Dubai-based Indian Trans Man Set to Marry Trans Woman

By | September 1, 2017

Dubai-based Aarav Appukuttan, a man who was born a female, and Sukanyeah Krishna, a Bengaluru woman who was a male, are set to get married later this year.

The couple met three years ago in the waiting room of a Mumbai hospital where they had gone for gender reassignment. Aarav, 46, who was born Bindu, met 22-year-old Sukanyeah, born Chandu, when she was at the hospital for her first appointment.

Love in a Waiting Room

“I got a call from a relative, and I was speaking to them in Malayalam about my surgery and health. When I finished my call, he was talking to someone on the phone in the same language. After disconnecting his call, Aarav came to me and asked whether I am from Kerala, after which we got talking,” Sukanyeah told Mid-day.

They ended up exchanging phone numbers and kept in touch even after returning to their hometowns.

Their common medical experiences brought them closer. “We are now planning to get married in a temple, with all the rituals. Both our families are happy for us. We have also decided to adopt a child, since we are aware that post surgery I won’t be able to conceive,” Aarav said.

Difficult Childhood

Both have faced hardships while growing up. “You know how our society is,” Sukanyeah told Better India. “The experiences were pretty bad. Just recently I had applied for a job in Bengaluru. I excelled in every test, and got a great feedback. But when the employers saw my Facebook profile and figured I was a transgender person, they rejected my application. They told me the clients wouldn’t be comfortable in dealing with someone like me.”

The society never accepted Sukanyeah’s identity. In an interview with News Minute, she recalled how one day, she draped a saree, dressed up exactly like a woman and attended a wedding. “It created a lot of problems, but for me, it was an open declaration of my identity,” she said. “I applied to change my name the very next day I turned 18 and also started procedures for the treatment.”

Aarav, too, was shamed for his identity many times. “Since childhood, I had a strong feeling I was born to be a boy. When I was 13 years old, I realised I was not a woman. After I moved to Mumbai, as I wore men’s clothes and cropped my hair like a boy, the women in local trains would yell at me when I boarded the ladies’ compartment,” he told Mid-day.

While Sukanyeah’s parents initially opposed the wedding, they are now happy about it. Aarav’s family has always been supportive.

Death Threats

The news of the wedding, however, hasn’t gone well with everyone. The couple has faced harsh comments about their age difference and their identity. They also received death threats after their story was published in the media. “Threats saying they will kill us both…and abuses not just for us, but for the people who said good things about us,” Sukanyeah told Deccan Chronicle.