Do you have only one vegetable? What do you want to cook? 

Let’s fry the onions.

May be eggplant also. We need one vegetable curry and one fried.

Ok.

I’ll do a mild curry with egg plant. 

You used to have your hair tied back, didn’t you? You’ve also tanned a bit. 

It looks like you’ve also lost weight.

Do you remember I came to that office once?

The office was in Narehenpitiya, Colombo. 

To Heart to Heart?

Yes, when you came to that office, I was also there.

There was an old gentleman there. What was his name? Lalith Aiya. 

Is it still up and running? 

Somebody told me there is no office there now. 

They are working on a new HIV project now. 

Everybody left because Heart to Heart isn’t there anymore. 

They’ll start again after two or three years. 

Lalith Aiya…he used to have a dog as well. 

When I was growing up, I was like a girl from a very young age. Later I started enjoying wearing girls’ clothes, growing my hair long, growing my nails and applying nail polish. At the age of 13, I realised something about myself.  I realised I must be a woman.

Everybody used to scold me. You are a boy, why are you acting like a girl? I used to tell them, “this is my life. I’m not living your life.” If anyone scolded me, then I stopped visiting their house and talking to them after that. It didn’t matter who they are, but I wouldn’t visit them anymore. I just stayed at home. I was working hard. I was raising chickens and goats. I had my garden. I didn’t want to see anyone. Teachers didn’t accept it. They used to tell, “Your name is Ravichandran. You are a boy. How can you sit with the girls?”

Even after they punished me severely, I would still come back and sit with girls. Finally, they called my parents and told that I was acting like a girl and asked them to correct that in me. My parents tortured me a lot to change. But they couldn’t change me. They used to cut my long hair really short with scissors. They did that when I was asleep. I didn’t give up for any reason. I knew. This is the way I am.

Who is that? What do they want?

Hello. How are you? 

They brought peanuts. I had them.

My boyfriend. 

What are you eating?

Man talks on the phone.

Look at you. We have not even had lunch yet. 

Looks like you are eating pizza.

Hmmm. Look how much fun you are having!

Do you think it’ll digest?

They said it was nice. 

When they asked about my husband, I told them. He’s not a permanent husband, but just a temporary one. 

Have you married? Does your husband support you? Do you survive with your own earnings? This is what they asked me. 

I do some seettu work in Jaffna town. And I used to park my motorbike in front of his shop. 

So I got to know him through that and we became friends. 

How do you see your future with him?

In the future he needs to marry and have children. At the same time he needs to look after me too.

His mother and family don’t accept this. Hence we keep it as a secret. 

He tied the thali and put the metti (toe ring) on me before he left the country. 

He would be fine to make it public, but then his life would be ruined. 

He told me, “if you want you can make it public, but then I won’t be able to do anything.”

I told him, “I don’t want you to lose your life for me. I’ll be living by myself, but you go head and marry someone else.”

I’ll go overseas and live with him. I’ll go to Canada.

Do you know what is he doing in Canada?

He just got the immigration card four days ago. 

He has got the work permit for four years. 

I’ll wait for another year and see.

Get down at Marudanamadam junction. Then hire a three wheeler. Ask directions to Uduvil Kooramban church. 

Kooramban church. 

They’ll start the mass at half past six. 

Why did you choose the name “Mary”?

I like that name. It’s a Catholic name. I used to be a Saivite. We used to conduct poojas in the temple.  

I left all of that to embrace Christianity. 

The changes in my body make it difficult for me to go to aSaiva temple. You need to take the shirt off to enter the temple. You don’t need to take your shirt off to enter the church. 

So I started going to church. 

Some of my prayers which were not answered in the Saivatemple were answered in Church. 

I was praying to become a woman. I was praying for money to do the surgery. Nothing came true when I was in the temple. Everything happened quickly once I converted to Christianity. 

Everything become better for me after I’ve become a Christian. 

Life become calmer. I’m earning well. I’ve got a land to live and I had the surgery. 

Oh lord show mercy on us.

I left home at the age of 16.

I went and stayed with one of my relatives. 

They also used to advise me, that I’m acting like a woman, speaking like a woman and asked me to act like a man. 

I told them, I am like this.

From there, I started to work. I did domestic work. I went didgardening work, work at the flour mill. Things like that. 

If I earned around Rs.100, then I tried saving some of that money after expenses for meals. Then I started doing seettu, giving money for credit interest.

I would give around Rs 1,000 or Rs 500 loans for interest. 

My family reached out to me and asked me to come home. My father didn’t say anything. So I ended up staying with my family. 

I’m the one who helped to uplift my family’s life.

I bought land, built a house and conducted the puberty ceremonies for all my younger sisters. 

Since then, my family doesn’t let anyone talk bad about me. 

If anyone talks about me, they would ask, “Is she seeking help from you? She has the talent”. And they would leave. 

I feel really sad when people say that I don’t act like a man. At times I feel like killing myself. The fact they are not accepting me as who I am, makes me sad. 

Even if I go to the temple I would keep to one side. I would never stay with women or men. It’ll be problematic.

Some people called me as “Ombathu” (a slur for transgender people in Tamil). I don’t pay any attention to that. I only pay attention when someone calling me by my name. 

I struggled from thirteen till eighteen years of age. After that I didn’t face any problems with my family. 

How seettu works is… say it’ll be Rs. 1,000 per day. 

I’ll take twenty people. I will then collect Rs. 20,000 per day.

And so it’ll be 2 lakhs in 10 days. 

That’ll be then auctioned out to others. If one person needs money, he would reduce it by Rs. 50,000 and take Rs 150,000 home. 

He still has to make the monthly payments for the the next 6 or 7 months until the seettu ends. That’s how this seettu business works. 

The next one is Rs 2,500 per day to raise Rs. 8 lakhs. It’s a group of about 16 people. I felt a bit shy at the start. I was bit scared too. I didn’t do seettu at the beginning. I started as a small merchant. I was selling curry leaves and spinach. I slowly started doing Rs.50, 100 seettu. Then eventually grew into 5,000 to 50,000 seettu. Now I go up to 20 lakhs. 

Had you already become a transgender when you entered the market? 

Yes.

How did they behave towards you there?

Even if some other merchants talked about me, I would just ignore it. I would ignore it even if I had heard. When they come to talk to me casually, I would tell them. “Why are you talking bad about me? You have a family and children. Don’t talk like that”. They would apologise to me and wouldn’t talk badly about me after. They see me as a woman. Even before I had the surgery, they have been seeing me as a woman. I only had the surgery in 2004. I started going to the market even before that. I used to wear a saree. My face used to look different. Since I used to shave, it looked so manly. They didn’t bother about that. They were treating me nicely. My dream is to be wealthy. 

I need to buy land and build a house. I always wanted to build a nice house and earn a lot of money. I don’t waste money. I come from a very poor family. Since I’m doing well, my family is in a much better position. This is my third house. I built and sold two houses. I had one in Malaham. It was difficult there, so I sold it. I sold the one behind this house as well. Now I only have this one.