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Photographer No. 1 - Hijdas Eunuchs in Mumbai

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Hijdas Eunuchs in Mumbai

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The Misery of a Castrated Crab.. – 2095 viewsThis is Kiran, actually I confess I might be wrong about her name, that night I met so many of them, I lost count , and luckily I was not yet transformed blonde or guys might have thought I am one of them.

Come to think of it the only guys around were Mr Raju Srivastav, the Mehndi applying guys, the home studs of the Eunuchs and a few good looking guys who were selling imitation jewellery, within the premises, curiosity seekers were thrown out.

Outside too were a few guys selling ladies materials, dupattas, etc, but the hot seller was a guy selling false hair that is actually real hair extensions added as braids to your natural hair, and many of the eunuchs had receeding hairlines and were going bald.So this guy was doing roaring business.

I got a call today at home from Mr Raju Srivastav the organizer of the Sammelan or the all India Conference of Hijdas , Mona the 8 year old child Hijda s foster parents were wanting pictures that I had taken, but I have not been able to work on them I told him, and Raju Bhai is a famous hotelier having hotels all around the city.And Mona is special..really special.. and I have kept her for the last.

And Kiran I have shot , so many pictures and inexcusable red eyes , and even Priya the Eunuch from Singapore her pictures too I have kept to post later.

I am not a Eunuch crusader , or a Eunuch activist, but I wont to make my gallery on Eunuchs a really memorable one, I have copied and taken stuff from the Net pertaining to Eunuchs, their Angst, their History, their Views, and if you guys have any thing interesting share it with me or send it to me at

And I wish I had more patience, to take notes, talk to them , their experince, their travails, and no hyperbole, I would have enough material to write a book.. but I am not cut out to be a book writer, I dont want to be eunuched by publishers, I am already eunuched to a cul de sac of an imaginary love online.

Sometimes you sit on the banks and try to phase out, throw a fishing line, purely to tease the Fish, with the sole intention to to hold its shimmering silverness in your hand and generously throw it back in the stream, but that day is not a good day and you catch a frickin Crab, who does not want to go back, fuck just watch him the crustacean arsehole has fallen in love hook line and sinker.. and you are happily married, mother , and now you are in a Dilemma , you take a huge boulder and almost castrate him pincers and all, and he wont die, the guy is armoured and enjoys the beatings, you take a web log ,bash him so badly , his claws and all, and the Crab.. well for a moment remember he is only a Crab, he cant make you a Crab, and live with you happily ever after..so next time dont fish in shallow waters go into the deep sea and Harpoon Whales for a change, they are almost like human beings you know...

And I never intended to write this it just came out the misery of a Castrated Crab.. did you have to crush his Balls too.....

The Magical World of the Indian Eunuch – 2575 viewsThis picture was shot by my burkha clad wife in a public place the Textile Fair at Bandra Reclamation.

She shot the hijdas she shot me..she shot a few preople watching the tamasha too..

Shooting Hijdas is not about taking pictures, its about capturing a divine moment and interpreting it humanly.

Hijdas are human,yes its their choice to live the life they want to live..

A man joins the priesthood to be closer to God and Man..

A man does everything a man would want to do..

But a man who wants to become a Hijda is ostracized , condemned , hounded grounded on a thought ill founded , his body his soul both impounded..

I have through my ordinary pictures of Hijda shown you the angst of the Hijda.

At the Red Light Mumbai Cages that I shot on my third trip a Hijda prostitute Heena approached me and asked me if I was a Hijda too?

Shooting pictures of Hijdas - is beauty in the eye of the beholder .

The Magic of Moti Katra – 2588 viewsI left the early morning next day to catch the Bus for Jaipur , though my train was in the evening at 8 pm from Jaipur, but I wanted to spend time with a friend Naresh Agarwal, and his brother in law showed me Jaipur hurriedly in the evening and I almost missed my train to Mumbai...

The Kamatipura Hijdas Peela House Prostitutes – 7345 viewsThis morning after all most two months I decided to to go to Kamatipura flea market, this is an open ground , 12th rd Kamatipura that transforms into a haven of thieves, this a flea market run by the Vagries of Gujrat, these are a second hand buyes of wares, from old Parsi houses, old bungalows, that will be dmolishe to give way to towers.
They buy the junk, peddle it on the floor on the open ground in Kamatipura.

