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Intro
A strange older woman has set up her home in the graveyard behind the government hospital. She doesn’t get many visitors at first, but soon the blind old Imam Ziauddin becomes a frequent companion of hers. The two of them read the newspaper together, and the Imam learns that the woman’s name is Anjum. She is a Hijra, a transwoman, who has left the Khwabgah where she lived for years with many of Delhi’s other Hijras. As a child, Anjum was born intersex, but her mother, Jahanara, gendered the child a boy and called Aftab.
Although Aftab generally presents as masculine as a child, he is an excellent singer, which causes the neighborhood kids to tease him about being too feminine. When Aftab’s father, Mulaqat, discovers that his son is intersex, he forces Aftab to undergo a gender-change surgery and tries to inspire him towards masculinity by telling him stories about his great warrior ancestors. But Aftab admires women far more than men and one day sees a beautiful Hijra walking down the street and follows her. He ends up at the Khwabgah, which he goes on to visit daily until the age of 15, when he decides to move there permanently, devastating his parents. There, Aftab transforms into Anjum, and, after having a male-to-female gender transition surgery, Anjum feels like the full version of herself. Anjum becomes a successful Hijra, being interviewed constantly by NGOs, human rights groups and journalists. She is beautiful and has an aggressive femininity.
One day, Anjum finds an abandoned baby outside of a mosque and decides to take her home, naming her Zainab. Anjum adores the baby girl but has no idea how to parent, spoiling Zainab and telling her terrifyingly realistic stories about her own life. When Zainab is getting ready to go to school for the first time, she goes through a bout of ill health, inspiring Anjum to take a pilgrimage with Zakir Mian to a holy Muslim site in Gujarat. However, on the pilgrimage, Anjum and Zakir Mian are caught in a massacre. Zakir Mian is killed and Anjum, spared because killing Hijras is bad luck, returns a transformed person, trying to dress Zainab as a little boy to protect her from suffering violence. Ustad Kulsoom Bi, the head of the Khwabgah, disagrees with this decision that Anjum has taken, and, upset, Anjum leaves the Khwabgah and moves into the graveyard behind the government hospital, leaving Zainab in Saeeda’s care.
In the graveyard, Anjum slowly builds a home around the graves of her ancestors and, when Saddam Hussain, an unemployed Dalit young man on a mission to murder the police officer who caused the death of his father, arrives, she no longer lives there alone. Saddam is the first one to tell Anjum that she ought to charge for guests and charge for funeral services. Soon, Anjum begins calling her home Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services, and tends to all of the outcast and downtrodden members of society.
Meanwhile, Biplab, a bureaucrat in the Indian government discovers that a tenant of his, Tilo, has gone missing. Tilo is a young woman whom Biplab has loved in secret for his whole life, whom he met as a university student acting in a play. At the time, Tilo was dating Musa, a Kashmiri architect, and in spite of this both Biplab and Naga, Biplab’s lifelong friend who is also in the play, are wildly in love with her.
In the current day, Biplab is involved in the Kashmir conflict as a bureaucrat whose work serves primarily to cover up the atrocities committed by the Indian Army in the region. Naga is a journalist, and although he doesn’t see himself as corrupt in any way, Biplab views him as a puppet of the government, who reveals only as much as the government want him to reveal. One day on assignment in Kashmir, Biplab receives a phone call from an interrogation center in Srinagar with an encoded message from Tilo. Upon learning that the army has captured her, Biplab sends Naga to collect her from the jail, and soon after, Naga and Tilo marry. However, the marriage doesn’t last long, and when Tilo finally leaves Naga, she asks Biplab if she can rent one of his apartments. This is where Biplab finds himself waiting for her, although it seems that Tilo has abandoned the apartment.
Sometime before Biplab arrives at Tilo’s former apartment, there is a wild public protest at Jantar Mantar. It starts as an anti-corruption protest by a Gandhian who has gone on hunger strike to speak out against corruption in India. However, soon many, many other causes come to take advantage of the TV coverage at the sight and protest for their own causes. Anjum and Saddam Hussain go together to see what is going on with the protest. One day, a group called the Mothers of the Disappeared finds a baby abandoned on the pavement in front of the protest. Anjum, who believes it is her destiny to be a mother, wants to take the baby home, but the other protesters believe it would be best to hand the baby over to the police. Anjum won’t go down without a fight, and Mr. Aggarwal, the bureaucrat advocating for the baby to be handed over to police, is no match for her. But in the middle of the conflict, the baby disappears, and no one knows who’s taken her.
The person who has taken the baby is none other than Tilo, who names her Miss Jebeen the Second after Musa’s daughter, who was murdered with her mother, Arifa, in a massacre by the Indian government in Kashmir. Tilo has become involved in documenting the Kashmir conflict after she went to visit Musa there one year and was taken captive by the military. After she and Musa have reunited on a houseboat, the military police raid the houseboat, capturing and killing Gulrez, a dear friend of Musa’s. That day, the military are led by Major Amrik Singh, and Tilo, once she is free from military custody thanks to Biplab’s intervention, vows to get revenge on the major for killing Gulrez. (However, the Major has fled to California, where he kills himself and his wife and children.)
When Tilo resolves to kidnap the baby, she does so for Musa in honor of his dead daughter. But the police are after her, and she needs somewhere safe to go. A friend of hers, Dr. Azad Bhartiya, suggests that she try Jannat Guest House and gives her Saddam Hussain’s card. So Tilo plans to have Saddam pick her and the baby up to move to Jannat Guest House permanently. When there, Tilo begins to work as a teacher for the poor, local children, and greatly enjoys her work. Zainab and Saddam fall in love and get married, and many of the other outcasts of the city flock to the space to be in a loving, welcoming community. Unlike her namesake, Miss Jebeen the Second is raised surrounded by love, peace, and safety.
