What do I identify as?
That is a tough question.
There is no vocabulary in my mother tongue
about who I am as a person.
I felt I was trapped in the wrong body.
People come and ask me whether I am a male or a female.
My answer always was that I am a male.
Why do you ask?
I had no connection. I disassociated.
I went numb for years.
I was like, I don't have a body.
I even tried to cut my private parts in my childhood.
Then I told my mother. And my mother's response was…
"It would be wonderful if women could marry each other!"
I think too early in my life I learned that you need to have struggles.
And you will be alone in that struggle for a lot of period of time.
My name is Aryan.
I am 35 years old. I am a trans man.
And I am a clinical psychologist.
I live in Mumbai. Born and brought up in Mumbai.
I think, as far as I remember, I had the best childhood.
I mean I've had a lot of fun. Lot of fun with my friends.
I want to talk about this character
who I was very fascinated with, and I still am.
I don't know if you guys remember this show called Hum Paanch.
Kajal Bhai.
He's a thing.
Looks like I'll have to beat it into his head.
Hey…
action queen!
Come here.
What are you wearing?
-Shirt. -Shirt.
Is it your father's?
Well, it's certainly not your father's.
I'll slap you! Take my shirt off!
Try laying a finger on me, and I'll snitch you out to Mom.
A man is scared of…
I am very emotional about that character.
I mean I don't know how that character--
Who thought about it and who made it?
Whoever-- I am so grateful!
Because otherwise, you can't get that confidence.
Just looking at the TV and saying that this is possible.
-They exist. This is possible. -Tulsi bhai. This is Kajal bhai.
How are you?
Listen, my TV is broken…
Because that was the sole media representation
of being a masculine woman.
Back then, it was just masculine women. No one knew about trans, etcetera.
I don't know how many people felt accepted
at that point, at my age, at my generation.
You know, talking like an oldie.
But yeah.
This was my major space of being…
"I will exist, no matter what."
This is my grandmother. It's my family photo…
Back then, I had very long hair. In fact, all the way to the waist.
So, I used to tuck them under the cap like she did.
Back then, we would enact these episodes.
My cousins and I would replay them.
It was always clear that he was going to be Kajal bhai.
I mean, she will play Kajal bhai, because she is him.
No one takes a 12-year-old seriously.
As in, "Let her wear pants if she wants to."
"She likes to behave like boys. It's a phase."
That's how people saw it.
I think my presence was very uncomfortable for a lot of people.
But same, I think I was too unapologetic to give…
any kind of attention to that.
I just know that I am a man.
If you don't see me that way, it's okay.
You don't have to see what I see in me.
Of course, there are some people who will come and tell me,
"This is so weird."
It only hurts momentarily.
You cannot take that away from your struggles.
So with me, it was always like,
"Focus on the relationship. Gender is unimportant."
The important thing here is to give love and get love.
Give respect and get respected.
I want to have that connection. That's what I die for.
That's what I crave for.
The connection.
My name is Madhuri Sarode Sharma.
I am a trans woman.
I was born in Kurla. In Mumbai.
My name was Prakash Ramchandra Sarode.
And I belong from a middle-class Maharashtrian family.
I have two elder sisters. And I am the third child.
I was the only son.
I was educated in a Marathi school until the tenth grade.
Even if I was not good at school,
but whether it was dance, or arts,
I was always first.
I've heard about the school days of several trans people
in their interviews.
A lot of them said that they were harassed,
or people teased them.
But I can't remember any incident where boys have tortured me.
Or followed me to the washroom. I mean, I never faced any of that.
Thank God it didn't. I had a nice childhood.
Sure, I used to hear words like baylya.
But no one dared to tease me to my face. It always happened behind my back.
Even at home, I never had that environment.
I remember seeing these huge mirrors in my parents' home.
When I would strip down and stand naked in front of the mirror
when nobody was at home,
it would make me uncomfortable.
I felt like a woman on the inside.
So, I didn't want this body.
I felt I was trapped in the wrong body.
I started having feelings for boys.
I wondered how it was happening.