Chor Bazar Kamatipura Flea Market Scenes I have a special gallery on my homesite

They have made good money, old paintings, cameras, parsi garas, lace,statues, amber, silver, gemstones, everthing from a pin to a marble elephant.
They are very calculative, shrewd , no ethis, their Goddess is Money, I wont say more than this or it will be held against me in a court of their law.
I have good friends, they all know me.
This morning as I got out of the cab , all the vendors were outside the compound, a severe loss for both the buyers the sellers.
The reason given was a new Boss had taken over the local cop station, so no business, to show that he means business.
The modus operandi is that all the agencies are in the pay, known as the Hafta system, to set up Friday shop..
So I moved away from , their desolate faces, walked towards the Chor Bazar flea market ,I had my loaded Nikon F100 too, I dont know what came over me, I took right turn closer to Dedh Gully 1 1/2 gully famous for buying your stolen shoes back that you lost at the temple or the mosque.
The gully or lane I entered is called Paheli Gully or No1 Gully, this is the most dreaded, notorious lane the citadel of the prostitute variety of Hijdas, in all my Hijda shooting life I had never been here at all.
I shot pictures, I must warn you my dress sense was atrociously of a Harlem American, I wore a ankle lenght coat in the worst summer heat, my Afghani Togs, my jewellery, my left handed jewellery a felt Havana hat, an orange scarf, my silver ornamental stick.
I was shit scared, a wounded hand , I walked towards two hijdas , sitting selling their wares, young, it was about 10 am, I greeted them , they looked me up and down, their hate towards my camera very visible, I told them I was searching for some Hijdas I had met at the Ganesh Visarjan, they feigned ignorance, uninterested, I requesed if I could take their pictures , they refused..saying they were new to the area , would get into trouble.
Now a pack of toy boy wolves ,saw me I approached them, told them I wanted to meet the Hijdas, I had shot at Visarjan time.
They directed me to a balding Hijda Guru called Zeenath, I walked up a narrow steps , shit scared, I reached the second floor met a bare breast balding Zeenath Hijda , they were having a Bhaichura Mata puja, she kept me standing I asked her to cover her torso so I could take her picture, she liked that, I had no flash so I shot it in available back light on a 50 mm lens , she told me not to shoot her chelas, I think this was a puja ceremony of initiation of a person into the Hijda fold, so they wanted to get rid of me.
She said go down I will meet you, on the way I saw Hijdas naked having a bath , they warned me with dire consequences, I placed my eyes at my feet and fled.
Below I met the Toy Boys, gave one of the better ones my shop visiting card there was a pretty hijda with them she also warned me not to take her picture , but on being told by the Toy Boys I meant no harm I took 2 shots.Than they told me a huge giant of a foreign photographer was here , they described Marc De Clercq to me .
Anyway I sat , realised that Zeenath Guru had made a popat out of me , so the Toy boys went up, they told me she had left.. The Hijdas are fierce of their privacy…the young Hijdas I saw bathing were the prettiest I had seen in the common Hijda toilet on the staircase.
This Hijda building is called Shankar Marwari Chawl, or lambi chawl, it is the longest concrete tenement shot several pictures..I walked to Chor Bazar..
I must tell you all this while I kept telling the Hijdas my proximity to Laxmi Narayan Tripathi,but they were not impressed,
From Chor Bazar I walked to Peela House near Alexandra cinema , the notorious area called Mumbai cages, here I shot pictures, was abused , cursed, but tried not to be scared.. I have given the roll for developing and scanning, you will see the pictures tomorrow,
From here I came to Colaba met my school mate Anil Shejale the webmaster of my school site HNHS.Finally took a cab, to catch up with my wife who had followed me later to town…

The Innocence in the Eye of The Hijda – 1616 viewsI met her at the All India Hijda Sammelan and she told me she was settled in Delhi, she was as human as you and me, aware of her alternate sexuality, but she was all woman, in her gestures her eye movement, the horny kids that had gathered to see them were hassling her with rude gestures, but she did not mind displayed their wantoness of their just bursting libido with the mature mind of a matron.
She was seductive , she could hoodwink any man , with her sexual duplicity.
Its a pity that I went to the sammelan on the last two days , when most of the Hijdas had left for their home towns.. how can I ever forget Priya from Singapore the jealously guarding me from other Hijda eyes me benefactress Basanti the Queen of the Hijdas.

The Humpbacked Hijdas of Haji Malang – 2952 views
When I first came to Haji Malang it was during Moharam, I had come to meet the late Sikandar Wali Baba of the Chancawalli Rafaees or body piercers , hijdas were not part of my blogs or my photography.It was meeting Laxmi Narayan Tripathi my transgender friend from Bollywood here after a gap of 11 years , that got me going , to capture the hijda soul in spiritual flight .
There was no ulterior motive , I write as I shoot pictures no morphing what does not exist in hijda human emotions..
As a Shia Pandit I could penetrate their layers and see them in their androgynous vulnerability .I could feel their inner struggle , the struggle with their dubious dichotomy.

