New Delhi, June 1: She is 31, an English literature graduate and an MBA from Symbiosis, Pune, says the matrimonial ad. She has a well-paid job and is an avid swimmer.

Interested? She is also a member of the transgender community and is HIV positive, the ad adds.

The responses are flying in, says a smiling Amruta Alpesh Soni, an advocacy officer posted in Chhattisgarh with the not-for-profit Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust.

"I uploaded my profile six months ago and have received many proposals."

It's understood, she said, that her HIV infection would limit physical intimacy if marriage happens - she is looking for "companionship".

"Most of the respondents have introduced themselves as divorced or widowed men," she said. "But I suspect that most of them belong to the transgender community but don't want to reveal it straightaway because of the 'transphobia' in our society."

Soni is no stranger to transphobia - an intense prejudice against people whose sense of their own gender does not match that assigned to them by others based on their physical attributes.

She was thrown out of home by her parents at 16 and abused by an uncle before joining a band of hijras, the entry ticket being sex-change surgery that left her neck-deep in debt to the band leader or guruji.

"To repay my debts I had to sell my body on the streets. During this period, I was raped and contracted HIV," the native of Solapur, Maharashtra, said.

Soni gave this newspaper permission to publish her real name, which she has used in the matrimonial ad too. She met The Telegraph just before flying off to the US on Monday night for an international seminar where she will speak on the "double stigma" of being transgender and HIV positive in India.

She doesn't want to disown the society that has disowned her, though. Soni, who uploaded her profile on simplymarry.com - which does not have a section for the transgender community - could have chosen sahodari.org, a portal launched in 2009 exclusively for the "third gender".

But she wants society to embrace the community, not create a separate nook for them.

"I don't want welfare schemes exclusively for us; I want the schemes for the general public to benefit us as well," Soni said.

Her own life, though, underlines the need for the special schemes the government chalked out after the Supreme Court last year gave official recognition to the third gender as a disadvantaged group, but which are still tied in red tape.

Apart from the skill development, scholarship, reservation and pension schemes for the community, the government has proposed a financial incentive to parents not to throw out their transgender children.

"Government money will not lure families into accepting their transgender children; society has to change," Soni believes.

"After the rape, when I was taken to hospital for a check-up, the doctors paraded me against my will before trainees to show them how a vagina had been created in my body and how my breast implants looked."

The police had initially refused to register a rape case, saying a sex worker could not be raped.

But Soni also remembers how a Mumbai shopkeeper - "a good soul" - gave her money to study. She eventually went to Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia to graduate before getting her marketing degree from Symbiosis.

She has bought a flat in Mumbai with her earnings from sundry jobs - from teenage bar dancer in Mumbai to her current occupation.

On Monday, she was feeling "nervous" in anticipation of her first speech at an international event - the Annual Philadelphia Trans Health Conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center - which was just days away.

"I'm nervous but happy. I want to tell the world that transgender people are not born just to beg; they can work and have a life beyond their gender identity."

She is also looking forward to marriage. "My previous relationship failed because I can't bear a child. However, I have (informally) adopted the eight-year-old son of my brother, who died recently."

Soni's sister-in-law reopened the doors of her home to Soni after the death. Soni's nephew lives with his mother in Solapur but Soni takes care of his needs.

"To him, I am the prodigal uncle he had heard of who has now returned as his Badi Ma (aunty)," Soni smiled. "He's one reason I want to marry - I want my boy to have a father."