This is my new website. Bookmark it now!! Visit it now!! errrmm...it isn't exactly 100% ready yet. But at least the blog is up... so do drop by   Thanks!

First of all, I would like to say Thank You to Style Magazine for this pair of sunglasses which makes the model look absolutely, positively provocative. And not forgetting the model, Eugene, who so graciously posed and flashed that megawatt smile of his. Wonderful! See how a little fun with PhotoShop made my day today? Try it...you'll know what i mean.

Anyways. Back to houseflies. I had no idea they had such a short lifespan. My colleague said that they live for approximately 14 days. And she was just talking about how they must life to the fullest every single day since they didnt have much of a life. It's sad how we can't do the same. Everyday we bitch bitch and bitch. It never seems to end. If it's not about work, it's always about something else.

Hijras: Challenging gender dichotomies

Arvind Kumar

A couple of women dressed in bright salvers and kamezes bang on the gate, then slip into the courtyard without waiting for a reply. Two musicians trail after them. The various members of the host family watch the visitors with equal parts of amusement and annoyance. The musicians settle on the ground, lift their instruments, and begin to play. The women respond to the music, sway in the style of the mujrah dancers; borrow moves from Hindi films best forgotten. Upon closer scrutiny, the "women" reveal rather masculine faces better suited for drag queens. A crowd of villagers gathers in the courtyard, uninvited, unimpeded. The "women" lift a month- old baby out of his grandmother's arms, coo to him as they murmur blessings. They tease the fathers, sing songs that border on the bawdy as the villagers laugh and clap their hands. The father slips ten rupees into the "women" hands, coaxes them into finishing their show, and then directs them to the door.

These "women" are actually hijra, enigmatic transgender individuals who are often talked about but rarely understood. They inspire questioning of the idea of gender as a dichotomy and they also attest to the brutal rate that some homosexual men experience when their attempts to live out their nature are severely limited.

A number of gay South Asians I know have mentioned the occasional use of the word hijra as a pejorative for homosexual men in India. A few Western writers have also confused the concepts of homosexuality and hijras and at times attempted to equate them. A closer look at the reality of the hijras, however, makes it clear that they have a rather complex relationship to homosexuality, spirituality, and mainstream society. Hijras and other individuals who undergo gender transformation, be it nominal or surgical, may seem bizarre, unreal to a Westerner, yet they have existed and continue to exist in varying forms, under a hast of names, and in a number of different cultures.

Among Native American tribes, transgender persons were variously known as winkte (among the Lakota tribes), hemanch (Cheyenne), and nadle (Navajo); the French settlers and explorers referred to them as berdache. In the country of Oman, they are called xanlth and inhabit a niche between those of men and women. Among the Muslims of Mombasa, Kenya, such individuals are called washoga, I and the Polynesians refer to them as mahu. In many of these cultures, as with the hijras of India, special powers are attributed to the gender-transformed people (Mihalik, 1989).

Hijras have traditionally been a north Indian phenomenon, although they are found in smaller numbers in the southern regions of the country. Rural Indians often define the hijra as a hermaphrodite, a person with the genitals of both a man and women. Others maintain that hijras are mostly transsexuals who give up their male genitals in homage to their goddess, Bahuchara Mata, in a quest for spiritual transcendence (Nanda, 1990). There are also those who believe that hijras are homosexual men who undergo sexual surgery, or simply dress in drag, in order to have sex with other men. In the village of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and other states, hijras are well known, though in Punjabi they are often called kuras. Visually many of them are somewhat masculine looking, though some, like a few transvestites in the West, can pass for quite pretty women. Hijras always dress in women's clothes; they wear the saris that are ubiquitous to India, or the salvarkameez that is favoured by north Indian and Pakistani women. Like many a Western transvestites, they often exaggerate feminine manners of speech and movement, and their use of makeup and sense of fashion can similarly present an exaggeratedly traditional image women.

Unlike cross-dressers or transsexual in Western countries, hijras have a sanctioned niche in the Indian culture, if at best near the fringes of society. They are despised, feared, and ridiculed - yet also respected. These contradictory attitudes on the part of the general populate have their source in the seemingly asexual condition of the Hijra. Whether they think that hijras are hermaphrodites or transsexuals, Indians believe that such individuals derive a special power from their familiarity with both genders. This power is thought to manifest itself in the ability of the hijras to lay both blessings and curses on others. Thus, no matter how they might be reviled or ridiculed, it is considered wise to stay in their good graces.

A group of hijras will make the rounds of the villages in its territory and visit the houses in which births of children and weddings have occurred. To an outsider they can seem to appear out of nowhere, but they have their own network for such communication. The visiting group usually consists of two or three hijras and a like number of musicians on the tables and other instruments. Invariably, a crowd forms to watch them. The hijras will dance and sing, tease the onlookers, and bestow blessings of good health and fertility. It is considered bad luck to turn them away, and the hijras will not leave until they have been "paid" for their performance. If they are paid an amount they consider inadequate, they will resort to leasing that gets progressively more crude; most often the host family gladly pays what is asked simply to have them depart on good terms.

Hijras live in small groups and in each of these groups there is a kinship hierarchy. Each group consists of a guru and her disciples (hijras always refer to themselves in the feminine). These gurus in turn answer to other gurus and, ultimately, all hijras come under the auspices of a handful of top gurus. Within each small group the members may adopt kinship ties with one another; thus one may refer to another as her "sister," a second might be a "mother" or "daughter." Similarly, all of the groups within the hierarchy under one top guru may treat one another as extended family (Nanda, 1990). In same ways, these groups and kinship lies are not dissimilar to the relationship adopted by the various "houses" of Harlem transvestites in the 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning. Social scientists assert that the loyalty of a member to his or her group is directly proportional to the price exacted for entry into the group, thus one can safely assume that the power of the bond that emasculation creates among hijras must be quite great.

