Abandoned, 3 girls find refuge in kinnar community

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 17

At Kinnar Mandir, in the impoverished Bapu Dham Colony of Sector 26, a 42-year-old eunuch, Kamli, monitors the work of two masons revamping the dera kitchen. In a couple of weeks, it will be readied as a reading room for the children of the colony.

For now, a gated porch has become a stopgap kitchen for the 15-member ‘hijra’ community at the mandir that has a ‘samadhi’ and a dargah under one roof, along with several other small temples running along the warrens of the two-storey facade.

Vexed and nonplussed, dera members Jayanti Amma (86) and Rama (67) have given up on getting a little girl, Aaina, to wear a woollen pyjama, but dera head Kamli melts her obstinacy with a warm smile. “This three-year-old girl is my daughter. Those who gave birth to her left her on the threshold of this mandir,” she said, while resting Aaina, who feeds on a bottle of milk, in her lap.

Other community members and occasional visitors from the neighbourhood assemble for ‘kirtan’ at the Murga Wali Mata Mandir, named after Bahuchara Mata, who is considered the patron of the ‘hijra’ community, right at the entrance. Along with Aaina, the dera members are nurturing two other girls — “Sehar* (10) and Aayat* (11 months),” she said. 

“Sehar was left here when she was around 15-day-old, while Aayat was a newborn when her biological parents abandoned her at the steps of the mandir. Aaina must have been four-day old,” she said.

Neighbourhood friends of the dera inmates managed to get Sehar to study in a public school, but she did not have a birth certificate, Kamli said. “We got her enrolled in a school using my Aadhaar card as a single mother, but none of these children has ID proofs, the basic one being a birth certificate. We don’t even have adoption rights,” she rued.

To protect Sehar and her foster sisters from the probing eye of society, Kamli often asks Sudesh (72) and other regular visitors to the dera to drop her off to school. “Who knows the pain of being banished by society better than us? I don’t want other children to ostracise her. Thankfully, I have many friends in the colony. Some even consider me their sister, daughter or mother,” she said.

Kamli also runs the Jai Mata Mandir Kinnar Educational Charitable Trust at her dera in the mandir and claims to have funded the education of about 50 children of the colony. “We manage to get 10 to 12 ‘badhais’, every month. Business is slow in summer, but a reading room is a necessity too or where will children study? I’ve even helped people get their daughters married,” she added.

(*the names of the girls have been changed to Aaina, Aayat and Sehar because Kamli doesn’t want them to be ever ashamed of their identity and existence.)