Boys should be liking girls--
I used to observe this at school.
Like boys sending letters to girls at school.
But none of that happened to me.
I used to have feelings for my teachers. Like me PT sir.
I used to adore his physique.
Or whenever we watched a film,
I used to find Anil Kapoor very handsome.
I would fall in love with him.
I would like the heroines too,
but not to the stage where I would dream about them.
That never happened to me. I used to like the hero.
When I was about ten or twelve years old, I realized…
"Something's wrong, Daya."
You know "Daya". I felt something is not right.
My official name that my parents gave me was Arif.
As I grew up, I got a new name.
A school teacher had given me that name.
Teena.
I prefer being called Teena.
I am trans.
I belong to the Van Gujjar community.
Van Gujjar community is a forest community.
It migrates for cattle.
I was the firstborn child.
All the family members used to pamper me a lot. Especially my grandparents.
I remember my aunt's wedding quite well.
The red dress she had worn that day attracted me a lot.
The veil was quite big.
So I insisted that my grandma get it stitched for me.
As a dress in the style of our traditional wear.
At that time, when I would wear the red dress
or anything girlish, everybody would call me a "cutie-pie".
A cute girl. Or a pretty girl.
Then aunt went away. She was the single girl child in our family.
Grandma missed her presence. So, she started to support me more.
I used to be quite depressed
because of the behavior of the teachers in my school.
Like I said, since childhood, I was like that.
I had kept my hair long.
During the school assembly, my teachers told me to wear two braids.
It would be okay if you wear a dress, but please get a haircut.
We had some seniors.
They used to bully me a lot.
They'd always say to me,
"Why are you always with the girls?
Spend time with us as well."
And…
they used to touch me in a strange way.
Due to which, I would hardly go to school.
I used to go to school once a week.
That day I used to get scolded, tortured, and bullied.
Then I'd go on another week-long holiday.
I remember that I first shared it with my grandma.
My grandma was quiet for some time.
Then she said,
"Please stop it."
"It's enough. Now behave like a boy."
When she said that, a question arose in my mind.
Are these things really so easy?
Can you switch genders whenever you want?
There is one self that wanted the social acceptance.
That wanted to be the…
good woman.
But there was also this rebel.
And I am this person who is Rumi today.
See, first is I could not express myself.
I just could not express myself in the space that I was in.
I was born in '73.
-I'm going to leave this house forever! -Mukesh!
No, my lord. For God's sake, do not leave me.
We do not have any relation.
At that point of time, it was man and woman. And nothing else.
For me, deep inside, I always felt that…
heterosexuality was very unusual and, like, very abnormal for me.
Music was dumped on me.
I actually did not like to sing.
I was more interested in dancing,
and I was more interested in learning history.
My mother forced me into music.
She insisted on me learning classical music.
From the age of 13 to 34 years,
I continuously sang concerts.
I assumed for all kinds of things…
that my mother would stop music for me once I perform.
Then it didn't.
Initially, it sounded like punishment.
What I really loved then was to do this practice with a male tanpura.
And not the female tanpura, as its high pitch wouldn't produce the desired effect.
So when my guru used to practice--
Before he would come and sit down and practice,
I would play the tanpura. The big tanpura.
And then I go with it…
And that was mainly because,
in my head,
I had a male voice.
At the same time, there was a process happening,
where I realized at every step that I'm not a woman.
One is…
to present myself in a very traditional manner,
while singing a concert or to…
do the traditional woman role, you know.
Like when classical musicians develop a language
and they use their body to talk about it,
and you know…
What is this type?
Then…
Sari.
If I wore a sari for the concert, I could not concentrate.
Firstly, I feel like cockroaches are running all over my body.
Second thing is, I feel…
I'm also scared that it will fall off.
So, I realized that my body
cannot adjust to a certain type of dress.
So, I decided to wear jeans and kurta.
That is when I was thinking, gender is a very body issue.
Then I moved from thinking gender is a body issue to the mind.
I'm Rie, I use she and they pronouns.
I'm a Dalit, trans person. And I am from Pune.
