Born-Again Man - Story of a Bone Marrow Transplantation

In the summer of 1998, My wife and I accompanied by our daughters aged 20 and 17 travelled to Kerala , my ancestral home, and to Banagalore where my in-laws are settled. This was our annual vacation from Dubai where I worked as a Senior Manager in an Arab Group. One week in to the holidays I felt a few ulcers developing on my tongue which then slowly became excruciatingly painful. The two doctors whom I consulted said they were harmless ‘Aphthous’ ulcers that come and go. I was told most people get them at some time or the other including them Doctors. Thus they dismissed me with a pat on my back hinting I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. However my ulcers kept re-appearing and then onwards I was not rid of them till recently after 13 Doctors and trial and error of 27 different medicines including Prednisolone as well as Dexamethasone internally. These steroids did give some relief in high doses for short periods; but since long term use was considered dangerous for bones, heart , kidney and so on I was wary of them. No Doctor thought anything more serious could be causing the ulcers. Each doctor kept repeating like parrots the same story of aphthous ulcers being a common condition and a minor irritant at worst. However I suffered immensely in the meanwhile as crops and crops of them appeared , sometimes at one time as many as 9 at various locations of the tongue and soft palate as well as mucus membranes of the inside of cheeks or on the epiglottis.

Should this have rung alarm bells in the minds of Doctors about doing a Blood Film and in depth study of my blood cells as they are emerging from the Bone Marrow ? Yes, but it didn't. I continued suffering for years. All sorts of investigations including ECG, Hepatitis , Colonoscopy and endoscopy , presence of Heliobacter Pylori ( the main cause for gastric ulcers) and so on were conducted by various doctors. Some great doctors suggested it must be stress that was the cause.

Let me Fast Forward now from 1998 to 2000 and 2001, back to Dubai, during which period, I developed peculiar stomach upsets. One such episode in 2000 April consisted of loose motions and stomach cramps, but no infection was detected. It continued for a week and subsided eventually. In another incident I developed hiccups one night which wouldn't stop. Two Doctors prescribed different drugs including Omeprazole etc but the hiccups increased its frequency and length of time between breaths and I felt chocked and panic ridden often. The condition abated slowly stopped after one full week during which I couldn't go for work. Both the Doctors involved in this episode did palpate my enlarging SPLEEN and advised me to stop drinking alcohol, if I drank often. Tunnel vision I should say. Anything to do with Spleen or Liver is attributed to alcohol, while gargantuan culprits of diseases go un-noticed. I had always thought that a reasonable "medical mind" would mentally scan all possibilities, however remote and take steps accordingly.

In year 2001 February I came down with heavy throat infection and was admitted to a good Dubai based Hospital. hospital. Due to low immunity, very low haemoglobin, or whatever, I developed pneumonia and was saved by simultaneous intra-venous injections of four powerful antibiotics. Regretfully again, no red alert was declared by any of the doctors, ( ENT Surgeon and a Chest Physician/ Pulmonologist) which to me now in hindsight seem highly unprofessional on the part of the various doctors and most unfortunate on my part.

In October 2004, my my friendly general practioner DR. Abraham Titus in Abu Dhabi was consulted by me for a stomach upset and on routine physical examination he detected my highly enlarged spleen and sent me rushing for an ultra Sound scan of abdomen and a blood analysis including a Smear test. The results were revealing and shocking for me--- I had what was then diagnosed by Dr. Titus as CML ( Chronic Myloid Leukaemia ). I asked the good doctor about the prognosis and he said 15 to 20 years if treated, but there was always a possibility of the disease transforming to the Acute variety ( AML = Acute Myeloid Leukaemia). I broke the news to my wife Molly and she was equally devastated.

