dogster

A plump boy in tight white trousers and way too much gold bling sat fat on way too much bed. He wore a red t-shirt that said ‘No More Fear’, spelled out in diamante clusters across his chest. Let’s hope he looked better in drag. Miss Piggy went into a state of red alert when Ifte came in, his two little eyes shining with excitement as they X-rayed my handsome bodyguard. His diamond clusters heaved; if they could have lit up and flashed ‘I love you’ they would have. I thought we’d have to sedate him soon.

‘Chai!’ An imperious squawk from the Nepali princess.

A swarthy man in a white boiler suit ran in from next door. Chai was brought. Now there were seven of us in a room the size of a double bed. All the hijra fluttered and whittered and twittered away to Satan as he explained our presence - then forgot about me in an instant and whittered and twittered some more, probably about Ifte. Nobody cared about the foreigner at all. Ifte was the man of the moment, so stunningly embarrassed he was a real pleasure to tease. So everybody did, including me. Everybody laughed, including, eventually, Ifte.

‘He’s very pretty,’ our Nepali hostess growled and leant back seductively.

Ifte blushed and squirmed.

‘Beautiful eyes...’

‘No hope of translation, Ifte?’

His head quivered. I took that to mean ‘No’.

Were they all prostitutes? Performers? I had no idea. Somehow I got the feeling they didn’t make their living just dancing at weddings.

dogster

There’s no exact equivalent for this phenomenon in Western society. Hijra is the Hindi term we traditionally translate as ‘eunuch’, but that’s not strictly correct. In India the Hijra actually refer to what we would call male-to-female transgender people and effeminate homosexuals, overtly gay guys who optimistically think of themselves as a third sex. Not all Hijras are eunuchs but, these days, most eunuchs are Hijras.

The word ‘eunuch’ is becoming replaced by a glossary of transsexual, transgender, intersex terms I get confused with, together with some really strange sexual oddities I don’t understand. Ceremony has been replaced by surgery. A sex-change operation is a far cry from becoming a eunuch, yet the results seem exactly the same. Of course they are not. The difference is chemical. Gender reassignment surgery, as we so coyly put it, is accompanied with a cocktail of hormones, girlie pills and jungle juice that would turn Arnold Schwarzenegger into Britney Spears.

The ‘girls’ were drawn to the city by fate, genetics, exclusion, circumstance – who knows? There aren’t many options for an effeminate youth born into superstition. Some ran, some were pushed, some were sold. Nobody aspired to be a hijra. It was a refuge of last resort. Their ranks were topped up by the poor lads who had been kidnapped, drugged, tricked and castrated, unwilling amputees propelled into the lifestyle by grim necessity.

There were Hijras and Hijras, of course, high and low class; some worked the streets, some worked the clubs, some worked the festival circuit, some were do-it-yourself drag-queens, just new to Kolkata. Business straddled the cultural universe; from some very strange behavior at the top end of town to a bit of debt-collection by humiliation in the downtown alleys.

The Hijra dress in saris, wear heavy make-up, chatter and coo like amateur actors but, interestingly, make no attempt to pass as women - they embrace the burlesque travesty of it all and, as an act of visible defiance, remain men dressed up like women, behaving like men behaving like badly behaved women – which manages to insult pretty much everybody.

These days only a passionate few achieve a nirvan – a Hijra rebirth – at the hands of a dai. An unlucky few get reborn without warning - but that’s another story. The idea of savage amputation, lock stock and barrel, has been supplanted by the idea of gender reassignment and cosmetic surgery.

It’s not a lifestyle to aspire to. Most hijras exist on the margins of society with very low status and few employment opportunities. Most get their sole income from performing at ceremonies, begging or prostitution, the three traditional Hijra activities. They get picked on and discriminated against with relentless intrusion, they get beaten up, knocked down and abused – and still they survive.

They have for at least four thousand years.

dogster

I sipped, sat and nodded, happy to be in such a unique situation, surrounded by a swirl of girly Hindi slang, a shriek, a giggle and a squeal, content to smile vacantly and wiggle my head. The whole thing was strangely familiar. It was the same gossip, laughter, the ‘oh!’ and ‘o-o-oh! and ‘ee-e-e-e!’ of any group of gay men anywhere in the world. I was struck by how relentlessly universal that behavior has become, particularly as I’ve never yet met a woman who acts like that.

