Hira Mandi
by Robert Knoth
A grey morning slowly retreats from Lahore’s Old City. The baker starts cooking puffed puris with curry for breakfast. A vendor rolls in a cart with freshly cut sugar cane and pink guavas. In small patches of open sky kites stretch out their wings and lazily drift on currents of warming air above the rooftops. Below is the tangled maze of backstreets and alleys of Hira Mandi, literally Diamond Market. First footsteps bounce along cobbled stones, but no one hears. The inhabitants have just bolted their doors and retired. They will sleep until mid-afternoon. This is the red light district and throughout the Indian subcontinent it has the same reputation as Amsterdam’s in the West.
Sex workers and dancers known as hijras live here in close-knit groups resembling the medieval European guilds. Family-size groups work under the guidance of ‘gurus’ or ‘mistresses’ who keep the largest part of the group’s income. The hijras perform at weddings and other parties, but also in the streets and in private houses. They are usually defined as ‘neither men nor women’. Hijras are born transgender, hermaphrodite or transgender of female gender, trapped inside male bodies. In the west they are often referred to as eunuchs, but many do not undergo sex change surgery. Rumor has it that whenever a transgender or hermaphrodite child is born, the hijra community stalks the newborn’s house until the child is given to them to bring up. More commonly children join a group when they reach puberty.
Strict rules about the segregation of men and women in traditional Muslim societies like Pakistan exclude women and girls from many sections of the entertainment industry, including dance and theatre. Lahore’s red light district also attracts heterosexual men and boys who come to have their first experience with sex. In this conservative culture, adolescent boys and girls would literally be risking their lives if they had experimental relationships.
Hira Mandi provides refuge to homosexual men and allows young boys and adult men to develop special friendships and sexual relations with other males. While most end up in heterosexual marriage, some maintain secret relations with the dancing boys or hijras. Mainstream Pakistan is ambiguous towards homosexuality. It is embedded in local culture but seen as just a temporary phase.
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