I visited Christian Medical College vellore, Tamil Nadu ( India) for their reputed competence, dedication as well as for their reasonable charges. My condition was confirmed as CML with Myelofibrosis, by Dr. Mammen Chandy the Haematology Professor and Head of Department there. Since I showed hesitation in going in immediately for Bone Marrow Transplant, Dr. Mammen put me on daily dose of Hydroxy Urea, with the hope of achieving a remission or arresting the progress of the disease. It worked for almost a year by holding down my WBC total count around 6000 from a peak of 23000, as well as other parameters like haemoglobin, RBC and platelets etc.

In January 2005 I made another trip to CMC vellore and Dr. Mammen and his super team extracted my bone marrow ( drilling the hip bone and aspirating a small amount of marrow) for further study and concluded that the disease had indeed transformed to AML with large quantity of " Blast Cells". He said the news was very bad indeed. The only alternative was BMT(= Bone Marrow Transplant) and I was asked to contact my siblings for HLA matching for stem cell donation from the one whose antigens matched. A perfect match would be of 6 antigens though less number of match ( say3) could also be considered if there be no other alternative. Siblings being the only possibility, I contacted my brother and two sisters. Dr. Mammen preferred a male donor and so my brother, then a Colonel in the Army and posted in New Delhi was the best choice as a donor. Will his antigens match ? If not what would I do ? If my sisters' stem cells did not match, what would happen ? These questions remained.

In the meanwhile it was a great relief to me and others including the donor, my bother that lately the Stemm Cell harvest was very "donor-friendly" unlike in the past when the bone marrow itself had to be extracted from the bones of the donor under general anaesthesia. Now the stem cells are filtered out of the flowing blood by an equipment. The blood would then be pumped back to circulation of the donor. This was a oasis of pleasant thought in an otherwise bleak scenario.

I am now a "born-again" they say. The doctors gave me just about 30% chance of survival even with fully HLA matched Bone Marrow ( stem cells) from my younger brother. The Chemo-conditioning for 6 days was an un-mitigating nightmare. On many occasions during the chemo conditioning I thought to myself : " the desease was better than the treatment" and said so , to Nurse Philomina, who just smiled as she would have heard this truism several hundred times or more. In those six days I had diabetes, hypertension, prostate enlargement, jaundice, nausea & vomiting, urinary hesitancy & pain, hallucinations and insomnia. In my hallucinations I 'saw' my daughters visiting me, my pet dog Negra hiding behind the medicine trolley, away from the sharp eyes of the nurses and kept looking at my face with unflinching eyes, willing me to get well !! Seven different tubes pumped antibiotics, diuretics, pain-killers and other medicines and marrow-destroying chemicals via a major vein through Hickman's catheter in my chest , in addition to various tablets and capsules by mouth. My fast shrinking body was a battleground between cancerous cells in the marrow and the medical profession. I tried all my meditation methods and mantram repeating to disengage my mind from the pain and misery of treatment, which turned out to be intolerable while the disease itself was painless apart from dizzy spells due to drastic fall in haemoglobin levels. Even though I ate no food, I passed motion consisting of my own mucus membranes which started sloughing off from mouth down to rectum in acondition called 'mucocytosis'. Extra care had to be taken to not initiate bleeding as the platelets count was too low. With each 'crisis' the doctors huddled to confer to decide the best course of action. At one stage when passing urine was excruciatingly painful, the Urologists were called who considered inserting a catheter into the bladder but ruled it out as uncontrollable bleeding was a distinct possibility, and that could lead to death. So they relieved the pain with powerful analgesics and got the urinary sphincter to relax, by appropriate medicines. Urine could then be passed with accompanying groans and grunts.

My wife Molly and relatives took turn to be by my bedside to tend to me with my incontinence, vomiting and moaning and groaning. Nurses at CMC Vellore refused to clean up after me as they considered that not part of duty. Senior and junior doctors checked all parameters at frequent intervals till midnight and nurses kept vigil 24 hours monitoring BP, temperature and body weight. I drank double boiled and pressure cooked ( 20 minutes under pressure after the cooker whistle) and cooled water and even fruit juice. Every visitor wore sterilized slippers into the HEPA-filtered and ‘positive-pressured’ Transplant Room, and rinsed their palms in sterilizing spirit before touching me. On the 8th day after clean sweeping my existing bone marrow they kept me alive with blood transfusions since my body did not by then have any bone marrow to produce blood. Alongwith cancerous marrow cells, non-cancerous ones also got wiped out !

