The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India

I thought this was a remarkable book. As someone who was born and brought up in India till I came to the US at age 22, this book was nonetheless an eye opener to me. Well worth the read.Particularly the middle class ladies she describe so well in Chapter 2, reminds me vividly of my mother's circle of friends--how they will talk you you so kindly in their "drawing rooms" one minute, then in a flash of a second (some of them) can turn to the maid and yell at her like a full Colonel in Nazi SS.Also, the history of the hijiras--truly rare to come across this kind of information. Also, remarkable, the tensions today between the "old school" hijiras with modern Indian transsexual women. In a nutshell, lack of medical techniques (Sexual Reassignment Surgery or SRS) quite literally forced these transgender women to become physically a third sex with their customs dating back centuries, an outgrowth of their unique position as a "third sex." In modern India this practice continues, but in cities, I gather from the book, trans-women with the means undergo SRS and so are not forced into being this "third sex." Hence the tensions between urban trans-women and less affluent, less educated "old school" hijiras. I suspect theirs is a group that will soon go extinct, and probably for the better as their life does not seem to be a very easy one. Though of course, they would be the one's to ask and they'd likely disagree.One other thing that comes through is that kids all over India, are chased out of their homes and so join up with these established clans of hijiras. But this the middle class cannot face--instead, they propagate the myth that their children were kidnapped, in order to save face with their peers.

I can't recall when I last read a book and felt so compelled to KEEP READING (I'm at the age when I've granted myself permission to simnply drop a book when it's boring me)..BUT?....I'm visiting the house of American friends who've spent many years in India, and whose two daughters-in-law are Indian. I saw "The Invisibles" and (picking up, in my extraordinarily clever way, on the surname "Jaddfrey") assumed I would enjoy reading this book.Don't ask me how someone could take a subject as initially interesting as this book's....and then somehow turn it into the most plodding, dull, stupor-inducing, supposed narrative/"investigation" I've encountered in years.I kept resisting the urge to simply flip through pages...including absurdly evasive (and L-O-N-G) conversations with folks who obviously weren't going to tell the author much, if anything. I suppose the point of this book is:"We don't know much about the subject of this book, and we're not going to do so anytime soon. It's all like a Big Mystery, you know"At a certain point?....one can begin to ask "Why do I need to know all the supposed 'secrets' of someone or a group of people who don't WANT to be known?". It's a valid qustion. In this particular case (and particularly when reading those interminable dialogues between the author and her subjects), I wondered if there were any "secrets" or "hidden histories" (ugh) at all.In any case, I've been dutifully reading this thing for three days. I kept saying "Oh, just put it back on the bookshelf it came from", but I didn't. I finished it this morning and wondered what was wrong with me that Iwould find any book so oppressively boring, tedious, and self-congratulatory.At a certain point, Nancy Drew (even if half-indian) has to discover SOMEthing......at least if she's going to write an entire book on the subject.Bascially (and I hope I'm not being too unkind here) is: "young woman goes to strange country, learns that there exists a group of people of whom she knows nothing, tries to learn a lot about them, learns practically nothing substantial/reliable, and then goes back home again to write a book about what she didn't uncover."I'm sorry....this midle-aged man had quite enough (by the mid-80's) of books that focus on the unknowableness of knowingness, etcetera.My apologies in advance,David Terry[...]

Some of these other reviews make me laugh. Would it be better had Jaffrey assumed the role of cultural anthropologist ala Serena Nanda and written an "anthropological" treatise on the role of hijras in Indian culture, their meaning, their context, blah blah blah? No. She presumes nothing and gets closer to the "other" than Nanda ever did. Nanda doesn't even scratch the surface, she just has the prestige associated with anthropologists who go there first, meet these people first, get the reality behind the actual life of some relative cultural oddity. Nanda's book is full of conjecture and Western psychology. She includes next to nothing about the long history of eunuchs in Muslim culture- hmm, wonder why hijras exist in the north of India and not so much in the south? She never even goes over the etymology of the term hijra. Jaffrey assumes nothing and writes an utterly honest, genuine book from the standpoint of human. Her book is incredibly informative, though lacking in some respects- more theoretical discussion of gender would have been interesting.I don't mean to knock Nanda too much, but her book is lacking personality compared to Jaffrey's, and after twelve straight hours of research- much of it concerning the development and history of hijras in Muslim culture- I'm entitled to complain. Like it or not, Jaffrey embodies the new form of ethnography. I'm giving it five stars to make up for some other reviewers.

Ms. Jaffrey has chronicled her search for information about the hijras of India. Her English and grammar is tortured and takes some getting used to. If you've ever actually been to India, you'll be reminded of how you rarely really understand all that people are saying even though it seems to be English. As an American English speaker, reading this book, there were times when I had no idea what she meant.There is also some information about the hijras, but it is repeated to the reader as often as it was repeated to the writer in her search. Mostly what you get from this book is a good sense of what it's like to try to research something in India: the complexities, the subterfuges, the lying, the mix of fact and fiction.