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JOURNAL OF CRITICALREVIEWS

ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 18, 2020

TRAUMA AND THE : A THEORETICAL EVALUATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ME HIJRA ME LAXMI

1A GOPIKA RAJA*, 2INDU B

1Research Scholar,Department of English.Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri,Vallikavu PO,Clappana,Kerala 690525, India 2Assistant Professor (Sr Grade),Department of English,Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri,Vallikavu PO, Clappana,Kerala 690525, India

Received: 25 May 2020 Revised and Accepted: 30 June 2020

Abstract The essence of trauma, as conceived by psychoanalysts, signifies adisruptive experience that profoundly triggers the self's emotional composure and the individual perception of the outer world. Trauma studies focus on the reflection of trauma in literature in particular and the society in general by considering its social, cultural and psychological parameters. The pioneers of trauma studies claim that trauma irrevocably fragments consciousness and therefore makes language more rigid and incomprehensible. The unintelligible nature of language interrupts linguistic representation in language thereby making language more subtle in trauma studies .This notion was challenged by a new pluralistic model of trauma theory that suggests the core concept that traumatic experience locates value and knowledge through a variety of representational modes.. The hijra literature is gaining momentum in the current literary scenario where the protagonist, mostly a or , often communicates the personal or collective experiences to the outer world challenging its heteronormative nature. The present paper is a study on the traumatic lives of the hijra community and how they encounter the stigma in society with particular reference to Laxminarayan Tripathi`s Me Laxmi Me Hijra.A striking feature of Laxmi`s narration is the inherent struggle for making the hijra community visible and audible from the obscurity of vulnerable silence. Key words :Trauma, hijra, psyche, heteronormative, identity

I INTRODUCTION The psychological struggles manifested by characters in the text often create a sense of empathy within the readers. It is a fact widely acknowledged that readers often choose to read stories that mostly conclude on an unhappy note. The question remains - why people prefer novels and stories with sad endings? Is the choice rather a reflection of their own repressed psyche? The history of trauma studies is stuffed with antithetical statements and contradictory arguments, leaving both the literary scholars and the psychoanalysts groping in the dark with various definitions and explanations of trauma and its effects on readers. Quoting the words of Michelle Balaev from his article Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered: Some alternative approaches start with a definition of trauma that allows for a range of representational possibilities. Alternative models challenge the classic model‘s governing raja.gopika29@gmail .com principle that defines trauma in terms of universal characteristics and effects. Critics such as Leys, Cvetkovich, and myself who establish a psychological framework apart from the classic model thus produce different conclusions regarding trauma‘s influence upon language, perception, and society. Beginning from a different psychological starting point for defining trauma than that established in the traditional approach thus allows critics a renewed focus on trauma‘s specificity and the processes of remembering. Understanding trauma, for example, by situating it within a larger conceptual framework of social psychology theories in addition to neurobiological theories will produce a particular psychologically informed concept of trauma that acknowledges the range of contextual factors that specify the value of the experience. This stance might therefore consider dubious the assertion of trauma‘s intrinsic dissociation (2). Childhood memories are always reflections that equally enrapture our body and mind.ButLaxmi had a different childhood altogether. Like every other child of his age, his wishes were gratified by his parents. He was given everything that he wanted as a child but what he missed or rather lacked was the pristine innocence of a child that

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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 18, 2020 makes it what it is. Laxmi lived in a shanty on the banks of Siddheshwar lake in Thane. As the only son of his parents, he was affectionately addressed as Raju.Raju`s mother gave birth to seven children but only three of them survived. She loved them more than how she loved her own life.Laxmi`s childhood was mostly fraught with pain and illness. He had asthma and during periods of temporary recovery, he was subjected to a host of restrictions. Laxmi writes her experience of childhood ailments in her memoir Me Hijra Me Laxmi as : …don`t play here, don`t go there, don‘t eat this, don‘t drink that. By the time I was seven, I had them all- typhoid,pneumonia,malaria, sometimes at the one and the same time.Doctors,hospitals,medicines,injections,saline –these were my companions. There came a stage when the doctors gave up on me, believing my condition to be incurable. But it was the love of my parents that brought me back to life. Though my mother gave birth to seven children only three of us survived, and she loved us more than she loved life (3).