My Brother Cherish arrived four days before transplatation and tyook injections of ‘growth fator’ to increase the stem cells in his blood, which gave him slight fever as aside effect which he ignored.Then they extracted stem cells from his blood using a new fangled machine and pumped 180 ml each of the same on two consecutive days, and told me that the rest was with God. Doctors said the stem cells would circulate in my blood stream and in a few days find their home in various bones in my body and hopefully produce normal blood cells of various types. This aspect of how the stem cells behaved after the transplant was entirely in the hands of Nature or God. The first 100 days from the ‘D-day’ of stem cells transplantation would be critical with regard to possible Graft Versus Host Disease = GVHD ( tissue rejection ). On 19th May 2011, I completed the 6 years from D-day. I am still alive . They call me a born again Christian. Yes, they are right; I am a Christian by birth and I survived Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, thanks to the Doctors and nurses and technicians of Christian Medical College Hospital Vellore, Tamil Nadu and to the Almighty God who created Man Medicines and Medicine-men. They call me a " BORN AGAIN" man.

Book Review: Mani Shankar Aiyar's "Cofessions of a Secular Fundamentalist"

I have just finished readinhg the book , “ CONFESSIONS OF A SECULAR FUNDAMENTALIST” by Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar ( Peguin Books). The following is intended as an appreciation of the book from my point of view as a member of the minority Christian community in India. There are reasons why i think all Indians both resident and non-resident must read it. The book is well written with a refreshing balance on opinions. For me what is really heart warming are his ability to give credit to members of minority religions, wherever they have contributed to Indian development in all fields, including education, literature and general enlightenment, among others.

As a Syrian Christian of Keralam, i feel proud and happy when Mr Aiyar ( a member of the ‘majority’ community ) writes the truth about the contributions to education and other social aspects by Chritians as a whole and Syrian Christians of Keralam in particular. He has said so many positive and true things about Muslims, Sikhs,Parsis, Jews and others too.

Some of his observations are worth reading and remembering:

“From partition and independence in 1947 to the first general election in 1952 the nature of our nationhood was the dominant political issue but with Jawarlal Nehru vanquishing the soft-Hindu school within the Congressby 1951 and going on to overwhelmingly win the general election in 1952 on a hard secular platform, the secular basis of our nationhood remained unchallenged for the next 34 years....”

On the topic of Coversions and the Constitution, his arguments are such that adherents of all religions must read and try understand our constitution sincerely: “ The constitution grants every citizen the fundamental right to propagate one’s faith. It does not confer the right to convert. However it also gives every citizen to be converted “.

To some of the the zealots in India he says: “ The Ramakrishna Mission is probably the most widespread, the most influential, and most effective of the missions operating in the country – certainly more widespread and more effective than the evangelical mission of Graham Stains who was brutally murdered by the zealots of the saffron brigade”.

When i was in college in Gauhati, Assam, i had both Hindu and Muslim friends. While i could not see or find any difference in either group, there were students who said things like: “ Pradip is a Bengali but Hamid is a Muslim. The surprising thing for me was the fact that both were from Calcutta, West Bengal, and both were nice gentlemen. I, as a Malayalee from central Travencore ( central Keralam) never could appreciate, such an attitude because in my green Keralam all were Keraleeans whatever his/her religious faith.

