Under the full moon, India defies categories Tishani Doshi
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/opinion/eddoshi.php MADRAS, India Koovagam is a village in Tamil Nadu, tucked away in India's south. With a single street of mud huts and a temple surrounded by sugarcane fields, it isn't the kind of place you'd expect to play host to the largest transgender gathering in the country. But every April, on the night of the full moon, it manages with considerable panache to do just that, in a burst of revelry that is a combination of village fair and traveling circus. To get there, though, you must negotiate trains, taxis and auto rickshaws; find a motel in the nearby town of Villipuram; and then be prepared to abandon all sense of normality. Because what happens during the festival at Koovagam is nothing short of a magical transformation. For five days leading up to the night- long ceremony at the temple, the streets of Villipuram are overrun by transsexuals, eunuchs and transvestites who descend here in thousands to parade in their brightest and best clothes, with flowers in their hair and bangles on their wrists. When they're not participating in beauty pageants, seminars on HIV, painting and dancing competitions, they're sitting in roadside restaurants beguiling onlookers about what's true and false, man and woman; fake and real; and the place in between that defies all definition. Transsexuals in India are known by a variety of names, most of them derogatory, highlighting their inability to either produce or bear children, but the umbrella term most frequently used to describe them, and by which they are best known, is an Urdu word, hijra, which means impotent one. For centuries, hijras enjoyed a unique position in Indian society, presiding over marriage and birth ceremonies, but when India's British rulers outlawed emasculation, hijras lost their royal patronage and ended up in ghettos, without the basic rights to have a passport, a ration card or property. Many have been forced into begging and prostitution. But they refuse to be pigeonholed into "he" or "she," and continue to claim a third neither- here-nor-there gender for themselves. For India's hijras, who number from 50,000 to two million, what happens in the Koovagam temple every April is a life-affirming act of high spiritual significance. On the night of the festival, hijras come dressed as brides to offer themselves in marriage to the warrior deity of the temple, Lord Aravan. According to Hindu myth, Aravan was a brave but virginal prince, who agreed to be sacrificed in war to salvage his family's honor. His only request, before going into battle, was that he experience one night of marital bliss. His brothers searched everywhere, but couldn't find a woman who would readily accept widowhood. Finally, Lord Krishna, assuming the form of a woman, helped Aravan consummate his desires. Every year in Koovagam, hijras re- enact this myth, becoming brides, wives and widows in the span of a single night. During this time, they are considered divine beings, for whom sex is an act of worship. Last year, watching the festivities unfold from the roof of the temple, I saw a sleepy village transform itself into a living, breathing theater of fantasy. All night, under the full moon, people sing and dance and gossip under trees, while loudspeakers, fireworks, trumpets and drums fill the air with music and light. Then bedecked brides begin to stream into the temple to be married by a Hindu priest, who ties sacred marriage threads around their necks; while outside, newlywed couples disappear into the sugarcane fields. At dawn, the hijras transform, again, into widows. Amid wailing and chest- beating, marriage threads are cut, bangles are broken, and flowers are flung from fake braids. After this, the hijras bathe in a water tank to purify themselves, drape themselves in white saris and vow that they'll return the following year to make the same sacrifice. Koovagam is living proof that a basic Indian philosophy is still in place, one that envisions a universe boundlessly various, including all possibilities of being, allowing opposites to confront each other without resolution. The fact that the local people accept the hijras year after year with such openness and anticipation is an optimistic sign in a country struggling with issues of identity and gender. For my part, I'll be making my pilgrimage to Koovagam again this year - not to be married to Lord Aravan, but to bear witness to an ancient ritual that rejects and transcends the ordinary. -- www.gaybombay.info Group Site: http://www.gaybombay.info ========================== This message was posted to the gay_bombay Yahoo! Group. Responses to messages (by clicking "Reply") will also be posted on the eGroup and sent to all members. If you'd like to respond privately to the author of any message then please compose and send a new email message to the author's email address. Post:- gay_bombay@yahoogroups.com Subscribe:- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Digest Mode:- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (attachments are removed in the digest mode. 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