—Georgina Maddox
(Mmbai’s Pride March is on Aug16)

SHALL WE DANCE?
Chennai
The first time Kalki saw Santhosh at her friend’s house, she didn’t like him. “I was dancing to a sexy item number and I could see from his face that he didn’t like it. So it was only natural that I didn’t like him either. But I wanted to win him over,” says Kalki. Santhosh probably wanted the same thing and they met the next day at a mutual friend’s music store. They became fast friends and were soon inseparable. This was 10 years ago, before Sabari had had a sex-change operation, before she turned Kalki and founded the Sahodari Foundation, an organisation aimed towards the socio-economic advancement of the transgender community in Tamil Nadu.
Now in their early 30s, Kalki and Santhosh are still going strong. Their families have known each other from the first day that Kalki presented Santhosh with one of her watercolours. “When his mother saw the painting, she wanted to meet me. Since then, our families are good friends,” she says.
Kalki began her activism in her teens and was named one of the ten youth icons of Chennai by Ananda Vikatan, a popular Tamil magazine, earlier this year. She also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lioness Club of Chennai last year. After an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication from Madurai University, Kalki is now pursuing a second MA in International Relations from Annamalai University. Santhosh has his own agricultural business. They meet every day but have chosen not to live together. “In the beginning when we used to live in the same conservative town, we lived with our respective families. And even though I am now living on my own, we like to keep it that way. Living together has its own traps and although he is my soulmate, we don’t want to feel bound to each other,” says Kalki.
Kalki recalls their first kiss with a blush. “It was a full moon night. He took me out for a bike ride very far from our town. I took the chance to ask him if he would marry me if I changed my sex and became a woman. He said yes and he kissed me soon after,” she says. Kalki and Santhosh have no plans of marrying any time soon. “We have our individual identities. I am a social worker and activist and am involved in cultural projects as well,” says Kalki who will soon make her celluloid debut in a Tamil film. “It is just enough for us to know that we want to be together,” she says.

... contd.