Eunuchs on the doorstep

The Observer | World | Notebook: New Delhi: "Notebook: New Delhi

Dan McDougall
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer

Eunuchs on my doorstep

There are half a dozen grown men in high heels and garish saris camped outside the gates of our home. I can hear them outside in the darkness, above the familiar sound of the peacocks in Delhi Zoo, clapping their painted hands, shaking their cheap glass bangles and drunkenly singing raucous Hindi songs.

I've been resigned to this rather unorthodox confrontation since my son was born here 10 days ago. An advance party of three eunuchs, or hijiras, as they are known, turned up outside my house at 9am as I was returning from my morning swim. Since then three more have come along, each one wearing a more elaborate silk outfit than the next. In hideous falsetto cackles they have spent much of the day screeching not at me but at my neighbours, threatening to disrobe and urinate all over their driveways - they are publicly embarrassing me into giving in.

It's quite simple really. They are here to blackmail me and my wife, bringing hideous threats of curses against our sleeping newborn. Curses that will naturally turn to blessings if we give them a nice backhander in the shape of 10,000 rupees (£120). In the past, eunuchs often enjoyed the patronage of Hindu kings, in whose courts they would "