Where do I belong?

This post has been awarded the 'Tejaswee Rao Blogging Awards 2011'. Thank you friends for your support.

Like every other week day, I boarded my bus at 8.40 am and was glad to find an empty seat in the ladies section. I slid in thankfully in an empty ladies seat and stared out at the same roads that were a part of my everyday. Two stops away from where I boarded, the bus stopped for a minute to pick up four passengers. Like everyone else, my eyes gazed in idle curiosity at the new entrants. Just as I was about to take away my eyes from idle speculation I noticed that one of them was a transgender. My gaze paused there for a wee bit more than on the others. Idly I watched as the person made their way to a seat near the ladies section. There was space yet for a moderately thin person to fit in. To my surprise the lady sitting there, immediately shifted herself, covering the entire expanse of the seat and politely gestured the transgender towards the male section. When the said person moved towards the male section, the bus conductor shouted, “You are supposed to be seated in the ladies section” There was something about the look on the face of the transgender that day that I would not forget in a long time.

Back home from office, the face haunted me. What would it be to belong nowhere? The feeling that you are neither here nor there..actually nowhere perhaps. I had of course seen transgender s many a times in life, like most of us do and given them curious looks and passed away, without giving it much of a thought. But that day, something touched deep inside me. I wondered how these people would feel in a society that did not accept them as a part of its normalcy. Like the scene I had seen on the bus, most people don’t know where to place transgender s.

The biggest problem is that faced by parents of the transgender s. While many still think it is a curse to have a child like that, others at times resort to violence. Plenty of transgender s face the problem of having parents who cannot accept them and as a result try to cure them by either beating, scolding or using other methods which they think would cure their child of the disease. As a result most often these children are forced to leave home unless of course the parents themselves throw the children out of their homes. In such cases the child is left to fend for itself. It is only when one is thrown outside into the wide world that one knows how cruel people can be. Transgender s are not acceptable in any jobs, neither are they granted educational rights. Many a times, the excuse of not employing them is as flimsy as not being able to bear the burden of seeing a so called abnormal person in their midst, day after day! This practically leaves most members of this community with only one option- that of prostitution. But matters don’t end here, the same job that the transgender is forced to do is again one of the strongest reasons why every time you see a transgender in any public place, the police will be out questioning them on the reason for hanging around in that particular area.

I wondered if people have any idea about the kind of trauma a person would go through if the society one lives in does not consider them normal and ill treats them for no fault of their own! Strangely enough, people find it easier to accept homosexual and lesbians but are strangely uncomfortable when it comes to transgender s.

There are many people who have over the years developed an instinctive irritation/hatred for these people. When yours truly asked a few people the reason why they disliked such people, the reasons varied from an amused- “because they are odd and I’m not comfortable in their presence” to “They are a nuisance on the roads, begging for money all the time” I wonder how many people realize that no community would want to beg, if they could have had a decent way of living, in every community there is good, there is bad and there is honor too.

It is time that the so called NORMAL people realize, these are also children of God and treating them right is our duty and their birthright.

‘A Transgender is a person, who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at the time of birth’

http://thesipoflife.com/2011/08/tune-in-to-priyanka-90-4-radio-active/
My interview of Priyanka R, a transgender radio jockey for community radio 90.4 for 'The sip of life'