Week 8: “Mona’s Story” Network Graph

This is the link to the network graph for “Mona’s Story” by Urvashi Butalia. The titular character, Mona, is a hijra in India. Hijra are understood as individuals who are assigned male at birth who, for some reason or another, choose to take on feminine forms of dress and behaviour. While many hijra feel that they were born the wrong gender, the term does not cleanly adhere to our understanding of transgender females. Some have described the term as a “third gender.”

The network graph illustrates connections between Mona and the various groups of people in her life that are mentioned in the story. Her family members, unnamed, constitute one group that interact with each other but not with the other groups. Chaman and Nargis are members associated with the hijra community that Mona becomes a part of, while Ayesha is her adopted daughter who is also under the care of the former two individuals. Chaman and Nargis eventually cut off contact between Mona and Ayesha for most of the girl’s childhood. Chand, Ankit, Dharmendra and Jugnu are described as “young men transitioning (if one can use that word) from maleness to femaleness,” who come to Mona for advice.

The three groups depicted in the graph do not have connections with one another, only within themselves, but all of them are closely connected with Mona. The graph thus illustrates how the various parts of Mona’s life are sectioned off from one another. However, the graph is unable to illustrate the nature of these relationships, nor depict a timeline in which these relationships take place. The latter would have been helpful for this story since Mona’s significant interactions with these individuals took place at different times of her life.