II TRAUMA AND THE HIJRA CONSCIOUSNESS Laxmi`s unstable health did not affect his love for dance. The stage had a hypnotic effect on Laxmi and he considered the stage as an oasis in the desert of unpleasant ailments. But for the stigmatization of society ,many failed to assess the cathartic and therapeutic effect of dance on him. All they could ever perceive was the matchless body of Laxmi, the boy, with the ardent spirit of a woman .Tracing the genealogy of Contemporary Trauma studies, the basic tenets of trauma theory followed from the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston .The tragic incident happened around the year 1942 in Boston. The unexpected tragedy had 493 causalities and many were trampled to death. Dr. Lindemann, who treated many of the survivors, concluded that more than half of the survivors showcased similar responses. Preoccupation with the memories of the lost loved ones, empathizing with the deceased, expressions of hostility and guilt, sleeplessness and nightmares, disorientation and disharmony were some of the uneasy feelings confronted by people who had gone through the trauma of existence. Caplan , one of the researchers who focused on trauma studies, was the first to describe the components of the traumatic experience systematically. He described the obstacles as insurmountable in terms of the customary methods and practices of problem solving. ―A period of disorganization and disharmony‖ is how the researchers described the period of crisis. Laxmi was first sexually exploited when he was seven at his cousin`s wedding. An older boy, one of the distant relatives of Laxmi, led him to a dark room but Laxmi,at that time, was too young to comprehend that somebody was molesting him sexually. Laxmi didn‘t realize what was happening and never bothered to reveal about this ugly incident to anyone around him. Sickly as I was, I had learnt to endure. I did not tell anyone about the ugly incident. Perhaps the guy`s threats scared me. But a few days later, he molested me again, and then again. He was accompanied by his friends and all of them took turns to violate me. The physical and mental torture I went through is indescribable. But I didn‘t say a word to anyone, either then or later. I kept my feelings bottled (6). The first instance of a traumatic experience in Laxmi was apparent when he struggled to confine his feelings of anger and disgust to himself. He bottled his feelings when he knew he was dawdling through strange and weird paths. Laxmi could have opened up to his parents who were so loving to him but something inside him restrained him from being open to his own feelings. His sexual exploitation did not end where it began. ―During family functions, when the whole clan got together, I was routinely molested by older cousins and their accomplices. It was as if my body did not belong to me but to them. They obviously derived a sadistic thrill from my suffering. But who would believe me if I complained?‖(7).Going by the conventional standards, it is hard to be born a woman in a patriarchal society and in the given context it is beyond the limits of tolerance to think of being born as a hijra in a conservative Brahmin family. At home, Laxmi was expected to behave as the eldest son of a family. Despite the care and concern Laxmi received from his home, he continued to be taunted and tormented, physically and emotionally, by the larger world around him. Laxmi slowly began to encounter what psychoanalysts termed the trauma of existence. Since Laxmi had to take a hard course in his relentless fight against some of the baseless conventions of society, he grew stronger in life. Shobhaa De writes in her review of Me Hijra Me Laxmi in the Mumbai Mirror as ―Laxmi is now the undisputed spokesperson of the community, relentlessly fighting to establish their rights in India, representing hijras at important global platforms as a keynote speaker, persuasively pushing reasoned advocacy. The world is listening to Laxmi - never mind her very vocal critics back home‖(9). The feeling that his body did not belong to him was symptomatic of the traumatic experience he had suffered at his own home. Being the owner of something and being helpless to take over its possession point to Laxmi`s inability to hold on to his own freedom. As Regiane Correa De Oliveira Ramos remarks in her article The Voice of an Indian Trans woman: A Hijra Autobiography : At present, the medical community affirms that transgender people suffer from ―dysphoria,‖ that is, that they are afflicted with discomfort with their bodies. However, despite their struggle against these mental health labels such as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -DSM), and despite questions of

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class, caste, race, gender, and patriarchy, hijras are writing their own narratives using autobiographies as an antidote to all forms of . In these narratives, the hijras write about their experiences of constant harassment, the looks of disapproval, the fear of being in public spaces, the fear of not returning home alive, the fear of using the public toilet, the fear of going to school, the fear of being arrested and, as Revathi strongly emphasizes, ―fear of everything and anything‖ (Revathi, 2010: ix). But now, this marginalized group is overcoming its fears and has started to speak up to the world, refusing to accept the invisibility imposed on its existence. They are asserting that being transgender is an identity, not a disorder. By publicly assuming their , they are challenging the heteronormative discourses that have imprisoned them for ages for being the deviants (Foucault, 1988: 43). They are inscribing themselves in world history, showing how they apprehend everything that exists within the norms and beyond them(73).

