Zenana

Depend upon it, Solomon would never have built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with queer names, if there had not been trouble of some kind in his zenana, and nowhere else.

Yet inside the walls of the havelis and the lattice screens of the zenana, life goes on as it always did.

Out of the blue, the chief eunuch of the zenana appears.

‘You have more than enough to occupy you, I'm sure, with all your palaces and zenanas and budgerows.’

In parts of North India, effeminate males who are assumed to play the passive role in homosexual relationships are referred to as zenana, literally meaning woman.

For some years past the zanána'''s have celebrated the Holi as a carnival. They assume female names, by which they are called in their own circle. Most of them are beardless youth; those who have beards shave them. Náz nakhra (flirtation) becomes their second nature.