CHENNAI: Happy birthday!” Waking up in a hospital bed, 29 years after the first awakening, was when these words made the most sense to Amy. There are many kinds of birth, they say. For Amy, choosing the body that felt like home certainly made the cut for the born-again tag. Aditri Chowdhury, who goes by the name Amy, is a woman of many roles — model, actor, trans woman, trans rights activist. She holds the distinction of being the first trans woman to walk the ramp without surgeries or hormone therapy, as part of a line-up that was all cis women otherwise. It took her 27 years of living to get to this milestone.
All this success was not without a big share of strife. The Kolkata native, like many of her community, had to struggle past her parents’ initial rejection of her identity, taunts and barbs from peers, bullying, stigma and plenty before she could transition to self-acceptance and stability. “It was suffocating to have to accept the social standards. That’s why I decided to be myself,” she declares.
Hailing from a small town, where gender identity was a foreign concept, being herself did not come easy. The agony she experienced had her seeking psychiatric help to cope. When even her parents were struggling to come to terms with her way of life, it was the modelling industry — one that has the reputation of reinforcing societal stereotypes — that allowed her to not just embrace herself, but go as far as possible to wake up to the new normal. “Beauty can’t be confined to a particular gender.
This could have been the only place for me to be myself,” she shares. Soon, this work opened up a world of opportunity and with it came the triumphs. Hundreds of photo-shoot assignments started pouring in, she landed a role in a well-acclaimed Bengali movie, she was becoming a sought-after showstopper model, and even being called to speak at the Transgender Visibility Day. Yet, the path had been long-winded. Born into a conservative middle- class family and bearing the identity of Abhisekh, striking up a conversation with her parents about gender was not something that just happened.
The reveal, when it came, brought with it as much drama as you would expect. Wanting a means of release for a secret so big, she decided to attend a party wearing women’s clothes and make-up. In 2012, at the age of 26, this seemed like quite a big move. While people at the high profile birthday party were all welcoming of her new avatar, what happened in Vegas stayed there; that was until a picture of her at the party found its way to a social media platform and caught the attention of her cousin. Soon enough, word got around to her parents. Life pretty much came to a standstill after that — her parents were giving her the silent treatment, she resigned from her job and stayed home for two years; there seemed to be no acceptance coming her way. Then, a little thing happened; an amateur photographer looking to show the world a different side to Kolkata asked to shoot her, after stumbling upon her profile on social media platforms. A little thing, but little things have a way of changing people’s lives in a big way.
The pictures earned her quite a following on social media. Not only was she being liked for her beauty, but she was also being celebrated for her grit and tenacity. And work started pouring in. Parental acceptance came in bits and pieces. While her mother was quick to accept the transition, she could do little to influence the father. Even as there was little she could do to change the perspective of those around her, her mother found ways and means to stand by Aditri. It didn’t take long for her father to eventually come around. He went so far as to consult people of the trans community to know more about the sexual reassignment surgery. For Aditri, the surgery marked the start of a new life.
“I have always been a woman. It’s just that I was trapped in a man’s body; I couldn’t recognise the person in the mirror. So, when I got the chance to change that at the age of 29 (in 2016), I took it up as a means to free myself,” she says. When Aditri was at peace with herself, love came calling. All it took to start the blaze was a simple message on Amy’s Faceboook timeline, praising her for being an inspiration. Two years later, this February, the two entered blissful matrimony.
After a great deal of grit and a good measure of luck, this trans woman can say she has it all. For one who isn’t blind to the discriminative conditions a majority of her community is subjected to, she fights for the rights that have long been denied to them. “I was privileged enough to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, I hope there are many others who discern no difference between man and woman, and only offer acceptance,” she says. Wouldn’t that be something?