Ayaz Qureshi

Village mela  (village fair) was not a new thing but this year Nabla loved  maut ka kuwan  (‘the well of death’) where transgendered performers  ( hijrae ) danced on the Bollywood tunes between motorcyclists' gravity-defying stunts inside an enclosed circular arena of wooden planks.  The onlookers stood on a platform circling the top of  maut ka kuwan . From there they could see the action below - the dance of life and death. They whistled and jeered at the dancers, applauded the stuntmen on motorbikes and showered money to encourage more daring moves. Some made lewd gesture on sexually explicit moves of the hijare dancers others were held in awe of the whole thing or experienced ecstasy, screaming with joy and/or fright. Nothing in the whole  mela matched the excitement created by the near death motorbike manoeuvring of the stuntmen accompanied by sexy dances of the hijrae performers.      Nabla loved it. He was 20 some...

They got her married to someone who was already married but was also well off, even if not around most of the year. A labour migrant in UAE (or was it Saudi Arabia). She fell in love with a Mirasian da munda, a   boy from a different village who she met in the town. He worked there at a barber shop in the town bazaar.  The Mirasi boy brought her home.  His family accepted her at once.  She was clever and beautiful.   They went to the court for a nikha .  She claimed that she was divorced from her previous husband. The husband's family contested that claim.  The court asked for a proof of divorce.  She presented her two sisters and a brother-in-law as witnesses.   Nikha was done with the court's approval but the litigation that followed cost them dearly. The Mirasi family had saved some money by selling an old house to buy a new (bigger) house. This money was now spent on lawyers,  court fees and police. Some of...