Sweden, Myanmar (Burma) and India. She holds an MBA, with a specialization in management of international organizations, a Masters in Mathematics, and a Minor in Contemporary Asian Studies. In a career spanning more than 12 years, she has garnered extensive professional experience across multiple sectors, including academia, non-profit and industry. She is married to an Indian and currently lives in Bangalore. The Outcasts is her debut novel.

Book preview

PART I

THE AWAKENING

1

SMOKELESS FIRE

She beheld a bowl of rosebuds. The fragrant blossoms shimmered under a silvery net of water droplets. These roses will absorb the chanted verses, she thought. Then the delicate petals will be spread over the tomb, to touch the mystic’s soul quietly, and by evening they will begin to darken, wane and dry out. Thousands of blossoms will rub the air, leaving behind the centuries-old Sufi¹ scent. At dusk, those piled flowers will be squeezed into large bags and taken away; thrown at a dumping ground, to dissolve and reconnect with the soil they once grew from. A few will be touched by the skilled hands of the local poor and be transformed into rose water, to bring back the qawwali² to the tongues of pilgrims.

‘Poor child, jinns³ sealed her mind and possessed her body,’ murmured an old woman, a passerby tottering towards the fence of the shrine, carrying a plate of stringed flowers, a few incense sticks and a handful of sugary sweets.

Tabassum sat idly on the floor, leaning against the pillar. Aloof, she quietly watched days pass by, and each night, along with the heaps of fading roses, a bit of her sparkle got pulled away into the dark slums of the soul. Forty days her slender fingers lingered on the latticed marble walls of the shrine. Each morning she tied a new red thread on the frieze, with forty knots of hope and faith. Her breath was rose-like, as petals imbued with the saint’s blessings became her nightly nourishment.

She never crossed those marble fences. The dargah⁴ was concealed within an intricate net of arabesque doors. She could peek in but did not have permission to enter, just like the evening breeze had no right to reveal anything more than a few locks of her hair from under the silken scarf. She was barefoot, permitted to see the sacred only through a net of diamond-shaped trellises, as all women were.

‘Twelve!’ she exclaimed to the group of aging men who stood offering scented velvety cloth inscribed with prayers. ‘Twelve veils stand in the way between a woman and the ultimate.’ She knew of the eleven veils these men had discussed that morning, removable through faith, prayer, penance, purity, charity, fasting, good manners, pilgrimage, knowledge, unity and the light of the divine. But for a woman, there was one more veil hiding the truth – the manmade latticed walls she could tie with threads of prayer and supplication, but never traverse.

Strangely, her words no longer held any power. The men ignored her act of insolence, thinking that the jinn residing in her body must have possessed her tongue too.

Suddenly she remembered Abhi again – those perilous eyes that had conned her into change, only to turn away once the pain of reluctance began gnawing his nerves. It could be that another veil, or a velvety cloth perhaps, divided his words from his whereabouts.

‘Come with me,’ he had urged. ‘Away from this city, before you become one more woman of futile dreams. Away from these people, before the speech of modesty and sacrifice fills you with timidity and remorse.’

She got nothing more than remorse the day she dared to trust her feet and leave her home behind. But it was not custom that made her lower her gaze the day after, nor was it the people who tarnished her poise by calling her shameless. The weakness in his feet and the reluctance of his own faith surpassed all else. It was he, who misattributed advocacy for change and lacked the confidence she had, the day she leaped. She stood alone, as he was not there waiting for her. And that was her nadir, the absolute descent, one that could never be outdone.

Buried dreams, she thought, looking at the dargah graves covered with twines of dark red roses. ‘What was the purpose of your studies?’ her father had asked. ‘To fill your mind with arrogance and faulty beliefs? To narrow your marriage prospects?’

The veil of her wedding gharara⁵ had the color of those pretty dark roses. The same as the tint on her hennaed palms. And the scattered tiny lines on the sclera of her eyes.

She found her new home no different from the house of her childhood. Pomegranates of the same sweet-and-sour taste and adamant stains remained her favorite afternoon pastime. The dowry she brought to Ahmad was enough to buy an entire pomegranate orchard. But it was not enough to feed the evergreen gluttony.