III THE TRUTH AND THE TRANSFORMATION Laxmi, despite being the apple of his parents ‗eyes, never had a vague feeling that he would ever be taken into granted and the thought of which prompted him to hide all that was happening to him in the dark. The sense of alienation and the feeling of being insecure added to his traumatic concerns. The hidden sexual assaults transformed Laxmi`s attitude to life. He grew more and more incommunicative and tried every possible way to conceal his feelings from his kith and kin. It felt as if he had grown above his childhood at a very young age. Laxmi started hanging around with older and wiser people, irrespective of their age and gender. Sangita Sethi, one such friend of hers whom she called Sangitha Auntie was quite modern in her outlook and spoke fluent English. The entire credit went to Sangita Auntie for whatever English Laxmi knew today. She introduced him to Mr Ashok Row Kavi who worked for community. Laxmi met him personally and got many of his doubts and suspicions cleared. Laxmi was relieved. ―The thought that I was not the only one like this, but there were others too was elating‖(11). For hijras, discrimination and sexual violence remain almost a day to day affair. In most cases, clients of sex work are perpetrators of physical and sexual violence, followed by boyfriends, strangers and even relatives to certain extent. The violence their bodies suffer urges them to fight for their own basic rights and also the rights of sexual minorities in the nation. Revathi claims that the hijras of her generation ―want to do something different. We want to tell others about our lives so that they can understand us. And we too want to live like those around us‖ (47). As an activist, ―I live on hope. Despite the many challenges, I still persist. Although I often wonder if I am chasing a fading rainbow‖ (235). Laxmi`s new love developed in his new house at Khopat. He fell in love with an older boy in her class, Rohan. Laxmi says ―With Rohan I was having sex by choice for the first time in my life. Now there was ecstasy,not agony‖(11).But soon things began to take a bitter turn and Rohan fell for a girl in his neighbourhood. Laxmi began to feel used and he confronted Rohan with the same feelings. Their relationship did not last long and everything soon blew up in Laxmi`s face. It was after Laxmi`s break up with Rohan that she met Rahul Kale who was more or less like him- effeminate in his outlook and behavior. Laxmi showcased great admiration for Rahul`s ―in your face approach‖ to sexuality and was inspired to be like Rahul in many situations that he confronted thereafter. Another guy, Mohan joined the group and happily called themselves the ―the happy trio‖. The ―madonnas of sexuality‖ is how they called themselves in public. Laxmi found some relief in the friendship but soon, for many reasons, the list of friends gradually withered away one by one. Laxmi was once again thrown into the pool of despair. The title Me Hijra Me Laxmi reveals the identity of the titular character using a more objective usage ―Me‖ rather than a subjective ―I‖. Strategically, the work has been placed under the popular genre ‗testimonio‘ thus claiming to echo the collective trauma of the hijra community as a whole. In this context, it is striking to note what Pamele Caughie describes as a ―transgenre‖ in her influential essay The Temporality of Modernist Life Writing in the Era of Transsexualism: Virginia Woolf ‘s Orlando and Einar Wegener ‘s Man Into Woman: I adopt the French "transgenre" in English for narratives treating transgender lives that transfigure conventions of narrative diegesis.3 life writing, as other scholars have noted, disrupts conventions of narrative logic by defying pronominal stability, temporal continuity, and natural progression. It thereby demands a new genre, a transnarrative. Woolf reached this insight in writing Orlando, remarking in her diary that she doubted she would write another novel after Orlando, that she would need another name for her fiction (Diary 3, 176). Trans narratives cross genres—for example, medical, psychological, judicial, journalistic, anthropological, philosophical, autobiographical, fictional—as in the case of Orlando with its generic mix of biography and fantasy, philosophy and literary history, poetry and prose. They cross—or more accurately, crisscross—temporal moments as the protagonist transitions in gender and in time. Of necessity, transnarratives emphasize the artifice of gender, even while maintaining its naturalness. The term "transgenre" extends Sandy Stone's provocative suggestion in her 1991 landmark essay, "The Empire Strikes

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Back," that be considered "not as a class or problematic 'third gender,' but rather as a genre—a set of embodied texts whose potential for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desire has yet to be explored(165).

