ALL I KNEW WAS that this non-profit group called MARAA was organising some sort of performance on gender and sexuality. A friend told me about it and even offered to pick me up. Work lay unfinished on my table, but what the hell, I decided, I could always catch up later. And that’s how we found ourselves at Jagaa, which calls itself “a community space created to serve the arts, technology and social change communities in Bangalore.” We climbed up two flights of metal staircases to find a fairly large group of people, sitting, standing, leaning on the banisters – and listening attentively to the performers – a group of people variously called hijras, transvestites, transgenders or Aravanis (The Indian concept of third gender is somewhat different from Western conceptualizations – read here).
AS CHILDREN, we were scared of them. At traffic signals or on local trains, they would stroll up, their gait nonchalant, voices raised. Above all, different. (What is it about us that fears difference so much?) Last month, while on 