Defining Who We Are Every Day.

Warning: This piece talks and reflects on identity, dignity, and exclusion through a story shared with me during fieldwork. I write this with openness and a willingness to learn. This is a personal experience and doesn’t reflect the overall experiences faced.

“Who am I?”

This is a question all of us contemplate on those days when an existential crisis suddenly appears out of nowhere. The kind of question that hits us on the head like a sledgehammer, leaving us stunned and wondering what exactly we’ve been doing all this while on Earth.

When I went to the field the other day, a similar question slammed into me too. An addition to the first one honestly:

“What am I even doing here?”

Vishakapatnam is a beautiful city, and I really like the old-city charm it still upholds from the British era. So when I walked through the narrow alleys of One Town, I couldn’t help but wonder who lived here. What kind of lives were hidden behind those fading walls and crowded lanes?

This is not someone I met personally. A friend collecting surveys happened to come across her and later shared her story with me. It deeply struck me because I wanted to stop, to imagine what it might feel like to live in someone else’s shoes.

Now all of us live our lives carrying certain labels. She is no different. She is transgender. A woman.

But here is what stayed with me. Her family accepts her as a woman. Everyone, including her mother, father, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles. All of them together, sitting around and enjoying a game of cards like any ordinary family would!

But, she is not allowed to live with them.

And somehow that image brings me to pain. To be accepted, yet still kept at a distance. To know that love exists, but only within boundaries. She knows she is different. She feels it every single day. And the saddest part is that she has to pay a heavy price for it too.

To be openly transgender in India often means paying double the cost for simply existing. When she goes out to buy groceries, she is charged more. When she hails an auto, the rate suddenly doubles. When she looks for work, she is paid less than minimum wage (that is if she gets hired at all).

No job, but paying twice for everything.

Where is the dignity in that?

What must it feel like to be singled out and asked to pay ₹20 more than the girl standing right next to you buying the exact same thing? What does that do to a person mentally? To constantly be looked at, measured, stared at? How safe must she feel walking through her own neighbourhood?

My mind keeps racing with these thoughts. But I imagine what must be going through her mind every single day?

Yet, she chooses to smile.

This everyday discrimination is something referred to informally as a “Trans Tax.” Unlike something that is more visible like “Pink Tax” on women’s products and services, this exists quietly in ordinary interactions. There are no receipts for humiliation. No official records for overcharging someone because of who they are. It exists in glances, bargaining, exclusion, and exploitation.

And it isn’t only social interactions that make identity difficult. Even legally, dignity becomes something people must prove. The recent Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) legislation has been heavily criticized for limiting the right to self-identify and introducing medical and bureaucratic verification into something deeply personal. Something that should belong to the individual slowly becomes transferred into the hands of institutions, paperwork, and approval.

I tried to imagine what that must feel like. To have transitioned, navigate the everyday hostility, struggle for employment, and then still be asked to prove yourself over and over again just to exist with legitimacy. With people judging your every fibre of being and then blocking their access to stable employment, survival itself becomes uncertain.

And so the question circles back again.

Who am I? What am I even doing here?

The odds are stacked against people like her long before they even get a say in shaping their own lives.

Reminded of Gopal Guru’s words:

“Dignity is a kind of claim that needs to be confirmed and communicated. One seeks to communicate this claim through the language of rights.”

Under a modern liberal democracy, shouldn’t dignity already belong to everyone equally? Should a person have to medically, socially, and legally prove themselves before they are allowed to exist comfortably in public life?

The question of “Who am I?” stings differently now. It becomes heavier. More painful. Because one should not have to struggle every single day to prove what one is.

Things that are personal and invisible such as gender should not have to be medically displayed or legally proven in order for someone to receive dignity.

It should exist universally.