The Devil leant over to me.

‘We don’t all do it,’ he said suddenly.

I had to focus. Wha...?

‘We don’t all have the operation, you know...’

He stared straight into my eyes.

‘Everything is in the mind.’

I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the operation.

The Devil tapped his forehead and looked around.

‘She’s a proper queen,’ he said, pointing to Princess Nepal, ‘all gone.’

‘But she’s a queen, too,’ pointing to Pimples, ‘with tits and a pennis!’

Pennis rhymed with ‘tennis’.

He pointed at Piggy, glinting fat on the bed.

‘She’s a queen and she has a tiny pennis!’ Piggy gasped.

‘She’s a queen!’ he said, pointing at the man in the white boiler suit, ‘but you’d never know.’

There was a slow, swarthy wink in reply.

‘I’m the biggest queen of all! Do I have a dick? Who knows? Who cares?’ Satan said, standing up on the bed. ‘It’s up to you. It’s all in your mind.’

It was a strange existential outburst coming, as it did, from nowhere at all.

‘Don’t you get it? We’re queens! We’re all just big queens!’

He trilled with laughter and waved his hands delightedly in the air.

Then he smiled. Little black pin-pricks of hate stared down the barrel of two perfectly empty eyes.

‘You are one of us – or you are not.’

How simple it was. How scary he was. How elegantly true. I felt a shiver run down my spine. That’s when I first thought he might be the Devil.

I looked at Ifte.

‘Feeling out-numbered?’

He nodded slowly, very emphatically.

dogster

Later on, much later, I thought the Devil was giving me the keys to the castle in that single little exchange. I thought about it a lot. He was a very smart man; scary, but smart. No time for reflection now though. We were off.

‘Chelo. She’s waiting...’

The Devil snapped his mobile phone shut.

‘Who?’

‘Chelo! You’ll see.’

dogster

So will you. Tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

indianapearl

Sounds like another variant of "Born Into Brothels," but I doubt the outcome for these "girls" holds any hope. I used to work in a medical facility where a few of the patients were "transitioning" from male to female. They never get the voice right (always sound like Ethel Etheridge) and the wrists are too large.

Carry on!

Kristina

Dogster, nice to see you back. We've all been waiting.

I looked here when I first got up this morning. I saw your post and didn't even click on it until I had the chance to go make my coffee and settle in. I knew it would be a good one.

Please continue...

moremiles

I knew this was going to be good but not nightmarish! Hope you are well.

Kathie

Ah, I've be awaiting the next adventure. It's good to have you posting again.

Take care of your leg, we need you back out there doing this dangerous work for us!

dogster

Hi indiana: I always think these girls are like toupees. No matter how good they are, you can always tell - but there's something tremendously heroic about someone determined to follow their path, against all odds. But the hijra aren't just 'transitioning' - there's a whole other agenda. Read on.

So, just for you - here's some more of this very strange story. It's stretching the creative boundaries of Fodor's Trip Reports, I will admit - but, in the interests of full disclosure I am bound to confess everything. Kathy is my shrink.

moremiles: I can only warn you that it gets worse. Maybe you could sit over there under the blanket with Becalm.

Take this baseball bat, Kristina. At the first sign of any untoward movement, club 'em.

Becalm - this might be time to close your eyes.

dogster

A fat eunuch in a red sari lay splayed out, her dyed orange hair coiled tight in a bun. Bleak watery eyes stared out from a face that had launched a thousand ships, seen a hundred wars, battled and fought every day of its life. The Hijra Queen sprawled in bed like a giant toad, sighing with an air of grandeur, doggedly hogging her dickless throne with all the faux-majesty she could muster. Like all big old Queens, she had a touch of tragedy about her.

Five piggy toes poked out, little painted worms gasping for breath in an ocean of red and purple. I don’t where the others were. She grunted and heaved a pink pillow behind her back. One chubby arm pinioned with bangles elbowed its way into the light. It gestured at me.

