Got myself in deep, Kathie? Yup - from the moment I met the Devil things were out of control. There was no warning for anything. BAM! There was a street full of whores. BAM! There was a room full of hijra. BAM! There was a huge eunuch. Ifte went to water almost immediately, poor lad. I'm a much better liar and perhaps a little more experienced than my 25 year old bodyguard. As I'm 35 years older, I'd hope so.

Just for fun, here's a picture of Ifte:
http://www.calcuttawalks.com/explorers.html
You can click on him and make him larger.

I'm also not remotely fussed about people's sexuality. I don't care what they do, any more. I'm always interested, but I don't CARE. I can't judge anyone any more. There is only one real no-go zone where that stuff is concerned. That involves children. Then I judge.

It's always good to remember that, when I'm in the midst of these situations, I am respectful, funny and lie like a trouper. I chat away as if their business is completely normal and don't dwell on the obvious. When it's time to shut up, I do. I sit, trying to look relaxed and watch. I rarely take pictures unless asked. Mostly I haven't the faintest idea what is going on.

It was only later, on much reflection, I had a chance to nut out just what an extraordinary situation I had been in - and make sense of things that didn't make any sense at the time. That's what I meant about translation sometimes being retrospective.

At this point in the proceedings, I'm just so deep in the proceedings there is no time to be scared - I'm just dealing with it.

So a street full of transsexual hookers, a room jammed with 'big queens' and an old eunuch weren't enough to spin me out. Just yet. That privelege is reserved for someone else.

I'm glad Becalm is out from under the blanket. As I never really accumulated much sexual energy in my youth, preferring to use it up in the traditional fashion, Kundalini never made much of a mark on me.

Now, I did know about that but I'd entirely forgotten so thank you for reminding me. That must be where it all began. Like everything in the hijra world, I suspect it's become cheerfully perverted and turned into a money-making proposition. A less yogic, spiritual group of women you'd be hard-pressed to find.

Actually, that's what I think the Devil was referring to when he said:

'It's all in your mind. Don't you get it? We're just big queens, that's all! Just big queens!'

I think he was telling me something.

Maybe that curse is all a bit of a con. Just as a work of art is worth precisely what someone is prepared to pay for it, so a curse is as powerful as the belief in it. There doesn't actually have to BE a hijra curse. There just have to be people who believe there IS.

Which leads us neatly to this:

This extraordinary band of ladies has adapted another survival strategy in tandem with their fatal curse; a unique theatre of Outrage that rather appeals to the anarchist in me. I haven’t found the historical precedent but this blissful piece of bullying has been going on for millennia.

As soon as they hear of a wedding or the birth of a male child, a gaggle of Hijra women will show up unannounced - and uninvited – to bless the event by singing, drumming, and dancing. In Hindu society births and weddings are hugely important ceremonial occasions governed by a set of traditions; everything is auspice, everything is aarti - everything must be correct. The last thing you need is a pack of eunuchs howling at the door.

Theoretically the performance is ‘a ritual entreaty for fertility on behalf of the bridegroom or newborn son’ but the reality is far more curious. The Hijra have cleverly adopted the politics of those who have nothing left to lose – they are the gate-crashers from Hell. Their dances and behavior become increasingly suggestive and relentlessly crude, a burlesque parody of civilized behavior – all calculated to outrage the party's decorum. Imagine having your party destroyed by twenty-five over-excited drag queens screeching obscenities in the lounge room. The clear threat behind this escalating behavior is that if appropriate baksheesh is not forthcoming things can only get a great deal worse – and they will.

If the hosts are mingy or refuse to pay, everything gets completely out of hand. The Hijras hit back by screeching, swearing and exposing their genitals – or, I assume, where their genitals used to be - loudly ridiculing the family to the neighbors or cursing them with a bitterness only a queen without a penis could understand.

Getting a curse from a Hijra is a terrible thing. A curse from an angry hijra dance troupe is worse. A curse from Bloody Mary would knock you down dead on the spot.

Only one thing could stop a hijra curse and that was the rustle of rupees. The smart guys had learned to get ahead of the game, inviting the Hijra into their homes instead, paying outrageous fees in advance. A prediction, a spell, a blessing or two; protection money smoothed the way - everything was available.