My recent trip twice to Haji Malang back to back, once with Dr Glenn Losack MD American photographer and second time alone , was a trip of learning and intermingling with the Hijdas.

Laxmi had offered me to stay with them at their spacious lodge , but I refused politely preferring the cot of the Ketkars lodge.
In retrospection I never slept just shot pictures night and day.

Shooting the Hijdas is divine photography.Its capturing what cant be seen by the naked human eye.You have to become a Hijda behind the camera to really get into the spirit of the Hijda you are shooting.This is a metaphor , so read it as such…in spectral light.
This may sound like bullshit to the present lot of photographers , I dont include photojournalists who represent high end cameras but not high end human photography.
Photojournalism in India is pedestrian and sucks barring a few ..that is just a miniscule.
The photos in leading Mumbai newspapers is nothing but trash..no originality , hackneyed and famine ridden..almost making viewers go suicidal..

Well excuse my rant..no love lost between photo bloggers and main stream media.

Date: 09/22/2005 Time: 09:30

When I try to recollect today what really pushed me towards shooting Hijdas, I think firstly it was the stray Hijda shanties on the railway tracks of Matunga , after that came the Makhdoom Shah Baba Urus, the pictures of the Possessed series.
But it was at Haji Malang , meeting Laxmi Narayan Tripathi after 11 years , that pushed me over the brink of Hijdadom.

As a salon photographer I shot one Hijda picture a classic in black and white, it was a Hijda sitting in a garden at Bandra Band Stand removing his facial hair with a tweezer.. facial hair and balding are a Hijda nightmare .

At the All India Hijda Sammelan, Vikhroli a street vendor did soaring business selling human hair extensions..now the majority of the Hijdas are from the poor strata of society, they have pangs , real human pangs to look beautiful, sex change , but with what they earn it is next to impossible…

Besides the Hijda community has been invaded by guys with Hijda pretensions , who with their glib make it big, but these guys are nothing but homosexuals eating away into the Hijda pie..They do not belong to the Hijda ethnicity far from it…they dress up as women..cruise the gay haunts..make a fast buck..They are less promiscuous, you find this varity near the Naval Mess at Wode House Road or a little further away near Mumbai University..

Most of the begging variety Hijdas like the ones I shot at Carter Road too are men dressed as Hijdas , crime by this variety is rampant..I am told .

The Matunga Hijdas are a thing of the past , their shanties were totally demolished , the entire community od slum dwellers shifted to Mankhurd a distant suburb.. I miss the dread head hjda a devotee of Goddess Yellamma who stayed in one of these shanties..she would light up when I stopped my cab on my way to town, giving her some money she of course blessing me in return, my wife watching my antics quietly from the back of the cab.

I wanted to call the Hijdas to perform at my sons wedding but the Shia folks that were invited would have run away from the site..though there was a separate section for males and females.

The Grey area
Thursday August 4 2005 19:54 IST
courtesy
sourced from net for hijda awareness

Scharada Bail

Eunuchs has always been a subject of curiosity and an object of ridicule. People stop and look when a groups of hijdas — as the eunuchs are known as — troops into a newly-opened shop to demand money or lays siege on a house celebrating a marriage or the birth of a child. And then you see them in the movies, where their mannerisms — the clap and the pelvic thrust — is expected to make you laugh. Another way of evoking laughter is to have the heroes dressed in drag — Amitabh Bachchan in the famous Mere Angane Mein song in Laawaris, Aamir Khan in Baazi and Shah Rukh Khan in Duplicate. A notable exception was Sadashiv Amrapurkar, who played a frightening eunuch brothel owner, Maharani, in Mahesh Bhatt’s Sadak.

Other than in wedding functions and in movies where they are supposed to evoke comedy, you never really see a hijda. No wonder an important work on hijdas in India, written by Zia Jaffery, is titled The Invisibles.

Which is why Santosh Sivan’s Tamil film Navarasa, set for yearend release but screened at the seventh Osian’s Cinefan Asian Film Festival held in Delhi last month, stands out. “Cinema is such a powerful medium. What it says can be carried to lakhs of people in a moment. And yet, in our films, hijdas have only been used for cheap humour, to poke fun at the community. What is worse is that they do not even use real hijdas, who would earn some money if they did. They get junior artistes to dress up and mouth bad dialogue about hijdas to raise some laughs,” says P Aasha Bharathi, president of the Tamil Nadu Aravanigal Association, who contributed at every stage in shaping the script on Navarasa.