Whenever i have a chat with some of my Hindu friends they have a standard comment about population growth, and that is: “ Muslim population is growing at lightening speed and their population will overtake that of all others shortly” . Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer’s statisical analysis clears the air so effectively thus : “ The 1991 census showed that Muslim population of India grew from 61 million to 75 million between 1971 & 1981.This amounts to 23 % over a decade giving an annual rate of increase of 2.2%. The Hindus’ number rose from 453 million to 549 million over the same decade giving an annual rate of over 2%”.

So, Mr Aiyer states : “ Muslim population is growing at just about the same rate as Hindu population. Will then the sons of Babur overtake the sons of Ram ?“

In the same manner the writer discusses Ayodhya, Hindutwa, and related topics and makes the reader conclude that partition’s responsibility was equally that of Hindus as was of Muslims’. I liked this part very much indeed.

As member of a minority religion in India, i.e. Christian ( that too a Syrian Christian with a history in India beginning with AD 52, a time when Islam was not yet born and an era when the Europeans were pagans or worse) , I find Mr Aiyer’s observations redeeming. I remember, as a young Area Sales Manager of a Multi National Company in Gorakhpur, a panwaala could not place Keralam as a state and advised me to call myself a “Madrassi”; and then asked me what ‘Jaath’ i belonged to. When i answered Christian, he shook his head side to side and quickly gave me the meedha paan and got busy with other things in a hurry. Poor bloke hadn’t heard of Keralam and how will he understand Christianity, which he associates with poor and hungry people who got converted after the arrival of Portugese, and British missionaries for the sake roti kapda and freedom from harrassment by their own upper caste brotherhood .

The early Christian origin in South India is reflected if one reads matrimonial columns in any English daily of the South where in brides and grooms from the Syro Christian Denominations announce that they belong to “ancient christian family”. Indeed that is true about South Indian Christians as they were Christians before Europe ever heard of Christianity. Surely the Europeans took up the religion and spread it far and wide with the help of their colonial clout. But that is a later story.

The author’s further analysis of ‘secularism and Indian religious minorities’ thows much light on points that are not widely known or discussed, much less understood.

Regarding Muslims in India Mr. Aiyar submits that: “ the root cause of Muslim backwardness in India is Pakistan. The partition in’47 robbed the Muslims of India of leadership – not political leadership but leadership at the grassroots. At local community level, schools and Universities,villages and in bazaars. The Muslim middle class of pre-partition India virtually vanished, as the ‘Muhajir’ took off for a new home ( Pakistan). True ,the fate the ‘muhajir’ met in their Dar-ul-Islam ( house of Islam) is infinitely worse than they left behind in the Dar-ulHarb ( house of war)”. This fact was driven home to me by a Tamil friend of mine who migrated in ’47 and happened to be my colleague in Dubai during the 1987 to 2004 period. He said to me : “ Laddoo milega sochkey gaya tha leikin kuch nahi mila” !

About Christians in India the writer narrates many interesting but less known facts. He writes : “ What has rendered complex contemporary India’s relationship with its Christian community is 2000 year long association with christianity through the Syrian Christian Church of Kerala and 500 years of symbiotic interaction with Jesuits.

Mr. Aiyar also explains the role played by Sikhs, Parsis, Jews etc in making India a true mosaic. He writes: “ Without its mosaic of minorities and majorities, India would not be the India we know. About Jews the author gives a very cute little piece of history : “In India the local Rajas of Malabar Coast ( that is north west coast of Keralam) ceded them territory to establish an independent enclave , free of all outside ineterference so that the only Jewish state in recorded history from the kingdom of David to the state of Israel was established in India”.

I will conclude this note with what the book says about the difference between India and the western civilization: “ It is the essence of Eastern civilization – specifically of Indian civilization – to synthesize and harmonize. It is the essence of western civilization to slice and divide. The western mind finds only one solution to problems of coflict : separate and compartmentalise ( dressed up as self determination). The western mind finds only one answer to ethnicity : domination of the minority by the majority ( dressed up as Democracy). The western mind finds only one response to diversity: elimination ( Hitler’s final solution), or unity through uniformity ( known in America as the melting pot, the dissolution of all diversity in to a single identity, the American mould). What the west finds totally incapable of comprehending, is unity in diversity”.