The Devil eagerly reeled off a list of prices, from a blessing to a wedding, a massed band of hijra to an elegant eunuch ensemble, from a disco-hijra to a big juicy curse. There were other services too, he hinted at that. I didn’t push for a price-list. He seemed keen to make the hijra scene seem a lot more vibrant than it probably was. I guess he wanted me to know that it was still a seller’s market; it always would be. There were only so many good hijras to go round.

The city was divided into districts; each run by an elderly nirwaan hijra. Some were more oriented to ceremonies and rupee gouging, some to sex-work, some to training, politics and repair. The number of girls working in each district varied from season to season - they followed the festival flow like showgirls, moved to Mumbai then Chennai then back again. The mother-eunuchs worked in tandem with the Devil, transferring girls from one job to the next, solving problems, swapping data; an effective mafia that had micro-tentacles into every family in their area – every pregnancy, every birth, every engagement, every wedding; a neighborhood held to ransom with threat of a Hijra Attack. Nothing escaped the Divas’ attention; no one escaped the Eunuch Gang of Four.

Slowly, drip by dreadful drip, it was becoming apparent that our new guide and hijra-fixer was a little bit more than the sum of his parts. He certainly had interesting friends. The Devil, Dogster and his bodyguard were having tea with the Fairy Godmother – and I mean that in the best Calabrian sense.

Maybe he was the accountant? Maybe he was Guru Corleone himself? I didn’t know – but everything that happened within that narrow strip of the socio-sexual spectrum was their department, everything was their business, everything was commission and politics and intrigue. These mutilated harridans held transsexual Kolkata in their grip; these four old girls and my Devil.

The Devil was the detail in between.

I caught Guru Bloody Mary looking at me through a crack in those old eunuch eyes.

I raised one eyebrow, winked, smiled and wiggled my head. I was trying to look cavalier, like Daniel Craig. That usually gets a smile. Yup, still does. Somewhere, beneath all that fat, I saw the faintest quiver of amusement.

I ached to take her picture but instead, pointed at one of hers. A faded black and white in a yellow frame of a beautiful young lady, turned to face the camera, her long black hair tumbling in a single loose plait down to her thighs.

‘Is this you?’ I mimed.

She flushed with pleasure, reached over and plucked her past from the wall. She handed it to me and dragged out an album. I cooed over the long black hair. Bloody Mary got my drift.

‘Here,’ she said, and thrust another picture at me.

There she was in traditional sari and jewels, dancing, here another full-length shot of a slim, gracious lady.

‘That was me,’ she said with a gesture. ‘Now look...’

‘You’re still beautiful, my darling,’ I said with an absolutely straight face. She squeaked with pleasure. The Diva didn’t understand much English, but she certainly understood ‘beautiful’. I don’t think she got many compliments. One limp hand came out and flicked coyly at my arm.

Ifte moved fast to fill in the gap between her hand and me.

‘Don’t let her touch you,’ he hissed.

The Devil snapped his phone shut. It was time for us to go to the next place. I bowed and thanked my old eunuch in words she didn’t understand. She smiled sadly and waved. The last I saw she was putting her old self back on the wall.

‘She liked you,’ said the Devil.

‘I liked her,’ I lied.

Ifte breathed for the first time in ten minutes.

‘Phew,’ he said, to no one in particular.

'Phew,' you might think: but the night isn't over yet. Tomorrow - if I can bear to post it - the conclusion to this odd little dance with the Devil.

But we'll all have to have a break first, to collect our thoughts. I certainly need a calming beverage.

Mesmerizing, dogster. I'm sitting here at my computer in my very American den, yet somehow I'm seeing and hearing (and, I think, even smelling) India.

Dear Doggie - I do love you and your stories - the things you do for us - to indeed educate us and save us from having to go there ourselves! I think maybe I've just had too much red for the night to go with the story but I haven't yet broken out the brandy. I'll keep that for tomorrow.

Ah Dogster, no baseball bats needed for me. I am not afraid. I grew up around those who could sling curses better than the best of the Hijra.

Thanks for the link to Calcutta Walks and Ifte. I think it's funny he was so shell-shocked by all of this considering that his bio says
"Life is an adventure for this true romantic, for whom the predictable is abhorrent. His antennae tune in to all that’s ‘forbidden’...he's all for unearthing and understanding the various sub-cultures that shy away from the mainstream."

He's a cutie. I can see why the <i>ladies</i> liked him.

you are truly a bad boy in every way

Do you think "The Dogster" will become one of the standard Calcutta Walks options?! Thanks for writing. Now I understand why you didn't want to get into it on the road.

