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Bombay Eunuch

2001, Movie, NR, 71 mins

Bombay Eunuch: Review

BOMBAY EUNUCH
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Through a special arrangement brokered by a mutual friend, filmmaker Alexandra Shiva and her co-directors Sean MacDonald and Michelle Gucovsky were granted the rare privilege of access to the closed world of India's hijras, men who, for various reasons, have had their genitals removed and live their lives as neither men nor women, but something else entirely: eunuchs. Throughout history, hijras have held a special place in Indian society, serving as everything from court servants and harem protectors to politicians and religious figures. The hijras' claim that they have descended from the goddess Mata lends them a mystical aura, and even today eunuchs are asked to dance and sing at births and weddings for good luck. Conversely, their curses are not to be taken lightly. But thanks to increasing Western influence and a resulting shift in attitudes toward gender, the status of the eunuch in Indian society has declined. Today, many live in abject poverty in cities like Bombay, where they beg for money or engage in sex work to survive. Objects of shame and scorn, many of the estimated 1.3 million eunuchs living in India today are forced out of their birth families (according to the film, most men don't become hijiras until they're teenagers) and gather in ersatz family units. The filmmakers were permitted to shoot one of these eunuch families, headed by outspoken, 37-year-old hijra matriarch Meena, for a total of five months. Meena and her "daughters" live in the poor Bombay suburb of Malad, and all have incredible stories to tell, from their first awareness that they weren't meant to live as men to their castration (such surgery is technically illegal in India, so many men turn to traditional thayammas, who operate with little more than a piece of twine and a knife) and the problems they now face living amid disease — including AIDS — and extreme poverty. The stories are often heartbreaking, but the film is fascinating to watch, thanks to an insightful commentary and the inclusion of clips from Bollywood films that illustrate the representation of eunuchs in popular Indian culture. Shiva states that she set out to make a film about gender and wound up with a film about survival. But her accomplishment, with its handsomely shot footage of contemporary Bombay, is about so much more than that: It's nothing less than an examination of the very meaning of family. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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