Teesta, since 2003

“Does every woman get so much attention?” Sanaia wonders on her way to a café in Mumbai. Or is it because she was once a man and is now a woman?

The men, of course, are not fooled by Sanaia’s new avatar, complete with flowing skirt, high breasts, glossy lips, a smooth, hairless face or even the head tossed back as she breaks into a beautiful smile. There is something masculine about Sanaia, and that’s enough to have the men gawking suspiciously at her.

Over the last four months, the Bollywood screenplay writer has been contending with the barrage of male attention that she gets nowadays. But as far as she is concerned, that’s just one of the minor problems of undergoing a sex change. As most young men and women who have undergone sex reassignment surgery assert, living the new role is no cakewalk.

Mahua, a 24-year-old Delhiite, has been carrying a can of pepper spray in her bag ever since she surgically switched from male to female two years ago. She finds the attention difficult to handle. “I get upset when people stare at me and ridicule me for my looks,” she says.

And it’s not just the new women who dread harassment. S. Rehan, 26, a teacher in Calcutta, who turned male from female, is tired of hearing people on the road say, “Yeh ladki ladka ban gayee” (This girl has turned into a boy). “The men want to have a look at my private parts, while the women are curious about how I have sex,” says Rehan.

Mahua, since 2005

It is not easy for a person who has morphed from male to female or vice versa to have a steady relationship. “That’s the problem with people like us,” says Catherine (not her real name), a 23-year-old beautician, who is one of the few to have a fiancé. “Boys will use us for sex, but they are not interested in marriage,” she says.

Their integration into society is also difficult. Dr Vijay Sharma, an aesthetic surgeon in Mumbai, points out, “Our country is not equipped for their rehabilitation. There is no social or financial security and no proper psychiatric care either.” In fact, even the surgery has its limitations. “However aesthetically good the man-made organs are, they cannot compare with the God-given ones,” says Sharma.

Teesta Das, a Calcutta-based actress and writer who underwent a sex change surgery in 2003, says only four out of the 10 persons who have surgically switched gender in the last three years are in steady relationships. They often face ridicule from their partners and unmet expectations are a serious problem. “Fantasy does not always match with reality,” she says.

Guidelines laid down by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend a three-step treatment for Gender Identity Disorder (GID): psychiatric assessment, hormonal treatment, and surgery. For this, the person would need to live the life of the desired sex for a couple of years. During this period, he or she is assessed and certified by two mental health professionals who would then recommend or advise against a sex reassignment surgery.

Rehan, since 2006

But it doesn’t always work like that. Catherine says it took her just two trips to a psychiatrist to get a go-ahead for the sex change surgery. “I had never felt like a boy. I had also lived and dressed like a woman from the age of 16 to 21, when I underwent the surgery.”

Radhika Chandiramani, a Delhi-based clinical psychologist who has certified five people for sex change surgery, says that most of them were “very intelligent, highly motivated and clear” about what they wanted. But unlike Catherine, many needed weekly sessions with a psychiatrist for six months to two years. Some took even longer than that.

Teesta, who had her surgery at 25, says she underwent psychoanalysis from the time when she was 12 years old. “It was a period of extreme anxiety,” she says. Her parents were hostile to begin with but eventually they came around and even accompanied her to her surgeon.

Sanaia’s sister supported her during the transition when she had “well-developed breasts and a stubble and people would just stare.” But Sanaia had some good times too. “It was fun to go out bra shopping with my sister, and to get excited each time my breasts grew bigger.”

Though it took much pain and persuasion to garner family support, her domestic help did not bat an eyelid when Sanaia broke the news of her sex change to her. In no time at all, she switched from bhaiya to didi, recalls Sanaia.

Not all are as lucky. Catherine went through her surgery all by herself. And with no support from friends or family, she also tried to commit suicide.

Indeed, suicidal tendencies in those with GID are not uncommon. Sharma says he stopped performing sex change surgeries after three of his patients took their own lives about 10 years ago.

“The problem is not with the people wanting to change their gender, but with society which cannot accept that there can be more than one sex in a single body,” says Manisha Gupte of Masoom, a Pune-based organisation working for sexuality education. “This lack of acceptance forces people to change their sex completely.”

The social prejudice against people with GID is also in evidence in the lower courts of Calcutta where applications for a change of name and gender are regularly dismissed — twice in Teesta’s case, and thrice in the case of Rehan. Last week Rehan finally got his application approved at the fourth attempt.

However, despite all the problems they face, the number of people seeking sex change is growing in India. Teesta receives an average of three calls a week — mostly from men — who seek her help in making the gender transition.

The surgical procedure itself is expensive. A woman who wants to change her sex has to pay about Rs 5 lakh for the procedure, while a man seeking a sex change pays half of that. That’s because switching from female to male is a more complex surgery than the one that turns a man into a woman. Chandiramani says many people have been flocking to Thailand where the cost of such surgery is three or four times less.

While Teesta was financed by well wishers, Rehan, who had a salary of Rs 3,000 at the time, used some clever logic on his widowed mother. “I told her that if I was a girl, they would have had to spend the same amount on my dowry,” he laughs.

Rehan may have got around his mother, but his neighbours are still suspicious. The people of his village of Brahmankhanda near Santiniketan insist that his sex change was motivated by greed for family property.

But for those who have opted for a new identity, all this doesn’t matter. All they need is acceptance. And acceptance, as Sanaia says, is when a waiter calls her “Madam”.