In this unusual autobiography, an unembellished account written as e-mail correspondence with her Swiss publisher, Mona reveals her poignantly lonely and secret world in her own words. Ahmed, the eldest of eight children of a cap-seller in Old Delhi, felt more at home playing with dolls and singing and dancing with his sisters than with the boys, who teased him mercilessly when they were not trying to sodomise him. Beaten by his disappointed father, ridiculed by his family and peers, deserted by his lover, at 17, Ahmed escaped from home to join the eunuchs, the only people who he felt completely at home with. So desperate was his yearning to belong that he was persuaded to undergo a painful castration to gain entry into their secret world. Ahmed, now transformed into Mona, is not immune to further heartbreak: the eunuchs abandon him to his drink and walk away with his only solace: a four-year-old orphan, Ayesha, whom Mona adopted at birth.Dayanita’s searching lens sensitively captures this "outcast among outcasts", now living in a wild graveyard, trying desperately to fight off her depression by constantly recreating a family for herself: the crazy women who seek her out, a pet doberman that gets stolen, a monkey that is poisoned because it is un-Islamic, befriending the homeless, including women, ducks and rabbits.