The Ritual

I sat in front of the mirror removing my makeup and wondered who I would discover underneath.

Ryan or Rayna?

When it comes to effectively removing makeup, it is important that you follow steps. You should always start with removing makeup from the lips.

The self-help page on some beauty site I was looking at advised me.

I picked up the cotton swab, and started wiping the lipstick off. Gently, or you will make your lips rough, says the page. I had invested in some of the best water-proof cosmetics I could find in the market. It was no wonder then that removing all the paint was taking so much time and effort...But I did not mind spending time on it. After all, my life depended on it.

“Hey! Look who’s here, guys! Miss Rayna herself! How can we help you, Miss? Ahh... Don’t turn your head away! Give us a smile, babe! ... Look guys! Miss Rayna is swaying her hips! Sexy...!!” And they had followed me sneering and mocking, and mimicking my walk.

“Come, give us a kiss, honey,” said Greg, pushing his big brawny body through the crowd of fifteen-year-old boys hissing and booing, but not hurting me physically. I shrank into myself, as the sickening body odour of the sweaty school football captain assailed my nostrils. Greg grabbed my arm and pulled me into a tight embrace. I struggled, fought back with my slim hands, but they were no match for the muscular hands of my tormentor. Tears scalded my cheeks.

“Let me go! Let me go, please, Greg!”

I kept shouting in my tremulous voice, hoping someone would step in and save me. But no one did. The booing and laughter only grew and there were even a few wolf whistles and catcalls, and shouts of “Come on, come on! Don’t fight it, man! Enjoy it! This is your golden chance, Ms. Rayna!” And the thick sausage-like lips came nearer and nearer and the raucous laughter grew and grew till I lost consciousness.

I did not know how long I lay there in the sand, but when I opened my eyes, there was no one around me, except Little Sam. His name was not really Little Sam; he was Sam Philip, son and heir of the great Mathew Philip, founder of the Mathew group of companies and filthy rich, but only 3 feet in height, and hence called by all ‘Little Sam’. They regularly picked on Little Sam as well, acting like they couldn’t see him and shoving him around, even physically lifting him up and throwing him around. I knew why they picked on Sam; after all he was a midget and a misfit in that school of tall, muscular, macho boys. But I still did not understand why they were doing this to me. I was tall, and as far as I knew, “normal” ...

I got up. Sam, reaching only up to my knees, also stood up.

I said, “Why are they doing this to me? Why?”

“You really don’t know?” Sam asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, take a careful look in the mirror next time,” Sam said.

“But you just ignore them and carry on; don’t let them get to you... That’s what I do.” He spoke in his high-pitched voice, standing very straight to make himself look taller.

I nodded. “I’ll try... but I get so scared...”

I had indeed taken a good look at myself in the mirror, but wasn’t any wiser even after that. Sam had told me then.

Next time I looked in the mirror, I did see what Sam had pointed out. I did look a bit girlish, despite my six feet height. My eyebrows were not bushy like my classmates’, and my jawbones hadn’t hardened into that manly square. And while all the others, even Little Sam had at least a shadow of a moustache, I had no hair on my upper lip. And my voice! My voice was the greatest problem. I wondered when it will deepen and become the bass sound I heard all around me in my all-boys class.

Well, it didn’t.

One would have thought it shouldn’t matter to anyone if I spoke with a girlish voice or not. But apparently it did. Each time I spoke, they pretended to look around for a girl; and then in mock surprise would ask, “Was that you, Ryan?” and roar in laughter. They lost no opportunity to bump into me, and then say, “Oh sorry Rayna!”

It only got worse in college. But I had grown smarter by that time. And that’s when the makeup started. I got waterproof eyebrow pencils and spent hours in front of the mirror penciling in thick bushy eyebrows, and a set of false moustaches which I would glue in bit by bit carefully. I was quite good at it, I had to admit. My fake moustache looked much more authentic than half my classmates’ authentic hair growth.

At night, I would patiently remove my makeup and clean my face religiously. I didn’t dare to think what would happen if one day I couldn’t put on my manly face.

But I was worried. And not only about my moustache.

It was Little Sam with the big heart who suggested going to a doctor. Who stood by me through all the tests and counselling, and the final consultation with the doctor. Who said nothing but held my hand in a firm grip when the entire family seemed to explode. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “You have done nothing wrong... and if you feel you need to right a wrong for your own happiness, do not hesitate. It’s your life, and your choice.”

