Third gender forced to live in obscurity

POKHARA, Jan 18: People call her names, while she passes through the street. Employers sack her immediately after discovering that she is a third gender. Even the parents, unable to understand her, have abandoned her and Khushi Gurung now leads a miserable life in Pokhara.

“I developed a girl´s behavior though I was born a boy. My parents forced me out of house by putting pressure on me to lead a life of a normal boy,” Gurung rued during a function on the rights of third gender in Pokhara. [break]

Gurung was not allowed to wear make-up, her long tresses frequently chopped and forced to befriend and play only with boys at school and home, forcing her to quit school and home altogether.

She started to work in dance restaurants after she started to live in a rented room in Pokhara and was frequently harassed by customers and employers alike. “The employers would order me to sit with customers who would ask to make physical relation. I felt humiliation but have to do so for living,” Gurung complained.

The employers would fire her after discovering her gender and she stumbled upon Naulo Bihani, an organization for third genders in Pokhara, while she was desperate for a job. “I felt to have found my friends and family there,” Gurung said about the organization that is home to around 50 like her who have been forced to live in obscurity.

Shreeya Gurung also has similar story to tell. “I would never find enough time to relate my sufferings,” said Shreya, who hails from Syangja. She was forced to leave home after her parents locked her in a room with a woman to force her into marriage. “There were four elder brothers, an elder sister and parents at home. But I felt like an orphan as there was no one to understand my feelings,” she revealed and opined that one can be parents only by understanding children and not merely by bearing them.

Shreya, who contested CA election from Syangja Constituency No 2, complained that third-gender and gays have not been able to exercise human rights like others.

Most of these third gender people in Pokhara are from Kaski, and neighboring districts like Syangja, Parbat, Myagdi and Baglung and president of Naulo Bihani Bindiya Gautam claimed more than 600 have had sexual relationship with them.

“The police refused to believe when I declared that I am a third gender three years ago. They said no one in Pokhara can be a third gender and threatened me to leave Pokhara in a night believing that I must have come from India,” Gautam said.