One of my fellow editors on Prism & Pen identifies as a transgender man. He lives in Kolkata and studied in Hyderabad before the pandemic shut his campus down.

Doing remote learning cramped up at home, he found the courage to come out to his family, and on a personal level they accept him. They still regard him as a beloved family member, although they think of him and refer to him as a young woman and not a young man.

The pressure he feels to hide his identity in public is intense. His family expect him to present as a woman, marry a man, take care of him, have children, and juggle a career.

He is resisting to the best of his ability, usually dressing in an androgynous way that sends his mother into fits.

But where his life will end up is still far from certain. The pressure he feels is just relentless.