The Cauliflower Read Online Free Page A

Pyne and all the members of his family with this prank, and while at first Durgadas Pyne was very angry with Uncle, he soon saw the humor of the situation and commended the young man for his impressive disguise.
    Of course, this was not the first occasion on which Uncle had dressed as a woman. Often in the past his female companions had dressed him up in sari s and ornaments—Uncle was their joy, their plaything—so that he might better act the part, and sing the delightful songs, of Radharani or Vrinda. In fact, Uncle loved nothing more than to get dressed up and masquerade as a village woman walking to the tank to fetch water with a pitcher. His observation of all the special female habits and mannerisms was very close. He was utterly convincing as a woman in every way. To the closed-off Western mind Uncle’s pranks may appear shocking, but in these parts we think of such behavior merely as Uncle’s lila —his special play. We see in it a kind of innocent devotion, an expression of the madhura bhava , a sweet mood. There is no deceit in it. Play cannot be deceitful. Nor devotional love. Like Uncle himself, it is simply joyous. It is completely harmless. It is utterly blissful.
    America, the late 1950s/early 1960s (an anonymous transgender man speaks)
    â€œI remember being alone on a farm with access to my landlady’s wardrobe … wearing the pretty, old-fashioned dresses made me feel so happy … but after a couple of hours in them I was overcome with sadness and frustration. I wanted to be a woman so badly … but I saw no way to achieve my goal.
    â€œI started to shout at the top of my lungs, ‘I am a woman! I am a woman!’ No one could hear me in the sprawling countryside but the cows and trees and sky.… Then all at once I was flooded with the sweetest, most glorious feeling I have ever had. It seemed to pour out of my heart into my whole body … pure joy just kept bubbling up within me, without any effort on my part. I felt that this feeling was the presence of God. And I decided that it was a sign that God’s grace was most available to me as a woman.”
    1836. In the following scene we find the Rani cheerfully contemplating the wider sociopolitical ramifications of her husband’s tragic early death.
    Ha! No we don’t. Of course we don’t. The Rani (although she is no rani , no queen; this is merely a fond nickname her mother applied to her which then stuck like ornate sugarwork to the end of a wooden spatula) lives within the asphyxiating vise of the present moment. Clever as she is, hallowed as she is, she still can’t step outside of it. The awesome “power of the present” treads rudely on the back of the skirts of her sari .
    But we can. We can step outside of 1836. We can stretch the melted sugar of the Rani’s life and analyze it from a distance. (Although ornate decorative sugarwork is a Western weakness. Let’s replace it with an Indian sweet— burfi , a popular Bengali treat made of sugar and condensed milk. Let’s push our clean thumbs and index fingers into the metal tray containing this sticky, cooling mixture—possibly flavored with coconut or almond or pistachio—pinch it lightly, and then pull the glorious, glutinous mess closer toward us.)
    The Rani hails from the lowly Sudra , or servant, caste. Her immensely wealthy husband has just suddenly died from “apoplexy” (which in modern parlance is a hemorrhage or a stroke) during a carriage ride. He is forty-nine years old. Reports tell us that when Rajchandra died the Rani lay groaning on the floor, stricken, for three full days without any food or drink. Then the formal grieving process began: She weighed herself and gave this exact amount to the Brahmin s (the spiritual caste) in silver coins (6,017 of them, in total); she distributed food and gifts to the poor.
    It may legitimately cross our minds whether the Rani