My name is Vidya

The autobiography of a transgender
Living Smile Vidya
Translated by V Ramnarayan
Price Rs. 100
Buy at www.nhm.in

Chapter 1

Nirvanam

I love the window seat in trains. Stretching my legs, I enjoyed the landscape, the trees and plants, the houses, as they flashed past me outside the window. It was a pleasure much like the first lazy cup of coffee on a holiday.‘Where are you headed?’ The unexpected question woke me from my reverie. I looked up. It was a rozwala, a regular commuter on that train. One look at my ordinary clothes and he must have decided that I did not belong in the sleeper compartment, that I was perhaps a ticketless traveller. You wore the most basic clothes on your way to the operation we call nirvanam. The same applied to jewellery. That’s why I had on the oldest sari I had, a white one with blue flowers on it. My tiny nose stud was all the gold I wore. I must hand it over to Sugandhi Ayah after the operation tomorrow.

‘Baithoon idhar?’

The rozwala was asking if he could sit down beside me. I was pretty sure he thought I didn’t have a ticket. Still, his manner had been polite, so I made room for him by shifting my legs. I went back to looking out of the window.My train reservation from Pune to Cuddapah had been done at the Lonavala station the very day after Nani agreed to send me for my nirvanam. That day, I didn’t go to work—to do my dhandha of begging. The whole thing was surprisingly different from the norm— usually no Nani planned a nirvanam a month in advance, down to the last detail. And no Tirunangai or transgender made advance train reservations to go for the operation.“You have to be discreet in such matters, observe great secrecy.” Sugandhi Ayah was in a plaintive mood, complaining non-stop. “Girls nowadays don’t listen to their elders; they do exactly as they please.” She was constantly comparing and contrasting transgenders of past and present, adding to the pathos by relating some personal experience from her own past.

Sugandhi was the matron for hundreds of doctors. Of massive physique, she wore her salt and pepper hair in a tight bun. The two-rupee-coin sized kumkum bindi on her broad forehead instilled awe in onlookers. Her mouth constantly chewed paan. Her bell-like voice matched her impressive physical appearance. Sugandhi Ayah looked formidable. Satya and I sometimes took the liberty of teasing her, calling her grandma, and she indulgently allowed us. . Today she was taking us and Nagarani, our next door neighbour to our nirvanam.Sarada Nani was an important person in the Pune locality where transgenders lived in substantial numbers. I was one of the chela daughters of one of her chela daughters Aruna Amma. Satya was older, my senior in the transgender group. She was of swarthy complexion, solidly built like Sugandhi Ayah. She had a voice to match, and long, thick hair. She was an excellent cook. She was so senior to me in the group, still her operation was only now about to take place. That my nirvanam was scheduled along with hers was a big step for me. My hair then was still short to tie up in a bun.

Satya did not show as much interest as I did in nirvanam. It wasn’t clear who would accompany her and so I reserved only my train berth. All that was not so important, though—any old ticket would do for Sugandhi Ayah and Satya. They sat on a newspaper they spread near the compartment door and answered the TTE’s queries. Nagarani huddled close to them and they managed to stay there till morning. I got up after a while and joined them. The old woman continued to tell oft-repeated tales of woe from her own life, her trials and tribulations. To all three of us, they assumed new dimensions that evening. As she went on with accounts of nirvanam and its after-effects, we listened in terror. I went to my berth when Ayah was overcome by sleep. Just one more night. Tomorrow would dawn the fruition of my desires, the fulfilment of my dreams. The night was long. I tossed and turned. I woke up and looked around.

The whole train was asleep. Very few were awake—the engine driver, a few policemen on patrol duty, and I.Nirvanam! How long I had waited for it! What humiliation I had suffered! Obsessed with it, I had mortgaged my pride, my anger, my honour—even begged on the streets to achieve that end. How could I sleep now, with my dream about to be fulfilled tomorrow?Morning at last. I welcomed the new day eagerly, with not a trace of fatigue even though I had kept awake all night. I drank a cup of coffee. Sugandhi Ayah had warned me to take only fluids in preparation for the operation.