My mother studied up to the fifth grade, and my father up to the eleventh grade.
Both of them are from the Dhobi community.
And didn't have a lot of means to, you know, get by.
My story is not like a lot of trans people's stories that we see.
For me, it started when I was around 17.
I was in a boy's school.
Boys only talk about cricket, football,
boobs, girls, and sports cars.
And these topics didn't interest me.
When I was 16, I was introduced to this support group called QTAM.
Queer Talks and Meetings in Pune.
It was a group of six to seven people. We talked.
And I felt nice that, "Oh, I'm meeting people who are like me."
And it's more than just hookups from an app.
There is more to life, queer life than this.
So, that's when I tried to learn about queer history.
And that's when I realized what is non-binary.
What is gender nonconforming?
And I'm like, these are things that I think I like.
Because I don't like…
calling myself "he" or "him" a lot.
So, that's when I experimented why.
I am like, why do I feel, you know,
not fully myself when I say that?
So, that's where my journey started. I…
told my friends that I'm non-binary at 17.
That feels nice,
to be genderless and not follow gender norms.
And let's be real.
Gender is a social construct.
Humans have made it. Animals don't have it.
My parents didn't have an idea about
me being gay or trans for a long time.
When I had to officially come out to my mother,
I was like, "I am non-binary."
She is like, "I know you like boys. That's okay."
"But why are you dressing up?" And all that.
So, I was like, "I am non-binary."
"Assume that there is a rainbow of genders.
With men on one side and women on the other.
And several other genders in the middle.
I am somewhere there."
This is my simple explanation of what a non-binary means.
Binary genders are male, female, and there's transgender.
Transgender is an umbrella term,
and there are a lot of gender identities under it.
So transgender is somebody who is not identifying with the gender
that is assigned to them at birth.
There's trans women, there's trans men, and there's non-binary.
Trans men are people who are assigned female at birth,
and then they transition into a man.
And there are trans women who are
people who are born as a male.
And then they change or transition socially, surgically,
however they want, into women.
In India, what people think a trans person
is that we have some genital deformity.
Or we have a penis and a vulva.
That's why we are trans.
That is the notion. It's been there since the 80s, 90s.
And transgender is used as "trutiyapanti".
That means third gender.
Not in a very respectful way.
So there's something called "paralingi", that I liked.
"Paralingi" means
you are a person who's on a journey,
you know, from this gender to that gender.
Something like that.
In our society, Kinnars are the oldest.
Whoever they are.
Be it trans men or even lesbians, they were called Hijras.
We had no words for them.
But later, I found out what LGBT is.
There are other categories.
Another confusion that arose was,
where do I fit in all this?
I thought maybe I was "T".
Because I didn't fit into any other category.
Soon I learned that "T" comprised of trans men,
trans women, and the Hijra community.
But back in the day, people hardly talked about trans men.
Even trans women were never the center of the debate.
The only community in the limelight was the Kinnar community.
So, I began contemplating that option.
Kinnars are called "Hijra" in the local lingo.
I admit people hesitate to use that word.
Because they believe it's an abuse.
But believe me, it's a very sacred word.
"Hijra" comes from "Hijr".
It comes from an Arabic word.
"Hijr" means,
who leave blood ties
to reside in a community of others like themselves.
for the rest of their lives.
And survive on what they get from the people
for the rest of their lives.
So people are unfamiliar with its meaning and thus hesitate.
I've seen Kinnars all my life.
But I would be scared of them and hide.
I wouldn’t come out until they had left.
It was because of what my sisters and my mother had instilled in me.
"If you behave like them, they will take you away."
I've never seen any Kinnar abduct a child.
People have spread this misconception to scare and defame Kinnars.
My parents had passed on that misconception to me.
But now, I am a part of that community.
In the tenth grade, I had studied a little about genders.
But the teacher did not explain anything beyond this.
What is neutral gender? What is male and female?
It was amidst this confusion that I was living my life.
I completed the tenth grade board exam in that.
People were worried about the result.
Whether they would pass or fail.
I had a different kind of stress on my mind.
New school. What would people and children be like at that school?