And yet, sometimes it was enough to close her eyes and dive into the abundant world of perfumes her husband sold for a living. Those landscapes were hers. In those lands, the roads were not stained with the color of paan⁶ spit; fruit sellers sold nothing but fruits, and beggars did not have looters’ eyes. There, her soul had a retreat, away from the prying presence of Ahmad’s mother and sister. Those were worlds of prettiness, free from the lifeless predictability of dull and repetitive days.

Love, as she had once known it, had felt like a surging tide. Although it had deprived her of certainty and loosened every anchor of security, she had willingly given in to that overwhelming, irresistible current. Her share of favorable fate made waiting seem sagacious, and life purposeful. It was meant to last. But lasting became only the memories of it. Sweet-and-sour memories, cropping up from derelict corners of her mind, akin to the wildflowers that always found their way through the cemented ground of her parental home.

Her bond with Ahmad could not be named. To the world, she was his wife; but her soul saw him as the one who had managed to transform the surge into a sequence of frozen fragments in time. She lived in-between the swings of his moods, that ranged from indifference to lust, none of which were potent enough to make a difference. But those were the moments that planted the seed and shook her stillness, reminding her of an identity left behind and of the soul’s tenacious dreams.

Lust it is, this force that makes his body coil around yours in a frenzy. Madness it is, this gush of earthly drives. Weak he is, despite his incuse-bearing touch.Were her jinns whispering these words of torment, inciting the dormant lunacy in each pore? For it was the truth they spoke. An unsullied torrent of raging thoughts and sensations so potent, that they gave birth to a voice. The tiny whispering slowly turned into a cry, and then grew into ire, only to burst into madness.

And such a madness it was! Not that of Majnun, intoxicated with love for his Layla⁷. What a foolishness it was! Not that of Mullah Nasruddin⁸, shrouding candor in wit. What an insanity! Not that of a Qalandar⁹, divine in his purposelessness.

She knew exactly how it all began. The trigger was the day her womb refused to embrace a child. The blood on her salwar¹⁰ was the same color of those darkened, faded roses thrown out into the landfill. Oddly, it felt like someone else’s loss. Was she less of a woman for not feeling lessened?

Soon afterward, Ahmad pulled his wife out of the house. He carried a bag of perfumes, an offering for the pirs¹¹, to heal the body of earthly ailments and free the mind of wandering jinns. Ninety-nine drams¹² of finest attar¹³ would scent their wrists and beards during the Friday prayers. Soothing jasmine, luscious sandal, thick musk, mystifying heena¹⁴ and jinn-repelling myrrh, in exchange for one woman’s sanity and a man’s peace.

She knew at once that destruction was entering their lives. The scorching anger in Ahmad’s eyes was like the smokeless fire that made the jinn’s form invisible to men’s eyes. It was like the roadside bonfires, smoky enough to hurt the eyes, warm enough to save the bones from the toothy winds of a winter night. Those new misty fumes were no longer there to turn petals into perfumes.

That fire distorted every remembrance of intimacy and blurred every trace of certainty. It made room for the jinns, and Tabu let them settle comfortably inside her troubled mind. The only thing Ahmad knew in response was to bring her to the dargah to unsettle those jinns with the help of a few saints.

The song of the dargah devotees sliced through her thoughts and she recognized home had become a distant place.

The words of my beloved torment my heart

If you bargain for love, you are fated to flop

Like a merchant who offers moth-eaten cloth.

Longing embraces my hoary soul

Oh, sweetness of pain, bitterness of joy!

Can rose be so fragrant without its thorns?

My master grinds the bones of conceit

Before he brings me to the table of feast

What a bitter-sweet craving and thirst this is!

The silkworm shelters in finest cocoon

Only to witness eviction and loss

Poor Fareed agrees to the cost!

The qawwals’¹⁵ piercing voices seemed to have percolated the hidden cracks between the world and the realm beyond. With each melody variation, the masters of sound widened those elusive crevices a little, just enough for the watchful to peek into the soul’s abode. A quick glance before the rifts closed again, and worldly matters pulled them back, consuming their minds with everyday nothings.

In that world, expanded by so very little, in that narrow gorge, there would be just enough space to accommodate one impossible love, Tabu thought.

