She

I was travelling in a Kalyan Fast today when a really tall girl got in, and stood stubbornly at the door. She wasn't rude, nor was she intrusive. She was just so tall that her head grazed the ceiling of the door, and no one behind her could see the scenery outside. I was standing behind her, very squashed and very astonished. At first, I noticed scratches that looked suspiciously like scars, and then a large burn, on her arm. Further, I noticed various tattoos on the other arm. Must be either a rock artist or an army officer, I thought to myself.

After a while, she asked us if the train was slow from Thane. Her voice, strangely, was deep and resonant. When we replied in the affirmative, she calmly took a packet of tobacco from her purse and started chewing it. I kept staring. Which woman who looks educated and travels by First Class would eat cheap tobacco? Here, obviously, my surprise did not stem from the fact that she was a woman, but from the fact that she surely knew tobacco-chewing is not very healthy.

Then, she turned a bit sideways at the next station to let the people alight. I gaped at her impossibly long - and obviously fake - eyelashes, dripping with badly applied eyeliner and mascara. Her face was streamlined, yet strangely masculine. There was the hint of an Adam's apple. Transvestite? I thought. A transvestite is a person who dresses like the opposite sex. My gaze travelled downwards. She definitely had a bosom. Then it struck me.

Transgender. And not just a transgender, but a man who had been surgically changed to a woman. She was the first of her kind I had seen, and it made a good change from the socially rejected ones you see begging on the street. I felt strangely proud of this woman who had chosen to be what she wanted - well, except the tobacco-chewing bit. It still was bad for her health.

India seems to be progressing, doesn't it?