“But somehow, with Santosh Sivan and Raja Chandrasekhar, there was a feeling of trust. I knew this team would not exploit or sensationalise our problems,” says Aasha. What makes Navarasa even more special is the remarkable sensitivity shown by the Censor Board, which arranged for a special preview of the film for the transgendered Aravani community, and asked them for a No Objection Certificate before passing the film.

The fact that hijdas earned the right to be consulted by the Censor Board shows how sexual minorities in India have organised themselves in recent years. In a society like India, where all kinds of sexual practices have thrived in the midst of seeming conservatism, the plight of the sexual minorities, consisting of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and the Transgendered (BGLT), has been extremely difficult. While each constituent of BGLT has its own set of problems, it is the transgendered who lead the most marginalised lives.

Who is a hijda? How does one become transgendered? Most often, it begins with a feminine psyche getting trapped in a male body. Boys in this predicament go through tormented childhoods till a time comes when they can take no more. In India, such boys, often after attaining puberty, either run away from home, or are driven out by the family — only to land at the doorstep of the hijda community which alone accepts them with open arms. In the absence of the sophisticated sexual reassignment surgery, a crude castration follows and the new hijda is inducted into the community by their guru. For someone who has fled a life of confusion and misery, the new setting provides protection, guidance to the ways of the world and survival and also spiritual education.

Then you have people who are other males but who cross-dress in places and circumstances where they feel safe. Hermaphrodites who are born with the attributes of both sexes also find it hard to fit into the society and become a part of the hijda community. And each of these individuals could have their own preference as to their partners, whether opposite sex, same sex, or someone from the third gender. According to conservative estimates, the hijda population in India today stands at about 500,000.

It is not hard to see why hijdas would be considered such a threat to society. By being patently above the male-female definition, they pose uncomfortable questions about sexual roles, family, ownership and patriarchy. Men shudder at them out of sheer denial of their own feminine side. A society that refuses to look beyond the exaggerated male and female attributes preserved in popular parlance does not give them the recognition of being thinking and feeling individuals in their own right.

“There is a lot more fluidity for the transgendered community in America,” says Elizabeth D Jeffords, the director of Transgendered Voices Inc., a self-funded organisation working for the rights of transgendered people in the US. She was in India recently to network with individuals and groups and looking for ways in which the community could reach out and help each other.

“Education and employment are open to us. I know District Attorneys who are transgendered, I myself am an architect and so on. In India, where you end up is directly related to the class to which you belong. If you are poor, you become a hijda and are forced to take up the twin occupations of begging or sex work that society will let you. If you are from the middle or upper class, you may become a transsexual, go in for surgery, or stay a closet cross-dresser with a perfectly ordinary life. Even from the middle class, if you come out in the open with your sexual identity, there is often no recourse except to run away from home and join the hijdas on the bottom rung. If the bottom is raised up, the people in the middle class don’t have as far to fall. Tackling the problems of transgendered people in India has to begin with addressing basic issues of employment, health and support for the very poor,” she says.

Asks Aasha Bharathi, “Where do our problems start and where do they end? For me, getting a passport was a Herculean task, and I must be the first person in India to have a passport whose gender is not defined as M or F. A ration card, or a voter’s identity remains out of our reach. How can we be denied the rights of common citizens? Forget discrimination and abuse at the hands of the police, we are denied even common decency. Usually eveteasing on the road evokes sympathy from passersby and police comes to help. But when we are teased or troubled, no one comes to our aid.”

The lack of a conventional sexual identity becomes a kind of disability that forces most hijdas to adopt an aggressive persona while dealing with the world. But there are people who have seen only their tender side. One of Elizabeth’s collaborators in India is filmmaker Koushik Chatterjee. This is what he has to say: “I consider whatever work I do with this community as repayment of my own personal debt.” When he was injured in an accident and lay bleeding on a Bihar highway at the age of eight, a group of hijdas took him to hospital, informed his family and vanished before they could turn up. “They saved my life, when others would have let me die, not wanting to get involved in a police case,” says Koushik.

Koushik, Aasha Bharathi and Elizabeth are collaborating today on ways to provide alternative employment to transgendered individuals and communities. “We need to find ways to break the paradigm of hijdas,” says Elizabeth. “We need to let the world know the creative capacity existing in the transgendered community.”

This picture was shot of hijdas having a ball at Haji Malang..