It was the most important day of my life. Autorickshaws mobbed us as the four of us emerged from the railway station. It was 26th April. “Naganna or Bapanna?’ the hordes of drivers pounced on us with their incessant questioning. We managed to stave off the competing marauders, and negotiating the fare with one of them, got into his autorickshaw. “Ayah, how do they know we are going to one of those doctors?” I asked Sugandhi.“Even the newborns here know our kind come to Cuddapah for the operation,’ Nagarani said.“Right down to the doctor’s name? Tell me Ayah, which doctor are we going to?”There was no reply from Sugandhi Ayah.“Why are you so glum, Ayah?”“Shut up.”I had no option. I kept watching the Telugu film posters.As we got off the autorickshaw, I was filled with happiness that we had arrived in Cuddapah and reached the nursing home.“Hurry up.” All of a sudden, Ayah rushed us in.

The nursing home was right on the street. Though not a main road, it was a busy street. The cinema theatre across the road displayed a poster of the film, Chandramukhi.The hospital was abuzz with activity. We were herded upstairs through what was evidently a rear portion. A nursing home attendant accompanied us, talking all the while in Telugu to Sugandhi Ayah. She must be a frequent visitor here, I said to myself. The attendant left us in a room. There were three steel cots in that room which had a bathroom next to it, with a solitary bucket. The cot was bare, with no mattress or sheet on it. Many female names were scrawled on the wall, some in ink, others in charcoal. The room seemed to be reserved exclusively for transgenders. Our predecessors in the room had scribbled their names on the wall, presumably because they feared they could die on the operation table. That was their way of ensuring the survival of at least their names after the hazardous operation we called nirvanam. “Write your name on the wall, if you like,” Sugandhi Ayah said.I didn’t feel like doing so. I was certain I would live. Hadn’t I struggled all the while just for that?

I was hungry. Sugandhi alone had eaten since last night. The three of us had obeyed her instructions to fast.“Go to the bathroom now if you must. Once in the operation theatre, your stomach should be completely empty.” Sugandhi Ayah warned us. Nagarani looked scared. I watched Satya. She looked grim as usual. I was all aflutter. “When? When?” The tension was palpable. None of us minded the strange odour in the room. Tension gripped us.We waited for a while. A male attendant came to Sugandhi. He said something to her and went away. We were watching all the while. Ayah then took all three of us downstairs. They took blood from each of us for a blood test in one of the rooms there.“We’ll get the blood test report in half an hour,” Sugandhi Ayah said. “They will do the operation once the report shows you are HIV negative. The operation won’t take more than half an hour.”Would there be no more tests? Wouldn’t they test us for BP, blood sugar? Only AIDS? Nagarani asked, “Why, won’t they operate if we have AIDS?”“Do you see Janaki in the next room? She has AIDS, they say. They collected an extra 2000 rupees from her to do the operation.”

Only after Sugandhi Ayah pointed her out did I see the woman lying there post-operation. I went in and saw her. She was from my own street. Though she had been in Pune for many years, she still retained the flavour of the village, her language had remained unchanged. She had lived in Mumbai and Pune for five years or so, but couldn’t speak a whole sentence in Hindi. I didn’t know her very well, but I had seen her being heckled while walking on the street. It was a rude shock to Satya and me to know she had AIDS. The three of us chattered nervously for a while, anticipating the moment with suspense.“Who’s going first?” Sugandhi Ayah asked. I couldn’t bear it any longer.“I’ll go first Ayah!” I shouted, “Let me go.”Ayah came to a decision. “Satya is your senior, let her go first, you go after her,” she said. No one replied. It was frustrating to know we had to wait longer.“Akka, let me go first Akka, please.”“Ok, go. I don’t mind. Ask the hag.”Sugandhi Ayah was particular about seniority. There was no point in pleading with her.The blood test results were out by then. Ayah handed over the report to each of us, asking us to keep it carefully. Thank God, none of us had AIDS.Speaking in Telugu, a hospital attendant called Satya, asking Nagarani and me to wait. He asked us to change, wearing only skirts, and be ready.Ayah had already got us ready. They took Satya away. “When will the operation be over? How long will it take?” I kept asking Ayah.I wasn’t prepared for the speed of the operation. I expected an operation to take at least an hour, and a vital one like ours at least two hours. In barely twenty minutes, a man and a woman wheeled Satya out. It was all over. Neither attendant looked like a nurse or a hospital worker. You’d think they belonged to some completely unrelated profession.They lifted Satya from the wheelchair (stretcher?), and, spreading a couple of newspapers on a steel cot, dropped her unceremoniously on it. Their unsafe, unhygienic approach made me nervous. There was no time to worry. They whisked me away immediately after dumping Satya on the cot. “Keep repeating the name of the Mother during the operation,” Ayah told me before I entered the operation theatre.

