So it was that Meenakshi—she with fish eyes, a political superlative since the fish was the totem of the Pandyas—made her appearance on earth. Her father worried that her three nipples ‘will make even enemies laugh’, and languished in ‘depression and unhappiness’. He had sought a child—a son, valiant and unparalleled in might—but what he got was a freak. A voice from the heavens, however, reassured him and the three-nippled girl was raised a boy, dissolving boundaries of gender and sex. When (s)he came of age, her parents said it was time to marry. (S)he, however, decided it was time to
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