It takes love, not gender, to be a mom: Transgender activist
BENGALURU: The day Hasini came into my life, doors of heavens opened for me. All the pain given by this society was gone. I had become a mother and I had to show to the world that to be a mother, all you need is to give love. Nothing else matters. Not even gender,” Chandini, a 45-year-old transgender activist, says about her daughter, Hasini (name changed).
Refusing to talk about the process of adoption, Chandini adds, “Forget about issues such as how and when. The fact is that my life has turned around ever since she has entered it.”
Chandini, who is wished by 16-year-old Hasini every Mother’s Day, emphasises that the bond between them has always been strong and gender has never come in the way. “I am not a stereotypical parent. Not that I never nag my daughter to do her homework and care for her teeth, or that I wouldn’t do anything to protect her from the evils of the world. I did, and I would. But I know how the society would treat a girl who is growing up amid a family of transgenders,” she points out.
Ask her if the teenager has ever asked her questions about her gender or felt conscious about it, and pat comes the reply, “Never. Not even once.” The youngster gets to meet six to seven transgenders at any given point of time, due to the nature of Chandini’s work.
“It’s not just one mother. She has many mothers like me. There have been situations and a few incidents through which I have realised that she has understood what I am. But she has never questioned me,” the activist, who works with Sangama, a resource centre on sexuality, says.
Chandini is, however, constantly concerned about her daughter’s future. She says, “Though I involve her in my activities at Sangama, and how I have become a mother to many boys who have wanted to step out as a transgender, I still doubt my abilities as a mother. I strive every single day to make sure I am the best mother.”
Her doubts are put at rest, she says, when her daughter comes and sits on her lap, wishing her a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ with a hug and a kiss. “I know it only takes love to be a mother and not gender,” she says.