HinduOnNet.com
Imagine a scalpel digging deep into your innards as if to remove them. That is how Vidya, a transgender in Chennai, felt when she underwent castration at a clinic in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, for “just Rs.6,000”. It was performed in “barely 20 minutes” in an operation theatre frighteningly reminiscent of a “slaughterhouse”. Vidya describes her experience in great detail in her autobiography I am Vidya, published by Kizhakku Pathipagam. She recounts in it the fear, the anxiety, the excruciating pain and the final sense of relief of discarding her maleness. She refers to the experience of liberation from the male identity as nirvana. “The nirvana pain of an aravani is worse than a woman’s labour pain. I kept calling the name of matha [Bahuchara Matha] to withstand the pain,” she says.