April 24th, 2007

The Hijras Tale – 1792 viewswhen he was a little child
an orphan
by his uncle and wily aunt
to the hijras he was sold
from a little doe eyed boy
a sexy siren
they did mold
a hijda goddess behold

The Hijras of Mumbai – 1674 viewsThis new site Word Press has been a blessing in disguise as I am copying the pictures from my parent site, also adding new textual content and re-editing what I wrote two years back, many of these pictures were shot in 2006 at the All India Hijda Sammelan at Park Site Vikhroli.

These are high resolution pictures that I copied to my Flickr stream too..

There is a growing awareness of Hijdas today as I see through my blog stats at Word Press and through my Flickr Stats.

It is basically the search for HIJRAS on my site.

I shoot hijras as I see them , there is no time for camera adjustments , or compensation value..and fr me even a blurred hijda picture is a good picture.
And it is tough shooting hijdas , you hardly get to see them in my end of Bandra.Even the traffic signal hijdas have gone to their hometowns to beat the awful heat and humidity of Mumbai.

update
4 June 2008

The first two attempts copying my blogs to the earlier Blog site met with the disappearance of all my Blogs.
Directi are looking into it..
Directi is from whom my web master bought my hijda-eunuch domain name.

So in the meanwhile I bought all this to Word Press a very tedious task..

The Hijras Curse – 1237 viewsliving in ghettos
living in misery
living in despair
men and women
they love to scare
born men
living as women
sexy womens clothes
they wear
the world
with a hijra clap
they dare
gods godliness
with god they share
hijda enslaved
in a leopards lair
the hijras curse
her facial hair

The Hijra Mujrewali – 2166 viewson the hijra kotha
at bacchu ki wadi
you will find her
that you had met her
in the heavy rains
you will remind her
but she will ignore you
her past
monsoonal cloudy
overcast
million light years
behind her

The Hijra Dance of Hope – 1664 viewsdance is the hijda soul
a metaphor for godliness
every mudra
every step
every movement
a sweet and soft caress
a new hope a new address
in a world beyond hijda hate
men in womens dress

The Hijdas/ MY LATEST BLOGS AR FLICKR.COM – 12734 viewsThe Hijdas are Indian transgenders. Biologically born men, living lives dressed as women,the richer ones go for sex change, but live as Hijdas.This state of Mind of living as a Hijda was coined by Laxmi Narayan Tripathi my Hijda guru, as" Hijdaeroticness". The Hijdas have their hierarchy, system based, the heads are called Nayaks , below them Gurus the lowest rung are the followers called Chelas . The hijdas have their own ethnicity unlike the transgenders in the West. The Hijdas have their Gods Lord Iravan, so those hijdas in the South call themselves Aravanis,they have a goddess who they worship as Bhauchara Mata,there is a English disciple at the Temple who is a Hijda and considered a living Hijda Saint.
The Hijdas irrespctive of their belifs have one common spirtual code, Sarv Dharm Ek, means all Religion is One. The largest gathering of Hijdas in the month of May is at the Koovagam Koothandavar Eunuch festival. After that at the Urus of Khwajah Garib Nawaz at Ajmer, all located in a hijda gully called Moti Katra. Another place the Hijdas throng in large numbers is at the Urus of the Saint of Haji Malang near Kalyan close to Mumbai. This picture was taken at Haji Malang, it was here I decided to write about Hijdas, post their lives through my pictures.For me the Hijdas is not about alternate sexuality,it is a very imporant human factor, they have to be treated as Humans.They deserve a better deal.

These Hijdas are fiercely private, gifted, some more wealthy than an industrialist or news baron. The eunuch is a born child with defective genitalia given to the Hijdas, like Mona the Eunuch child. I am a hetro sexual male, no confusion about my sexual orientation, but I am a disciple of Laxmi Narayan Tripathi , my metrosexual net savvy Guru. I do not have time or sponsorship to finance me to reach out to the Hijdas in India, I have no intention to write a coffee table book, but my Blogs are a book to be read online. So there is more to my stories than just blood soaked Moharam pictures. I have added I talker as a Word Press Tag. Another fact about Hijdas, theyare identified by their profession of chice, you have the lowest rung of beggar hijdas found at traffic signas, trains, at lovers nooks extoting money from love starved couples, the hijdas that dance on births and weddings, known as badhai, than you have the hijdas from Kamatipura ho are prostitutes.. Hijdas are now becoming politicians like Shabnam Mausi. Bobby Darling is not a Hijda but a male wanting to become a woman through sex change, he is the toast of Bollywood.

FOR MY LATEST PHOTO BLOGS PLEASE GO TO FLICKR DUE TO TECHNICAL REASONS I POST EVERYTHING THERE...THANK YOU
FIROZE SHAKIR
PHOTOGRAPHERNO1

http://www.flickr.com /photos/firozeshakir/

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