The Truth about me - A Hijra life story

“We got stared at a lot. People asked out loudly—some out of curiosity, others out of malice—whether we were men or women or ‘number nines’ or devadasis. Several men made bold to touch us, on our backs, on our shoulders. Some attempted to grab our breasts. ‘Original or duplicate?’ they shouted and hooted. At such moments I felt despair and wondered if there would ever be a way for us to live with dignity and make a decent living”.

Doraiswamy was born a boy but felt and behaved like a girl, The Truth about me talks about the struggle of Doraiswamy who decides to break the shackles of his body to become Revathi

Each day when sunsets upon Bangalore all the commercial streets teem with loud music, the young generation hop bars and eateries run full. Irrespective of whether you are a boy or a girl you are allowed to eat or drink what you like and wear what you love, Bangalore has been ahead of time to accept it.

But each day as the sun sets city also brings out another set of people whom we civilized shun at first look. Transgenders / LGBTQ Groups are regularly cited not inside a pub or an eatery but at road signals, under dimly lit bridges, on roads without street lights, and at any place, you do not want to be. Each time I pass under the silk board bridge I get sight of transgenders talking to a man usually someone who looks like a daily wage worker, probably negotiating a price for sex and walking towards a dark ally under the bridge, but other the other side you can also notice the commuters, pedestrians including myself, either amused at the sight or frowning, placing transgender way below the social order.

But we need to understand that these people were not born right there, right under that bridge, and started doing their business the very next moment they were born, but they have a life, a family, a struggle with their own body which has brought them there.

Revathi’s biography "The Truth about me - A Hijra life story" is an eye-opener, the book details what we can only imagine, the constant unrest of Doraiswamy who hails from a small town in Tamil Nadu with his male body and a female soul and elopes to Delhi then moves to Mumbai and to Chennai where he did his sex reassignment surgery and was reborn as Revathi which among transgender community this is called Nirvana.

Revathi’s life through her book is a constant run for survival, be it a home where we get to see that her parents and brothers take the liberty to beat her up black and blue yet Revathi through the years supports the family by doing menial jobs primarily sex work. Her love for the boy at the theatre is also threatened and brought to an end by her own brothers who also see disgrace in having Revathi in their family yet Revathi has shown no hatred. Surprisingly we see Revathi fighting back to life to join Sangama a developmental organization working for the disadvantaged and vulnerable communities, where Revathi gets into a steady job and gets married to a co-worker, while we look forward to a fairy tale ending, life has no smooth roads laid to Revathi, her relationship with her husband was failing who within months of their marriage started showing signs of displease, Revathi says- “Sometimes, when I begged him to hug me, he would get angry, throw a sheet over my face and then hug me. I felt great anger and shock when he did this” their marriage ended. Months later her mother succumbed to death due to ill health and her beloved Famila commits suicide, Revathi fall into chronic depression but a woman born and raised in hardship is not the one to fail, Revathi who had left Sangama while she was married gathers herself and get back to work at Sangama itself

Books also detail the Hijra communities life, hierarchy, and how they make efforts to take care of each other within the community, but there is no space for inclusion for them in larger society except for inviting Hijra to dance at family functions and to get their blessing after which we see neither goodness nor humanity in them. We live in a multilayered society where we have a place for Murderers & Thieves to walk among us but Queer groups live on the verge of it and we claim ourselves as an educated and civilized society. Revathi and many others like her are a living testament to the dark ages that we are going through.