MYSELF MONA AHMED By Dayanita Singh Scalo Price: 1,250 Pages: 158.

Most Happy families," says Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, "are alike. But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Also, most happily gay and in-your-face accounts of human exotica hide within their rainbow aura deep anguish and unending conflicts. This queer book carries between its handy pages a thousand mutinies of sexual proclivities and predilections.
In a bunch of candid e-mails, Mona, a hijra (eunuch) reveals her unique story. The labyrinthine text in pidgin English (cute? irritating?) is complemented by Dayanita Singh's evocative pictures shot over 13 years. Together they document the life of Ahmed, a boy from Delhi's conservative Muslim area of Turkman Gate who chose to get himself castrated and join a band of hijras. But they also reveal the private pain and pleasures that each of these flamboyant social anarchists live through.

Books

OTHER STORIES RELATED TO BOOKS An Eye for Economy Authorspeak

In an environment where transgender issues are looked at with eyes wide shut, this first-ever first person account of an Indian hijra's life is not a comfortable read for the straight and square. Whereas traditionally Indian society celebrated this sexual diversity, even seeking their blessings at marriages and child birth as symbols of fertility, the present day vestiges of a colonial mindset would rather wish it away.

CLOSE FAMILY: In her animal farm Mona has a dog, rabbits, ducks

Nevertheless, there is also much intellectual naivete here: Mona makes a case for the third gender-neither man nor woman but both. Throughout the book the pronouns he and she are interchangeably used and Mona does not utter the western word transvestite ever. This is not out of ignorance. She says she has been to Bangkok and seen the Thai she-boys; a plastic surgeon even offered to perform a sex change operation on her. Mona aspires to both womanliness and motherhood. She finds fulfilment in her adopted daughter Ayesha, who, sadly, was taken away from her when she (Mona) turned depressive and an alcoholic. Now separated from her hijra family, Mona lives surrounded by a flock of ducks, a dog and rabbits in a dream house she is building in the midst of a graveyard. In her courtyard she wants to build a swimming pool for young Muslim girls to learn swimming one day. Hope marries ambition and mocks at the staid comme ils faut. Do partake of this delicious deviancy.