From 'Lalita' To 'Lalit', This Cop Is Ready For The Duty After Gender Reassessment Surgery

Good girls in Rajegaon, a semi-arid town in Beed, are not supposed to raise their voices or leave home without a dupatta. When they see boys on the road, they must scurry over to the other side.

For a big chunk of her youth, Lalita Salve was one of these girls, adjusting her dupatta and minimizing herself on the streets that will now see her return as a man who breathes easy.

¡°Main abhi khulke jeeyunga (I¡¯ll now live life openly),¡± says the 29-year-old constable, who will soon be discharged from St George¡¯s Hospital where she underwent a gender reassignment surgery. Lalita is now Lalit, and his tongue trips over the word ¡°jeeyunga¡±; he¡¯s still getting used to changing genders while speaking in Hindi and Marathi.

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Outside his hospital room is a guard in army fatigues whose job is to dissuade sundry visitors, of which there are many. In a feebly masculine voice that reminds you of Sachin Tendulkar, Salve admits he is a tad tired of the media but the room has mostly protected him from the noise of his own story.

From under the bedsheet runs a urinary catheter tube that connects to a bag which is half full. In time, he won¡¯t need it and that¡¯s when he will allow himself to use the gents¡¯ washroom for the first time.

¡°Many times, when I would enter a women¡¯s public toilet at places such as bus stops, female bathroom attendants would shoo me away saying, ¡®This is ladies¡¯,¡± says Salve. ¡°And I wouldn¡¯t enter the men¡¯s loo as I hadn¡¯t accepted myself as a man.¡±

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Fed up of the dilemma, he decided to surgically exorcise Lalita from his confused body. Before being wheeled in to the operation theatre on May 25, Salve said, ¡°I was nervous but I told myself I will be happy if I lived but also happy if I died after this.¡±

Salve had started questioning god for a while after discovering through a test in 2014 that the tumour he had feared having re-grown was really a testicle. It shocked his parents, who had been told by doctors that Salve was a girl when the fact was that he was born with ¡°undescended testes¡± and ¡°undeveloped penis¡±.

He then discovered that when he was seven, a doctor had removed his right testicle, mistaking it for a tumour. ¡°If only that doctor had detected the testicle, I would not have had to undergo this pain,¡± says Salve, who stopped wearing bras, earrings and women¡¯s sandals and started buying collared T-shirts instead of full-sleeved blouses to exorcise Lalita after the test. ¡°Not once before had I suspected I was a man,¡± says Salve, who went to an all-girls¡¯ school.

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On his phone is an old photo of Lalita sporting very short hair¡ªa consequence of a scolding at Khandala¡¯s Police Training School. ¡°Cut your hair or do an eight-figure,¡± the in-charge had said. An eight-figure is an elaborate hairstyle involving braids that end in a bun.

¡°I didn¡¯t have the patience for it as we had to show up at the grounds at 5am daily. So I made a call home and told them I am getting a boy cut,¡± says Salve. ¡°I was so conscious that I would hide it under several nets the first few days,¡± he says.

Salve joined the force because he wanted to support his family. Born to farm labourers, Lalit, the third child in a family of four siblings, grew up a few kilometres away in the home of his rich uncle. ¡°There, I realised how poor my family is and decided I¡¯d get a government job,¡± says Salve, whose mother tended to their farm while his fat- her ¡°didn¡¯t do much¡±.

He started filling every government job application form he found after passing out of college. He was a good runner, which helped in his induction as Lalita into the Majalgaon police station¡¯s anti- harassment squad. Famous at a girls¡¯ college as Salve Madam, Lalita would often be called to report harassers.

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When he sought a month off for the surgery, the department denied permission. Salve app- roached the high court, which pointed to the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal, where Salve did not go ¡°because I didn¡¯t have that kind of money or time¡±. In March, Salve approached CM Devendra Fadnavis, who asked the authorities to treat the ¡°case favourably¡±. Salve thanked Fadnavis four times.

¡°I feel fit,¡± says the constable, who has another surgery coming up in three to six months. Marriage is not on his mind. ¡°I didn¡¯t undergo this surgery to get married. I did this for myself,¡± says Salve.