To A Colourful Life

Sitting by the roadside, Hira intently watched cars speed by. Tears welled up in his eyes—he would do this often, and it would make him break down every time.

He could’ve been in one of those big cars. He could’ve made it big. He could’ve studied hard and married and had beautiful children of his own. He could have. Had God not decided to play around with him. Had his father not taken offence and thrown Hira and his mother out of his little house. Had his mother, his own mother, not have left him in a dump yard to die.

Hira was abandoned as a child, unwanted and kicked out of his own parents’ lives. Left to fend for himself in a garbage dump, he was discovered by a group of people—people just like him, who slowly, gradually, taught him about the norms of the cruel world.

The world was a sad place for Hira. Because the world didn’t look at him for what he had tried to make of himself—a breadwinner, a diligent worker, a good person, no. The world looked at him for what HE had had no control over, for what God had made him to be—a transgender.

In a country like India, where social stigmas had created linear demarcations between true and false, right and wrong, black and white, where there was no room for any greys, Hira stood apart. There were no clear lines to him—he was a shade of every colour he knew, and proud of it.

Nobody else around him, however, deemed him fit to be even called human, let alone be given his place in the society. His place was this now, on the streets. His job was this. He was expected to clap and be crass and look decked up, go window to window, and ask, beg, plead. He was expected to be everything he didn’t want to be.

Hira’s life, like that of others of his kind, was an ode to irony. For they were the ones everyone looked for on every auspicious occasion. A new house, a new bride, a newborn baby—every happiness requited them. The cursed came to bless. Invited respectfully in celebration, then trampled unceremoniously all the time. All this, everything, had to be taken without so much as flinching. The smile was never to leave the face.

Sighing deeply, he wiped off his tears and stood up—the cars had stopped at the traffic signal—but he couldn’t.

*

Every day, each of us encounters a Hira. Every day, each of us treats them with a sneer, a leer, a contemptuous glance, or often, not even that. Not one of us, however, stops to wonder what they’ve done to beget our indifference. Today in a country like India where we have voices of concern rising for all sections in the society—the rich, the poor, the men, the women, every caste, every religion, even animals—its a shame there isn’t any for them. Nobody for them.

A Hira isn’t created out of choice. God has made them beautiful in their own way. God gave them a life of their own. A life to live as they wish to. A life of dignity, of pride and of self-esteem.  And we’re nobody, nobody, to deny them that.