A hijra's life and hard times
Published: Sunday, Aug 15, 2010, 3:36 IST
By Rosamma Thomas | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/review_a-hijra-s-life-and-hard-times_1423509

"'Do you want me to arrange things so that you pee like women do, from below? Or as men do, from above?'
'I want to live as a woman, which is why I wanted this operation. Please make it like it is for a woman.' I did not know how women peed, but I wanted to be a woman. After two hours, I was told it was all over.'"

After that operation, done with only her lower body under anesthesia, A Revathi emerged quite "cleaned up" of her masculinity, without, as her brother would say in abuse, "her bud". And though it was terribly painful once the effect of the anesthesia wore off, she had crossed an unusual threshold, emerging from a conflicted boyhood into a less than perfect womanhood, observing the elaborate rituals of the hijra community after nirvaanam (the operation).