The invisibles

by Zia Jaffrey

In 1984, Zia Jaffrey traveled to Delhi, and there glimpsed a group of cross-dressing men who had walked, uninvited and unannounced, into a wedding. They sang out of tune, hurled insults at the guests, and were finally paid to leave. She learned that these often-castrated, elusive figures were known as the hijras - "neither male nor female" - or the eunuchs, of India. They existed in thousands in every major city, were tolerated yet reviled, thought to bring good luck to newlyweds and newborns, yet also called extortionists and kidnappers. Jaffrey set off on a journey to understand the forces of caste, poverty, sexual ambiguity, and the tradition itself that had allowed the hijras to persist into the modern age. In an investigation that points to her own sense of "otherness" in relation to Indian culture - she was born in New York of Indian extraction - Jaffrey delved into the mysteries of the hijras' closed world, uncovering details about their past, their daily lives, and their comple