Her way of evoking empathy…

… and create awareness about the transgender community, she felt it was necessary to speak out. She narrated her story in her autobiography, A Challenge to Sympathy. “Writing an autobiography needs a good deal of determination,” says Akkai. “One has to question the self. I also wanted to bring it to the notice of the people, without seeking sympathy but building empathy.” She has talked of the politics of gender identity and politics of sexuality.

She is confident that awareness and gender neutrality will spread slowly but surely. She says, “Our country stands for plurality, rich culture, language, food, religion and different ethnicities. Things will change but just one Akkai cannot be the answer. Even if one person changes it is a big social change.” It needs like-minded groups, alliances and organisations to come together and build a non-judgmental society. “It is a long struggle, a long way to go to combat the prejudices, the social phobias and the discriminations.”

Akkai remembers watching some transwomen on her way to college. “People called them eunuchs. I wonder why and how… but I picked up the courage and talked to them, sharing some of my dilemmas with them. ‘Don’t become like us,’ they told me. “We have only two ways to earn – begging or sex work.’ Thinking of it now, I get a mix of emotions. Their plight and yet the good they wanted for me.” This comes from a deep trauma – of discrimination, sexual assaults, rejections – which is very difficult to get over. “To survive, I also was a sex worker for four years. My parents believed that I was an office assistant in a private company,” she says with remorse.

But these four years were probably what strengthened her – she came to know many other transgender people, she didn’t feel lonely anymore, she didn’t want to die anymore, she wanted to fight this stigma. Ironic? She joined an NGO, Sangama, and started studying the laws and rights along with educating people about the community. She states that most of the existing work caters to the upper-class, educated ones. “The working class, non-English speaking, the poorest of the poor, the rural population are almost not included. I don’t support such coalitions which have excluded the poorest of the poor or the working class.”

The change, she says, has to come from the mind. Public awareness, Akkai feels, is a huge responsibility of those within the community as well as those outside it. “Ultimately it is upon the rulers of the nation to ensure that people in the largest democracy live without any discrimination.”

Akkai is now a member of a political party. “I realised that though the work is needed at the grassroots, it has to begin from the policy-makers and bureaucrats. We need to start educating them first. It’s high time that the concepts of gender and human rights are well-studied and understood – aren’t we a growing country?”

Having been rejected by her family to being invited to a gathering of international who’s who, Akkai feels there’s yet a lot to do. When the former US President Barack Obama visited India, she became the first transwoman to be invited to be a part of the Town Hall in the US. She was also invited by the President of India to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the Chief Justice of India. She also is the first Indian transgender to get a driving license stating her chosen gender.

She is just a human being, she says, and no one great. “I just consider myself a common human being speaking about social injustices. I have come to believe that we start thinking beyond genders, a lot of other social vices, like domestic violence, rapes, etc., will come to an end.”

We hear you, Akkai, we agree, we feel. Society is coming to it!