Literary this can be directly translated into half woman. A book written by K K Saman Kumara. He has presented this book as an unusual erotic novel of four characters. A Cassanova who loved a transgender woman, a Buddhist monk who loved a lesbian.
He has dedicated the book to Bhoomi Harendran, a transgender woman in Sri Lanka who is an activist fighting for the rights of the transgender community in Sri Lanka. I do not know her personally, but I know that she is from my school. Maybe one day I will be able to meet her in person. Coincidentally, when I was reading the book there was a video released by one famous video producer Iraj Weerarathna. He was interviewing Bhoomi. Once Iraj asked Bhoomi, how can you call yourself a woman, you can’t even be pregnant? Bhoomi answered, can all women be pregnant? What about the infertile ones?
This clearly shows the level of knowledge and understanding these so-called video producers have on these issues and humans. How many of you really knows who a transgender is?
A transgender is simply a person who have a different psychological gender to that of the physical gender. For example, a person who thinks and feels like a woman but having a body of a man or vice versa. The plight of them is so sad as they simply detest the physical body they have. They take medicines, do surgeries just to get the physical appearance that they desire and feel comfortable with. This needs money and, they must undergo such pain. Even after they undergo the changes, the society still sees them differently. Society do not accept then fully in their new gender though they have a legal identity as a male or a female.
The story clearly depicts the plight of such a woman. For the very reason, she doesn’t want to get involved with any man who wants to know about her past. True enough. What is there is a past? Some people are ready to forget the mistakes of the past? But will you forget that someone was of a different gender before? Umayangana was someone like that. She is woman at present. She wants to leave the past behind. She is a talented presenter. Her looks even attracts the lesbian producer. But will her past gender hinders her future happiness?
Can we have a control of the person we fall in love with? Can we control of the person for whom we have lustful feelings? A Buddhist monk, being lustful towards a lesbian that he made opened a tv channel, make others threw stones at her, use every opportunity to sneak into her apartment to get his hidden desires satisfied.
It is interesting to see how as humans we fall at the foothills of another human because of love and lust. That need to have and consume another human is so strong that we are ready to do whatever possible putting us even in grave danger possibly destroying both our and their lives.
The book talks of sex, sexuality, lust, desire, humanity, social interactions, society basically wide range of subjects. The author uses colloquial language even using filth to express the ideas that he wants to convey. The author questions what is to be human? We can have many labels, many stereotypes which forcefully put us into a different framework. Anything beyond the frame becomes unacceptable and deviations. We do not understand that these deviations are often not because of a fault in them. As Bhoomi mentions “it’s a mistake of the god during creation”.
If we are to be more humane, more empathetic, more understanding, we need to kill those stereotypes that define us. These very stereotypes and frames would trigger us to be violent as we feel insecure, scared of others who are not like us.
It was a hard book to read and understand because of the unfamiliar Sinhala vocabulary the writer has used. He has dedicated the book to Bhoomi. I recommend all of you to get hold of the book and read it. You will understand how complex life can become. There are these types of people who are deprived even of the basic human rights. The issues they face are beyond our understanding. So at least put some effort to understand them. Put yourselves in their shoes.
