An unlikely love affair comes to fruition when Aarav Appukuttan marries Sukanya Krishnan. They had very little in common, except that they spoke the same language and their souls were trapped in the wrong body. They were on a difficult journey to the opposing poles when they met at the midpoint.

The man in the story was not born a man and the woman in the story was not born a woman. Appukkuttan was still Bindu when he was waiting for a doctor to consult on a sex-change surgery three years ago. Sukanya, then Chandu, was also at the waiting room at the clinic in Mumbai with the same determination.

Three years down the line, they have found their real selves and they found each other in the process.

“I was on the phone with a relative and we were talking in Malayalam,” Sukanya recounted the life-changing day. “I remember seeing Appukkuttan on the phone even as I cut the call. He was also speaking in Malayalam but immediately cut the phone and came to me. He asked me if I was from Kerala. That’s how it all started,” she added.

“We had to wait for three hours to see the doctor. We talked a lot and opened up to each other. We exchanged phone numbers and kept on talking even after I returned to Bengaluru,” said Sukanya, who works as a web designer in the Karnataka capital.

Lives of others

Sukanya, who was born Chandu, always knew that she was meant to be a woman. Her relatives admonished her and forced her to wear boy’s clothes and hang out with boys her age. She went through great mental agony until she was 18 years old. She was a butt of jokes for her feminine ways. She was taken to a doctor, who ruled out a sex-change surgery until she turned 18. He gave her hormone injections instead and they complicated things. She could not even appear for the crucial 10th-standard exams.

The day she turned 18, she went back to the doctor to chart out her physical transformation to a woman. It took her over a year to convince her family about her decision. Then she left for Bengaluru to raise at least Rs 10 lakh to pay for the surgery.

Appukkuttan, or Bindu, was also saving money for the same purpose in the meantime. He was working in a Gulf country. Now a tour manager in Kerala, Appukkuttan did not have it easy either. “I always thought that I should have been a man. I was convinced when I was 13 years old. I went to Mumbai and cut my hair short. I used to wear boys’ clothes. If I entered a ladies’ coach in a local train, the other women would shout at me,” he said.

“I still do not know when we came so close to each other,” Appukkuttan reminisced. “We just held each other’s hands one day. Perhaps that sealed it.”

The couple plans to get married next month in a temple. Their families are on the same page. They plan to adopt a child after marriage because natural pregnancy is impossible after a sex-change surgery.

Appukkuttan’s parents died a few years ago. His siblings live elsewhere. Sukanya’s mother remarried after her father died.

Lifting spirits

Appukkuttan and Sukanya are also bound by a common love for the other hapless souls destined to live the life of someone else. They are active in counseling the parents of children like them. They want to help out the others who are punished every day for none of their faults.

Sukanya wants to meet prime minister Narendra Modi to turn his attention to the problems faced by transgenders.

But first, the big day in September.

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