A book well worth reading.

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, A TRUE FRIEND

A pet owner recalls his enduring relationship with his dog.

My wife and two daughters and i were residents of Jumeirah, in Dubai back in 1990s. Having been brought up in rural South India, i was used to many cats, dogs – even cows and goats in and around my ancestral home. Hence my yearning for a pet dog was always strong.

In December 1994 – the week before Christmas - my young school-going daughters asked me whether we could adopt a pup. I immediately responded by calling K9 friends ! I was informed that several puppies were ready for adoptionat the villa of a woman living nearby.

The pet owner showed us four pups. We were all in favour of the beautiful female puppy, which had a black coat sprinkled with white fur patches. Her name was Negra and she always had one wet eye, as if from crying.

My wife said that after the initial enthusiasm, the rest of us would slowly stop caring for the dog and it would fall on her shoulders to feed and bathe Negra. The prophesy came true to some degree.

Years passed and Negra grew up to be a mild mannered , medium sized beauty. She gave three litters of six pups each.

Negra could recognise the sound of my car from about 300 meters and three road bends away. In the summer, she loved being in the staff quarters with the air-conditioner on, while during the winter she was happiest outdoors. Chicken bones were her favourite food. Negra was a much loved member of our family for 11 years.

Then in 2005 i had get admitted to a hospital in India for bone marrow transplant. Under the influence of various medicines i dreamt of Negra and had hallucinations of her being next to me. The nurses at the hospital laughed when they heard this from me, explaining that hospitals do not allow dogs in sterile rooms.

The week before Christmas, 2005, my daughters who were alone at home, saw some boys calling out to Negra. Our dog gingerly walked away with them. That was the last we saw of our dear Negra.

Four months passed and i returned home healthy. I hoped Negra would return or that we would know her fate. But we still do not know what happened to her. Negra came to us in a Christmas week and went away in a Christmas week. When Christmas 2008 approached, we hoped we would see her again. But that was not to be.

I am sure Negra put in aprayer for me when i was ill. Otherwise i would not have made it.

TITO MATHSON

(This article appeared in Gulf News, Dubai, UAEi, in 2007)

9th July, Happy Birthday !

After my 30th birthday, i developed the habit of congratulating my mother on my birthday. On the first occasion she was surprised and said her birthday fell on 4th September and not on 9th July. I explained saying: “on 9th July she was the star attraction for having delivered a baby boy for the Maliekal family ; and then you said to your beaming husband that you wished to name your son 'Babu' ! ”

Papa was most amused and said that it was too common a name and the word 'Tito' would see him through life in a better light. So, though i was Christened 'Mathew' in honour of my grandfather, the name was modified to Mathson for further "better light" over and above the 'light' from the first name 'Tito'. Sure enough i have all this ‘light’ around me all the time. School teachers never forgot my name, Doctors recalled my name on my second visit with lightening speed. When i wrote to Mr Bipin Pal Das (he was my college principal, in Assam), at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Delhi to say i was to join State Trading Corporation head office in New Delhi, he replied saying he could never forget my name. And to think that only at admission time in a crowded hall for B.Sc course in 1967 he had come across my name from a list and commented: " that is an unusual name". He could recall the words Tito Mathson in 1976 and wrote a letter in which the words 'how could i not remember you', came as a surprise to me as I was not an ‘all rounder awardee’ of the college or had any such distinguishing aspect. I have the letter on official letter-head of Minister of State of Foreign Affairs, Government of India preserved along with my degree cerificates. So the name did have some benefits. My Am ma's choice of ‘Babu’ would have been one among millions in India.

It was great fun teasing my Amma about my possible fate if Babu Mathew were to be my name. She would then go into lengthy giggling and say feebly, "Babu is not all that bad a name" !