IV CONCLUSION Laxmi‘s narrative, being an autobiography, mostly depends on personal recollection and individual experiences. The book has been open to fair and unfair criticisms. Many critics have preferably labeled the book as a piece of traumatic literature. In a biting review, Ashok Raw Kavi, one of the gay activists, criticizes the memoir in Fables and half- truths: Autobiography of a Hijra as“ What gets tiresome is Laxmi's huge "I". The book is full of "I"s without telling us what that "I" does for the society around her or what it observes as symptoms, which threaten people like her‖(9).It is an advice that Laxmi took to her heart when she says: The decision to become a hijra is traumatic. Once one becomes a hijra,the door to one`s earlier life is shut for ever. It isn`t easy for a hijra to come to terms with her new life. The family, and indeed society as a whole, reacts strangely.Terrified,the hijra in self defence invents the story of her having gotten kidnapped and forced into hijrahood.Sometimes,even a complaint to that effect is lodged. Of course, it`s not as if hijras never kidnap kids. But then the community doesn‘t forgive them. Like mainstream society ,the hijra community,too,has its share of black sheep. Though the laws of the land should be sufficient to deal with them, crimes by hijras are often exaggerated and the hijras are chastised(157). Dancing was always Laxmi`s passion and the art always transported her to another world where she could be her own true self. Miss Menon who was her dance teacher brought grace to her movements and she turned a more flexible dancer under the guidance of Miss Menon. She realized that dancing was her oxygen which made her forget all her ailments. Laxmi not only tried to surpass the stereotypical image of classical dance as belonging to a domain, but also used it as a strategy of dissent. From the initial steps of dance she climbed the stairs of fame and became a model co-coordinator getting her first stint with recognition and fame when she performed in an album, Lavani on Fire. Thus it was Laxmi, the dancer rather than Laxmi, the hijra who took to fame and entered the world of ‗celebrification‘. Laxmi‘s education made her capable to bear the responsibility of being the chairman of DWS that empowered the sex workers in the hijra community. Taking up responsible positions in society did not mean Laxmi was free from the world of trauma.She still had to fight many traumatic experiences of which her association with Jaspal proved a damper. ―Eventually, Jaspal threw me out of his life. Of all my relationships, this one was the most traumatic. It hardened me for I resolved never to get emotionally involved with anyone again(34). There has been much research dedicated to the study of trauma and the field of trauma studies has emerged rapidly as a result of several crucial developments. Sandy Stone in her influential essay , The Empire Writes Back, maintains that transsexuals be considered as a separate genre rather than a third gender-―a set of embodied texts whose potential for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desire has yet to be explored‖ (165). This is also relevant for Laxmi, the transgender in several unexplained contexts. Her ‗celebrification‘ has enabled the upliftment of hijra community to a great extent. She brought to the forefront the so far repressed and unrecognized talents of the hijra community. Perhaps Laxmi‘s greatest accolade lies in reclaiming the cultural significance of the term hijra, from its derogatory usage.

WORKS CITED Tripathi, Laxminarayan. Me Hijra, Me Laxmi.Translated by R. Raj Rao and P. G. Joshi, Oxford University Press, 2015. Ahmed, Sara.―QueerFeelings‖.TheRoutledge Studies Reader. Edited by Donald E Hall,et.al.,Routledge, 2013. Kavi, A. R. (Fables and Half-Truths: Autobiography of a Hijra [Review of thebook Me Hijra Me Laxmi, by LaxminarayanTripathi]. Hindustan Times. Retrieved 29 May. 2015 Caughie, P. ―The Temporality of Modernist Writing in the Era of Transsexualism‖. Modern Fiction Studies ,2013 De , Shobhaa. ―Me Hijra,Me Laxmi…Me hero!‖Mumbai Mirror,2 May 2015.Newspaper Source,search. https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/shobhaa-de/me- hijra-me-laxmi-me-hero/articleshow/47126782.cms Courtois, C. Complex trauma, complex reactions: Assessment and treatment. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, (412–425).2004. De Oliveira Ramos, Regiane Correa. ―The Voice of an Indian Trans woman: A Hijra Autobiography‖ Indialogs Vol 5 2018, ISSN: 2339-8523,12 March 2018,pp 71-88,

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https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/indialogs.110 Stone, Sandy. The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. Camera Obscura, pp 150–76.1996

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