She is 28, a marketing professional who lives in a rented flat with her female partner in an east Calcutta high-rise, and very, very wary.
"I haven't voted this time," she says. Much probing later, the story comes out, bit by bit. She had to leave home "in a hurry" when she confessed to her family that she was "not straight".
"I used to think I was bisexual but wasn't sure till I met my partner two years ago," she says. "We met through mutual friends, and we went out partying. It was love at first shot," she laughs.
But her life changed, she says, when she came out last August to her "apparently liberal, well-educated" parents and elder brother late last year. They turned her out and kept all her documents, including her academic certificates, voter ID and passport.
The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls started in Bengal in October last year. "I couldn't apply for a fresh voter ID card. I have no identity now," she confesses. "I don't know what to do."
Her partner, 29, and a techie, says this experience has taught her a valuable lesson. "Coming out to my parents is out of the question now," she says.
Her parents, based in a small town in a northern state, have been after her to get married ever since she graduated from engineering college eight years ago. "I was averse to marriage, but I realised I am a lesbian only when I came to work in Calcutta in 2023. It was the first time I could freely think about myself."
No mainstream politician has spoken on how the SIR has impacted the LGBTQIA+ community, a gay activist in his 40s — "no names please, I don't want my organisation to get into trouble" — said. "I am a cis man and I live in my ancestral home, so I could vote. But many transmen and transwomen have assumed identities and names that are different from, say, their birth or school leaving certificates, or even earlier voter ID card. They are now missing post-SIR. What about their right to vote?" he asks.
Why Bengal, these are tough times nationally, he says, flagging the proposed changes to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act that have deeply scared the queer community.
"The 2026 amendment bill strips away the right to self-determination by removing the provision for self-perceived gender, forcing human beings to undergo deeply intrusive medical board examinations to be recognised," he says. "Why are we going backwards when the Supreme Court's 2014 NALSA vs Union of India judgment gave every person the right to self-identify their gender?"
Minakshi Sanyal, now 63, and one of Calcutta's first queer feminists, agrees. She has voted in every election as an adult, she says. "I don't live in a bubble and every issue, from LGBTQIA+ empowerment to education, from women's safety to jobs, from corruption to communalism, deeply affects me. My vote is my voice."
The SIR brought home the importance of bureaucratic paperwork amid social hurdles specific to the queer community, she says. "A girl from a district recently rang up a helpline seeking intervention as her parents were forcibly marrying her off, knowing she was a lesbian. When the team of activists reached the venue, they managed to stop the wedding, but her parents burnt all her identity documents in anger. Cases like this cause LGBTQIA+ people to get disenfranchised," she says.
The broader messaging is that if you are different, the State will unsee you, says the marketing professional. "See us," she says, showing the identical tattoos on her and her partner. "We aren't going anywhere."