It started when Zubairiya realized just how pretty her mother and sister were. She remembers it clearly, though she was just three years old.
I saw my sisters getting ready, dressing and putting their makeup on. I saw my mother doing this. They looked so beautiful.
She wanted to try it out – at least once. Once soon became twice.
I started to feel like a lady. Gradually, it became a habit. I became a better woman than most women. Family members began to tease me, saying I looked like a Hijra. They told me to take off those clothes. But I felt better in those clothes. I try to wear them everyday.
That was when she started secretly dressing as a woman. In her large, extended Muslim family, she managed to find something she could call her own – her changing identity.
Zubairiya is the 16th son in her household. She has 15 brothers, 17 sisters, three mothers and one father – who is 95. When she was just one in 36, could she have felt the need to be different?
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to editor@madrascourier.com
