One of my closest friends is a young transgender man who lives in Kolkata, and has he ever been faced with the kind of struggles you describe. He has a passion for languages and linguistics, but his mother pressured him to drop out of a master's program in linguistics (at a very good university) after only one year, because she worried that he wouldn't make enough money as an academic to support her in her old age.

He reluctantly enrolled at a prestigious business school for an MBA, and he has hated almost every moment of the experience. Brutal hazing was common in his first year, and there was a suicide that made the news. But university administrators supported the hazing, saying it produces stronger graduates. (They apparently weren't terribly concerned that it also produces dead people.)

The official university website claims administrators and faculty do not tolerate bullying, but that's a blatant lie.

And then, my friend's girlfriend broke up with him because SHE was under extreme financial pressure supporting her elderly parents. She was so stressed that working long hours was all she felt she had time for.

She and my friend are only children, so maybe they feel the pressure even more strongly. Neither of them feels like they have real personal autonomy.

If my friend had autonomy, he would be in a linguistics PhD program today instead of a course of study he hates so that he can do work that he will also hate.

So he can support his parents later in life.

To say that the situation fills him with a certain amount of despair is not understatement.

That's not to even broach the queer issues — but I'll mention that his mother is desperate that he never tell anyone that he's trans. Because it will hurt his career, she feels, with the unspoken assumption that it will hurt his ability to support her.

Sigh.