New York Times (May 7,2012)
Tears and Broken Glass as India’s Largest Transgender Festival Closes
By MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN
Ayush Ranka
Devotees pull the cart carrying the statue of Aravan around the
village on the second and final day of the festival in Koovagam, Tamil
Nadu.
Human beings often seek spiritual healing out of a sense of
psychological pain. In the case of India’s hijra population, a group
with a tradition that spans back until at least the Kama Sutra period,
their sources of pain are sociologically complex, poorly documented,
but difficult to deny: According to outreach groups like the
Mumbai-based gay rights organization Humsafar Trust, India’s hijra
population has a staggering rate of H.I.V. infection that numbers
somewhere between 29 and 49 percent.
Simultaneously dehumanized as both good and bad luck omens by
conventional Indian lore – hijras are often shoved to the edges of
Indian society with few resources for earning money outside of begging
(“mangti”), offering blessings on auspicious occasions (“bhadai”), and
prostitution (“pun”). Even the act of making love for hijras remains
debatable in Indian society as a crime.
So, at the conclusion of the Koovagam Festival, when legions of hijras
dress in bright white and weep real tears as part of a ceremony
mourning the death of Aravan, the warrior who Hindu god Krishna married
after taking female form – it’s not difficult to connect those tears
with the real life trauma that haunts their community outside of mere
ritualistic play.
Ayush Ranka
A group of transgenders are seen outside the Koothandavar temple in
Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, after they perform the traditional ritual of
breaking their bangles and adorning a white saree.
Dr. Mohan Kumar, a psychiatrist at Columbia Asia Hospital in Bangalore,
made the trek down to Koovagam out of what he loosely described as a
sense of dedication. Dr. Kumar has worked with transgendered female
patients from across India’s vast economic divide, and says that the
cathartic release the festival provides is very real, and in some ways,
necessary. “You’d have to write a book rather than just an article or
two to get closer to how it really feels,” Dr. Kumar says. “Most
transgendered women in India are getting sex, sex, sex – but rarely do
they receive compassion or love. And the majority of Indians still
believe that it is a vile curse, that these people are disgraced in the
eyes of god.”
Dr. Kumar says the ritualized enactment of the feminized Krishna’s love
for Aravan is extremely powerful in hijra and Indian trangendered
communities not only because of the cathartic healing the mourning
ceremony provides through the release of tears but also because of a
positive, aspirational element embedded in the story. The myth,
ultimately, is about true love. “When Lord Krishna takes a female form
for one night – he sleeps with Aravan. But it’s romantic love,” he
said. “And so when Aravan dies, Krishna endures the sorrow of a devoted
wife losing her lover.”
In traditional Hindu culture, when a woman loses her husband, she
refrains from wearing color. Color can of course mean loud outfits (not
unlike the ones worn in the wild Villupuram days leading up to the
festival) but also jewelry, like bangles. At the close of the festival,
the hijras fall at the feet of a large, artfully constructed idol of
Aravan. Playing the part of widowed wives and dressed in simple white,
they cry at the feet of the idol, and break their bangles before him.
To sensitive observers, the spectacle can be emotionally affecting,
like Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” but from a different world.
Ayush Ranka
A group of transgenders mourn after the traditional breaking of the
bangles and cutting of the Taali in the village of Koovana Naththam,
near Koovagam, Tamil Nadu.
After Koovagam, the immense idol is pulled up a winding dirt road
through surrounding territories by scores of villagers. And as the
festival goes, so too go the fly-by-night food and drink stalls that
capitalize on the festival’s massive attendance, the remaining
journalists, and the sleep-deprived hijras who gave their last shreds
of energy to the closing of the festival.
The ultimate destination for the gigantic Aravan is the arguably even
more obscure farming community of Koovana Naththan. There, burrowed
into a forested enclave surrounded by sprawling fields, the villagers
pay homage to it, and light fires. Around the fires, small, passionate
circles develop where men and women kneel and burst into prayer.
Taalis, small ropes that unite husband and wife during Hindu wedding
ceremonies, are broken in mourning and left hanging on trees in massive
quantities. The massive clumps of rope that are formed look almost
dreamlike, like wax Matthew Barney sculptures. Broken glass bangles
litter the ground. The villagers often break the bangles and the walk
on the glass with bare feet without wincing – it’s a jaw-dropping
display of stoicism.
Food offerings given to Aravan are then eaten by the villagers before
the sculpture is taken away, deeper into the wilderness of Koovana
Naththan and beheaded. By that time, the patches of fire on the dirt
ground, sustained by burning taalis and bangles, serve as the primary
source of external lighting.
By late Wednesday night, only a few villagers stay in Koovagam to take
in what little remains of the festival – the garbage-strewn ground, the
multicolored lights decorating the temple, and the rented camels
chained to the trees beside the circus tent.
And back in Villupuram, where hijras and transgendered women once
dominated pedestrian crossways and poured joyfully in and out of
open-spaced hotel courtyards, only a three or four local hijras remain
– inside a bar, begging for handouts.
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