Reddy distinguishes two different relationships/bindings in the community: the guru-cela relationship (focus on lineage and hierarchy and entails obligations), and the sister and mother-daughter relationship (motivated by mutual affection, focus on love and caring). I note that she didn't discuss how the sister relationship is organized for hijras, instead comparing the guru-cela and mother-daughter as parallel. As she argues that this latter form were not restricted by houses or lineages, will it unsettle the Hijra's rigid kinship structure by houses? How does the kinship incorporate this form of relationality, or even use it to recuperate the need for care, which is sometimes absent in the obligations-bound guru-cela relationship?

Hooray, at the final bit of the argument in this chapter. Reddy employed the notion of the architecture of conflicting desires from Trawick. It is an architecture, a system for organizing and managing the ambiguous forces in "various polysemic" desires and relations. The kinship system here is the way to make such ambiguity the meaning-maker. This goes back to her critiques of psychoanalytical, relational, and family explanations. The architecture helps us to think about how ambiguity manifested in these practices of desires, and how in turn it is managed in this way.

Reddy shows her concerns with the "resistant" discourse that reads hijras' kinship model as an opposition against the traditional heteronormative one. Reddy pays attention to the fact that hijras also internalize and adopt many ideas and terminologies from others (guru-cela is a clear example of how toxic it can be sometimes). And this understanding somehow feeds into the heteronormative hegemony (as if all other alternatives have to have something to do with it). I love how she used the word "polysemic," which really allows us to see the possibilities in the hijras' community, which does not exclude the role of power relations. It is not the dichotomy of conforming/resisting. Instead, the hijras create a space in the ambiguity in between.

Many vignettes above called back here! Reddy criticized the recent scholarship that resolves the theoretical problem raised by hijra with their investment in the family. Reddy has shown that this family is not what we usually conceive: multidimensional, inclusive, and elastic. The family structure of hijra does not oppose the mainstream family value of India, but precisely in the space of ambiguity, it finds its legitimacy and possibility to sustain.

The paragraphs above criticized the psychoanalysis method; here, Reddy also argues that the relational framework is unsatisfying. Indeed, identities are all relational, but it seems to be an easier option not to obscure the specificity of practices and rituals - why in this way? As other relations also provide identifications, why do this and why insist on becoming hijra despite all the hardship and the sacrifices? Reddy further pushes Don Kulick's idea of relational femininity, which glosses many difficulties between the ideal and practices for travestis (maybe they do love their boyfriends!).

This passage delivered the punch of the argument: hijra is a relational identity. This echoes the idea of relational femininity of Travestis in Kulick's ethnography. An identity of self can only emerge in a relational network with others (whether the in-groups or out-groups). Then Reddy criticized Western scholarship that views identity as a matter of individuals, neglecting the significance of specific contexts that condition the manifestation of such identity.

Reddy tries to build dialogue with the Indian psychoanalysis literature that seems to insist on an essentialist approach. This view naturalizes the hijra identity as something intact and given, as simply a desire for fusion with the world. ijras' desires were essentialized as the desires for fusion. Therefore, the intricated innovation of hijra kinship structure can be reduced to their "desire for an idealized relationship" with their maternal mother. Nevertheless, as Reddy also already shown, many of the hijras did maintain good relationship with their biological mothers, most often as their only connection with their natal family. Reddy wages a critique of the psychoanalytic approach and argues for a more in-depth examination of the hijra's kinship to understand their desires not as a taken-for-granted fact but as a mediation (ambiguity_ of the negotiation of their status quo in the society and their own agency.

Hijras identify all Pantis as the othered, denying their membership to join the kinship network of Kotis. Therefore, sexual penetration (penetrator/penetratee) serves as a principal distinguisher for the hijras' relationality. However, at the same time, the desires for panti/coexist with this exclusive concept of family. For example, in previous chapters, Reddy introduced a vignette of a panti who is viewed as a member of the family, who basically lives at the waterbank with the hijras. Many other instances illustrate this physical proximity with their husbands. It once again demonstrated the elastic application of the family system. It is a kind of family that does not exclude other forms of kinship but allows them to coexist. Moreover, it also relates ot Kulick's account of travestis wherein they could reverse the othering, reiterating their subjectivity.

