Matter Of Pride: Inside State's First Shelter Home For Trans Members

How will my lipstick be visible? wonders Nashik's Shagun when asked to wear a surgical mask before breaking into a jig for our camera. Zeba, her new friend from Kurla, too, chooses to wrap the thin blue mask around her wrist instead as the duo dance with feeling to a sultry Hindi number. It seems all masks--literal and figurative--have already been shed at Garima Greh, the newfangled shelter home for transgender (TG) persons in Kalyan whose yellow walls still sport balloons from the inauguration ceremony of June 4.

- Sharmila.Ganesan

Bobbing a red balloon up and down on her cot, Zeba says she is feeling lighter after having confided in the wise, English-speaking Rekha--one of her six new roommates--about the ghosts of her recent past including a roommate's death in Kurla. Referring not only to the six other TG occupants but also to the TG cook Dilbar and the cheerful TG project coordinator Tamanna Keni, Zeba says: We've finally found our family.

Set up by the National Institute of Social Defence (NISD)--a central advisory body for the central government's Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment---on the third floor of a crawl-like building in Kalyan east's Dwarli Pada, this first-of-its-kind shelter home for needy TGs in Maharashtra is being run by the Kalyan-based NGO Kinnar Asmita. According to the NISD guidelines, it's open for those TGs who do not have any means of income, do not beg or do sex work, and are below 60 years of age, says Tamanna, adding that inmates can stay there for a maximum of one year.