‘Who is this?’ the arm asked.

My presence was explained; she peered at me, wanly consented to an audience, gestured to the sofa then studiously ignored me. I hadn’t met a proper eunuch before and didn’t know the etiquette so I decided to just shut up, grovel and applaud; Diva Rules would apply.

‘She’s very famous...’ Ifte whispered.

I don’t know why he had that strange expression on his face.

Poised on a tiny sofa in a turquoise room in a Kolkata slum, trying to look cool, I’m very aware that I don’t. The room is brightly lit, neat and impeccably tidy, chock-full of brass knick-knacks, old photos and plastic fruit arranged carefully around a huge raised bed covered in a purple throw. Heart-shaped satin cushions have been artfully arranged to frame my hostess in a riot of Carnival Pink, a bit like putting a tutu on a bulldog.

She clicked a switch and to my great surprise the plastic fruit began to perform a son et lumiere. Each piece had been wired and covered in tiny light-bulbs that lit up in sequence. I was particularly taken with the pineapple, now a glowing orange orb of twinkling lights. The lights travelled up the pineapple then down the pineapple, went round the pineapple then flashed. Then the entire pineapple lit up, from bottom to spiky green top. I don’t know which was better - the eunuch or the pineapple.

dogster

The room is tiny but perfectly thought out. It’s about the size of three double beds and bit more. One third is the eunuch’s throne, a raised platform with a border around it, a riot of colour - purple, turquoise, red and pink with highlights of cheap gold, tinsel and brass. From the rest of the room, her boudoir looks exactly like a Toy Theatre, specially lit and framed in a glittering proscenium arch of performing electrical fruit.

With all this distraction, it’s a bit hard to tell what she actually looks like. There isn’t really very much of her to see, just a bloated face and a neck, two chubby arms and those five terrible toes – all the rest has been abandoned to theatre. She was a cross between Bloody Mary from South Pacific and a bag of lard.

The rest of the room is a tidy den, a two-seater couch, a tiny coffee table and a chair. Cupboards cover every wall, a mass of little doors and shelves and drawers. There’s a television set encased in clear plastic high on a shelf, opposite the throne. For once in India, it’s silent. The Eunuch Princess is the only show in town.

Everything is spotless, relentlessly so. The room seems half public space and half private; throne room, reception hall and waiting area. It was clear that I was just one of a passing parade of callers.

‘All arrangements go through her,’ Ifte said, ‘babies, weddings, funerals – everybody wants her blessing.’

Or more to the point, nobody wants her curse.

‘She is a true nirwaan,’ he whispered, ‘the real deal.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything...’

He made a cutting sign with his fingers.

‘Gone.’

dogster

Some consider the castrated nirwaan hijras to be the real deal. It’s not hard to see why. The operation, carried out by a traditional midwife, involves removing the penis and scrotum at a single stroke with a very sharp knife and no anesthesia.

Yee-owch.

The happy cries of the re-born castrati are masked by trumpets and drums.

The emasculation ordeal is thought to confer special powers. Folk-myth, truth, history and fiction have been combined in a mysterious cultural blender to create a lasting popular belief that stems from one basic assumption: that because the nirwaan hijra don’t have sex, they accumulate unused sexual energy in their body.

Maybe that’s what I could feel hanging so heavy in the air – accumulated sexual energy. Maybe there was a curse coming on. Well, fair enough - if someone had cut my little Dogster off without anesthetic when I was fifteen, I’d be cursing, I’d be incandescent with accumulated sexual energy.

Anyway, the eunuch’s repressed mojo can turn rancid unless you pay it lots of rupees. It’s best to get in quick; otherwise the accumulated oomph will spurt out like a lizard’s tongue to deliver a particularly nasty mega-curse.

A eunuch’s curse is a terrible thing. You can die from a eunuch’s curse. Your skin will crawl, your balls rot off, your arms will wither and your bum explode. Your children, should you live to have any, will be leprous, scabrous beggars. Your family will perish from the plague.

