Of Trains and "Chhackas"

Once upon my visit to India, I met a transvestite on a train, who proceeded to take my specs off of my nose, and demand one hundred rupees should I want them back! This was way after the times when transvestites, or rather, Chhackas, as they are known in Hindi, were socially acceptable. Historically, the Chhacko has always been a very mystical figure, an oddity rather, to be feared, but never understood! They had no rights, and were treated with as much contempt as rabid dogs. In this day and age, however, it is socially acceptable for a Chhacko to board any train, overcrowded or not, and demand rights, whether or not they be his!

As an interloper in the train (did I mention that I was traveling without a ticket? It all comes under the rule, When in India, do as the Indians), I couldn’t very well raise a racket, for that would bring the ticket collector scrambling through the masses of teeming humans to my side, and I was rightly wary of being charged a hefty fine. Reluctantly fishing out a hundred bob, I paid the Chhacko, and made good my escape. That train journey will always be remembered as the day I got ripped off by a Chhacko. After all, the train ticket to Chennai was a measly forty five rupees!

In the convening years, I have often thought it weird that although the train was packed to capacity, not one man came to my rescue. In that train filled with people from all walks of life, I found no one willing to confront the Chhacko; no one who found the courage to tell him that he was in the wrong. At that moment, I felt like a coward, for even I had not had the courage to confront him.

Someone once said that we all live lives of quiet desperation, and upon hearing this, some three years down the line, I remember this incident in the train. With a hindsight that comforts as well as exonerates me from my sense of self-contempt, I realized that India, the land of cultural and moral conservativeness, would not be accepting any strays that do not fit into the norms of the land. Hence, ‘socially acceptable’ is merely a cliché that standardizes the presence of transvestites in the Indian Society. True acceptance has never been gained, nor shall it ever be, as long as the society continues in its sluggish state of moral exactitude. It’s really no wonder that that Chhacka ripped me off. I’d do it to, were I one.