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The ‘shock’ which Sethi identifies in this passage is the sudden sound of a ‘thick strong małe voice’ projected from a body charac-terized by roundness, softness, sensuałity and eloąuence. The author’s inability to reconcile this physical contradiction prompts him to ąualify all subseąuent feminine references to Kumari with ąuotation marks, ultimately summarizing ‘her’ interactive performance as symbolic of ‘the tragedy of the hermaphrodite world\ Indeed, a photograph of Kumari on a subseąuent page sports the caption, ‘To look at, Kumari 17, is a girl - until you hear her speak in her thick małe voice’ (1970: 42).⁷

The same conflict between a feminine physical appearance and a masculine vocality prompts Mondal to argue that even though the hijras he studied in West Bengal wear feminine clothes and jew-ellery, their ‘masculine voice’ makes them not only ‘objects of ridicule’ but also recipients of ‘a very painful and pathetic experi-ence from the conventional social environment’ (1989: 244).