Born as Sujatha, a child assigned male at birth, in a traditional orthodox family, she began to realise the defined set of distinctions between the males and females of her household. In her family, a boy was considered masculine and muscular, while a girl was docile, vulnerable and weak. Males were supposed to wear pant shirts or dhoti and girls’ saree, skirt, makeup and manage household work. However, she always liked to help her mother with cooking, offering prayers at home, dressing up as a female, etc., which her family did not accept. Not only was she not accepted but also ridiculed, abused and beaten up for not behaving ‘right’. She was always given an example of her father and brother, a bodybuilder who would do heavy-weight training exercises. “Everyone at home had a lot of lessons for me. ‘Act like a boy, not a girl. Do ‘manly’ things. Wear ‘manly’ clothes.’ But for a long time, I had no clue what wrong was I doing. As I grew up amid society’s jibes about my gender and sexuality, I realised I was born in the wrong body. And this was something I was supposed to suffer in silence.” Sudha endured it all for a long part of her life.

The fear of ridicule from parents and relatives prevented her from talking to them about the physical and sexual abuse she faced in school. And then, one day when she finally told her family of all the abuse, her mother blamed and scolded her even more. “My family wanted to hide me away and so sent me to Chennai under cover of higher studies as I enrolled for a BDS degree. It was a new place with people speaking different languages that were hard for her to understand. She tried her best to adjust to the new environment and continue her studies as well but couldn’t for long. However, she managed to find people like her, people who weren’t judging her and were comfortable to talk and sit with her. She started spending most of her time there and dropped out of college. She went to attend an entertainment show with friends and boyfriend. “I draped a saree for the event. A man dressing up in a saree didn’t go down well with others in the audience and I was trashed. Back home, my brother thrashed me blue and black with his belt. I started bleeding, I started limping – only then did my sister-in-law intervene and help me out of it.”

She was then sent back to the village, “They decided that the city lifestyle had influenced me but I knew it was no one’s effects but myself. I had to do something for myself – and do it soon”. Sudha ran away from home and joined the transgender friends she had made in Chennai. But soon she realised, life was not as she had imagined. “I was told that I had only begging and sex work as my options to earn. Believing I could be better than them, I started looking for jobs. Of course, I failed. At times, not even the guards talked to me.” Hurt, she decided to do something for everyone like her.

She was a part of Sahodarn Foundation for the LGBTQ community and gained awareness regarding her rights. “Coming this far without the support of people like Sunil Menon, the man behind the Sahodran Foundation, wouldn’t have been possible. However, there’s still a lot of work to integrate into mainstream society. With help from the government and the love of the community, I have begun to live my dreams, which motivated me to start something on my own to give me and others a purpose and a shelter that many of us are devoid of.”