Reddy adopted a semiotic analytical framework here to understand the ambiguity/ and the flexibility of the kinship conception. The subtle difference between family and manollu is interesting, as it shows how they relate to the wider Koti community and other communities they deem with less izzat. It also makes me wonder if it is possible to extend such kin identification to their biological mothers, as Reddy states, women can also be included in. It also differs from the biological family, which is rigid and passes down through vertical lineage only. Perhaps the kinship system of hijra elucidates on how the a system of relationality can be organized multidimensionally.

Another paradox arises: the complicated presence of multiple kinship relations, the hijra kinship and the natal kinship. While it is ideal for hijra to completely renunciate their natal family as the hijra family is supposed to replace the latter, there is a lot more elasticity in practices. It is also interesting to see that the natal family sometimes recovers the individuals when the hijra kinship fails to extend the support and care. The lasting relationship with their natal mothers also points to the differences from the hijra mother-daughter relationship. Do hijras understand them as two fundamentally different relationships?

The question of Izzat that echoes the title of the book, reiterates the inquiry of what it means to be a hijra in a specific sociocultural context of India. Reddy here draws our attention to another paradox: the ascetic, asexual ideal and the desire for a husband for gender affirmation. This passage also responds to the two issues outlined on page 169 (idealization of marriage and the ambivalence in their feelings towards men). It is because such ambiguity makes sense of their hijra identity. Izzat is at the heart of the ambiguity knot of the Hijra kinship system. It somehow resonates with the Travesti. Despite the very different attitude towards husbands/boyfriends, both groups understand their romantic partners as an example of their status in the in-group.

Reddy demonstrated that the sense of ambiguity has orchestrated the everyday life of the hijra community and their identity of the self, from guru-cela and mother-daughter, and the natal family relationships, to their attitudes towards husbands and marriage, to their ideal and reality. For her, this intentional ambiguity may serve both as a means and an end of this kinship model to make sense of their unique position in the gender milieu of India. She concludes her argument, drawing on the connection between such a paradoxical nature and love or desires. Intentional ambiguity explains the impossibility to realize those ideals, or in other words, it strategizes such impasse as productive where individuals can find belonging. Ambiguity is precisely the meaning-making here.

I understand that Reddy is very cautious about making the parallel connection between the heteronormative consanguineal relationship and the mother-daughter ties in the hijra community. This sentence implies a temporal order, that the biological form precedes the other (maybe I am wrong). Nevertheless, the appearance of "newness" reflects the social construction as the basis of our kinship.

Just a random pondering: how would the celas and daughters of one hijra interact with each other? And does this scale of affection also engender another form of hierarchy and evaluation?

It is interesting to see that though the mother-daughter relationship is founded upon a mutual affection, it still entails a power relation within the larger hijra community as a means of negotiation and alliances. The term "extend" implies the horizontal orientation of the mother-daughter relationship, which supplements the vertical hierarchy of the guru-cela relationship. Also, they can be interchangeable, as the interlocutors showed that the guru would exchange celas. I dont know whether this alliance also creates a friction between the hijras? For instance, if two gurus exchanged their celas as the other's daughter, will one step out to protect her daughter while she was facing mistreatment by the other guru? And what will happen if the cela decides to switch to another guru, will this mother-daughter tie not be obstructed? Overall, this passage clearly demonstrates that the this horizontal mother-daughter love is not the exception of the hijra kinship, but a constituent of the holistic part of what animates it, opening up venues for ambiguity (Reddy will talk about it later!).

The emphasis on milk, a substance, is interesting. This ritual contrasts with the guru-cela one, in which the centre is the monetary "offering" and kissing the feet of the guru and nayak. In this ritual, the transmittable liquid—blood and milk—fuses with one another, sealing the bond in a nursing gesture. It is the mother who enacts the act of care to the daughters. These two rituals sort of indicate an opposite relationship dynamic and orientations of care.