Easier said than done, of course. But the consultation and counselling had cleared my mind. No more sleepless nights wondering what was wrong with me. Or rather, now I knew what was wrong with me. Poring through the booklets the doctor had given me, surfing the net for as much information as I could get, reading up every available paper on transgender life – it was an education I couldn’t get in school.

And then I decided the time was ripe to come out and reveal myself to the world as what I truly was. A woman trapped in a man’s body. And I was going in for treatment and surgery. The whole family was against me. My mother refused to talk to me. Surprisingly, my old grandfather was the one who supported me.

“Couldn’t you all see how the child was unhappy? Now let him be happy,” was all that he said.

I was sure I would be happy.

After much mental and physical trauma, I was now truly Rayna, the transgender woman. The irony of choosing the very same name the bullies in my class used to torment me did not escape me. Yes indeed, I was Rayna now, who had soft, smooth arms, a girlish voice and a hip swaying gait. The nightly ritual of drawing and painting, and gluing on hair, ended.

I remember my first encounter with hijdas^* when I was still Ryan. The car had stopped at a signal, and suddenly this almost grotesque apparition had knocked on the window. My mom had lowered the glass, and the huge form of the hijda had filled the window. She wore a neon orange sari with a jari border and a bright green blouse which contrasted with her sari. The multicoloured beads in the necklace around her stout neck jangled and sparkled as she wiggled her huge breasts, deliberately, it had seemed to me. But it was the face that mesmerized me. Her eyes, magnified and enlarged by kohl and eyeshadow, seemed to occupy almost half her face. Her lips were painted a bright pink and it was obvious that the lipstick had been used generously to give them a luscious fullness. She had probably done some treatment for her skin for they looked scrubbed clean of all natural hair and polished to an unnatural waxy sheen.

But despite all the cosmetic effort to achieve femininity, there was something indefinably masculine about her... which was frightening and at the same time pathetic. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

She suddenly put her hand through the window and with a coin clasped in her hand waved it three times around my mother’s and my head, chanting in a gruff voice some prayers for our good health. My mother paid her at the end of it, the hijda said thank you and hurried to the next car.

“Who is this, Mom? And why did you give her money?” I had asked in wonder when I recovered from the overwhelming experience.

“She’s a hijda, son, they’re neither men nor women, but God has blessed them with special powers, and if they pray for you, it will come true.”

“But how?”

“Well, the story goes that when Lord Rama left Ayodhya and went on his 14 years’ exile in the forest, all his subjects followed him in tears. At the edge of the forest he told them to go back and wait for him in Ayodhya. Unwillingly, they all went back. After 14 years, when Rama returned, he saw some people waiting for him in the same spot. When questioned, they said Rama had asked ‘men and women’ to go back, but since they were neither men nor women, they had stayed on and not returned. Touched by their love for him, Lord Rama blessed them and said when they give blessings or pray for others, their prayers will come true... All just stories, probably, but we all can do with some extra blessings, can’t we?” My mother had asked smilingly.

Many times I had met them since that first encounter, but I had never got over that first, fearsome impression. Even now when their over-the-top personas approached me, I would quickly hand over some money and escape.

After the operation and ‘coming out’, I had expected I would be happy and at peace with myself.

Remembering the unnaturally made up hijda, I had not used any make up initially. I was not going to make myself grotesque. But if in school I was tortured for looking feminine while being a boy socially, now there were whispers and sniggers and sudden silences when I passed by. I knew what the issue was. Though I dressed and talked and behaved like a woman, my face still seemed to hold on to traces of Ryan. It was so frustrating that when I was a boy, my masculinity was not considered enough to merit being called male, but now my meagre masculinity was overriding my feminine identity. 

There was no getting away from Ryan, it seemed. Ryan was always going to cast his shadow on Rayna.

And I had bought a whole new set of cosmetics. Mornings became once again battlefields where I would don war paints to go out and meet the enemy. Nights became once again field hospitals where I would wash off the paint along with the blood and tears endured in the day’s battle. Each day was a battle, a battle for survival, a battle against my own divided self. Each day I hoped would see the end of the battle. But the war dragged on.

I was hopeful each night as I removed my makeup. I prolonged the ritualistic cleansing hoping every day for that final miracle. As I slowly, gently, peeled off the many layers of my handiwork, I would ask myself, “Will Ryan have vanished forever? Will Rayna finally come into her own?”

But now I know better. Ryan will never leave Rayna. And I will always be Ryan/Rayna.

·        Hijdas are a transgender community in India alternately respected and ridiculed and believed by some to have divine powers.