MADHYA PRADESH: Back in 2021, a young transgender woman working at a beauty parlour in Indore lived a financially independent life.
A physical clash with fellow transgender persons, followed by a murder case, shattered her dream of one day running her own beauty salon in Madhya Pradesh’s commercial capital.
Five years later, the same promising transgender woman has spent more than three years in jail at Bhopal Central Jail after being convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in the assault case, and remaining under trial in the murder case.
Yet the prison walls and an uncertain future have not deterred her from training 25 women inmates at Bhopal Central Jail in professional beautician skills. She is not alone in this effort. Another woman inmate—once a beautician in Sehore district and recently shifted to the Mahila Ward after conviction in a criminal case—has joined her as a co-trainer.
As the duo trains 25 convicted and undertrial women inmates to become beauticians, both trainers and learners share a hope for a self-reliant future. The transgender inmate describes the initiative as a way to build a team of beauticians who can support themselves after release, and possibly come together to start a salon of their own—perhaps in Indore in the years ahead.
In an adjoining hall of the Mahila Ward, another group of 31 women inmates is turning beads into bags, purses, mobile phone holders, fruit baskets and other fashionable utility products for external markets. Guiding them is Bhopal-based designer and entrepreneur Tavishi Srivastava.
“I’ve been associated with these creative women for the last nine months. Mistakes of split seconds landed them in jail, but they are now determined to give a new meaning to their lives through this creative endeavour. Not only are they earning remuneration, but the creations fashioned by them are being sold not just in MP, but outside, including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.”
The same space also houses shopping bags, fruit baskets and hats made from jalkumbhi (water hyacinth), a plant that often invades ponds and degrades aquatic ecosystems.
Trainers from an NGO in Maharashtra, experienced in similar rehabilitation work with inmates in western India, trained women inmates at Bhopal Central Jail last year to transform water hyacinth into eco-friendly products.
“What Tavishi Didi has trained us over the last nine months (turning beads into fashionable bags) and the art of turning pond suffocator jalkumbhi into baskets, bags and hats has rendered us those skills which we will not just practice once we are released from jail, but even train others and build a group of self-sufficient women in our villages under self-help group umbrella,” a convicted inmate from Sehore district said. Male inmates are also contributing to a long-standing creative tradition at Bhopal Central Jail.
“For years, crafting dolls and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses has become our jail’s hallmark,” said assistant jail superintendent and Mahila Ward in-charge Jaya Yadav. Women inmates are also learning stitching and Kashidakari (traditional hand embroidery) under the guidance of trainers Nina Srivastava and Rajkumari Chauhan.
Over 30 inmates, including two of five middle-aged sisters convicted in a dowry death case in Ashta area of Sehore district, are currently being trained in these skills. Bhopal Central Jail deputy superintendent M.S. Marawi, says the skills being imparted to inmates are part of a sustained reform process in their lives.