***<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/07\/12-1.jpg\")
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This is not the first time Shreya has been humiliated. Her life has been a struggle. Born a man \u2013 Samrat \u2013 she had realised right from childhood that she was a woman trapped in a man\u2019s body. She would secretly dress up in women\u2019s clothes, wear make-up and prefer to use women\u2019s wash rooms.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly though, there never was a problem in school or in college \u2013 her teachers \u201callowed\u201d her to use the ladies\u2019 washroom, even though it was a boys\u2019 school and she got the same support in the co-education college where she went. \u201cMy friends always protected me,\u201d Shreya said.<\/p>\n
Her main struggle was home \u2013 her parents refused to accept that their \u201cson\u201d didn\u2019t think he was male, a son who would secretly dress up as a girl, and who wanted so desperately to be a woman. Her father runs a shop in south Kolkata, her mother is a housewife, and both were convinced Shreya (then Samrat) was losing sanity. So they put her in a mental asylum even as she was working full-time at a call-centre and earning a decent salary.<\/p>\n
Physically still a male, she was under huge pressure because it was difficult to convince the psychologists, doctors and her parents that she was not suffering from any mental illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mental asylum authorities were only concerned about money. On the one hand they told me they would counsel my parents, while they told my parents they would counsel me,\u201d Shreya said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, when she returned home, a lot of money had been spent but she was more convinced than ever that she wanted to be a woman physically.<\/p>\n
This calamitous event in their lives \u2013 the loss of hard earned money but without any less desire on part of their son to be a woman \u2013 made the parents lay bare their cruelty. Ridiculed socially, ostracised, unwilling to accept this \u201cfate\u201d, her parents asked Shreya to leave home.<\/p>\n
And she did. By then she had already lost her call centre job due to the long absence from work (since parents had suddenly put her into the mental asylum).<\/p>\n
Unable to make ends meet, Shreya took shelter in the home of a man who promised to teach her dance. The dance teacher and many others subsequently promised her help but eventually stole her money. A few years after leaving home, Shreya finally managed to get breast transplant by saving up money from the little work that she got. After the breast transplant, she got more dance assignments and did some modelling.<\/p>\n
By now, her parents welcomed her home. Now, Shreya lives with her parents who have now \u201caccepted\u201d her. But at work, she has tough competition with women. For the past few years, she has been a singer in a bar but sometimes her women colleagues have \u201cdisclosed\u201d her \u201creal identity\u201d to the men visiting the bar where she worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that I am a transgender makes me somewhat less of a woman than them perhaps,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, if a customer is happy with my performance and pays me well, my jealous women colleagues tell them secretly that they have been foolish to spend it on a chhakka<\/em>,\u201d Shreya said.\u00a0“It is not that I am hiding my true identity, but this sort of cruelty hurts.”<\/p>\n Such lack of generosity and unkindness doesn\u2019t surprise her anymore. She is always ready to fight, though it has been tough, she says.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Last night, after being denied entry to the Sudder Street bar, she went straight to the nightclub at JW Marriott Hotel on Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. And there, no one stopped her, and she danced to her heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [Photographs courtesy: Shreya Karmakar]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Police complaint filed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"adace-sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender"],"yoast_head":"\n