Aftab/Anjum
Born with both male and female organs, Aftab is effeminate and is mesmerized by a hijra, trans-gender he sees on a street. After being accepted into the hijra community, she has her penis removed surgically. She is deeply traumatized after the Gujrat riots of 2001, and begins to dress like a man for a while. She adopts two girls later and is fiercely jealous of everyone who acts as a mother to them.
Zainab
She is the adoptive daughter of Anjum who she found near Jama Masjid where her parents deserted her. She is an animal lover and studies fashion designing. She grows distant from Anjum when she tries to dress Zainab as a boy to save her from communal rioters
Saddam Hussein
Saddam, a low-caste man, whose family occupation was to collect cow carcasses since high-caste Hindus won't touch them and use the carcasses to make leather. He witnesses his father beign killed by a communal mob when a corrupt police inspector implicates his father in killing a cow, an unholy act for Hindus. He changes his name to Saddam Hussein, after seeing the manner of defiance of the Iraqi dictator at the time of his death in a video. He works a number of jobs all of which include petty cheating.
S. Tilottama
Tilo was a love child of a high-caste Syrian Christian mother and a low-caste man her mother fell in love with. After being treated as an adoptive child from her biological mother, she grows distant of people in general. She finds solace in Musa, with whom she could relate as both were odd in their Delhi group of theatre actors.
Musa Yeswi
Musa was sent by his father to study architecture so as to avoid him being dragged in the Kashmir insurgency of 90s. After his wife and daughter are killed in a gunfire by army, he disappears and works as a terrorist.
Biplab Dasgupta
He was the part of college theatre group in which Tilo and Musa acted. He is smitten by her but is wary of her personality. He helps her later after she is arrested in Kashmir using his influence as a senior officer in Information Bureau.
Nagaraj Hariharan
Naga is a journalist wiht Leftist leanings, but soon changes into a pawn of IB which uses him to get media favor. He marries Tilo after her arrest and release, but finds that she doesn't really love him.
