Bhagmati is not a woman like other women. She’s told me something of her past life; I’ve discovered the rest myself.

Bhagmati was born in the Victoria Zenana Hospital near Jamia Masjid. When her father asked the doctor, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ the doctor replied, ‘I am not sure.’ Her parents already had three boys. So they gave their fourth child a girl’s name, Bhagmati. When a troupe of hijdas came to their home to sing and dance and said, ‘Show us your child. We want to see if it is a boy or a girl, or one of us,’ her father abused them and drove them away without giving them any money. The hijdas gave her parents no peace. Whenever they came to the locality to sing or dance at births or weddings they would turn up at their doorstep and say, ‘Show us your last born. If it is one of us, let us take it away.’

Bhagmati’s mother had two more chldren—both girls. Both times her father had taken Bhagmati with him to the hospital and asked the doctor to examine her and say whether she was a boy or a girl. Both times the doctor had looked at her genitals and said, ‘I am not sure; it is a bit of both.’ Bhagmati was then four years old. When the troupe of hijdas visited them after the birth of their last child, her father gave them twenty-one rupees and said, ‘Now I have three sons and two daughters, you can take this one. It is one of you.’

The troupe of hijdas adopted Bhagmati. They taught her to sing, clap her hands and dance in the manner of hijdas. When she was thirteen her voice broke and became like a man’s. She began to grow hair on her upper lip, round her chin and on her chest. Her bosom and hips which were bigger than a boy’s did not grow as big as those of girls of her age. But she began to menstruate. And although her clitoris became large, the rest of her genitals developed like those of a woman. This time she went to see the doctor herself. He said, ‘You can do everything a woman can but you will have no children.’

There are as many kinds of hijdas as there are kinds of men and women. Some are almost entirely male, some almost entirely female. Others have the male and female mixed up in different proportions—it is difficult to tell which sex they have more of in their makeup. The reason why they prefer to wear women’s clothes is because it being a man’s world every deviation from accepted standards of masculinity is regarded as unmanly. Women are more generous.