So every year, I congratulated her on my birthday and she found it preposterous; like some kind of reverse mortgage situation. However, I firmly believe that congratulating the birthday boy/girl for having come in to this world may not be all that relevant. The parents deserve the appreciation for the child’s birth, upbringing and the loads of love that it costs them ( not forgetting the money and effort ) in the process.

I did not get this idea when my Papa was alive, so I do not know what his comment would have been.

So, now that you both are up in the sky somewhere; “many happy returns of the day, Amma & Papa, it is my birthday today”. Please send me a piece of the cake after you both eat it. The cakes must be good there.

Half-life of Atoms and Other Things

‘HALF-LIFE OF ATOMS’

There is a fairly good reason to believe that like the 'half-life' concept of radio-active decay of materials, most aspects of life too doubles or triples its speed of aging, going empty or burning out, at geometrical acceleration after the half way line. In 1993 my friend Sam took me for a drive in his car from Nairobi to Nakuru in Kenya. Talking and laughing and enjoying the country side we were not much bothered about the fuel in the tank as the needle showed above half way line. However within less than a quarter of the time it took to reach the half empty level, the needle showed a tendency to hurtle towards the 'empty' position. My friend philosophised that the phenomenon was familiar to him, in all the cars he sold from the car dealership he manged. A Kenyan gentleman whom we befriended at a tea stall helped us to fill up petrol from a Private Club in the middle of bush-land.

Now with my 62nd birthday about to dawn in July this year the same phenomenon of 'fuel tank indicator' seems to surface. Till my 50th birthday, weeks months and years went by at a speed I was familiar with, though while in school and college time passed at a rather slow pace. These days the weeks and months fly at the speed of sound.

Pretending to be a nuclear physicist, who has mastered the half-life concept of atoms, l have observed that even candles ( during power cuts, in Bangalore) burn longer till their half length and then accelerate to burn-out the lower half in no time.

Even the curry-leaf plant at my back yard in Shanti Nagar, Bangalore, took one month to dry down from the top branches to mid level but the bottom half died in a week !

I wonder if I am on to some new cosmic truth !

The 'Hijras' of India

I just finished reading a book titled "THE TRUTH ABOUT ME" ( A Hijra's Story) by A. Revathy.Originally written in Tamil and translated to English by Ms. Geetha.

This book narrates the heart-rending true story of a human being, born a son to his parents and named Doraiswamy, in a village named Namakkal in Tamil Nadu state of south India. As the he grows he feels himself a female inside ( mind and body) while externally looking male. The story takes the reader through all the jeering and negative comments of villagers and siblings that Doraiswamy suffers and then to adulthood where he/she is torn between the inner need to be a woman in the body of a healthy man.

Eventually Doraiswamy runs away from home and joins other Hijra communities in Chennai,Bombay and Bangalore in succession. Along the way he undergoes surgical operation to remove the non-functional male organs including internalised testicles. Thereafter she looks, walks, dresses like a woman and finds some happiness of becoming what he/she always wanted to be. She then changes the name to Revathy with the help of a Senior Guru Hijra. However in India the life of a Hijra is pure hell in every way.

In the narration, Revathy asks with deep emotion the questions : " what have i done to be born like this ?" ; "What sin did i commit in my previous life due to which God made me a Hijra ?"

Revathy describes many situation to show the stark discrimination Hijras face. The following are examples...

# When she/he applies for a Scooter driving license, the Road Traffic Officer (RTO) refuses to even accept the application saying he is authorised to accept form only from male or female applicants. The form does not have a third option on it !

# When she/he walks on the street she is booked by the police and taken to lock-up with accusations of begging or soliciting clients as sex worker or considered plain 'suspicious' characters.... and beaten up.

