Sakhibai stands guard, clasping a sturdy lathi as she tends her cattle, about 500 in number and grazing on an expansive gochar. Her 84 years have not withered her as she keeps vigil. Canny grey eyes size up visitors. Over four decades of such outdoor work has tanned and burnt her skin, and hardened her against the elements. And her identity as a kinnar guru, heading a toli of over 20 eunuchs, consigned by fate to the margins of society, has hardened her against the ways of the world. The toli runs three gaushalas, offering refuge to those willing to spend their life in such service. Parveen, a middle-aged eunuch, avers that given the nature of her birth, she decided to dedicate her life to goseva as a means to redeem it.
Sakhibai, a hermaphrodite, was taken away by her late guru Shantibai when she was a child of seven years from her natal home in Mainpuri. She discloses little about her past except that she was born into a Yadav family, with whom all ties were severed after she left.
“Who will keep a child who can never procreate?” she asks.
The sun is at the zenith and a tardy monsoon serves to magnify the heat and dust in Brajbhumi. This fabled place of Sri Radha Krishna leela epitomises the cow belt: goseva, service to cows and, by extension, bulls and calves, is a primary duty here. For Sri Vishnu’s Krishna avatar led by example, as a young cowherd tending kine and dallying with the milkmaids, who forsook family and home at the call of the divine. The practice of serving and protecting cows, hallowed by tradition, though widely prevalent here has not deterred cattle hustlers, who spread their net wide over this region. Abducted cattle are packed into trucks and taken to West Bengal, and from there across the border to Bangladesh for slaughter. Buxar in Bihar is reportedly also an important transit point for this illegal trade, with traffickers buying cattle at the weekly livestock mela held in Chausa, ostensibly for farming purposes, and sending them onwards to traders in beef, leather, bones and other derivatives.
“My life has been dedicated to saving gomata,” says Sakhibai.
Much of her time and energy has also been expended on fending off the land mafia which, in connivance with local politicos, has since long been trying to grab her land, inherited from her guru Shantibai. Lining the Mathura highway and located in Kosi Kalan, renowned for the ancient Shani temple in Kokilavan dhaam, en route to Vrindavan, her gaushalas are prime real estate. Land sharks teamed up with lawyers to forge papers to wrest the land. Anxious about the fate of her kinnars and gaushalas after her death, she donated the gaushalas to an empowered religious trust that will permit the eunuchs to continue the goseva work.
The inmates are from different parts of India. They also undertake toli badhai, the staple income generation work of eunuchs, whereby they bless newly-wed couples and newborn babies. They also dance at weddings and functions. Sakhibai even contested municipality elections once but lost. She says hers are the only kinnar-run gaushalas in the country, and she makes a good income from selling milk. The Supreme Court order in April this year, recognising eunuchs as the third sex, and a socially and economically backward community, entitled to reservations, has boosted their status. Sakhibai herself takes pains to dispel the popular stereotypes that project eunuchs as sinister, criminalised and sex purveyors. She is Mataji, guru for many people, in line with the tradition that bestows the third sex with occult powers. The main gaushala where she resides always has visitors, who treat her with respect. When she travels in the area, people know her by name and acknowledge her work, even in Vrindavan and Mathura. The Swamiji at the helm of Vrindavan’s Soham Ashram respectfully does namaskar on seeing her. Both have a common mission: goseva.
Brajbhumi holds her in thrall, and she reciprocates through devotion to Goddess Radha and kine, charity and organising bhandaras and readings from holy texts. She is also a skilled vaid, dispensing panaceas for hair loss and childlessness. These are part of the legacy of her line, passed down from one generation to another. She provides a glimpse of magical lore too, of her devtas who intercede on behalf of supplicants; and the pair of cobras in one of the gaushalas, that dance when it rains, laying down their mani, the fabled cobra gem believed to bestow everything. She simply goes with the flow.