After eight days of admission, I prepared myself.
I came to school.
One day I came to school…
I did not have a vehicle.
No one from home used to drop me off.
We used to ask for a lift and go.
So, I was going and had reached the main gate of Gaindi Khata.
They came. They were two of them on bicycles.
They asked me if I wanted to come.
They were from the same village.
So, I agreed and sat on one of the bicycles.
After going a little ahead, they stopped the cycle near the river.
They said, "Let's sit here.
We are tired."
"Do you have water?" I said, "No."
They were sitting at a distance, while I sat on the platform near the riverbank.
I told them, "Please let's go."
They said, "Not now, let's rest some more."
"Come here."
I went to them.
They started touching me in a bad way.
I asked them to stop and said, "I'm leaving. You may come later."
When I was about to leave, they pulled my bag from behind.
I started crying.
God knows what went through their minds when I started crying.
They immediately went away on their bicycles.
On the way back, I thought, "Why did this happen?"
I was injured but didn't feel the pain.
What haunted me was wondering why that happened.
Why did they do this with me?
On the way to my house, there is a graveyard.
For the first time, sitting there,
the thoughts of suicide and death crossed my mind.
That was for the first time in my life.
I sat there and I saw that
there is so much peace in the life of these people.
Why? I mean…
they are lying down so peacefully.
And I am becoming the target of people outside.
I am not like you
You are not like me…
There was no question of gender.
I always knew I was a man.
When someone makes me stand in a female queue,
I'm like, "Why put me here when I'm not one?"
I felt the disconnect when I hit puberty.
It's when your secondary characteristics start showing.
My chest started growing.
See, that's the whole point.
Right now as well I cannot call it "the B".
It's very difficult for me.
I can say it when I'm talking about someone else?
Okay, they have breasts.
But for me, I can't use that word.
Until I turned 12, I thought I would never have them
because I'm a man.
But I got them.
It felt disgusting.
I'd think, "These are not mine."
"Why is my body not listening to me?"
Because I am a man, and I want a flat chest.
You've got an idea about what your body should look like… as a man.
When you feel the disconnect…
it leads to distress.
That's painful. It's called dysphoria.
I was very disappointed.
I had no connection. I disassociated.
I went numb for years.
I wouldn't even look down while showering.
I didn't want to look.
Done.
For almost 20 years, I didn't see my chest.
In my head, I was always like, "They don't know what men are."
"Men can be like this as well."
But I am a man.
I think that's how I coped.
I am Anubhuti Banerjee.
I have identified as a woman ever since I knew what identity was.
I am pretty sure 14 years ago, they would not have believed
that I would be sitting here. I would be looking like this.
And I would still be me.
I work as a future of work professional
at a very large industrial manufacturing company.
I often use that term of being a self-made woman.
Because that's how I saw it.
I chose that as a life goal very early on.
I was working.
And was starting to become financially independent.
And with that came the agency,
of living my life as I please.
And also finally take steps to be myself.
The year around 2014 or 15,
just after the landmark NALSA judgment had come about.
In fact, NALSA judgment was one of the major reasons
when I decided to pull the trigger immediately.
It's like, okay, now there is a judgment.
You never know when things go back to being, you know, bad.
So I was like, we have to do it. Immediately.
So at that point of time, I found a lawyer. I found a doctor.
I found my mental health professionals.
I found everyone who is going to support me through this.
And I also came out at work.
So when all of these
sorts of reassurances were created
only then did I decide that now nothing can go wrong.
Now I am going to tell it to my parents.
One of my earliest memories
is of my mom telling me how glad she is
to have finally got this boy.
She prayed to some God.
Did a… "mannat"
to get this particular person.
And that is my understanding that,
"Okay, there is something about me that my mom really likes."
"That is me being a boy."
I would have liked to do it face-to-face.
But there was this huge long period of time
when I was not talking to my parents.
I remember my friends used to take a timer,
and they would be like, "How quickly will she put the phone down?"
My record never broke of being less than a minute.
It comes from that same space that I can't really share anything with them.
So what's the point?
