A question of identity
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/11720/a-question-identity.htmlUrvashi Butalia
7/4/09
Until the age of 18 she was a man — although she felt that her real self was female. Then she had herself castrated — as she said, 'happily losing all the trappings of maleness'. Some time after that, she went one step further and had a sex change operation so that today she has a female body. Often, in the company of men, Mona assumes a male identity, and becomes Ahmed Bhai, and then, with women, she becomes female and becomes Baji, or Mona, or simply Behan. This shift in identity is sometimes only made through the name, and at other times, it's done via clothes — a mardana salvar kameez or a zenana one.
During the many years that I have known Mona, I have met many young men in her home and it has taken me a while to understand that several of them are in the process of transiting from one identity (male) to another, possibly female, or perhaps to one of the many in-between identities (kothis, hijras, transvestites, msms and so on) that lie along the trajectory from one to the other.
