"To be or not to be, that is the question..."

BEAUTY CONTEST

The department of tourism of Pondicherry, remarkable only in its strategic placement on one of the central attractions of the town, the beach road, decided to shed its shroud of anonymity and go public by advertising a beauty contest of transsexuals. Huge garish posters displaying three women dressed in pearl studded gowns and jewel encrusted crowns flashed pink lipsticked smiles at passing cyclists and scooterists. A visit to this event in Pillayarkuppam was being organised by Pondicherry tourism office. A fantastic opportunity for a miiddle class woman, head abuzz with snatches of lascivious rumours to see this mysterious community from closer. 

Pillayarkuppam is a small nondescript village in South India, situated near the more well known coastal town Pondicherry. It comes alive once a year because of a very curious festival. Every year in April,  this little village becomes the hub of transsexuals who come for fifteen days from all parts of India to celebrate their right to exist. This festival called Koovagam is held on a larger scale near Villipuram. another town in Tamil Nadu.

There is a sizeable community of transsexuals in India.They are called Hijras in the North and Aravanis in the South. Spurned and ridiculed by society most of them earn their lives through prostitution and begging. Victims, they use the tools they have,  their ambiguous sexuality,  to embarrass and harass those who are not willing to part with their money. This festival though weaves them into the fabric of Indian society

At about six in the evening, I set off a in an air conditioned bus, accosted by responsible bureaucrats, towards Pillayarkuppam. In front of me a tourist department guide recounted the mythological story underlying this annual gathering of transgenders in garbled English . I could catch a few names over the sound of the bus: Aravan, Pandavas, Krishna. Behind me a Dutch man and his Indian friend were earnestly conversing about the relative merits and of their country's cuisines-French fries, chapatis, sausages, rice...I was in a truly eclectic atmosphere.. Luckily I had done my homework so I knew that the guide was telling the mythological story of Aravan from the epic Mahabharata. Son of the great warrior Arjun, Aravan agrees to sacrifice his life to propitiate Kali and thus ensure the victory of the Pandavas, but he has one request, he would like to taste the joys of sleeping with a woman before his death. No woman is willing to marry a man doomed to die the following day so Krishna himself takes on the form of a beautiful and seductive woman,  Mohini,  and weds Aravan. The next day Aravan dies and Mohini becomes a widow. 

The Aravanis enact this ritualistic marriage on the last day of the fifteen day festivities. A priest marries them to the idol of Aravan and bedecks them with all the symbols of marriage, the Thali ( a necklace worn by married women), bangles, the vermillion mark in the parting of the hair. Then follows a night of sexual revelry where they sleep with the man or men of their choice in exchange of money or otherwise. The next day they efface all the signs of marriage , dress in white and lament the passing away of their spouse and probably the anguish of their broken lives. 

We arrived in Pillayarkuppam at about half past six in the evening. The bus had stopped at the entrance of the village on a mud road.  On either side of the road women were sitting on the front steps of their houses with their children. It seemed a perfectly ordinary evening without any overt signs of excitement, except the fact that there were quite a few people in party wear strolling down the road. Our guide herded us along and we soon came to an open ground where a fair was in progress. And it is over here that things started getting interesting.for us city dwellers to whom rural India is probably as much a mystery as the Amazon forest. 

In the fairground vendors of bangles, flowers, children's toys, fritters and other bric-a- brac  had set up their stalls. The biggest crowd was in front of  the stalls of bangles and flowers. Stocky, veshti-clad men squatted patiently on the ground while  bangle sellers patiently struggled to slip on glass bangles past their knotted,  work roughened hands. Others wound garlands of flowers around their necks, wrists and upper arms. Men who all around the year took pride in flaunting their masculinity were here under the auspices of the Koovagam festival giving expression to their feminine side. It was incongruous , incredible! I felt my notions about men in Indian society undergoing a dramatic shift of perception. Later talking to Maria alias Vishnu though curbed my enthusiasm. 