I remember it was a rainy night.
And my mom, my dad, and I were in three different places.
So when I talked about the fact that I am this person,
and I'm already taking medical steps,
and legal steps to completely transform
my identity to a different person,
it was extremely shocking for them.
My mom lost all cool.
She was not able to be calm at all.
And we decided that we would meet.
There is no point of,
you know, expressing something which you do not want to communicate.
I dressed up as myself, as Anubhuti, and I arrived there.
My mom's first reaction was,
"You are very pretty.
I really appreciate you.
You are beautiful. You are everything that you are saying.
But I would really like my son back."
Gender is a spectrum.
Or your sexuality is a spectrum.
I don't think that's true.
Because it's very limiting.
It always has a two-sided aspect…
with male on one side and female on another side
and all others come in the middle.
But there isn't a specific goal or endpoint where
only being a man or woman is considered ideal.
So we are splitting the binary again.
Actually, it's the opposite.
We think we're splitting them into more categories.
Actually, we've been merged into these two.
They were very strategically chosen.
Only these two can confirm it.
Only those who follow this routine,
will be considered valid.
According to me, it's a cloud with space for everyone.
You can stay or leave. Be the way you are.
The cloud doesn't have an end.
It takes form and size accordingly.
Even change color.
They connect with each other,
form relations, connections, and interactions.
But a cloud is a free space.
According to me, gender, sexuality etcetera was born in free space.
I actually used to see music
when these people sang those film songs.
You and me Our love goes back a long time
This is a secret life that I have led which my mother couldn't find out.
Like I was married off to classical music.
But my love affair was with Hindi cinema music.
And when my mother is not there,
I put the songs, imagine to become the music director.
And a singer and a bass guitar player.
And a drummer.
And in that big house, I had the full space,
for my imaginary world to exist.
Where it is a studio and I am recording.
Then I am having a very serious conversation
with Mukesh to sing a particular song.
So… or I will be meeting Kishore Kumar.
This world still exists for me.
And in that world, I am always a male.
I was never a woman.
And when there was not this society
After my first shot of testosterone…
two things I used to do in the morning.
One, get up, go immediately, and see the mirror.
To figure out if I've developed a beard.
Absolutely no.
Two, sing.
To see if my voice has changed.
No, my voice has not changed.
So I said, "Hah, voice has not changed." But the beard…
When the pitch started reducing,
I started enjoying my voice.
According to these standards, it's a very middle pitch.
This is A…
I can't reach there.
After "Pa" it becomes weak.
Now, when I am transitioning…
I am stuck with the old voice.
And the new voice is not well trained.
I can't say I lost the voice, I think it's in my head.
I still have not divorced the old voice.
I have to divorce it.
This happened on October 10th in 2021.
This boy started yelling at me. I just looked twice.
I think me looking twice at him gave him the permission to come and harass us.
He just pulls me by my T-shirt
and just slaps me across my face.
Then he starts stomping on my chest.
On my face.
There was blood coming out of my mouth.
And then he starts kicking me in the crotch.
I just didn't know-- I was shocked that this was happening.
And this is happening right, you know,
in a public space at 5:15 p.m.
There were people who were watching from windows also.
This was happening. We were asking for help, but no one came.
And the police were like, "What were you doing there?"
The police were trying to accuse us that we were doing sex work.
We approached these men for sex.
And that's why, you know, we got assaulted.
For a few days, I stayed home.
And finally, I posted about this on social media.
Because I needed help and I didn't know who to approach.
I posted it. And it went viral.
People were supportive.
But it was just comments and likes and shares.
There was no support.
It's been 14 months now. They still haven't called me to get a sketch done.
No action has been taken.
WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO BEAT HIM UP? HE COULD HAVE ENDED UP WITH BROKEN TEETH
I don't have any good memories about childhood.
No parents or siblings would want this.
That one's brother or a family member becomes a Hijra.
When violence is common in one's family, they suppress you.
Survival in itself was a great feat.
Then gender would take the front seat.
I was told, with folded hands, "Please leave from here."
So…
I left home.
Can we cut?