Sonali Dalvi
Birthplace:
Pune, Maharashtra
Residence:
Pune, Maharashtra
Qualification:
M.Sc. (Finance), Indira Institute of Management, Pune
Inspiration:
Stepmother, Surekha
LOVE FOR ALL, ALL FOR LOVE
She is a self-made person who didn’t allow life to slip by without lending it meaning, though none of it came without prejudices since childhood.
When she was just three-year-old, her kindergarten teacher noticed her talent for dance. The tiny tot had just performed before her class in a preparatory class for an upcoming programme and won a big round of applause. Amid the applause were sniggers on her girl-like behaviour. The class teacher, a wise lady, that day taught her young students to look at individuals beyond their gender. Sonali became the showstopper in the class show. Cheeks tinted with rouge and dressed in a lovely brown frock, she performed to Euro-Caribbean vocal group, Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring. “I felt so special that day.”
A couple of years later, she was showing off her dance moves to her visiting aunt and uncle, a towel wrapped around her head and a hint of lipstick for added effect. They clapped and laughed. Encouraged, I continued. “Mid-performance, I felt my father’s hand on my head. He dragged me by my hair to his room and beat me black and blue. I did not understand his anger then.”
The stark difference in attitude between her teachers and her father, Shankar Narayan Dalvi, speaks a lot about why she avoided being at home and why at the tender age of 10, she joined the transgender community.
“It was a difficult time for me. Relatives, the real pests in my life, would often instigate my parents against me. I was thrashed for not conforming to gender norms and taken to several doctors, but how could all that change my soul? Initially, I blamed myself, but soon understood that I was not trapped in a wrong body, but in a wrong society.’’
Sonali was born in a middle-class family on 12 December 1982, a time of no internet, social media or means of awareness on transgender persons.
Her days at St. Vincent’s school are her best childhood memories mainly because of her supportive teachers. “They were always by my side. I didn’t have many friends though. Boys would tease for me being effeminate, girls would push me away for not being a girl physically. I saw the library as the panacea for all my troubles. While other kids would read comic books, I would look up books that would help me understand myself better.”
She cannot forget the mental and physical trauma from experiments doctors did on her. “I was a young child, a class-4 student. They would inject me with male hormones causing me nose bleeds and bloody urine.”
When unscrupulous concoctions failed, relatives advised leaving her with an occultist for a night. “That was the last straw. I screamed, cried and kicked, pleading with my father to poison me instead. That was the first time I stood up for myself.”
While school was the cushion she could fall back on, thanks to sensitive and supportive teachers – “especially Supriya Ma’am and Rhea Ma’am” – things only worsened at home. She developed suicidal tendencies. The demise of her mother and grandmother in a road accident nailed the coffin. “I was 12 and the sole survivor of the mishap. Relatives blamed my gender preference for their deaths. At their funeral, I wanted to jump into my mother’s funeral pyre and end it all.” But that would have been the end of a transgender person’s dream to live a life of dignity on her own terms.
Real-life Cinderella
Her father soon remarried, and ‘well-meaning’ relatives again crawled out of the woodwork, whispering to Sonali about the mistreatment and torture her “evil” stepmother, Surekha, would subject her to. “Quite the opposite, she was a blessing to me. She gave me all her love and support and accepted my preferences. She may not have high educational qualifications but possesses a progressive mindset. She convinced my father to let me live the way I wanted. This was Cinderella’s tale with a twist where the stepmother was the fairy godmother.”
She resumed practicing dance and began choreographing children for school shows. By the age of 14, she had started an academy of sorts and used the money earned to fund her education right up to her postgraduation in Finance from Pune’s Indira Institute of Management.
Turn towards activism
Many corporate houses rejected her due to her gender identity. “I am now called to address Pride month events in companies – there was a time when I was not allowed past the security gate because I didn’t fit into set gender boxes.” She then joined the NGO, Ashirwaad, which works for the rights and welfare of female sex workers and transgender people. “That was my entry into the fight for transgender rights. We fought for the right to allow mothers’ names in children’s documents, for ration cards and bank accounts of the transgender community. We live in a democracy, don’t we? These are our basic rights.”
Sonali hid her work from her family for many years. “My first posting was in Pune’s red-light area where I worked with the constant fear of being spotted by family members. I would cover my head. More than my mother, I worried about my father’s reaction. He had still not accepted me.”
She recently wrote to the Maharashtra state administration following which it issued a circular mandating every college to build toilets for transgender students. “Toilets are where the maximum harassment and abuse take place. We need safe spaces.”
Besides being a member of NNTP, she is also the president of the MIST LGBTQ Foundation set up by Mr. Gay 2020, Shyam Konnur. She is part of many women’s groups, “because women are naturally more accepting. It’s the men we face challenges with, maybe because of their patriarchal mindset.”
She feels life after Section 377 is a little better. “Today I can say, ‘ek ladke ko dekha toh legal lagaa’. I have the right to love, right? People have begun understanding us as fellow humans. The community has a lot more to achieve in terms of rights and recognition.”
Her father is now her biggest supporter. “I can proudly call myself daddy’s girl.”
VISION FOR THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY
Sonali doesn’t want any transgender person to face what she had to. “It’s quite simple. The less privileged in the community need additional support. I have worked on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill from 2016 to 2019. While it criminalises sexual assault, it trivialises the crime with a maximum sentence of two years for the guilty.”
She calls for easing the complicated procedure to obtain an identity certificate. “First, why do transgender persons need an identity certificate; second, why is the procedure so complex?”
“We need job assurance. The condition of transgender people at the grassroots hasn’t improved. Ask a transgender at any traffic intersection if the NALSA verdict has changed her life. She will tell you she had been begging before the judgment and is doing the same even today.”
MESSAGE FOR THE MAINSTREAM SOCIETY
Anxiety and depression become childhood companions for almost every transgender person, she rightly says. “Discrimination, oppression, physical and sexual violence are largely to be blamed. I may be a rights activist, but my family’s apathy can negate all my contributions to the community.”
She requests that mainstream society accept the community wholeheartedly, without bias. “Love for all, all for love. Society calls us demi-gods but does not acknowledge us as equal humans. Talk to us, understand us and pay us a compliment. Treat us as equals. We have already paid a big price to win a small slice of victory. Support us.”
FIVE FACTS ABOUT SONALI
A compassionate lady, her family is her weakness.
She loves to read; Devdutt Pattnaik is among her favourite authors.
She loves to paint.
She can never tire of spending time with the community.
She is a party girl.
