Bhavitha, a hijra person from Warangal, Telangana, was found dead on 2 December near a dustbin. The police did not allow her sisters and other hijra persons, to claim her body, because apparently, only biological parents or “blood relations” can lay such claims. Her body is not hers, but of the society. Burning her body might delete her corporeal existence, but the marks of the collective trauma that queer-trans people face every moment of their lives can never be erased. It is better to burn after death than to burn every day, and yet the heat kills only us, and not the ones who light the...
