On a recent summer afternoon, I shut my laptop, bunked off work a bit early, downed a mug of virgin-mojito and began the walk to Simran’s study space. Simran has grown used to the offensive jokes and slurs. They came at school, at university and more recently, at work. It is dressed as harmless teasing but it is not. Her pronouns are She/they. Simran is pansexual.  

She remembers being bullied, threatened and physically hurt because of her sexual orientation. “Yes, I was treated unfairly at school, college and now at work,”she says. We leave their home after a brief chat and sit under a cluster of chinars near a popular eatery in the uptown locality of Srinagar.  The conversation is not easy. There are long pauses, moments when she appears to search for the safest way to describe something that has been part of her life for years.

Simran occupies a complicated space in Kashmir. She is queer, disabled and devout Muslim. None of these identities exist in isolation. Each affects the way the others are understood by the people around her. In this part of the globe, sexuality is rarely discussed openly and disability is still frequently approached through pity and protection, being both queer and disabled can mean living under layers of scrutiny. Add faith, family expectations and the realities of living in a region shaped by over three decades of turmoil, and even ordinary things like friendship, intimacy, privacy, can become difficult negotiations.

For many transgender Kashmiris, invisibility is not a metaphor. It is a survival strategy. I do not want to be misread but the truth is that for a community that remains largely unseen, there is little visible queer infrastructure in Kashmir.There are few spaces where transgender people can meet openly, few dedicated support systems and limited access to professionals equipped to understand the particular pressures associated with sexuality and gender identity. Mental-health services are already stretched, while conversations around queer identities remain limited.

For a disabled queer person, the gaps are even wider. The informal networks that do exist often work with limited resources. Queer support groups may not be equipped to address disability. Disability organisations have little space in their work for questions of sexuality, gender or intimate relationships. This leaves people like Simran moving between two worlds without belonging completely to either.

We can now answer questions that were genuinely a no-go thirty years ago but today, we can talk about the woes of Kashmir’s invisible gender minority. The problem is not........

© Greater Kashmir