ILA

By Parnalekha Mishrra Paul

Ila and Kartik had been married for 3 years. Ila was a housewife and Kartik, an employee at a bank. They had an arranged marriage; both having agreed to the betrothal after their very first meeting. During the course of their first meeting, Ila found Kartik to be an affable fellow with a stable job and life; and Kartik had found Ila to be a beautiful girl with innocence being her most attractive quality. Kartik was a hard-working young man who was respected by his colleagues at work and loved by his friends. He was very close to his mother; however, he lost her just a few months after his marriage. The absence of any siblings and the lack of closeness with his father had brought him very close to his wife. Ila, on her part, had taken up the role of being a dutiful wife very seriously. She loved him and took care of all his needs, but she wasn’t happy with him.

Their happiness as well as their future, all of it depended on a secret that Ila had hidden not only from Kartik and her family, but also from the rest of the world. Ila’s secret was that she wanted to transition into a man.

The desire to transition wasn’t a recent phenomenon in Ila’s life. In fact, she always felt like a boy and wanted to turn into one from a very young age. However, maturity had hit her at a tender age. At the age of ten, she had decided that the day she would turn into a “man,” she would call herself Dev; a name she had picked after a boy from her class. As children, we think that we can change the world and for Ila, her gender was her world, and she knew she could change the world. At that tender age, her courage knew no bounds; such was her ambitious nature, that after she had received a new drawing book in art class, instead of writing her name-Ila-in it, she had written the name, Dev, a fact which was noticed by her teacher and eventually communicated to her mother. That day after school, young Ila had received the thrashing of her life. A small human being who loved playing with spaceships and rockets, who wanted to sport a “boy cut,” who hated the sight of barbies and dolls was suddenly made to attend kathak lessons and was “forced” to wear more feminine clothing. Ila’s ambitious nature died in her childhood. Her formative years were spent in conflict with her mother who tried to cure her “tomboyishness.”

Kartik was unaware of any of this. For three years, he had thought that he was the luckiest man in the whole wide world blessed with the most beautiful and trustworthy wife, who would one day bear him children. He thought that life was perfect and was going to remain one as long as he had his wife with him. Ila, however, was going to challenge that perfection, for she herself was born imperfect.

Initially, she was happy in her married life; however, after a few months, she began to feel restless. Restless and scared at the same time, for in her heart, the desire to transition into a member of the opposite sex had risen again. The absence of her dominating mother and Kartik’s late office hours had contributed greatly to her loneliness. Like many others, she attempted to suppress those feelings; she knew that transitioning into a man would be an impossible idea because now not only was she married, but it would break Kartik’s spirit and destroy his happiness. Besides, societal pressures would’ve made her existence hollow. Above all, she couldn’t hurt Kartik because he was the only man she had ever truly loved and felt it was evil to hurt such a good man. So, Ila did what her mind told her to do-to forget about that parallel dream and existence, and just be Ila- a woman, wife and homemaker.

However, the heart does what it has to do. She could NOT suppress her true nature. She then tried to distract herself by completing her education (which she had left midway because of marriage) and focused on getting a degree in history and sociology. What she failed to realize was that no kind of distraction could suppress the desires which she had stored in her heart. With time, Ila, began to break. Her life was consumed with guilt, sadness and longing. She tried to speak about her feelings with Kartik on many occasions but could never muster up the courage to tell him anything and finally, when she did muster up the courage on a dull Thursday morning at the breakfast table, he didn’t pay any attention to her incoherent words and emotions as he was getting late for office. Another failed opportunity, Ila was choking up.

The thing about opportunities is that they present themselves to us in the strangest of ways and in the strangest of times. That Thursday morning when Ila tried to tell Kartik about her reality, also, happened to be the 6th of September 2018- the day homosexuality was decriminalized in India. Like wildfire, the news spread across the country. Why would Ila remain privy to such a wonderful piece of news? Feeling utterly guilty on having failed to speak to Kartik, Ila decided (as usual) to distract herself; she decided to finish an essay she had to submit next week in class-“The socio- political conditions in Maharashtra on the eve of the British rule.’’ While researching online on the subject, she decided to log into Facebook in order to send a message to a friend requesting him for his notes. No sooner had she begun scrolling through the news feed then the news flashed- “Section 377: Supreme Court rewrites history, homosexuality no longer a crime.”