That’s their story, anyway – and as long as others believe that the Hijra will survive.

dogster

We were all on our very best behavior, rather as if we were having afternoon tea with an unpredictable maiden aunt - everybody on tippy-toes waiting for the explosion, that infamous cock-less curse. As at this point I knew nothing about the Hijra, I was unencumbered with baggage of any kind. For Dogster all is bliss and ignorance. It’s a delicious canine state; fully alert with no comprehension and no agenda. All you can do is react.

It was my own fault. I asked to be here but didn’t know where here was or what would be here when I got there.

Smart move? Well, no...

Nirwaan Hijra Guru Bloody Mary rose to the occasion and was very grand indeed, docilely accepting praise and grovel from strangers as her due. I watched and sat and smiled and was charming – but somewhere, somehow I’d seen that act before. Without any fore-knowledge of the deadly hijra curse, without any history about just how famously nasty these gals really are, our chai with the eunuch was all sweetness and light. To all intents and purposes she was just another stately homo, just another piss-elegant drag-queen crumbling on her throne.

While the Devil and the Diva dished the dirt I sat silently on the couch staring at Ifte staring at me.

Poor kid. He was starting to look a bit shell-shocked.

‘He’s a good Muslim boy!’ a friend explained later ‘and a guide.’

‘He’s a good guide, too.’

‘And as a good guide he has to take you where you want to go - but as a good Muslim, he’d be appalled!’ he cackled, ‘as a good Muslim and a good guide, he’d be too polite to tell you.’

None of this had occurred to me.

‘Hijra prostitutes! Ifte? In the street! I wish I’d been there to see his face!’

My pal hooted.

‘Muslims hate the Hijra! People are actually afraid of these guys. People believe in their curse. He’s probably the first Muslim ever to sit in a eunuch’s house!’

Well, I guess that would explain quite a lot.

dogster

Poor Ifte.

I'll leave you to reflect upon the hijra's curse. You'll all need a brandy after that last bit. Console yourself with the sure knowledge that it gets even worse.

Stay under the blanket. Do not open your eyes.

MaryW

Thank you - I am feeling the nourishment building up. I'll get the brandy ready for later as I think you are right and it will be needed.

LAleslie

Somehow "Bangkok 8", William Faulkner, the Nik Cohn pinball wizard book that "Tommy" was based on, and Jabba the Hut all came to mind as I read this. I don't know why. Great fun, as all travel horror stories are in the re-telling. But whatever possessed you? No, I don't mean who you were possessed by. I mean, to go there?
Poor Ifte indeed. It will takes him years to wash these images from his mind.

dogster

Hi LA: Bangkok 8, William Faulkner, the Nik Cohn and Jabba the Hut - I'm keeping good company these days. Apart from my never-ending search for danger and intrigue I was prompted to search out the hijra in the vein of this post:

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...ru-kolkata.cfm

'Threatened, secret, small and almost invisible sub-communities of Kolkata' is the sub-heading. File under the chapter entitled 'Really Stupid Ideas that Get Out of Control'.

Yes, Mary - you'll need the brandy.

Kathie

Ah, now we are getting to the heart of the matter. You are so right, hijra aren't about being gay or transitioning or passing... and it sounds like you got yourself in deep before you knew it. I do hope this isn't why your leg hasn't healed.

Becalm

OOOOH...KAAAAY. I know you made it out alive, (although perhaps not unscathed) so I'm game. Fire away.

Eyes open and the heck with the blanket. LOL, I can be brave when I'm sitting comfortably at home, even now at the witching hour. Sitting there on that tiny sofa alongside you like Ifte, feeling like a fish out of water? UUUUNH....I think not. Even curiosity spiked with a (un)healthy dose of ignorance and naivete' is not enough for this pup. Nope. Best to let some sleeping dogs lie, me thinks.

The idea of channeling life force including the sexual energy accumulated through celibacy, for creative purposes other than procreation, is not uncommon among some mystics in the East. The yogic practice of Kundalini involves the raising of the pranic energy that accumulates at the base of the spine upwards to the higher energy centers.

Soooo...at this point, the ultimate fate of poor Ifte and the unsuspecting Dog who are truly sensing impending doom in the air hangs, as they say, in the balance....Stay tuned. (shades of the old-time thriller serials, eh? Add the musical accompaniment here for effect).