‘Help me, sister.’ A puny and trembling voice pulled her back from her reflections. ‘Can you hide me? Please don’t let them see me!’

There was something strange in that voice – scraping, sand-like and subdued. Tabu felt a grip under her elbow and moved instinctively before grasping the unknown silhouette seated next to her.

‘Save me, sister,’ the voice urged thickly with disturbing anticipation.

Tabu looked up and saw a pair of unsettling kajal-lined¹⁶ eyes, cheekbones that blushed a little too much, a sharp chin and a bony jawline. Golden jhumkas¹⁷ appeared in her palm. Frightened eyes begged her for help. Trapped in her distress, the stranger failed to notice Tabu’s despondency.

A dozen of feet away, three eunuchs stood tall and innately lascivious. The sight of them brought a momentary tremor. Impatient yet composed, the eunuchs looked for the escapee with a mix of determination and semi-acknowledged defeat. Their eyes scanned the dense grid of devotees spread around the shrine.

Tabu had no time to reason. As if lifted up by high winds, she suddenly rose up and ran into the crowd. Her open hair fell upon her arms and shoulders, covering her face and lips stretched in a daring smile. An unnerving cry rose in her, causing people to quiver and move away. The guttural roar of a wounded creature sent shivers down the spine. Tabu daringly thrust into the faces of the devotees, embarrassing their modesty and shouting words of shamelessness.

The qawwals continued singing, seemingly undisturbed by the cries of the vexed girl. Poor Fareed agrees to the cost! The singing hung in the air, lifting devotees into a trance.

‘Fareed is afraid of me – he hungers for these kajal eyes, he thirsts for these luscious lips. If not so, why then are even roses allowed to touch his abode, but not Tabu?’ she yelled at the dargah’s trellised walls. Some looked at the blasphemer in disbelief, others with sympathy and pity. A few pretended not to be troubled by the possessed woman.

‘Dance with me, sister!’ She ran into the eunuchs and took one’s hands. ‘Show me those seducing hip swings, teach me the enthralling ways of your eyes. Show me your guiles of love, and I’ll tell you what secrets the jinns teach me at night.’

Loud laughter followed by incomprehensible words ripped the air. Tabu hugged the eunuchs, pinching their cheeks, pulling them into an erratic, dance-like motion.

‘Let me go!’ cried the middle-aged eunuch, anxiously attempting to get free of Tabu’s overwhelming presence.

‘Khwaja’s¹⁸ grace will set you free from the insanity in your veins. Just sit and pray,’ said another eunuch, one of sharp eyes and brittle physiognomy.

The third eunuch, apparently the youngest, ogled Tabu’s sensual gestures in a state of amazement and, with naïve coquettishness, tried to mimic her postures.

Tabu had never before come so close to a group of hijras¹⁹. They repelled her, frightened her, aroused uneasiness. But this time, as she pulled their own wiles to protect an estranged member of their community, she looked straight into their eyes. Nothing in those eyes could be scarier than her own darkness, she thought.

Tabu lifted a jar from the floor and threw it down again, letting it crash against the white marble. She had done that before with many matkas²⁰, their fragments scattered in the shrubs around the dargah. The sign was clear – the wicked one was running through her blood, whispering words of zest, impatience and rage.

How many jinns could she have released from these pots? What imbalance had her act caused in the minds of those watching her? If God had created man from clay and jinn from fire, how could one imprison jinn in a pot, sealing him in a handful of soil? Was it a trick to make him believe he was residing in a human, luring him into embracing his own imprisonment?

‘To hell with deceit!’ she yelled. ‘Tabu is setting the jinns free! You can now blame them for your rage when you lift a hand against your wife. You can blame them for your greed when you impoverish your father-in-law. You can blame them for your lust when you slobber at the sight of a girl from the neighborhood.’

It did not take long before two of the dargah caretakers grasped her arms and pulled her towards a secluded area, away from the sight of the tongue-tied devotees. She lost sight of the hijras, but she silently hoped her small act had been worthwhile. What did Tabu know of these pirs and all the girls brought here to face their own anguish and anger? How many hits of the broom would it take to provoke the body to writhe and wallow with humiliation so sordid that even Shaitan²¹ ended up spitting itself out of it?

