I’m a Human Being

It’s a story about a group of Transsexual people living in my neighborhood. Though this is not so much easy to show their life if we consider  the social & religious circumstances of my country.  “Shame on you man  you mix with hizra” this is a typical reaction normally I got from people around even from some of my friends at times.  Religious beliefs and cultural standards of morality make transsexuality an unacceptable abomination in Bangladesh. The ‘Hizra’, as transsexuals are called locally, are ostracized and thus live together in small communities. Yet social stigma is not enough to dent their unshakeable faith in life. But even though they are a visible reality of society we live in & part of it.

Locally called ‘hizra’ living in tiny & remote areas of the city & within themselves mainly but everyday they populates the city where they are living with all sorts of attires & attitudes of their own. Usually they go out for collecting moneys from different populated places such as bazaars & market places as a group lead by the mashi.& end of the day they sit together & distributes money to each members of the group to their ranks. The transsexual people traditionally dance with new born baby & collects money from its parents which they thought as their rights. Rather than these they perform as a dancer or singer in social festivals likes weeding, birthday party etc to provide entertainment occasionally. But in different social circumstances many of them worked as sex-workers at night at bog streets & stations for living.