It was not an easy choice to make, but coming out in the open as a transgender was one of the best decisions she has ever taken – of course, one of the most difficult ones too to go ahead with.

Born a male on 28 May 1977 in a middle-class family based in Andhra Pradesh, she was named Ram Babu. Sailing through the first six years – the time when gender hardly crops up in discussions – she realised she was different from boys her age by the time she was seven.

“It was difficult,” Rachana says, recalling her ordeal during schooldays. Uncomfortable using either male or female washrooms in school, she used the washroom “either after lunch or before the final school bell.”

The boys’ uniform made her uncomfortable too. “I would rush home after school to peel the uniform off – it felt like a cage. I would feel uncomfortable doing my daily routine in pants,” she says.

College life was more convenient for the choice of clothes. But before long, she was overwhelmed by the notion of the gender binary. “It’s a long path you have to take and quite a tough one. I was really scared of coming out. So, I waited until graduation.”

On 2 July 2009, the day the Delhi High Court declared Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which regarded homosexuality as ‘unconstitutional’, she came out in the open. “I announced to the world I’m a transwoman, in the full glare of the media,” she says.

Soon, she left her parents’ home and started living alone. For her, coming out was akin to “removing the first barricade to help me become happier and get to a better place”.

But the better place was a mirage. The stigma and prejudice in society towards transgender people denied her access to employment. “It forced me into sex work for nearly 20 years,” she says. However, that didn’t stop her from completing her education – first M.Com. from Punjab University, distance learning and then an M.A. in Social Work from Nagarjuna University.

She worked with a few NGOs including Pehchan, a Global Fund programme for transgenders, as an advocacy officer. “But after that, I was jobless again and needed to sustain myself. I had to return to what I despised – sex work – once again.”

During her arduous journey of life, she has lost many transgender colleagues – something that still weighs her down. “The community continues to suffer violence everywhere, she says. People throw acid, chilli powder and empty beer bottles on us, and beat us. Some transgender sex workers have been killed too but no one talks about them. Most of us give in to sex work and beg only out of the compulsion of survival. We suffer terrifying violence and abuse. I wonder why we have to suffer so much. It’s not our fault that we were born different,” she rues.

Rachana recalls that in 2015, following the murder of a transwoman sex worker, Pravallika, in Hyderabad, the police detained a few transgender people sex workers for interrogation. “The police stripped them to check their gender which was shocking and brutal.”

“No transgender person chooses sex work on will; they are forced to wander on streets, beg or sell their bodies for a livelihood. Instead of protecting us, police humiliate and abuse us based on our gender.”

Although she contributed her best to establish the Telangana Hijra Intersex Transgender Samiti (THITS) in 2014, it was Pravallika’s murder that triggered Rachana to take up transgender activism. She committed herself to upholding the dignity of the transgender community and started campaigning against the violence and abuse.

“Irrespective of the crime, by transgender people or against them, the police cannot touch their bodies,” she stresses. Years of advocacy have brought some change. I’m encouraged by the police officers who acted the right way.”