The six council members approved the lease, with the blessing of the local bishop. It was an important endorsement in Kerala, where the Church is a powerful social and political arbiter in a state that is nearly 20 percent Catholic. The Church has no official doctrine regarding transgender identity, but most Catholic churches (especially in the United States) have distanced themselves from the issue. However, the Carmelites are Catholic nuns whose mission revolves around three elements: prayer, community, and service. For Sister Pavithra and her convent’s council, helping the trans community through education seemed like a natural blend of the latter two elements.

When the school was inaugurated on December 30, 2016, media organizations reported that Sahaj had 10 students and intended to offer accredited online classes through the National Institute of Open Schooling as well as vocational training to trans dropouts in their 20s and 30s. It was the first school of its kind in India, and the first time the Catholic Church had gotten involved in such a capacity with the issue of transgender education.

But three months later, Sahaj has no teachers, no accreditation, and no students. Mallika never got around to hiring teachers, and the few students who briefly attended left, partly due to a lack of direction for the program. Sahaj is now functioning only as a shelter: The dormitory and kitchen are used by four trans people training to become workers for the forthcoming metro system. The school isn’t suffering because of a lack of need in this conservative South Indian state. Instead, various factors have impeded the school’s success: social stigma, weak direction, and a failure to anticipate the needs of the larger trans community.

According to a 2014 government survey, there are an estimated 25,000 trans people in Kerala, out of a total state population of over 34 million. (By contrast, California has a transgender population of around 218,000, out of a total population of roughly 39 million.) Kerala boasts a higher literacy rate for both men and women than any of India’s other 28 states. But 58 percent of transgender students in the state drop out before completing 10th grade and 24 percent drop out before ninth grade, driven in large part by familial abandonment and bullying from their peers. Mallika is well aware of the physical and verbal abuse transgender youth face in schools; she attempted suicide twice as a student.

Educational challenges are compounded by employment discrimination. Of the 4,000 trans people in Kerala’s 2014 survey, only 11.6 percent had regular jobs, and 89 percent reported mistreatment at work. (Those surveyed were either of working age or were not attending school.) All the respondents said they had been denied a job due to their gender identity. Despite graduating second in her class from Calicut University and earning a graduate degree, for example, Mallika was fired from a job after three months once her employers learned that she was transgender. Faisal, one of the trans people training to work for the metro system and currently staying at Sahaj, dropped out of school after being bullied and blamed by teachers for provoking the mistreatment. What followed, Faisal said, was a dim period that involved working in a hotel, suffering from sexual harassment, and being either underpaid or not paid at all by a boss who suspected that trans people would not dare to go to the police for help.