Eunuch Tax Collectors (Sounds Fun, but Isn't Really)

Nothing much to say today, except this story caught my eye. Headline: Pakistan appoints eunuchs for loan recovery.

At first glance, this seems like a well-intentioned government attempt to include a neglected segment of society. A Pakistani judge has even suggested the same. The truth, however, is a little bit more nuanced.

I frst came across the eunuch's unique method of persuasion late one night when I was rolling through Delhi's streets. I was in my usual auto, stopped at a red light, when a callused brown hand wormed its way through the window. I looked up. The arm belonged to a spectacularly ugly woman, who was earnestly entreating me for money in a deep and voice. On second glance, I realized that this ugly woman was, in fact, a man dressed in a sari. I refused. She clapped her hands together, flat-palmed, and stuck her hand out again, glaring at me insistently. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I shook my head again. The light turned green. The auto driver gunned the engine. The woman backed away, looking disgusted. She shook her fist at me, uttering a curse so vile it made even the auto driver swerve in shock.

It wasn't until later that I could appreciate the humor of the situation. At the time I was cold, alone, and more than a little scared by how angry she seemed to be. Discussing it with my aunt, she told me that the eunuchs (a generic term that includes hermaphrodites, cross-dressers, and eunuchs) usually show up in brightly-dressed groups on happy occasions. They sing, dance, and chant bawdy verses, attracting the neighbors' attention and curses. The family in the house can hold out for a while, but the eunuchs' verses get ever more sexually explicit. They start to lift their saris, flashing passers-by. Around this time, the family usually gives in and pays the eunuchs off - the sum can run to the hundreds of dollars - and the eunuchs offer a blessing and leave.

The first time there was a wedding in my uncles' colony, the eunuchs arrived around six in the morning. Their howls woke the entire street. My aunt locked all the doors, dragged a sofa in front of the gate, and tried to wait it out. The singing and dancing grew louder. She sent someone down to negotiate. The eunuchs wanted Rs. 10,000 ($200). She said no, and offered them Rs. 2000 ($40) instead. Eventually they settled on Rs. 6000 and a new sari for every eunuch in the troupe. The eunuchs offered a blessing on the happy couple and pranced away.

The next time they came to the neighborhood, my uncle called their leader up. "Look," he said. "There are several families in this complex. Let's make a deal. You lay off the singing and dancing, and every time your rep shows up, we fork over a standard Rs. 5000." The eunuchs, knowing a good deal when they saw one, accepted. So now, they run either a legitimate business or a protection racket, depending on your point of view.

In India, however, eunuchs play an accepted role in society. The Pakistani idea - to use the eunuchs' method to shame serial debtors and tax evaders - is nothing short of genius. In a society like ours, public shaming is only a small step down from the rack.

In her book "The Dancing Girls of Lahore," Louise Brown praises Pakistani society because it has a place for eunuchs. In England, where she comes from, society isn't so kind. But to an extent, Brown misses a bigger picture. Yes, eunuchs have a place in South Asian societies, but it isn't necessarily a place that anyone would want. Consider: the eunuchs do their song-and-dance extortion routine because they don't have any other way to earn an income. A cross-dresser who applied for a job as a bank teller would, I suspect, be laughed out of the branch. And consider also the blanket term "eunuch": it includes cross-dressers, hermaphrodites, those who impersonate hermaphrodites, eunuchs, and gay men who become cross-dressers because they have no other way to express their sexual identity. Is that really kind?

(Of course, in many parts of India a eunuch's blessing is regarding as great luck, and people seek it out. But that doesn't mean the role is any less restrictive. And then there's the thornier issue of the "impersonators" - as my uncle once said, real eunuchs/hermaphrodites are very rare. More commonly, men dress up in saris to capitalize on the eunuchs' reputation and business model - this was the type of eunuch who accosted me that night)

(A more practical person might ask how eunuchs maintain their tight-knit communities. Mysterious. A cousin once said that the hermaphrodites show up at a house or hospital where a hermaphrodite child has been born and "take the child away." "How do they know?" I asked her, since her explanation seemed a little voodoo. "They just know," she said, shrugging. In India, 'they just know' is logic enough)