Prerna Chatterjee Corporate Immigration professional I Blogger & Hobby writer I Freelance Public speaker
Sunshine in the Dark Inspired by true events
The 21 year old dusky woman with large eyes Malati, standing at the bus stop clad in a loud neon orange Salwar kameez and dangling earrings, looks eye catching. But unlike the young girls of her age she is neither on her way to college nor is she heading to any function. She is just waiting up there for the signal to turn red so that she can knock on the windows of the cars which would queue up in a while. Yes, she is a trans-woman, often referred as ‘Hijda’ in our society. ‘My parents dumped me when they discovered I was not normal’ shares Malati in her village style Hindi dialect. Born to a lower middle class family of two older boys, Malati too was a boy at birth named ‘Malay’. ‘I didn’t understand why it was that way, but I never felt like a boy inside. I liked girls’ clothes, their accessories, and my friends too were mostly girls.
My siblings and friends used to tease me at first but slowly the teasing turned into mockery. Even then I couldn’t fathom what was wrong with me. My parents started to object to my every move, the way I talked, the way I walked, just everything. I remember being beaten up brutally by my father couple of times while he yelled what a shame I was to him. I was barely 7 to 8 years old then. But by the time I turned 12, things were clear. I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. My family couldn’t take this embarrassment any further and decided to get rid of me for good. They gave me up to the ‘Dera’ (Hijda community) and never considered looking back.’ Hailing from the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, the state which on date has maximum enuch/ transgender population in India. Malati is just one among the many names and her journey has been equally arduous. She had to get her male organs removed and transition into a female in... FEBRUARY 2021 - 002