The thing about courage is that no matter how many times it fails, it continues to persist and Ila, was all about persistence. After spending hours with herself that day, with her emotions alternating between euphoria and misery, Ila, found it within her to come out to Kartik, for she knew that if she did not come out to him that day, she would never be able to. It had to be done that day. For, Ila, that day felt like the greatest opportunity and the greatest day for God to protect her. She decided not to tell him, but to show him who she really was.

That evening, Ila cut her hair like a boy; she decided to bind her breasts with a bandage (she hated her breasts), wore masculine clothing, and waited for him to return home. He did; he saw, and he turned into someone Ila had never met.

In Kartik, when the shock disappeared, his logic failed to see reason; when his logic failed to see reason, his emotions took over; when his emotions took over, he tried to negotiate with her by asking her to visit a doctor; when that, too, failed he tried to physically violate her. She stopped him before he could commit the greatest sin of his life. They both sat there staring at each other like strangers. She didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know who she was. Through very few words it was communicated that they couldn’t, shouldn’t, and wouldn’t live with each other. Ila packed her things and left that night, not knowing where to go. The moment she had stepped out of that house, Ila was dead, and Dev was born.

TWO MONTHS LATER

A young Dev who was enslaved at the age of ten had recently been emancipated after twenty-four years. Usually, emancipation calls for freedom and celebration, but for Dev it meant leaping into the unknown. Dev was living in with a childhood friend, Jaya. They both had grown up together, shared almost everything since childhood together. However, Dev had failed to tell Jaya about the biggest truth of his life simply because he was scared as to how Jaya would react. Dev had already lost Kartik, losing Jaya would be a tragedy. To Jaya, Dev was still Ila. Dev could never run the risk of letting people know about his preferred gender, so it was decided that Ila would remain alive in front of people. The absence of Kartik from Ila’s life was blamed on his business travels. Dev, however, could not lie to Jaya for they were staying together. Jaya was simply told that the marital problems between Ila and Kartik had gotten out of hand, and that a break was required until both of them found a common middle ground. Dev’s latest butch hairstyle was blamed on female pattern baldness, a disease of the hair that Ila suffered from since childhood. Dev had told Jaya that the shorter the length of the hair, the fuller the head looked. Jaya, like many others, had believed that story.

On blessed days, when Jaya wasn’t there, Dev would appear to be sitting in the room which was assigned to Ila. On one such blessed evening, Dev decided to apply minoxidil-a medication which is used to treat hair loss. Dev had told Jaya that minoxidil was a great steroid that would help Ila with her hair fall problems. In reality, Dev had kept minoxidil in order to apply it on the cheeks, for minoxidil was known to boost the growth of beards in transmen (a fact he had chanced upon while researching on transmen while he was still Ila).

While applying minoxidil in front of the bathroom mirror, Dev felt the urge to urinate. As Dev sat down on the commode, a thought crossed his mind. Dev suddenly got up, turned around facing the commode and began to urinate through his penis. That thought gave him peace; he smiled.Sometimes, all beautiful things are short-lived. Dev’s attention suddenly went to the packet of whisper ultra which was kept in one of the bathroom shelves. The horror Dev felt knew no bounds. Realization came to Dev as fast as a lightning bolt-Ila hadn’t gotten her period since last two months.

Five months later, a pregnant Ila met Kartik as Dev in Jaya’s house. It was mutually decided that the child would be welcomed by both, but Kartik vehemently opposed the existence of Dev. What irked Kartik more than anything else was that Dev was wearing the clothes that had once belonged to him. Arrogance and not acceptance was the highlight of the meeting. How could Kartik accept Dev, and how could Ila leave Dev behind? A storm had begun. Nobody knew how and when it would end, and how many families it would consume. Would society be kind? Would Ila’s mother still try to cure her? Could she? Could anyone?

By Parnalekha Mishrra Paul