Eunuch finds new glory with tale of a forsaken society

A eunuch who lives in a graveyard has published her autobiography amid signs that prejudice against India's million-odd eunuchs or hijra is beginning to dissolve.

For collectors of improbable occasions, this was one for the scrapbook. A small, highly select group of artists, culturati and socialites assembled in the graveyard in Old Delhi this week with the Swiss ambassador to India and one of the country's most prominent photographers to witness the launch of Mona Ahmed's autobiography.

Some are born as eunuchs, but most are castrated while children. Once they entertained royal courts and guarded harems but as the courts crumbled the hijra found themselves out on the street. They survived as best they could: blessing babies and newly married couples at parties, prowling through markets and threatening to expose themselves if not paid to go away.

Loud, vulgar, big and buxom, garishly made up and altogether rather terrifying, especially to children: that's the stereotype. But there are signs that they are beginning to gain acceptance. Two years ago one stood for election as mayor of a small town in central India and won. In this month's state election in Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest and most populous state, 18 more are chancing their arm.

Mona Ahmed has no political ambitions, but her life reflects the chaotic way in which the position of India's eunuchs is changing. When the photographer, Dayanita Singh, stumbled upon her in Old Delhi in 1989, she was the "empress of Turkman Gate" as Dayanita calls her, most celebrated and striking of the hijra in her neighbourhood. That year she adopted a baby girl, Ayesha. On the girl's birthday, 2,000 eunuchs from all over India, Bangladesh and Pakistan came to the party.

But eunuchs often fall out. "We are not related by blood," Mona says in the book, "so they [hijra] are always fighting."

Ostracised by her own group, thrown out of her home, she found a corner of an old Muslim graveyard where no one bothered her. Her adoptive daughter was taken off to Pakistan by her guru. But with Dayanita Singh's steady support – the book is filled with her tender photographs, taken down the years – she made a new life for herself in the graveyard, and slowly built a ramshackle home on top of the graves of her ancestors.

This week, her home was full of marigolds and scent and beautiful people, and Mona Ahmed was in glory again.

'Myself Mona Ahmed' is published by Scalo, Zurich