'I cannot lead a false life'

In Class 5, Ramya, raised as a boy, began to identify as a girl.

“In [middle] school I had to wear shorts and my thighs showed,” she says, “It was embarrassing to be made to sit with the boys.” Now in her thirties, she wears a red saree and sports long hair, embracing her identity as a woman.

Ramya manages a small amman (goddess) temple in Thiruporur town, Chengalpattu district. Her mother Vengamma is seated on the floor next to her. “While growing up he [pointing to Ramya] liked to wear chudidaar [a two-piece women’s outfit], davani [half-sari] and kammal [ear studs]. We tried to tell him to behave like a boy. But this is who he wanted to be,” says Ramya’s 56-year-old mother.

Since the temple of goddess Kanniamma is closed, the quiet allows for this conversation to flow freely. Members of the Irular community, like this mother-daughter duo, come here during the day to worship goddess Kanniamma.

Ramya was one of four siblings and grew up in this Irular locality. Irulars are listed as one of the six Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in Tamil Nadu. Her parents, like most others in their community, did seasonal wage work earning between Rs. 250 to 300 a day working on farms, in construction and MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) sites.

“Those days people were not aware of thirunangais [Tamil word for a trans woman]. So, when I stepped out of home, people in town would talk behind my back,” Ramya says, “They’d say ‘he is dressed like a boy but behaves like a girl, is it a boy or a girl?’ and this would hurt me.”

She dropped out of school in Class 9 and took up daily wage work like her parents. Ramya continued to express her gender as a girl, and her mother recalls frequently pleading to Ramya, “to behave like a boy,” worried about what other members of their community would say about them.

In her early twenties she suggested leaving home to live the way she wanted. That’s when her mother and late father, Ramachandran began to hear her out. “We had four sons. We said let him be the girl child we never had,” says Vengamma, “Boy or girl, it was our child. How could we let him leave home?”

And so, Ramya was allowed to wear women’s clothing inside their home. Vengamma, however, feared common stereotypes of trans women and told her daughter, “ Nee kadai erakoodadhu ,” which meant Ramya must not go from shop to shop seeking money as her livelihood.

“Even though I felt like a woman inside, outwardly others saw only a man with a beard and male features,” Ramya says. In 2015, she spent all her savings, nearly one lakh rupees, on gender affirmation surgery and laser hair removal.

It cost her Rs. 50,000 to pay for gender affirmation surgery at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute in Puducherry, 120 kilometres from Thiruporur. Although far and not free, the hospital was the preferred one as it was recommended by her friend for its gender care team. Free surgeries were offered in select Tamil Nadu government hospitals across the state. She spent an additional Rs. 30,000 to remove her facial hair over six sessions at a clinic in Chennai about 50 kms away.

Valarmathi, an Irula thirunangai , accompanied her to the hospital. Moments before her surgery, sitting on the hospital bed, Ramya realised the enormity of the step she was about to take. She had heard of fellow trans women whose surgeries did not turn out well, “either the parts were not removed fully, or they had trouble passing urine.”

Her surgery was a success, and “felt like rebirth,” Ramya says. “My parents started calling me Ramya only after I got this operation. Until then they called me by my panthi [dead] name.”

She believes that the operation changed the attitude of women around her. They now think of her as one of them and “they even accompany me to the toilet if we go out,” she says smiling. Ramya is the head of a women’s self-help group called Kaattu malli irular pengal kuzhu with 14 members.

A licenced snake catcher, she and her brother supply snakes to the Irular Snake-Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society for anti-venom preparations, earning about Rs. 3,000 a month for six months a year (non-monsoon months). She also continues to do daily wage work.

Last year, her Irular community of 56 families relocated to Sembakkam Sunnambu Kalvai, a new government housing layout about five kms from Thiruporur town. Ramya met government officials and helped secure new electricity connections and apply for identity documents.

Her civic and political roles are only strengthening – during the last panchayat elections in 2022, she led protests to secure her community's voting rights. Non-Irular members of Sembakkam panchayat had objected to their voting. “Now I am looking to get special ward status for our hamlet,” she says and hopes to contest panchayat elections someday to serve her community. “One must live a life that they like. I cannot lead a false life.”

Across the state, around two lakh people are part of the Irular community (Census 2011). “For us, whether it is a boy, girl or thirunangai , we accept our child and provide for it. But it also depends from family to family,” she says. Her friends Satyavani and Suresh, both Irulars in their late twenties, have been married for 10 years. Since 2013, they have lived in a tiny tarpaulin covered thatched hut in an Irular hamlet in Kunnapattu, 12 kms from Thiruporur town.

