Nisha Gulur
Birthplace:
Tumakuru, Karnataka
Residence:
Bengaluru, Karnataka
Qualification:
Class 11
Inspiration:
Manohar Elavarthi, the founder of the NGO, Sangama
FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE
The death of a fellow sex worker turned her life around. She went from earning Rs. 90,000 per month to a mere Rs. 200 just because she wanted to change the situation, the way the transgender community was treated. She is unstoppable now. She exhorts her community to face the challenges with bravery as it’s the brave who get courted by fortune!
She was just two years old when her father, Krishnamurthy Gulur, passed away. Born on 5 September 1980, a male child – the only child of her parents – being taken care of by a single mother, life was full of hardships for them in their small town. Coming from an upper caste, Sushila, her mother, had to start working as a house help to get her child educated.
As an eight-year-old student in class 5, Nisha was uncomfortable with the boys in her class, so she hesitated to play games. “I’d spend time with the girls. There was just one boy, Ramesh, whom I liked,” she reminisces.
Teachers often complained about Nisha’s behaviour to her mother but she ignored it all. “My mother thought it was because of the lack of company of any sibling. By the time, I was in class 8, I started disliking my body – I felt caged. I was attracted more to boys. Things started to change drastically within me.”
To add to her woes, Ramesh moved to another school and Nisha felt lovelorn. “Now I think back and realise – why would he have left? I was a boy in his eyes. Depression had probably started setting in. Result? I failed to concentrate on my studies and scored below-par marks in class 10, which was a blow to my mother. After all, she was working so hard for me,” she confesses.
And this was just the beginning. When she was 17, in class 11, a student from class 12 sexually assaulted her. “I complained to the principal but what came out of it was like a slap to my young mind. Instead of supporting me, he blamed me and my mannerisms for the assault. I felt burdened but I couldn’t share it with my mother. I didn’t want to add to her bag of troubles.”
Peeved by the incident, she started to deliberate and finally made a decision. She fled to Bengaluru, sans any money.
Life in a metro
So here was Nisha now, at the railway station, without any means of earning a livelihood. A transgender person begging there noticed her and grouped up with other transgender people to take her along. However, it was a chance meeting with a person that changed the course. He offered Nisha a piece of crisp advice: “There are two ways for you. Either go to a brothel and join the hijra community or join a hotel. You’ll get meals and shelter both ways.” He told her about some hotel jobs in the city and she found one as an assistant chef with a salary of Rs. 5,000.
Every day, after her work hours, she would go to meet the transgender people she had met earlier. This went on like this for some time and she finally landed in a brothel. The promises of a lavish life and higher income allured her. She was welcomed lavishly – a proper meal, sarees to drape, and a few pieces of jewellery. “It was all I could want at that time,” says she, adding, “Little did I know what lay ahead.”
The rude shock came soon when she was made to beg and sell her body. It took her a lot to agree but she had to give in. “I was educated and I had hopes. Why would I do these things?”
She was then trained to clap and beg. “Men would leer at us and then abuse us. The men I was sleeping with stank, they were extremely unhygienic. I’d miss how my mother would maintain hygiene. There often were so many men in a single day to sleep with,” she says with tears welling in her eyes. Was this what she was supposed to do, she’d wonder.
Her mother finally found her out some 20 days later. They saw each other at the Mahalakshmi Temple. Her mother had expected to see her son, but she found Nisha draped in a saree!
“Could a mother not accept her child? It’s the society that pressurizes a woman to disown a child; it could never be a mother’s will. My mother too accepted me willingly.”
Six months later, she purchased a house for her mother, and started staying together.
Living on her terms
When Nisha was in the brothel, she saw another transwoman, her close friend, getting infected with HIV and dying of it. It hurt her immensely to see her die; what hurt more was that no one bothered taking her to the hospital fearing loss of business. This and a lot of other things bothered her a lot – she was now tagged a hijra, she was into prostitution, she hated her work, the fear of dying like her friend, and the attitude of her colleagues – this wasn’t how she had expected to live.
In 2011, she joined Sangama and started working on its Pehchan project as a peer educator. As she contributed to taking the project to Kerala, she was promoted to a counsellor and later a mentor for her diligence.
For more than five years now, she’s been working as an Advocacy Officer and oversees many other projects for Sangama. She’s worked very hard to reach this position. To enhance her skills, she took training in spoken English and typing and learned the usage of computers. She serves the National Network of Sex Workers as its Vice President and as an elected member of the Country Coordination Mechanism (CCM), in India.
All this while, Ramesh, her first crush, was her only friend. Later, she made friends with the founder of Sangama, Manohar Elavarthi, who guided and encouraged Nisha as a mentor.
From a confused childhood to abuse, and depression of sex work and begging, she has come a long way, developing strong willpower and determination.
“Now I know I can work as hard and smart as I want to and I am sure nothing can stop me. Yet, I’d one day like to do nothing but travel. I wanted to live all my dreams and my mother with me, but unfortunately, she isn’t physically with me anymore though she’ll always be by my side, my heart knows this for sure.”
VISION FOR THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY
Nisha wants to see every transgender person find a respectful job, even if it pays low. “As long as we continue to do anti-social things, we remain outcasts. The community needs to start understanding society and respect it. Inclusivity will come with mutual understanding.” Education, she notes, is the foundation of their success and inclusion. “Never drop out of schools and colleges. Those who already have, should restart and educate themselves up to graduation at least, even if through open-schooling.” She wants the government to give them easy access to health care, “not just in metropolitan cities but also in rural India because the community is in shambles in rural areas. That is where extra efforts to create awareness are needed.” Doing her bit, she educates the rural transgender community about their rights. She also works towards their mental health.
MESSAGE FOR THE MAINSTREAM SOCIETY
Transgender people are human beings; they deserve an equal treatment – allow them the space to work and prove themselves to be more than sex workers and beggars. The community has all legal rights as Indian citizens. However, after years of discrimination, the basics – housing facility, education, employment – are what they still seek. “Yes, the government has given us the rights, but unless society doesn’t accept us, we’ll lack and lag.” She feels hurt to see parents disowning their transgender children. “Well, the government also excludes transgender children. Had experts or the community been consulted while changing the laws, they would have known that it is during puberty that a transgender identifies itself and not during childhood.”
FIVE FACTS ABOUT NISHA
She is a polyglot.
She loves romantic Kannada songs. Her favourite song is Preethi Madu Tappenilla from the movie Halli Meshtru.
Her favourite dish is chicken curry and ragi mudde every day and loves gulab jamun.
She is an avid traveller.
Actively participating in growth and development of her community, she is the National Executive Member of Swaraj India Party.
