"Education is to a state what national defence is to a nation," he says. He talks excitedly of his plan to make sure every young Texan can read, of his admiration for Mr Lee and the staff, of the importance of literacy.Mr Bush can certainly talk He has none of the slightly angular elitism of his father. He is warmer, more direct, at ease in micro-politics, while his father's natural environment was the United Nations, the Central Intelligence Agency, the high tables of the world.His eyes are his father's, but his manner reminds the casual observer more of his mother, Barbara Bush, whom he refers to several times. He will be re-elected as governor next month; the only doubt is whether he beats Garry Mauro, his Democratic challenger, by 30 or 50 percentage points. But it is what Mr Bush would like to do next that fascinates so many at the moment, and which has brought the national press to an elementary school in a small town on the Gulf of Texas.Mr Bush, opinion polls show, is the strongest contender to take the Republican nomination for the presidency. The same polls show him beating Al Gore, the current Vice-President and the most likely Democrat to stand in 2000 But Mr Bush is reticent.
"I haven't made up my mind one way or the other," he says in the school library.He will decide after the election, after he has launched his programme for the next year, maybe in spring Until then he wants to talk about Texas and about education. But on this hot autumn day, Mr Lee is being out-tiggered by his star guest. George W Bush, the Governor of Texas, is racing around his schoo, bursting into every classroom he can find. He hugs, he greets and he sits with the children, reading to them from The Very Hungry Caterpillar and telling them wonderful stories of his dogs and Ernie, the six-toed cat, which he found up a tree. As the governor shakes off his handlers and shoots into another room, which was not on the scheduled trip, Mr Lee says: "He marches to his own drum."One of the governor's staff explains: "He does what he likes, and we say, `Yes Sir'."George W Bush, son of the former president, is clearly doing just what he likes today: meeting people, talking about his education plans, and chatting with the press. He explodes with energy and enthusiasm for his pupils, his teachers and his school as he guides visitors around. Feeling a little vulnerable, I walked Shahnaz, the eunuch, back to a waiting rickshaw while everyone stared They are talking about us already..
THE MASCOT of William B Travis Elementary School in Port Arthur is Tigger, the irrepressible tiger from the Winnie the Pooh books. Morris Lee, the school's principal, is something of a Tigger himself: a man who has taken an underperforming school and turned it into a star pupil, with some of the most outstanding scores for reading anywhere in Texas. I did not have anything cut off."Shahnaz's lap appeared completely smooth beneath her limp tunic, but a true hermaphrodite would not be so flat-chested."Destiny has me dance as a hijra, even though my mother brought me up as a girl. They have a right to claim any new-born whose sex is ambiguous.Now 21, Shahnaz first ran off with the eunuchs at the age of eight. Whiskers won't grow on my face," s/he boasted, and added that she sometimes will not dress as a woman, especially on the road."To avoid rape, I disguise myself as a labourer in a tunic and dhoti Lone women suffer indignities and atrocities Eve-teasing is what I fear the most," Shahnaz confided. "If a boy walks with a sway to his step, it gets noticed," s/he explained. "Eventually everyone mistreats him, and the only place he can belong is with the hijras."Eunuchs provided a community for Shahnaz, far more structured than a gay lifestyle.
Eunuch gurus in Delhi recruit and auction off their young charges, and a comely dancer can fetch up to pounds 2,000.A few eunuch queens wield their power with cruelty, while others develop business acumen and invest for the group's benefit. Ailing elders are nursed and property is passed down after a guru's demise.Youthful misfits from the villages seek out the hijras and many eventually submit to a crude operation, which slashes away the testicles and penis with one cut. Bleeding is crucial: "It lets the male energy spill out," Shahnaz said, and the wounds are cauterised with a hot iron rod "I am different," s/he told me coyly "I was born this way. Most people pay up immediately rather than be taunted in public with flashes of scarred genitalia.If crossed, a eunuch's hex is believed to be as potent as a gypsy's. Now s/he lives and works with a band of bawds who appear like bad fairies at marriages and births.If the lucky family will not acknowledge their fortune and give enough money for a blessing, the eunuchs make a racket and threaten to lift their saris above their thighs.
Finally I tipped a guard to keep strangers away, and we crept behind a screen to chat.In conversation, I wondered whether to call Shahnaz he or she S/he used to be a boy. "Out, you disease-ridden whore," he growled, narrowing his eyes at Shahnaz.Without the usual band of castrated cronies, Shahnaz was shy - the deep- set eyes cast down and fingers nervously twisting It is hard to be brazen when you are outnumbered "People always shove us around," Shahnaz complained. Two old women threatened to hit the hijra with their sandals. Surrounded by a hostile audience, it was impossible to ask Shahnaz any personal questions.