Photos by Rahul Dhankani

KOLKATA, West Bengal Sintu Bagui was 14 when she dropped out of school and started working in a plywood factory. For $1 a day, she hauled heavy sheets of wooden board and did assorted cleaning jobs in brutal 12-hour shifts. Her hands were bruised and blistered at the end of each day, but it was better than the government school she was supposed to attend.

Every time I walked into school, I died a little, Bagui, who identifies as a trans woman, recalls. I did not want to use the boys washroom, I did not want to wear a boys uniform, and I was tired of hearing boys and teachers bullying me to be less like a girl.

Baguis mother, a sex worker who lived in a red-light area, was devastated. It had not been easy to enroll Bagui at the school.

The school wanted my fathers signature and wanted him to enroll me, Bagui says. They probably suspected my mother was a sex worker and tried to turn us away. But some parents from the school protested and made them take me in.

So when Bagui quit school, her mother worn down by a hard life of endless marginalization and struggle lashed out violently at Bagui. Baguis mother died in 2012 when Bagui was 20, unable to come to terms with her childs gender expression.

It was only after her mothers death that Bagui wore a sari and jewelry for the first time.

My mother always kept saying, Be like a man, be like a man. So I never felt like dressing the way I wanted to around her, she says. After her mothers death, Bagui says, her family tried to marry her off to a woman as a cure. Here I was dressed in a saree and bangles, and they were trying to find a bride for me, Bagui says.

In 2018, Indias Supreme Court finally struck down a colonial-era law, commonly known as Section 377 after the relevant section of Indias penal code, that criminalized gay sex. The courts welcome decision granted LGBTQ citizens equal rights after a lengthy struggle, but transgender individuals like Bagui, particularly from working-class families, continue to face discrimination, social stigma and violence.

Today, at 27, Bagui is a trans rights activist with Anandam , a nonprofit working with some of Indias most marginalized communities in small towns and settlements where LGBTQ people struggle to find support groups, civil society organizations and lawyers to fight for their rights.

In conversations, Bagui preferred to use LGBTKH, where the traditional words kothi and hijra rather than queer speak more closely to her lived experience. Bagui continues to live where she grew up in Gorabagan, the red-light district of a small town called Seoraphuli, an hours drive from Kolkata in the east of India.

Imagine what happens in small towns where theres no immediate support nearby and the police and residents are hostile, Bagui says, describing the hardship of transgender people in small-town India. Most of them are poor and uneducated and have been shunned by their families. They dont read about landmark judgments.

From Factories To Activism

The memories of Baguis time at the plyboard factory still traumatize her.

I was so young and desperate then, I barely realized how I was being abused, she said. I used to put up with men grabbing my chest, pinching my butt, poking me while smiling and cracking jokes.

But she stuck with the job because she needed the money. After years of sex work had taken a toll on her mothers health, their family of five often ate little more than a handful of vegetable fritters and puffed rice.

A year into her time at the factory, she found a job at a stationery shop near her house, which is where she first met a group of transgender people. One day, on the pretext of interviewing for another job, Bagui followed the group to a rundown house where a large group of trans women and intersex people lived.

For the first time, I felt like I belonged to a place. People were in womens clothes, they were cursing, laughing, she says.

From that day on, Bagui often escaped from work and went to the house, where she finally found what she calls a community. At the same time, with help from another trans woman there, she enrolled in dance classes.

In those moments, I could actually breathe, she says. However, her luck soon ran out.