From the center of the fairground loudspeakers blared Tamil songs. A small stage stood empty and in front of the stage the organizers had fenced in a small portion. like a cattle pen for tourists. There were already quite a few people around the enclosure waiting for the show to begin. Our guide made way for us through the crowd . We followed closely behind and settled down on chairs,  slightly out of breath.

The show began soon. To the accompaniment of pulsating Tamil songs transsexusals with varying  degrees of femininity - some distinctly masculine looking, others on the borderline between the two  sexes and others so much like women that one had difficulties believing that they could be anything else- swayed onto the stage. They were dressed in sequined sarees, long bright-coloured skirts with body hugging blouses revealing their cleavage and midriff. Flinging their hair around , flashing bright lipsticked smiles at the spectators they pranced around the stage in keeping with the music while the crowd roared and clapped in appreciation.  (some pictures)

As I looked on different emotions coursed through me; amusement, wonder, curiosity combined with sense of rejection.   There was a sense of bravado in being  a well brought up middle aged woman  confronting and delving into a reality  which is taboo in society. But I definitely did not want to get close enough to jeopardize the frontiers of my identity.

Two or three of them caught my attention;  a tall, wily , beautiful, elegantly dressed transsexual who looked like a film star and was as graceful as a professional dancer, another  who was  more masculine looking, flattish face, high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes, something of a satyr thrusting his/her navel and hips brazenly forward to the raw, pulsating music. And another much younger transvestite, round-faced  wavy-haired, dressed in a blue and white sari who spoke English reasonably well  and resembled  a university student of indeterminate sex.  

Beautiful Woman

Satyr

After the formal wear contest, the participants changed into more informal wear and repeated the same routine. Cameras  were clicking away inside the enclosure and outside the enclosure the crowd in one voice expressed their approval and disapproval of the candidates. The performers intoxicated by their own performance and the energy of the crowd were putting in their maximum. One short, dark, curly-haired transvestite, the darker shadow of his/her beard clearly visible below his makeup, dressed in glitzy blue with matching  blue eye-shadow kept overstaying his stage time and was booed out by the spectators.

The Clown

  
The favourite clearly was a  plumpish transsexual with fair, smooth, skin and long hair. Her/his delicately plucked eyebrows  arching over black, kohl rimmed eyes, round cheeks, full lips coated with red lipstick and  rounded curves straining against the body hugging dress  came closest to  men’s fantasies.

The show finally came to a close with the performers coming on stage to express their thanks,  their feelings and thoughts. A few of them spoke with conviction and honesty. They said they were  grateful to the villagers for hosting this celebration where once a year they can joyously revel in their identity.  . They spoke about the condition of being transvestites and their relationship with society; shunned and marginalized they eked out a hand to mouth existence by working as sex workers and   beggars. But they aspired to a better life, education, employment, recognition like any other man or woman.

At the end of the show irony of ironies, a police officer, upholder of morality and conservatism, walked onto the stage to crown the winner and the runner up of the beauty context. The winner in keeping with the  sentiments of the crowd was the one who resembled most a woman. 

After the crowning ceremony was the guide urged us to stay together and frayed a way out of the crowd for the tourists. It was about ten at night. I knew that the real purpose of this gathering, the symbolic marriage with God Aravan and the night of consummation with men who had come to the festival only for this purpose would take place after midnight. The tourist department’s initiative did not go that far. In about half an hour we were scheduled to head back to Pondicherry. I managed to sneak away from the group for a couple of minutes and with my photographer friend to find the statue of  Aravan at the far end of the ground. Aravan seated on a horse looked on imperturbably at the surrounding scene. He would be paraded in the village streets late in the night and beheaded the next day.

As we walked away to join the rest of the group the elderly woman in black who was seated beside me in the beginning of the show strolled past. Our eyes met and she smiled, a small, secretive smile to further titillate my sense of curiosiity.

Arunima Choudhury