Ramya attributes her comfort growing up trans to her community and friends like Valarmathi. As the duo sit outside Ramya’s home, they share how festivals such as Aadi thiruvizha, celebrated in the Tamil month of Aadi, and Maasi magam , an annual congregation of the Irular community along the Mamallapuram (popularly known as Mahabalipuram) coast, were spaces where they both felt a sense of belonging.

They signed up for dance performances at these gatherings to “dress up like girls,” says Valarmathi. She would eagerly await the Aadi festival and often wonder why she couldn’t dress like that every day!

“We have been friends since our pant-shirt days,” says Ramya. They met in Class 6, when Valarmathi lost her mother and moved from Kanchipuram town to Edayankuppam, an Irular hamlet near Thiruporur town with her father and two siblings. Both would confide in each other their feelings and worries, and discovered how they yearned for similar things at a young age.

As a first born ‘son’, Valarmathi’s gender identity created tension in her relationship with her father. She dropped out of school in her early teens and ran away from home to join a thirunangai family about 35 kms away. “I lived with other thirunangais in a house together. We were adopted by a guru or amma [mother], an older trans woman.”

For three years, Valarmathi’s job was to visit local shops seeking money in return for blessings. “I went every single day. It was like going to school,” she says. She had to turn over all her earnings, a few lakhs as per her estimates, to her guru. During this time, she even had to repay a loan of one lakh rupees, allegedly taken in her name by her guru towards expenses for her gender affirmation surgery and an elaborate ritual to celebrate it.

Unable to send home money and not allowed to meet her biological family, Valarmathi sought another guru’s help to leave this house. She paid a penalty of Rs. 50,000 to the guru whose trans family she left to transfer to a new thirunangai family in Chennai.

“I had promised my father to send money home and support my siblings,” she says. With limited education and work opportunities available to trans persons, especially those like her in their late teens, she she did sex work and travelled on suburban trains blessing people in exchange for money. It was during these train journeys that she met Rakesh, who was in his late twenties, and working at a shipping yard then.

The couple fell in love, underwent marital rituals and began to live together in 2021. Unable to find a suitable house in Thiruporur town, or an owner who treated them with respect, they initially moved into Valarmathi’s father, Nagappan’s house in Edayankuppam. While Nagappan shared his home his acceptqnce wasn't wholehearted and the couple moved out and rented a hut adjacent to his.

“I stopped going for vasool [go from shop-to-shop seeking money]. It was tempting to go clap and earn a few thousand rupees but Rakesh did not like it,” Valarmathi says, and began to work with her father at a nearby wedding hall, cleaning utensils and the premises for wages of Rs. 300 a day.

“She told me everything about herself. I liked that about her,” Rakesh told this reporter when they met in December 2022. He supported Valarmathi financially and emotionally, when she wanted to undergo the breast enhancement procedure after her earlier gender affirmation surgery. They spent over a lakh of rupees on the surgery and post-surgery recovery. “All the surgeries were my decisions. I didn't do it because others did it. I thought of only myself and how I wanted to be,” she says.

During Valarmathi’s first birthday after their wedding, she and Rakesh went to buy a cake. On seeing her, the shopkeeper extended some coins, assuming she had come for vasool . Embarrassed, they explained their purpose and the shopkeeper apologised. Later that night, Valarmathi had a memorable birthday in the company of her husband and siblings, with cake, confetti and laughter. The couple also met her grandfather for his blessings.

Another time, she recalls, the police stopped them as they rode late on a bike. She showed them her thaali (sacred thread signifying marriage). Contrary to the couple’s fears, the police were surprised, wished them well and let them pass.

In August 2024, Rakesh moved to Chennai after securing a government job. “He avoided my calls and never returned,” says Valarmathi, who travelled to the city after her father encouraged her to look for him.

“Rakesh’s parents told me politely to let him go so he can marry someone with whom he can have children. It never occurred to me that I should register my marriage. I trusted him not to leave,” she says. Valarmathi has decided not to pursue Rakesh anymore, and has moved back with her thirunangai family in Chennai.

Despite these setbacks, she looks forward to mentoring two young trans girls, from low-income communities, whom she adopted into her thirunangai family. One of them wants to become a police officer and Valarmathi hopes to help her realise this dream.