The Hijda Mujra Dancing Queens Rise And Fall

The Hijda Mujra Dancing Queens Rise And Fall
Originally uploaded by flickr photographerno1

I was at the All India Hijda Sammelan, a conference of Hijdas Eunuchs Transgenders that had collected from all over the world , it was very tought getting entry here , I had a press card of Bandra Samachar, but the hard core Hijdas bodily threw me out, I was dressed in saffron, they thought I was a Tantric , so I stood outside the gates of the hall at Park Side Vikhroli.Intervention by a Times of India photographer Nitin Sonawane and meeting with the host Mr Santosh Shetty , a social crusader for Hjda rights got me the necessary permission .
I shot them from close quarters , some despised me, some looked at me in fear,hijdas dont like to be photographed..
The entire hall had delegations, from the country, all living together , the richer ones from abroad had their own special rooms like Priya from Singapore.
I was called by a senior white haired still gracefully aging Hijda, we started talking and she began opening herself to me, treating me like her brother, she offered me tea biscuits, shunning and shooing away the other Hijda who were gathering around us..within limited words I have tried to poetize her pain ..
She was the reigning Hijda Mujra Dancing Queen of Bhopal...
She had insisted that I do not shoot her pictures , I realised you dont need a camera to shoot androgynous amorphous pain..I thought this introduction was necessary this is a true story..Read on .

His parents had died
The only memory he could recall
He was bought up by his uncle’s family
He worked morning and night at the tea stall
He was fair skinned chubby cheeks kohl eyed
Slim feminine medium height not very tall
His aunt was issueless asthmatic with a sickly pall
In the nights of his loneliness began the assaults
Drunken uncle all over him pushing his member
Hardness that made his skin crawl bleeding
Night after night within these filthy four walls
Bites bruises all over his body on his
Broken doll of a body his uncle’s lust scrawled
His wages taken away his miserable fate he could not forestall
One night he ran away with a truck driver who was going to Nepal
Drugged he found himself in a tiny room
How did this befall?
He was sold to the hijdas after all
The birth of a hijda mujra dancing queen
His tender feet choreographing his pain
The silence and sorrow of a dancing hall
Now he has aged white hair wrinkled
Countenance Bhauchara Mata
And his prayer shawl
Looking after the pretty hijdas
More comely more metro sexual
more gifted and street smart
after all
reminiscences tears of lost
memories a gnawing pain
of his trodden childhood youth
at the all Indian hijda sammelan
this old hijda told me all
within the glistening drop of a tear
perched on her cheek
the Mujra Hijdas Dancing Queens
Rise and Fall

And I am already crying after having written this...