Hijra Article from Hindustan Times 26 Sept. '98
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            The final blow to my manhood 



            My name is Shabnam and I am a eunuch. I was not born so...well, this story is
            about how a young man called Aslam was turned into Shabnam
            overnight...through a barbaric operation. The deep gash of a knife that you see on
            my face is a recent one. I got it a few days back in a scuffle at the Old Delhi
            Railway. 

            One customer, a very tall young man, tried to run away by not paying me after we
            had sex behind the public urinals. I was soon overpowered by him, though I
            myself am quite strong. Luckily, a cop, who is also my “admirer”, came to my
            rescue. As I stood before the mirror at home that night, attending to the bleeding
            cut in my left cheek with an anti-septic cream, I was suddenly filled with a twinge
            of pity for myself. Where has Fate brought me? I almost wept as I looked at my
            pathetic, painted face, kohl-lined eyelashes, balls of wool in my kameez and a
            woman’s dress with a red dupatta, hanging about me as if on a dressmaker’s
            mannequin. 

            Contrast this with my image of only three years ago, to which the mirror hanging
            in my old Seelampuri one-room flat has been witness. I was a handsome young
            man of 27, clean-shaven and always dressed simply in a white shirt and black
            trousers ( my favourite), in which I would sit for hours at the sewing-machine. I
            was a tailor in Moradabad. Since it was an old, shabby quarter where I had my
            little shop perched atop a hair-dresser’s, with whom I shared a common stairway,
            all sorts of customers frequented my shop. Among them were a group of hijras
            who came almost every night, since I was soon hooked on grass and other drugs
            of which they always had a good supply. As time went by, I didn’t mind even
            being paid in drugs for the clothes I (or, rather my assistant) sewed for them.
            And, they in turn, used my shop, after closing time, as a convenient joint for their
            drunken get-togethers. 

            Little did I suspect how cunningly the clap-trap had laid for me. And I, the fool I
            was, myself walked into it. On a pretext, they took me one evening to the
            outskirts of the city, for a “drinking session”, persuaded by one elderly hijra (
            addressed by others as guru of their dham), where they kept me confined in an
            old, deserted house, feeding me on opium and milk for three days (a ritual they
            judiciously follow before the main ceremony). 

            Then came the night that ruined my life. Under a full moon, dozens of colourfully
            dressed hijras had gathered with dhol-beaters. In a state of drunken stupor, I was
            brought to a raised mound of earth, and even though I was half-conscious the
            terror alerted me and I vividly remember the pounding of the drums and the mad,
            frenzy of the dancing hijras, as they celebrated another addition (myself) to their
            grotesque world. A quack had been hired (for Rs 5,000, I found later on) to deal
            the final blow on my manhood with a doctor’s blade. It all happened in a flash of
            a knife. As per the ritual, I was left to bleed through the night, with some elderly
            hijras having applied a paste of katha and some herbs as antiseptic on my
            wounds. 

            Well, the rest is imaginable. There are certain injunctions we must follow. We
            must shave every day, make up our faces heavily to hide any trace of stubble,
            practice obscene pelvic thrusts, learn the lewd, rhythmic dialect of the hijras and
            obscene parodies of popular film songs and be ready to tear a throat or lift a
            child...for ransom.” (The conversation was interrupted on the roadside, near the
            Old Delhi Railway Station, as a car glided to a halt, and the man inside beckoned
            to Shabnam to hop in. And that was the last this writer saw of Shabnam, a victim
            of such strange twist of fate!) 

            (As told to Pankaj Tuli)