Dia - Marigolds

 

I remember when I was around five years old, the sun was slowly waking up over the horizon, painting the horizon with bold strokes of orange, And my beautiful Amma in the fields of marigold, picking each bloom slowly and onto the doko, a bamboo basket. Then she plucked a little bright orange bloom, and tucked it beneath my ear and called me her “Ramri chori,” her beautiful daughter. And ever since I was a child, I knew that I was a girl.

 

So, when we moved from the village to the city and I started to go to school, I spent all my time with other girls from my class. I sat and ate lunch with other girls from my class. And I even went to the bathroom, the girls’ bathroom. Until one day, when I came out of the bathroom, my teacher was standing in front of the door. She slapped me across the face and yelled at me, “It is wrong for you as a boy to enter the girl's bathroom.” I was crying. When I unfolded the events to my Amma back at home and asked her, “Am I really a boy? Am I not a girl?” And I waited. But she didn't answer. Instead, in few days, we moved to a different part of the city, to a different school. And she told me I had to act like a boy. 

 

So, in the new school, I started spending all my time with other boys from my class. I sat down and ate lunch with other boys in my class. I even went to the boys’ bathroom. But even after doing all these things, I didn't feel like a boy. I felt like a girl pretending to be a boy. I felt like everyone could see right through the masquerade. 

 

As I grew older, my face became angular and sharp. I started growing beard. My shoulders broadened, my chest flat. But even after all this evolving, my heart, it was of a girl. And my mind was now in a tug of war. Do I go on pretending to be a feminine boy, because that's how the world sees me, or do I tell everyone that I meet, “Hey, stop. I'm not a boy. I'm a girl stuck in a boy's body.” But there came a point where this was not viable, and that is when I found myself at the doctor's table begging him to diagnose me of gender dysphoria, so I could start my hormone replacement therapy. 

 

After a few sessions, he told me to certify that I had gender dysphoria, he had to meet a family member. And that is the moment when I saw my hopes crumble to the floor. The floor is where I was looking when my Amma sat across the table from the doctor as he asked her questions after questions about my mannerism when I was growing up, about my moods when I was growing up, about my education. 

 

And then he asked her, “Do you know she identifies as a girl?” “You have to act like a boy. You have to act like a boy. You have to act like a boy.” Those were the words my mother told me when I was a child, playing in loop in the back of my mind. But then, I heard a different word. She said, “I always knew that, doctor. She's always been my daughter.” And in that moment in the small room, the claustrophobic walls began expanding into the beautiful field of orange where my Amma was plucking marigold and I, her daughter, was helping her. 

 

Back at our house, in our kitchen table, I asked her, what had changed from then to now. And she told me, “Nothing had changed.” She told me, “I asked you to act like a boy when I was not there, because I couldn't protect you from the world. But now, you don't need any protecting. Now, you can be you.” I couldn't help, but smile in euphoria as the aroma of the marigold flower filled the kitchen, the same kitchen which now housed a mother and her daughter.