“I felt like Cinderella at the signal”
That’s how Shri Gauri Sawant narrated her feelings when she came to Mumbai after her dad banished her for being a transgender and the members of transgender community in Mumbai gave her footwear and some good clothes to wear..
One of her dreams she shared was that she admired Usha Uthup, the great singer, and wanted to be like her [she did narrate how she was elated when Usha Uthup met her on the sets of KBC when she was invited to participate in an episode]. While she may not have achieved that dream, she has still made great achievements in her stride to uplift the #LGBTQ & Sex Workers community in India.
It was an absolute pleasure to listen to Gauri in discussion on the webinar “Being Your Authentic Self With Pride “ hosted by MMC India as part of the PRIDE month initiatives.
Some of us may have seen her in the famous VICKS commercial few years back [here is the link to it in case you haven’t ] as well.
While she shared a lot of views, the simplest way I could summarize them is, be inclusive and accepting - be it Sexual Orientation, Differently Abled, Choice of dressing up, Choice to speak lesser/be less social, Choice to live in a preferred way or Choice of food (Vegan/Vegeterian/Eggetarian/Fisheterian/Non Vegeterian/Only curry but no meat pieces and probably 23 other such classifications), – what matters is how they perform (if you are employing them) and how they treat you. If they are not unkind to you, there is no reason to be unkind to them or dislike them and they deserve to be treated as you would like to be treated by others!
Was nice to see Shashi narrating the whole discussion in sign language.
We can have more Cinderellas around and it doesn’t even need you to act like a Prince [but we can definitely try not act like Cinderella's step mother]…. Just accept and be inclusive…
Link to original post :- LinkedIn
