While Aboard The Train
We had a new India train experience with the sellers on-board. Many, many people walked through the train cars selling toys, snacks, drinks, coffee and endless amounts of chai, but there were a few people that puzzled us. Four women in bright orange saris walked through the aisle loudly clapping in the faces of the passengers as they smiled and asked for money. They weren’t selling anything but some people gave them some small change. They asked me for 30 Rupees and when I smiled and shook my head ‘no’, one woman smiled and pinched my cheek and kept walking. Odd.
It was only much later that we learned that these were the mysterious ‘third sex’ in India. There are no gay men, only men who like other men and who dress as women and ‘perform’ as entertainers for money. The clapping was their entertainment and this was their method for earning money in a country where they are not able to be openly gay but are able to live acceptably as a third sex. Something very new for us.