It will be hard to give up this line of work and do a nine-to-five duty." “Now they beg at traffic-lights and on trains. “For years, our community has lived off earnings made by dancing at weddings," she adds. “The other problem is, if you are making thousands, sometimes lakhs, simply from badhai (money collected by eunuchs from families for blessing newborns), you won’t want to do any other work, will you?" Mona says. “Society has to also change, along with the law," he adds.
“I was bullied at school for being ‘girly’-all the time," he tells me. Roshni, who attended school till class VIII, looks suitably forlorn. “Who is going to give him a job in an office?" asks Mona. At the end of the night and after several tricks, Roshni goes home with the money he makes from sex work. As evening descends, he dresses in drag, goes out, and waits for men in cars to pick him up. He runs errands for her, checks on her health, then starts drinking himself into a steady state of high. “But what can the law hope to give someone like him?" she asks, pointing at her chela (disciple), a pretty young man who goes by the name of Roshni.Įvery afternoon Roshni drops in at Mona’s to look after his guru.
Those from her community who are educated can get employed, she knows, and have a better life, perhaps become more integrated with the “mainstream". She is happy about the Supreme Court ruling on the third gender but not unduly excited. Mona looking at her book ‘Myself Mona Ahmed’, 2013
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