Mohini’s children

An annual festival in Tamil Nadu allows transgendered people from near and far to affirm their identity. 

It is early spring and, for Tamils, the beginning of the new year, Chithirai. As farmers harvest their crops, many are streaming into a small town about 150 km south of Chennai to celebrate at the Koothandavar Temple, under the full moon. Every year, more than 50,000 members of the transgender community, or aravanis, as they call themselves in Tamil, gather at this temple to take part in the elaborate drama of the Koothandavar festival. An elderly male couple ties the knot at the start of the festival, amidst a crowd that has travelled great distance to be here, some from as far away as Singapore and Indonesia.

The temple itself is centuries old, but the transgender community 'discovered' its significance to their experience about three decades ago – an ancient point of commonality described in the Hindu texts. Located on a single street lined with mud huts and surrounded by sugarcane fields, the temple comes alive at the beginning of spring every year, in a burst of 18 days of revelry. This year was no different, as highlighted in the accompanying photographs.