One of the wedding parties that Jaffery attended was crashed by a group of cross-dressing men who sang and danced until they were given alms to leave. The writer's curiosity was raised, and she soon learned that these were 'hijras', a low caste of castrated transvestites whose roots stretched far back into India's history.

Jaffrey was fascinated and began to research their background and history. "I was reading a lot of theory at that time, authors like Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, and was immediately struck by this group of people. Despite being outcasts, one of the lowest rungs on the caste ladder, they are able to move freely among the higher castes. No Indian has not encountered them, but very few people knew anything about them. They were ubiquitous but invisible."

That, combined with the fact that she was a woman, often made her project difficult. Indians were shocked that she would want to study this taboo subculture. Some flatly refused to speak to her when she failed to approach them discreetly enough, while others apologized for being so "immodest" when they told her stories. The hijras themselves were frequent liars. Not only does the community have a strong code of silence, but some of their activities -- particularly the castration ceremony of initiation and homosexual prostitution -- are illegal. But when they saw that Jaffrey's intentions were honorable, and that she was willing to treat them with respect, they began to open up to her. Meanwhile, she scoured historical records, trying to trace the relationship between the hijras and traditional court eunuchs.

When she came back to America, she gave a lecture on what she had discovered and for many years, that was the end of the story. Jaffery began writing for magazines, eventually became an editor, and then started working on fiction. Now, twelve years after her encounters with the hijras, The Invisibles is a deliberate, and largely successful, attempt to capture the richness and the complexity of their history, one shaped by Hindu, Muslim, and British influences.

As a woman of Indian heritage and American upbringing, Jaffrey is able to balance her disdain for the way in which women and others are treated in Indian society with insights arising from a familiarity with the traditions of that society. She acts as an informed go-between for Western readers (who may be confused by such an exotic culture), while showing readers familiar with India that she isn't trying to tell just another stereotypical "orientalist" yarn. It would be no great task to present this subject matter in a lurid, sensationalist manner -- "Crossdressing Tranvestite Eunuchs Roam Indian Streets!" -- but Jaffrey pursues the story calmly, albeit not detachedly. The book is as much about Jaffrey's role as investigator as it is about the subject of her investigation. It isn't always a pretty story; some of the hijra have been kidnapped into the community, or handed over by families when they are too young to choose for themselves. Jaffrey's conscious attempts to understand the hijras on their own terms, however, create a balanced portrait that dispels many of the rumors surrounding this outcast community without being unduly sympathetic.

Other reviewers have read the book in a similarly positive light, although one lesbian critic chastised Jaffrey for not emphasizing the homosexual aspects of the hijras' culture. Jaffrey counters by suggesting that the critic research and write that book herself. "Nothing is ever a story about THIS or THAT," the author asserts, "The hijras don't exist just for the gay community, they exist as buffoons, as theatre, as midwives, as part of a tradition involving the ruling class and the underclass." What she hoped to do in The Invisibles was to offer a glimpse at some of the possible ways in which the hijra can be seen. To that end she has adopted a deliberately disjunctive style that repeatedly shifts from fairy tale to travel essay to interview to historical extract. It's a style that will perhaps disappoint those readers who are looking for easy, straightforward answers, but one which mirrors the impossibility of trying to "know" a subject such as the hijra with any degree of thoroughness or certainty.

Ultimately, Jaffrey's tale raises as many questions as it manages to answer, but she is able to make a strength of inconclusiveness by always keeping the object of her pursuit well within our sight. It's like a constantly changing orbit around a barely visible nucleus -- paths that seem like digressions inevitably loop around and return to familiar territory from a slightly different perspective.

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