Salman Rushdie investigates India's transsexual underworld

[Natasha]

Salman Rushdie investigates India's transsexual underworld

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article4683261.ece
9/5/2008

The Hindu tradition contains, if anything, a more powerful version of this story, elevated to the very summit of the Hindu pantheon, and glorifying not merely the beauty of the physical union of the sexes but the union of the male and female principles in the Universe, a metaphor reaching far beyond biology. In a cave on Elephanta Island in Bombay harbour is a sculpture of the deity named Ardhanari or Ardhanarishvara, a name composed of three elements: ardha - half, nari - woman, ishvara - god; thus Ardhanarishvara, the half-woman god.