My encounter with the third sex

Have you ever encountered the third sex?

I have. 

By encounter, I mean physical touch – sudden and unforeseen. Here's how.

A few days ago, just before the Puja rush took over the city, I was on my way to Golpark to a tailoring shop. I had dumped a few saris to be hemmed along the sides. Also, I had a few matching blouses to collect. It had rained earlier in the day and the evening was damp.

Golpark, as the name suggests has a round green patch as an island in the middle of bustling traffic on all sides. I have often passed gardeners working at the overgrown shrubbery, which surprisingly sprouts a sparkling statue of Swami Vivekananda from its belly. Just across the road stands the Ramkrishna Mission, founded by the legendary Indian monk in the memory of his mentor Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansdeva, the Hindu mystic priest. The statue is a token of respect to the disciple.

Image courtesy: Internet

There is a library inside the mission. I used to be a member of the library once upon a time, as a student of the Jadavpur University department of English. The membership was more of a signature gesture to belong to a group that went in solidarity looking for books on the mahogany shelves. Having realized that there was little that the building housed that could be of use to me, I quit going. Not of course, before being warned by the librarians that sleeping in the hall was not allowed!

Anyway, so here I was on the 5th or the 6th day of October this year (my memory always fails dates), marching along the road opposite the mission. To give you a clearer picture, there is no road exactly opposite to any here since Golpark makes a perfect circle with roads going round it and then moving out in several directions, just as spokes emerge out of a wheel.

So I was walking down the other side of the mission, a footpath that is crowded on one side by local florists. That is the place you would usually want to be if you are looking for a quick bouquet of home-grown flowers – rajanigandha, golaap, bel, jui, podmo, etc. White for a funeral, red for a wedding, and maybe pink and yellow for birthdays. And as I said it had drizzled all day, lending a heavy humid air to the surrounding. Add to that the fragrance of the flowers, now sporting pearls of rainwater on them, glistening in the street lights. The footpath is laced by shops on the other side – stationery, sweets, watchmakers. And passers-by. Incessant footfalls of pedestrians, people crossing the street, people waiting for the bus, people shopping, beggars, vendors, all kinds of faces to watch.

As always I was preoccupied in my head and was looking down at my feet as I walked. It was a stop I had made on my way home from work, so was listing my to-dos for the following night. Also, I have terribly tiny feet, and I am in perennial danger of being off balance on pot-holed roads. And potholes, they are aplenty on that particular track. I was double careful of not landing up on the poor flowers to my left.

Now here comes the climax of the story.


As I had almost gained a certain amount of rhythm to my walk, I was forcibly bunged in my track by someone. I suddenly felt being pulled away from the road, with two very strong hands clutching my own. I looked up to find myself staring into the eyes of a beautiful man wearing a sari (we call them hijra in India). She (yes, I call her a ‘she’ as she would only prefer it that way) was clad in sequined black chiffon. A heavily made up face with one day old stubble, a perfectly chiseled nose, under ached, penciled eyebrows and a scarlet pair of lips – there she was holding my arms in a vice like grip and smiling an angelic smile.

Image courtesy: Internet

My first encounter with the third sex.

“Ei sundori, dosh ta taka de na ekta sari kine pori” she said in a baritone heavily accented into a feminine drawl.

(Hello my lovely, give me ten bucks. Will buy a sari).

The fact is ten bucks will not ensure a sari, nor will any amount of begging on one single day. But reason had abandoned me and I was in a trance.
After what seemed like forever, I opened my wallet (yes, I don’t carry a purse) and brought out a ten rupee note.

“Arek ta dosh taka de na,” came the same inflected tone.

(Give me another ten rupee note).

I meekly obliged. Giving her another note.

She had released my arms by then and was blinking at me with extreme coyness. I quickly became aware of eyes watching the brief episode on the road side theatre. The shopkeepers were smiling at me, some had gathered around to watch the fun.

Maybe she realized that as much. She made a hasty retreat after touching my forehead and muttering a blessing in audible gibberish.

I was blessed!
The price being twenty rupees.

Now why am I writing this? This is nothing unusual now, is it? I have seen the third sex beg at traffic signals. Sometimes rolling down car windows I have given them money. I have even smiled at them.

Shakily.

Every time, making a mental note that the next time I come across one of them, I will speak to her and try to know their kind better.

Where does she live?
Why does she beg?
Does she even have a family?

Now when I had my chance, where was my bravado? Where was my tongue? Why couldn’t I touch her and bless her back? Why did I keep staring at her as if she was non-human? Why was I so scared?

Are we so unsure of the gender-less? Is all our social communication centered on the male-female construct? Is the world only mainstream for ‘normal’ people like us, who pretend to be great humanists outside but are really cowards within?

We are uncomfortable with anything that cannot be compartmentalized, categorized. We live gendered lives. We play roles expected of our genders. Boys are conditioned not to cry. Girls are told it is okay to cry, as it demonstrates their legitimate feminine-hood. All our relationships are weaved within and without this divide in mind.

I am no exception. That is why I didn’t know how to address this gorgeous person I met.

Coming home, I googled “eunuch” to find out more.
Research surprised me.

As much as they are repressed currently, they were historically not always so marginal. Some of the ancient civilizations have records of the third sex rising to huge power, sometimes leading the army in wars, sometimes guarding the door to the king’s personal chamber. And then found, how even in the height of their power, they were easy targets of a male-female dominated society. Mostly castrated, they offered the least risk of producing any heir, so no dynasty to usurp the throne. Sex-less, they were trusted with guarding the harem full of royal wives.

Of course, there was brutality against them in ancient times too, I shudder as I read more. Castration was punishment against several offences. It was used against prisoners of war to create forced laborers. More often than not, I learned, eunuchs are born as perfect males – only that they choose to cross-dress – accepting themselves as women trapped inside male bodies. However, disfigured or irregular genitalia also ensures access to the tribe – though castrated ones still believed to be the purest form of the “hijra”.

They are considered auspicious in popular culture. They offer comic relief to the bystanders. They dance, sing, come uninvited to weddings and birthing ceremonies. In many cultures, they are invited to bless the new bride or the male child. Being sexless, either by choice or by biology, their libidinal energy is believed to have channelized elsewhere – their power to blow miracles into lives.

I wonder if the energy can be channelized into better things. 'Hijra' is a Hindi loan word, derived from the Arabic root 'hjr' in its sense of "leaving one's tribe". I am thinking if the tribe here is the tribe of normally gendered folks, born with regular genitalia? Or folks who behave as the civilized human world demands them to behave? Or dress according to the codes handed down?

The KamaSutraa calls them tritiya prakriti, the third sex. So where does that leave us? A close second, or is the coinage strictly attributable to Beauvoir alone?

We women, the second sex. My charmer at Golpark, the third sex.


Equality, you seem to have evaded us all!


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