Flying away

Tired of all the emotional and mental burden and the continuous beatings, she one day ran away from home to Mumbai. “I eventually landed up with the transgender community and for the first time, I felt like someone understood me. I felt empathy. Yet, when they told me I was a hijra like them, I denied believing them.” But finding people who understood her gave her some hope. And then she chanced upon meeting Zeenat Pasha, who took her to Mumbai. “And so I became a part of Kamathipura – strange that I couldn’t feel happy at home with people who were my family but here, at Kamathipura, a place that people talk of in whispering voices. Some called me their child, some sister, some granddaughter – strange that I became family with them soon and never with my actual family,” says Rukhsar with a sad smile. She also met her guru, Jyoti Amma, here.

Enjoying acceptance and days without any jibes or beatings, she was happy there with her new family, though she often missed her mother. She finally called her up three years later. “My mother asked me to return home. ‘We miss you and thought you were dead. Come back home.’ Ecstatic, I ran home immediately with my little savings.” Home was a shock… a rude shock. “My brothers snatched all my savings, beat me up again and drove me away.”

Something ignited in her that day. “I was now adamant to live in Hyderabad and make something out of myself in this city only!”

She found a place to live some 5km away and earned through dance shows and sex work. “I also joined an NGO working with MSMs, Mitrudu, and later joined another NGO, Suraksha. Together, I was able to pay my bills.” At Suraksha, she learnt of the growing threat of AIDS and changed her perspective. To give up sex work, she was guided to take up some respectable job. It took her some courage but soon she found a job at a shop for Rs. 5000/month. She was doing congratulatory work in the morning, shop in the afternoon and some select sex work. “Though I didn’t like it, to make some extra money I continued sex work – it would help me with my SRS.”

She underwent the knife in Vijayawada. Post-surgery, she faced a financial crunch and called her mother to help her out. Her mother told her to come home to get it. Unassuming, she went there once again and returned with all hopes in life lost. “My brothers beat me up again, especially targeting the areas where I was still recovering from stitches. Name-calling had become acceptable to me by then. Whom do you trust if not your family?” The traumatic experience shook her up – she was on the verge of committing suicide when a couple of passers-by saw her and talked her out of it. “They convinced me to prove myself. I then waited for 40 days to recover from the surgery, conducted a prayer meeting for Goddess Durga at home and went back to sex work. All these days, I had support from the community members.” She joined a chit-fund scheme and started saving.

Good things happen, sooner or later. “I met a person, we fell in love and started living together.” However, things once again started turning sour as her partner started finding faults in her body and physical appearance. “I invested in another surgery to get a feminine body but he still couldn’t stop – he now would rue over my inability to produce children.” They were together for 10 years.