"So one day I met some eunuchs in a park, and they made me friendship. I felt very happy to meet them and very comfortable for the first time in my life. They were singing and dancing very well. After one week they invited me to stay in their house with them." This is the first book by New Delhi-based photographer Dayanita Singh. It is the story of eunuch Mona Ahmed whom Singh met and started photographing more than ten years ago. Mona Ahmed is a member of a secret community who normally does not permit access to outsiders. We follow the daily life and the rituals of the Eunuchs, we are invited to their parties and ceremonies, we learn about prejudice and reality of a eunuch's life, we witness the story of Mona's castration and of her losing her adopted child. Mona is a member of the real third gender. And she is a very sensitive person, as her moving e-mails to the publisher of Scalo show; to preserve Mona's own voice and to give her the power of expressing herself, they are published in their original form with as little editing as possible!

Author Biography

Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi in 1961. She has been working as a photo journalist since 1989 for various international publications such as Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, New Yorker, The Times, Independent, Telegraph, Express, Granta, Reportage, Marie Claire, Sunday Times, Liberation, Le Monde. Singh has been exhibiting her works since 1997, at Scalo Gallery, Zurich; at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; at the Tate Modern, London; and at Venezia Immagine/Italy.