Revathy returns several times to Namakkal after suffering either humiliation at the hands of police, or fellow-Hijras for solace and involves herself in the business of her father: transporting milk cans to the co-operative in the town nearby in the family owned trucks and in other house-hold work. Even here she would rather do cooking, cleaning and other domestic work by helping her mother like any girl-child rather than clean trucks or load milk cans on to them.

Her brothers quarrel with her, abuses her physically for her 'funny behaviour' and accuses that perhaps devil has got in to her to make her behave like a woman while Doraiswamy was a boy ! The father quietly hears out the sons and mother about the 'abnormal' behaviour of Rvathy(his youngest and dearest and handsome son, Doraiswamy) and siletly sheds tears and keeps mum. On occasions he holds his/her hand and gives heart-broken looks with bewilderment. After the surgery, Revathy regularly wears Saree and Blouse though people do guess that she is a Hijra due to her manly walk, though she develpoed and breats and smoother skin eventually and the beard softened out and almost disappeared.

Later in life after long months of begging on the streets (as many Hijra's do in India), and other odd jobs as personal servant of other elderly Hijras in their community living quarters,as well as sex work, in Bombay, Delhi and Chennai she gets introduced to members of in an NGO called "Sangama" in Bangalore having regular office and PR initiatioves with the sole purpose of getting recognition for Hijras etc.

After the long suffering and ignominious life now Revathy actually works for "SANGAMA" in Bnaglore. After a long fight to get her ather's house registered in her name after promising in writing to look after the father and mother in their old age ( they had thought she would give away the house to the Hijra community). This, despite the fact that she contributed to expanding and maitaining the house with her meagre income and the fact the house as per normal situation should have gone to her any way as per custom since he/she was the youngest 'born male' of her father.

I recommend that this book be read by all Indians.


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My personal comments.

India has millions of Hijras ( some people insultingly call them "No.6" or "Chhakkas") and they are never enumerated in Census; not admitted to schools; not allowed to write male or female in any aplication form; nobody employs them while their blessings are considered good by shop-keepers and general public based on a dubious mythological story which goes thus :-

......When Laxman was going in to the forest for meditation he asked the multitude following him to go home. He said: " all you men women and children please fo to your homes". After many years when Ram came out of the forest he found Hijras still waiting at the spot. When he asked why they waited so long they replied: " you said men & women to go home but since we are neither, we waited. So Ram blessed them with the power to bless any one whom Hijras wanted to bless and the the same would come true.Such is the 'double-standard' when it comes to these unfortunates.

Hijras are a curse to their family and a laughing stock for the rest of the world !
Interestingly the upper cast Indian society considers sighting a Hijra first thing in the morning as AUSPICIOUS ! But then sighting a dead body is also auspicious here; while if a Priest of any religion comes across one in the morning, that is pure bad luck and one might as well stay home as calamity would be on its way !


I undertand that in the latest Census of India which just conluded on 28th Feb 2011, there is a provision to include Hijras as THIRD GENDER. Karnataka State Govt has included a sum in it's new 2011 budget, for the welfare and training of Hijras in suitable skilled and semi-skilled jobs.

In my personal opinion Hijras are able-bodied human beings who can be empoyed for Security Watch, as Drivers, Plumbers, Electricians and even as Police Staff. The Moghuls used to employ them as guards of their Harems etc. Mind set of the India general public and particularly those in power has to become positive towards Hijras. After all it is not their fault that they were born Hijras. Now with most Indian girls wearing western attire of Trouser and top, Hijras can wear them too and not look like men in women's attire which is the main reason for open ridicule.

I understand that many so called respectable families as well as others hand over their new-born babies of 'doubtful sex' based on 'deformed' genitals, under cover of night or in connivance with the Midwife or Nurse or Doctor and close relatives, to Hijras along with some meagre pocket money so that the ignominy of a Hira offspring is obliterated in the bud. The hijras of course bring up the baby as their own. Our society therefore owes a big debt to Hijras. We must respect them and integrate them in to our Indian Society which boasts of great things that it did in the past.