Her laughter was raucous as the pirs tied padlocks as amulets around her neck, ankles and wrists. They reminded her of the padlocked chains men used on overnight trains to tie suitcases to their waists, to ward off theft. She laughed to think of a girl with padlocks, as if she had suddenly become treasure instead of a burden and a curse. Was there anything remaining inside worthy of protection? Her laughter was a fusion of mockery and agony.

She knew she was in for another forty days of prayer, penance and tawiz²²-imbued rose water. She would probably be closely watched and restricted from interaction with anyone apart from the pirs and the other girls. She might become a silent spectator of the dargah’s economy again; the perfect, self-sustained world of the dargah she knew the pulse of.

Chaddars²³, the prayer cloths sold to pilgrims and placed on the saint’s tomb, would be handed over for reselling. Some fabrics would be given to the poor to dress or tailor. Rose petals bought and spread over the dargah tomb would turn into incense and rose water. Pilgrims whose prayers were granted after days, months or years of prayer, would return to feed the poor in the dargah premises. People believing they had been set free of illness would keep bringing money to the pirs and the singers, to sustain their families and the local workers. She was sheltered in a community that recycled everything from flowers and fabric, to hopes and dreams.

In the morning, she was to complete the forty healing days. By the evening, she had managed to close the cycle and start all over again. But it was different this time. The jhumkas added sparkle to her rebellious face. For the first time, a scarf did not cover her face. The veil with the color of pomegranate seeds concealed a fugitive who had misled the eunuchs. Tabu thought she would never see those frightened, kajal- lined eyes again. It didn’t matter. Still, something in her chest swayed with joy. One fugitive had just helped another.

¹ Sufism is an esoteric spiritual practice and a mystical form of Islam.

² Qawwali is a devotional musical form of Sufism, performed by a group of musicians, based on Sufi poetry and characterized by rhythmic repetitions and improvisations. Qawwali is believed to induce mystical ecstasy in the listener.

³ In the Islamic folklore, the jinns are supernatural entities inhibiting the earth but invisible to the human eye. According to the tradition, God created the jinn from a smokeless fire before he created the man.

⁴ Dargah is a Sufi shrine and place of pilgrimage, centered around a tomb of a Sufi saint.

⁵ Gharara is a type of a traditional dress set worn by Muslim women in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It consists of a veil, shirt/tunic and a pair of wide-flared pants.

⁶ Paan is a chewing intoxicant popular across Asia. It is made of betel leaves wrapped around a mixture of Areca nut, lime, spices (such as cardamom), and very often tobacco.

⁷ Layla and Majnun are the protagonists of the best-known love story of the Arabic world, told by the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami.

⁸ In Persian and Sufi tradition, Mullah Nasruddin is a character of many folk tales known for the humor, sarcasm, and apparent foolishness followed by a profound truth or a moral of the story.

⁹ Qalandars are unorthodox Sufi ascetics or wandering fakirs. Sometimes the title Qalandar is an honorific one, and refers to the self-realization of a Sufi master.

¹⁰ Salwar is a traditional women’s outfit; a pair of loose, pleated pants.

¹¹ Pir is a Sufi saint; the title Pir often honorifically included in the names of revered mystics. Here, pirs refer to the chief caretakers of the dargah.

¹² Dram is a unit of measurement; 1 dram ~ 3.7 ml.

¹³ Attar or ittar is a natural, alcohol-free, essential oil perfume extracted via distillation from various parts of aromatic plants, such as flowers, bark, or seeds.

¹⁴ Also known as hina or Shamama, it is an exquisite and expensive type of traditionally made perfume in India.

¹⁵ Qawwals are singers and musicians who perform Qawwali music, usually as a part of a ritual at a dargah. Typically, they are carriers of a musical qawwali tradition (silsila), passed down through many generations in the family.

¹⁶ Hindi: kohl, an eye make-up

¹⁷ Jhumkas are Indian-style earrings with traditional, bell-shaped design.

¹⁸ Khwaja is an honorific title for a Sufi master.

¹⁹ Hijras are members of a transgender community in India and several other countries across South Asia.

²⁰ Matka is an earthen pot.

²¹ Shaitan is a word of Arabic origin, used in Islamic tradition to denote the Devil, the