One of the difficulties in trying to define hijras is their own varying description of themselves. Some speak proudly of their sex change and see their emasculation as a tribute to their patron goddess, Bahuchara Mata. This operation takes place in the group's home and is performed by another hijra, without the assistance of anaesthesia. There is little guarantee of the client surviving the surgery. When the male genitals are removed, no female organs are constructed in their place; thus the survivors become truly asexual.
Many of these individuals speak of a history of feelings incongruent with their gender, similar to the experience of transsexuals in the West. It is something of a paradox that those who can neither father nor give birth to children are attributed the power to give blessings of fertility.

Many hijras do not speak of this sacrifice but rather insist that they were born hermaphrodites. It is difficult to ascertain the truth about these claims, yet stories of such births are stuff of village lore in most rural areas. In parts of north India many people believe that all children born with the genitals of both genders are the property of the hijras, to b raised by them into their caste, and there are numerous stories of hijras claiming these children. In reality, most, if not all, hijras choose to join the ranks of this community as adolescents or adults. Still, it is not unusual to hear a hijra recount in song of how from her birth as a hermaphrodite she was shielded by her parents, raised as a girl, married off to a man who, upon discovering her dual genitals on the wedding night, threw her out of the house and left her with no choice but to join other hijras in earning a living. Questions of veracity notwithstanding, these songs certainly lend drama to the performance.

Both the self-proclaimed hermaphrodites and the transsexual hijras frown urban transvestites in their midst. 'These latter individuals are anatomically male and have never undergone the ritual emasculation; they simply adopt female garb and join the groups for pragmatic reasons, the opportunity to have sex with men being one of these. It is not uncommon for groups to expect new members to prove their status (they may join the group as preoperative but must undergo the ritual to remain members). Some of this disdain may be due to the need of the hijra to project an image of asexuality and thus preserve their status in society. Despite claims of asexuality, however, many hijra" engage in prostitution to support themselves; this may be due to economics, but the pursuit of pleasure as an objective cannot be ruled out (Nanda, 1990,).

Given the status of homosexuality in Indian society (being denied, bidden, or condemned), many homosexual men have found, and still do find, their way into the hijra community. As hijras", they at least have sanction to exist within society; as homosexuals they are not given even this marginal validation. As hijras, "they are also allowed to adopt an identity and become part of a community of " similar others; as homosexuals, they are likely to be isolated and ' have fleeting interaction with others like themselves. Some researchers, like G.M. Carstairs, have asserted that hijras" merely serve as an institutionalised option of homosexuality; eunuchs and transvestites have had acknowledged roles in sexuality since the days of the Karma Sutra (Nanda, 1990).

Individuals like Carstairs attempt to simplify the rather complex role of hijra". They also seem to have a peculiar definition of homosexuality. Once a hijra has been emasculated, does his having sex with a man constitute homosexuality? In light of the fact that we define a man as such primarily by his genitals, and given that homosexuality is defined as sex between two individuals of the same gender, sex between a hijra and a man could hardly be labelled homosexual behaviour. This is not to say that one or both do not get pleasure out of their interaction and that this pleasure is not their main objective. The hijra, however, is merely serving as a surrogate and is playing the role of a woman both in the sexual act and in visual appearance. Of course, if the hijra is an anatomically male: transvestite, "her" sexual activity with men would certainly constitute homosexual behaviour.

In the case of the hermaphrodite, the scenario becomes more complex. These between-gender individuals come in a variety of forms: they may have functioning genitals of both genders, they may have functional female sexual and reproductive organs and non-functioning, vestigial male organs, or their male organs may be fully functional while their female genitals are merely vestigial. In the latter case, an argument could be made that such a hijra having sex with a man constitutes homosexual behaviour. In the other two cases, however, such a claim would be specious. In the first instance, a label of heterosexual or homosexual behaviour would be equally accurate, while in the second a heterosexual label would constitute a more accurate characterization.

The percentage of hijra who are true hermaphrodites is estimated to be very small (Nanda, 1990); emasculated men thus probably constitute a large majority of this community. This majority can be further divided into those who have felt cross-gendered throughout their lives and thus are really transsexuals, and those who are homosexual and turn to the hijra community because no other path of acceptance and sexual expression are available to them.

In the case of homosexuals who become hijra, this writer cannot help but feel a deep sense of sadness and anger. Sadness because of the physical pain and mutilation these individuals go through in seeking an avenue for sexual self-expression. Anger at the society, at the world, that withholds validation from so many man-Ioving men and compels them to mutilate themselves in an attempt to achieve same of the pleasure intrinsic to their nature.

Perhaps these feelings of anger and sadness are rooted in the influence of the Western gay culture. I suppose a counterargument could be that the status, validation, and community offered by a hijra identity is preferable to the shame, isolation, and fear that a clandestine homosexual identity would entail. But in the end, the transformation of a homosexual man into a hijra is an act of desperation, born out of a lack of self-acceptance and a desire of alternative ways of being true to one's nature. It may bring a sense of community to the individual involved on one rather limited level, but it also stigmatises the person deeply and forecloses his participation in many facets of the surrounding society. For those individuals who are true transsexuals, emasculation and the status of a hijra may provide partial relief from their gender confusion; for homosexuals, however, it is a brutal fate that strips them of their identity and robs them of finding pleasure and love with other men as men. Perhaps as awareness of homosexuality increases in India, as the possibility of loving and being with other men becomes more of a reality, the number of homosexual men, potential gay men, lost to ritual emasculation will change inversely.