10 A life worth telling Love and suicide in Hijra lives Meghana Rao In August 2012, I attended a protest meeting conducted by the Coalition for Sex Workers and Sexual Minorities Rights (CSMR) in Bangalore, India. 1 The meeting was held to have a public discussion on the Karnataka govern- ment’s 2011 Amendment to Section 36A of the Karnataka Police Act, which criminalizes the Hijra community. The protest meeting was one of liveliest meetings I had ever attended. It was held in NGO Hall in Cubbon Park in the central part of Bangalore – a large dry, gray room with bare walls and windows, but the room was bustling with excitement and energy. There were about 300 people in the hall; FTM, MTF, Hijras, Kothis, Jogappas, Mangalmukhis and others were all there in support of the cause. Three transgender activists from the Hijra, Jogappa and Mangalmukhi commu- nities in Karnataka and a Human Rights lawyer were invited on stage to talk about the impact of Section 36A on the lives of the Hijras. All the activists who came on stage spoke about having to now register at the local police station every time they move houses, having to carry a government issued identity card with them all the time and how the act has given the police the power to ask them for their identification even if they were sim- ply walking on the street. What was most striking to me, however, was that all of them included stories of their own attempts at suicide in their talks. These attempts at suicide that all the three transgender women narrated were primarily due to the violence they were subjected to in their lives by their family, the police and the general public. I wrote this in my field notes: The Hijra who was on stage was invited to talk. She was beautiful and had such a strong personality. Before she came to the stage, there was a lot of murmuring and giggling in the audience. Once she started speak- ing, everyone in the audience stayed quiet and listened. She greeted people in the audience and started speaking about the violence Hijras were constantly subjected to. She then focused on the violence her fam- ily had unleashed on her while she was a teenager because she wanted to wear feminine clothing, she spoke about how the only option she felt open for her was to commit suicide and that she tried to hang herself. However, she did not die. She then went on to explain that she realized that she didn’t have to die; it was not her fault that people humiliated