FROM CASTOFF TO CORPORATE EXECUTIVE

Born male in Udupi, Karnataka, Nayana Udupi was ridiculed by peers and by her own father, who hated her effeminate ways. “He complained about the way I walked, the way I behaved. He called me a eunuch, in a way that felt derogatory. After finishing high school, he sent me away to the mining town of Kolar to learn how to be a foreman, because he didn’t want me in the house. Meanwhile, all I wanted was to be his daughter,” she recalls. She quit that training programme in a year and moved to Bangalore for a preuniversity course. She found friends in the transgender community and began to shuttle between Mumbai and Pune, where she transitioned at age 20.

“But being a woman alone in the city was tough,” she says. “I had to resort to begging and sex work to survive. But through it all, I dreamed of a corporate job in a regular office.” She moved back to Bangalore and got an advanced diploma in multimedia design. But no one seemed keen on hiring her. She finally found a job as administration manager with the NGO Sangama, which works for sexual minorities in Bangalore. She kept applying to corporations. To her surprise, she was finally selected by global tech firm ThoughtWorks, which was looking for a graphic designer. “I feel like I have empowered myself and finally made my mother proud as a daughter who leads a dignified life and has a respectable job,” Udupi says.

Tina Vinod, diversity and inclusion lead at ThoughtWorks India, says Udupi’s sheer sense of determination is what impressed the interviewers. “We could see the resolve in her to break out from the mould and enter the mainstream,” she says. She made so many friends at work and became such a people person, in fact, that she was soon moved to the marketing department, where she works in vendor management. Three years on, she says all her colleagues know her and love her for who she is. “When I walk in in a sari,” she adds, “my colleagues always notice and compliment me.”