Life of a Transgender

Book Review

Title: From Manjunath to Manjamma

Authors: B Manjamma Jogathi with Harsha Bhat

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023

Pages: 171

I had an aversion towards the transgender people I met on the trains during my frequent travels as a younger man. These people came across as rude and vulgar. They would enter the train compartment in a large group, clapping hands loudly, waking up sleeping passengers and insisting on being given generous alms. They would go to the extent of hectoring the passengers, even making physical intrusions like poking and caressing body parts that we won’t let strangers touch.

Reading Arundhati Roy’s novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a few years ago, made me look at transpersons with some empathy. Anjum, the transperson protagonist, is also a Muslim. Double alienation. Anjum is an undesirable citizen of the country by virtue of being a transperson who is also a Muslim. She is pushed out of the mainstream literally and driven to living in a cemetery. Once you have fallen off the edge, Anjum tells us, “you will never stop falling. And as you fall you will hold on to other falling people.”

From Manjunath to Manjamma is the autobiography of a transperson who started ‘falling’ the moment she decided to stop pretending to be a man and start living the life of what she really was: a woman in a man’s body. But Manjamma, the name she took for herself, was fortunate. She was a good dancer. She learnt the Jogati nritya [the folkdance of a community of transgenders] and went on to become the president of the Karnataka Folklore Academy. She was awarded Padma Shri, the furth highest civilian award, by the Government of India in 2021. This book tells the story of her journey from a hated transgender to a successful individual who discovered the dignity of her life in spite of its alienness.

Manjunath was one of 21 children of her parents. Only four of those children survived one of whom is Manjunath-turned-Manjamma. Like Arundhati Roy’s Anjum, Manju too learns that transgenders don’t belong anywhere. “We have no place we can call our own,” she says in the book. “We live a nomadic life, moving from one place to another, singing and seeking alms, performing and telling tales.”

Manjamma joined the community of Jogathis, a transgender community of goddess Yellamma’s devotees. They have rather elaborate rituals of initiation, similar to a wedding. The rituals make them children of the goddess. People seek their blessings on occasions like weddings. Being an accomplished dancer, Manjamma became a heroine among people who knew her.

It wasn’t an easy journey, however. She attempted suicide two times. She swallowed a whole bottle of pesticide and had to spend two entire weeks in a hospital recovering. Later she went to put her head to a rail track. Destiny had better plans for her.

Transgenders have the normal human feelings, Manjamma tells us. She wanted to be loved by a man, just like any other woman would. She wished to wear attractive clothes, put on cosmetics and be admired by a man. There were a couple of love affairs too. But love evades people like her, Manjamma knows. They belong to goddess Yellamma. They have to.

Harsha Bhat, journalist, tells Manjamma’s story movingly, with empathy as well as authorial detachment. In fact, it is Manjamma who stands tall throughout the book and Harsha’s presence is never felt. Good book, for those who are interested to know more about transgenders.