The journey of self-discovery

“This scholarship was a big achievement for me,” he says. Anshuman had faced enough and proved himself enough to reach here – literally and figuratively.

In Gangoli, the village where he grew up, girls were, and maybe even now, deprived of basic education, MBA was out of the question. The MBA seat was his fitting reply to a regressive social mindset and more importantly, to his father, Avinash Ratan Singh.

“Many young girls from my village would run away from home just to escape the stifling environment. My father too was against my education and decided to discontinue funding it after class 10. It’s not that he didn’t have the money. Nevertheless, I told him I would manage on my own.” Anshuman too had to face it all – for he was born in 1990 as a girl, christened Shwetanjali by the family.

Although his father later relented, Anshuman always feared that the funds would one day stop and hence, began tutoring primary-class kids charging each student Rs. 25 a month. He shored up the earnings and cleared class 12 with top grades, all this while battling a patriarchal society and his inner gender identity demons.

“I would go to bed wishing to see myself magically turned into a boy the next morning. At times, I would accept my fate and pray to God to align my soul with my body. I just could not bear this conflict and confusion.”

In college, Anshuman joined the National Cadet Corps and won the district-level Best Wicketkeeper Award, but was stopped from playing at the state levels. In 2007, Anshuman cleared the physical test for Border Security Force constabulary, but again his father refused to take him to Lucknow to submit the documents. “He said women in our family don’t take up jobs or join the forces.” Anshuman got through in Amity University, Noida, but was prevented from attending.

“I kept getting silenced by toxic patriarchal and regressive ideas. I started hating the word ladki (Hindi for girl). To me, it symbolised nothing but restriction and represented a gender I could not relate myself with despite being born a female.”

In 2010, when the college was almost over, he chose to fight – for himself. He applied for the Rai University scholarship seat and got a call letter.

The night before the entrance test, he boarded a train from Farukkhabad to Delhi dressed as a boy – the shirt was gifted by his elder sister – and with Rs. 50 in his pocket. “I had spent all my tuition earnings on buying my younger sister a bicycle and school supplies—things that I had to fight for. I travelled without a ticket, hiding in the toilet to avoid being caught.” The next morning, after hungrily gulping down a few biscuits and a jugful of water, he continued his journey – this time atop a bus and crying during most of the two-hour bus ride.

“While MBA was a route to escape the oppression and insults, earning the scholarship on my own merit was the real achievement. But I was all alone with no one from my family to share this proud moment with. My sister in Jaipur broke the news to my father and he could not hide his disbelief.”