Acouple of weeks ago, we awoke to the raucous sounds of clapping and jeering outside. “Haay Haay!” a loud voice cried, “Haay come outside and show us the new scion of the house! We’re here to bless him!” It was the eunuchs, who had come around to check out my brother’s newborn. Immediately, the household went into a tizzy. My mother began frantically looking for things to give them. The new mother and baby were sent off to the farthest bedroom. The rest of us girded up for the inevitable fight. We stepped out to see a group of four eunuchs, hijras as they’re locally known. Dressed in bright and shiny female garb, pancake make-up and faux jewellery, they were quite a sight. As negotiations began (they wanted Rs 20,000 since the baby happened to be a boy), they became louder and louder. The bargaining, initially good natured, soon began to sound more threatening. And their demeanour slowly began to transform from jocular to aggressively lewd.
What was with them? I wondered, scared yet interested. Why did they stress their gender in this fashion? What intricate espionage networks must they operate, to get wind of every occasion in every household that afforded them a chance to extort money? I remember hearing a story about their origins. Apparently, when Lord Ram, exiled from his kingdom for 14 years, he found himself being followed by all his faithful citizens, and requested “all men and all women” to return to Ayodhya. It was only the hijras — neither men nor women, who decided to stay on with him. Impressed by their piety, Ram gave them the power to confer blessings on people on auspicious occasions, like childbirth and marriage. Over the years, however, this fairly benign and accepted social practice has turned into an institutionalised system of blackmail.
Anyway, back to our morning encounter with the hijras — we stuck to our guns insisting that it was too much money to pay for traditions we didn’t really follow. Eventually, after much clapping, insults and veiled threats of unveiling their scarred genitalia, they finally left with half of what they’d demanded.
Later, I did a little research on the Indian hijra community. Battling a long history of prejudice, violence (mostly sexual) and denial of their civil rights since our Constitution does not recognise the third gender — hijras are victimised by the police, ostracised by their families and rejected by the community. With few options to study and get regular jobs, most eunuchs end up on the fringes of society, either in large “gangs” or as sex workers. It’s not as if they’re an insignificantly small number either. When in 2010 the Municipal Corporation of Delhi decided to bring them under the purview of its monthly pension scheme, in a landmark recognition of their disempowerment, the apex body counted over 300,000 eunuchs in Delhi alone.
Looking back on my experience with the hijras, I wondered at the irony of it all. They were a community reviled and abused for generations — but seemed to best get off by reviling and abusing people like us. They were people threatened by sexual violence all their lives — who terrorised “normal” people by threatening to disrobe in front of them. They belonged to a sub-culture shrouded in secrecy — but flaunted their gender identity flamboyantly.
“Just forget about those dirty creatures, Didi!” the maid said disdainfully as she found me later, poring over a book about eunuchs, “people like them are just not worth thinking about!” It was sad but true that she pretty much summed up the general opinion on these shadowy people of the “third” kind…