Enakshi Nandi’s book explores the linguistic and social dimensions of Ulti, a sacred language spoken by the hijra-koti community in West Bengal, India. It is sacred because it indexes their social gender, challenging dominant gender and sexuality norms. This community is diverse, with fluid gender expressions and varying approaches to femininity. As a gender and sexual minority, the hijra-koti face intersecting forms of marginalization shaped by caste, class, and geography.

A central focus of the book is the status of Ulti—whether it should be considered a language or a register—given that it is spoken exclusively within the hijra-koti community, whose members are mostly native Bangla speakers. Although Ulti is the community’s language, it is not a first language; it is learned at different stages of life, and Bangla remains their lingua franca. The book also examines code-switching, as speakers frequently alternate between Ulti and Bangla.

Ulti is described as having a limited lexical domain focused on identity, body, sexual performance, adornment, kinship terms, occupations, and money, while its grammar remains largely rooted in Bangla. Where Bangla lacks specific terms or avoids certain topics, Ulti provides alternatives; otherwise, speakers rely on Bangla’s lexicon. The author highlights mashi as a symbolic gender marker for femininity, which emerges from the absence of gender markers in both Ulti and Bangla, expanding possibilities for gender expression and subverting binary and heteronormative frameworks.

The analysis takes a broad view of Ulti, seeing it not merely as a linguistic system but as a marker of hijra-koti identity and a tool for community cohesion, solidarity, and intimacy. Although primarily used within the community, Ulti also appears in interactions with mainstream society. Its public use shows that secrecy does not imply restriction. However, the author raises important ethical considerations, noting that studying a secret language required her to reconsider publishing a detailed grammatical description out of respect for the community’s privacy.

From the perspective of its speakers, Ulti is the language of the hijra-koti community. Theoretically, however, Nandi frames it as a register of Bangla. More specifically, Ulti is a register that developed sociohistorically as a means of preserving knowledge through secrecy, a feature central to its value within the community. Nandi proposes the concept of ‘encryption’ as the most fitting to describe this process. According to the author, Ulti cannot be adequately described within the framework of code-switching. Instead, Nandi proposes translanguaging as a more suitable approach, one that better captures the multilingual ecosystem in which Ulti, as a register, coexists with Bangla, Hindi, English, and regional varieties of Bangla. However, the concept is introduced late in the book, and one wishes that it had been introduced earlier and with a bit more explanation.

Overall, the book achieves its goal of describing Ulti with a focus on gender from both linguistic and social perspectives. It also offers an approach to understanding secret languages, along with methods and ethical reflections for studying and writing about them with respect for the community’s sensitivities.