So if the, um, bollocks are removed, there's no testosterone, ergo no accumulated sexual anything, just like my cat. So it all works like voodoo --- if you believe bad things will happen, they do.

It's so good to get out of Los Angeles even into such a bizarre world as this-or maybe L.A. is the more bizarre.

it sort of sound like LA to me...

I'm with you, Indiana. Smoke and mirrors - it's all in your mind.

Try telling that to a few million Indians who fervently believe in the hijra curse. lol. So, in a way, these gals don't have to DO anything, history and superstition have done it all for them. They just sit there and look scary.

Yes, Kristina, you can see why all the Ifte fuss, eh? That's who NOBODY was looking at me. It was quite a relief. I've just realised that, in the whole evening, there wasn't a woman in sight - yet I was surrounded by 'ladies'.

Check out that link some more. Calcutta Walks is a cool company. I've used them four times. As you see, I'm stretching the boundaries. For all their young, get ahead, groovy new India vibe, they are really just clean-living, well-educated, energetic, enthusiastic innocents when it comes to the real down and dirty Kolkata stuff. Like us all.

When it's in ya face it's very different from 'caring' from a distance. If someone had chucked me into the middle of transsexual hookers and eunuchs at that age, I'd be spun out too. I felt like his father most of the time - but I enjoyed watching his implosion.

Had we both gone home at this point, I think the evening would have been judged a great, if rather peculiar, success. Alas, there was another little surprise just round the corner.

Tell on, please...I await with bated breath.

Although, come to think of it, that alas sounds pretty ominous.

So this time around, dogster went beyond doggie-style. I am glad that you made it out safely..you are tempting fate with many adventures, dogster, I must say.

Amy...you are not "smelling India"...this is highly uncommon for everywhere. But just like you, I am learning about a whole another life-style that I didn't know existed.

Kinda like the David Carradine story...another surprise.

Fascinating stuff...you are a good story teller dogster.

O.K. - it's probably time to stumble a little further into the maw. I content myself with the knowledge that as you've made it this far into the story, nothing much else can disturb you. Well, let's see...

Time to bring out the brandy.

Chelo! We’re in a cab, zooming away, Satan squashed in the back directing proceedings, juggling driver and phone calls in rapid Bengali. I can hear high pitched voices.

‘That’s my girls,’ he smiled, ‘they want to meet you.’

I don’t know what is going on, where we are headed and Ifte doesn’t either. He’s had enough.

‘I was thinking of going home soon...’ he said.

We squeal to a stop at an intersection.

The Devil leapt back on his mobile phone.

He waved out the window. Suddenly, to my complete astonishment, three pre-pubescent lads burst into the front seat of the car. Another jumped into the back seat. He’s sitting on Ifte’s lap. It’s like one thousand hyper-active children just joined us.

‘These are my girls!’ beamed Satan.

It hadn’t occurred to me that his ‘girls’ were going to be little boys.

I mean little boys. They looked eight, nine, ten years old.

They were all for sale.

The topic had dramatically changed. Up until a second ago I’d been dealing with curses, castrations, drag-queens and whores, kamikaze transsexual dance troups, even a flirtatious eunuch sitting on a bed. I’m cool with all that. I’d rolled with the punches when all around me were flailing, been relentlessly jolly, courteous and kind; complicit acceptance was always part of the deal for this evening - I’m an anthropologist in this situation, not a judge.

I just didn’t expect tonight to head into this little boy business, that’s all. I have a very non-anthropological attitude problem with this stuff. I see red.

I’m stuck in a swerving taxi through streets I do not know with people to whom the whoring of children is the most normal thing in the world. The Devil is perfectly charming, smiling indulgently in the back seat while his ‘girls’ show off to the stranger. The kids are bright and funny, if disturbingly effeminate, bouncing up and down, turning around to smile and laugh. Their English is fluent and natural; they are dressed in the neatest of groovy clothes, acting up for the foreigner in the most unnatural of little boy ways.

I am chatting and laughing and losing it, all in a single ride. The more they talk, the more I die. It is raining. Kolkata blurred by, surreal streaks through grubby glass, slumdog drizzle wipes the day’s dirt from the windows of the car. Can it wash me clean? This is awful. Suddenly, dreadfully, not cool at all, awful.