A dimly-lit, near-unreal scene … a wailing male infant is brought and laid on a piece of cloth … in an atmosphere of grim celebration, the knife lifts … Immi, the 'born awry' child, has failed every test of masculinity … the rst being a replay of an oft-enacted ritual among young boys -of a game to see who is able to make the furthest mark upon the sand while voiding urine. Our friend, who is part of the game, sits down to compete, as is not wont for boys to do, and is immediately pounced upon by those standing up -'He' does not have a penis! The child's frustrated mother, who has taken pains to conceal ambiguity in 'his' childhood, closets 'him' in a room with a woman engaged in prostitution, hoping to awaken and prove 'his' masculinity, but is defeated with the disgusted proclamation -'yahan to kuchh bhi nahin hai' (but there is nothing here!) … her 'son' has nally and irrevocably been denied access to manhood. And she wails to the world her failure to deliver, 'Khoobsoorat … Zeenat ne zankha jana' (the beautiful one has mothered an in-between) … .
Our protagonist has visited the ghetto … delighted with the women's clothes and jewellery 'he' has been decked up in, 'he' enters the liminal world of fantasy, till 'he' is rudely ripped apart by the brutality of the 'homosexual' act 'he' is subjected to … bruised and broken, 'he' ees from 'his' body ….The last scene -our protagonist is calm. 'His' 2 mother has already lost touch with reality … she gazes again and again into the mirror on the wall in her old nery, trying to revive the past … trying to understand that it is over. 'He' has mixed a potion for the two of them that 'he' tenderly feeds his mother and then partakes of 'himself' … hand in hand, cheek to cheek, they pass away.(Descriptions of scenes from the lm Darmiyaan 3 )Darmiyaan is a lm made in the last decade of the twentieth century by a director who in the past has dealt sensitively with subjects concerning women. The lm itself, made on the life of a person with an intersex condition, espouses a deep empathy with the protagonist, with 'his' mother Mumtaz Begum, an actress, herself ghting marginalizatio n in a fast-moving lm industry with an even lesser premium on women who are past their prime or no longer sexually interesting … with the hijras who share a love-hate relationship with Mumtaz, commiserating with her at times, berating her at others. The most consistent motif that comes through with respect to the hijras, however, is what appears to be their almost malevolent persistence in attempting to recruit our protagonist into their ranks. They literally leave no stone unturned in this effort, and the person they pursue is equally adamant in 'his' refusal. The viewer, in fact, is drawn into the tussle, identifying with the protagonist in 'his' resistance, and leaves the hall with some myths and many fears intact, maybe reinforced. The Hindu, heterosexual, patrilocal, mainstream viewer, that is. 4 Identities naturalized enough to be forgotten, or treated as views from 'nowhere'.