It was no operation theatre, I realised as soon as I entered the tiny room. It was like going into a slaughterhouse. “Mata, mata, mata,” I repeated to myself. In the room was a solitary cot. A masked doctor stood by its side. His eyes were those of an old man. Two more people, a man and a woman, filled the minuscule room. There was no way another person could enter.I wanted to talk to the doctor, but the environment silenced me. They removed my skirt and made me lie down on the cot, and helped me overcome my embarrassment. They made me curl into the embryonic posture, and gave me a spinal injection. It hurt. I lay down straight and was given glucose drips through a vein in my right arm. I was able to cooperate with the staff as Senbagam who had undergone the surgery a few months ago had given me a detailed account of the various steps. She had warned me that the spinal shot would anaesthetise me below the waist, so I was quite brave.Only when the surgeon made the first incision on my abdomen with his scalpel did I realise I hadn’t quite lost sensation altogether. Another spinal injection followed my screams of pain. The pain subsided but did not disappear. I couldn’t move my hands and legs, but I felt the movements of the surgeon’s knife and my pain quite clearly. I cursed and swore. “I can’t bear the pain, let me go,” I screamed at them constantly. I wanted to run away. I wanted to kill the doctor and his helper. Desperate with pain, I repeatedly called out to Mata following Ayah’s advice, reaching a crescendo screaming, “maaaaa…aaataaa.” As the operation reached its climax, the pain rose to unbearable heights—as if someone was digging deep into my innards with a long rod and removing my intestines.Yes, what I saw in that instant was death. They had removed that part of me over which I had shed silent tears of rejection from the time I could remember. I saw that my penis and my testicles had been excised.I was sutured and applied medication after that. I could feel all that very distinctly and bear the pain.

Ah! Nirvanam. The ultimate peace!My operation took all of twenty minutes. They put me on a stretcher, writhing in pain, and carried me down a ramp accompanied by violent jerks, causing new pains and aches. They dumped me on a newspaper-covered steel cot just as they had dropped Satya. In the bed next to me, I could hear Satya crying and moaning. Even though I was in great pain, I was able to bear it. Soon, to my surprise, Satya began to sob uncontrollably. Was it really Satya crying, unable to bear her pain? She had been an elder sister to me in Pune at the place where we had sought refuge. She was a strong person. Thrashed by Nani after an occasional drunken bout, she used to lie down absolutely still and quiet. I couldn’t believe that she was crying in pain now. Or that I was able to stand the pain better.Inside, I was at peace. It was a huge relief. I was now a woman. Mine was a woman’s body. Its shape would be what my heart wanted, yearned for. This pain would obliterate all my earlier pains. I wanted to thank everyone, cry out loud to the doctor, his assistants, Sugandhi Ayah, express my gratitude to them to my heart’s content. I couldn’t move my lips or open my mouth.I thanked them silently. “Thank you for removing my maleness from my body, thank you for making my body a female body. My life is fulfilled. If I die now, I’ll lose nothing. I can sleep in peace,” I told myself.The intensity of the pain grew with the hours. My abdomen seemed to be afire. I couldn’t move my arms and legs. The pain was unbearable, however hard I tried to bear it.

Amma, Amma, I have become a woman. I am not Saravanan any more. I am Vidya. A complete Vidya. A whole woman. Where are you, Amma? Can’t you come to me by some miracle, at least for a moment? Please hold my hand, Amma. My heart seems to be breaking into smithereens. Radha, please Radha, I am no longer your brother, Radha. I am your sister now, your sister. Come to me, Radha. Chithi, Manju, Prabha, Appa… Look at me Appa, look at my dissected body. This is a mere body. Can you see that I can bear all this pain? I can take any amount of pain, Appa. Look at me Appa. Look at me as a woman. Accept me as a girl, Appa.Only I could hear my screams.