MRITYUNJAY MOHAN

No End Route

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• Some bodies only exist on paintings and text. Some relationships have no history. Some stories have no end.
• I was born with a thumb between my lips, mother drowsy from anaesthesia, father holding a washed body that still smelt like blood, that was as red as the blood that seeped out of his skull eight years before. Father on a motorbike, sitting between his friends, on the way to the cinema. A bus, drunken driver, a hopeful trio of fans that worshipped Rajnikanth, hit by the headlights and thrown off balance. A milkman’s son that watched it, telling my mother of her future husband’s accident. One survived, two died. It seems like an accident, my birth, would my parents have gotten married if they knew their son would be transgender?
• I don’t feel real. I feel like I am shrouded in stories. I cannot see myself in the mirror. I bite the idli, dipped in hot water. I am two. I feel like I belong in a story. A book. A character, not human. I don’t believe I am real.
• I learn of my identity at four, living my whole life thinking I am a boy until I see a transgender person on the road and grasp the word like a nipple between the growing teeth of a baby. I live in fear for years. Would I have told anyone if it were acceptable to be an abomination?
• I make a promise to myself. I will never tell anyone I am transgender. Are promises only there to keep true to oneself or to test the boundaries of belief? I feel it is neither. I feel I will never know.
• I am sitting in a pool of blood, my legs are bleeding. I am wearing short shorts and a tee shirt. The shorts are soaked in blood. My fingers are trembling. Mother takes me to the hospital. I cry when I am injected. Mother fills out a form. There are two options for gender. Mother circles female. I feel ice skating down my throat. I almost reach for the pen and scratch it out. Write male.
• Are these events even in order anymore? I do not know. I am sitting in a jewellery store. Gold is between mother’s fingers. My sister, mother, and aunt choose chains from the women’s section. Father and I choose chains from the men’s section. My sister ridicules me for it. My father is proud. Says I am his son as I am masculine, not a daughter anymore. Calls me he. Son. I almost cry.
• I tell myself I am not real. I am only a character in a book. I wait for the book to end. I am transgender. I am scared. The book doesn’t end.
• I don’t remember most of my life, but at four, I had a breakdown when mother talked about my birth certificate. Female, she said. The doctors said I have a vagina. I am convinced the doctors were wrong. She says everyone thought I was a boy when she was pregnant. People still see me as a boy on the roads. I want to say I am a boy. I almost say I am transgender. But I bite my tongue. I smile instead.
• I convince myself I’ll get a hysterectomy when I turn eighteen. I convince myself that I don’t have a uterus. I don’t know which one to believe. Do you know which one to believe?
• I sit in a pool of blood again. This time from between my legs. I feel I am not real. Father gets on the first train home to see me. Sister and mother overjoyed. I almost lose consciousness. Sister tells me I am a woman now. I scream I am not. Father stops calling me his son. His boy. I am his daughter now. He is still proud of me. At night, I sleep between my parents and imagine myself dead.
• Someone on the television tells me transgender people are delusional. Father jokes that I am a tranny. I bite my lip, and weep. Tears are said to cleanse one’s soul. Will the tears really cleanse my soul? I weep until I believe my soul is cleansed. Then, I slip off to sleep.
• I am asked by my mother what causes someone to become transgender. I avoid the topic. I say I don’t know.
• I am not real. I am not real. I am not real. When would the book end? I am still waiting.

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