User:Thasleema nasreen
Breaking stereotypes involves courage, determination, and firm stand against pessimism, especially when it comes to age-old societal beliefs on gender. For ages, the transgender community has struggled to live a dignified life. Taslima Nasreen, a transgender woman, has broken all norms to come up with a unique initiative of starting a food catering business entirely by the transgender community. Her startup “Halal catering” is a massive hit in Tamilnadu and Kerala with their tongue-tingling dishes.
She has also trained six other teams of transgender women for catering and helped them start their own food catering business. Even you can experience their esteemed service on your good days at home. It can help them in a lot many ways, most importantly, to live a dignified life.
Hailing from Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, Taslima Nasreen had a very different story to share. Belonging to an affluent family, Taslima enjoyed her childhood to the core with every comfort one can imagine. However, the dark days arrived when Taslima turned 13.
“I wasn’t someone I wanted to be. I was terrified. My family didn’t accept me as I am, and finally, they abandoned me. I spent days at Tirupur bus stand, haunted by loneliness and falling into the clutches of hunger, I decided to commit suicide. I got rescued by some transgender people at a park in Tirupur.”
As she didn’t want her family to identify her anymore in the town, she moved to Bangalore. After undergoing sex surgery there, she searched for jobs but found it difficult to find one. She begged at traffic signals. To make the situation worse, she was diagnosed with severe jaundice. Trying out every hospital there, she realized that there are no proper treatment facilities for transgenders. Somehow Taslima managed to get treated at a government hospital in Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu.
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Getting her life back again, she took a bus to Chennai. Through some menial jobs, she managed to earn a paltry sum. For the first time, she decided to unveil her womanhood, in an eagerness to buy a nose-pin for herself. As soon as she entered the shop, the owner found it very strange to allow her. She was ashamed, ill-treated and not allowed to step inside. That is when a woman shopping nearby shared her kind gesture by consoling and enquiring about Taslima’s work and livelihood. Later the lady was identified to be Anjali, one of the heads of “Mahaveer Trust”.
With Anjali’s help, Taslima began to volunteer for an NGO ‘Small Difference’ to take care of patients who were abandoned by families at the CMCH. At NGO, she worked as a cook. She started cooking chicken and mutton biryani in many functions.
Years after, these experiences helped her with the idea of starting “Change trust” with the aid from Rotary club.
Training Other Transgender Women Being a victim of discrimination herself, she is striving hard to ensure a safe and dignified life for all transgenders. Taslima personally has trained over fifty transgender women in cooking, thereby paving the way for their independence. Through Change trust she has also taught Computer training, Jewel making sessions and tailoring to transwomen.
She has also organised Swachh Bharat – tree plantation drives, cleaning campaigns [esp in hospitals]. Motivated by her words, a large number of college students, along with their families also participate in the activities.