Mumbai: ‘First exclusive transgender toilet an inclusive move’

MUMBAI: The Martyr Tukaram Omble Park near Goregaon (E) is an oasis of peace. Almost insulated from the nearby cacophonous crossing, this green patch with a paved jogging track and benches for senior citizens has just created history.

In one corner of the park sits the newly-constructed, a first in the city, public toilet exclusively for the transgender community.

A much-needed but long-ignored facility, the small pucca toilet, facing the park and accessed by cement stairs, is a source of huge relief. Its importance can be understood fully if you concede the enormous shame transgender people feel when they are unwelcome at public toilets. “We feel marginalised everywhere, even at public toilets. At the women’s toilets, many women give us disapproving look as if we don’t belong there while we don’t enter the men’s toilets for fear of getting molested,” says advocate Pawan Yadav, the state’s first trans person to practice law.

Yadav is all praise for Shiv Sena MLA Ravindra Waikar who used his MLA funds to build this toilet and is also helping third gender persons get ration and identity cards. “When we approached Waikar sahab with this demand, he immediately understood it and promised that we would get it. We are so grateful,” says Yadav, her bob cut, flaming red lipstick and well-pressed saree making her stand out among the bevy of her ‘sisters’ who invariably love to flaunt their long tresses.

The toilet has given confidence to the transgender community. “Since most of the kinnars (transgenders) don’t have a regular job, they beg in local trains or at traffic signals. They hold back the urge to urinate for hours and are at risk of getting urine infections. Which is why we need our exclusive toilets in all wards. Hopefully the authorities will look into it and build more such facilities,” says Ujjawala Pani whom Yadav calls ‘Maa’.

“People discover daughters and sons in strangers. I discovered Maa, mother,” explains Yadav who was around 12 when she discovered that she was not the ‘boy’ that her biological parents wanted her to behave like. “I was a girl in a boy’s body. I desperately wanted to live as who I was. If I was created like this, I was not to be blamed for it. I left my parents’ home and joined my kinnar community,” says Yadav.

It was to get several grievances of the transgender community redressed that Yadav floated Saarthi Foundation, a body to work for the welfare of the community. While Yadav became the registered NGO’s president, Pani became its secretary and Mona Hingmiri its treasurer. After the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights Act), 2019 was passed, all states were asked to establish Transgenders’ Welfare Boards.

Courtesy : TOI

Note: This news piece was originally published in timesofindia.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights objectives.