From begging on the streets to becoming Coastal Karnatakas 1st Transgender RJ and even working in a film,Kajals journey has been nothing short of inspiring.
Born male at birth in the village of Mandya, in Karnataka, even at the age of eight, Kajal knew she was different.Kajal was only 14 years old when she began to notice a physical transformation in herself. .Neither men nor women in her family would understand why she felt trapped in the body of a man.Despite facing several mental and physical issues in this phase, she completed her pre-university education with an 85 percent score.
She began travelling to Mumbai frequently to seek comfort, and started working as a bar dancer to survive in the city. Kajal then joined a circus company as a dancer, through which she got an opportunity nine years back to go to coastal Karnataka.
Around this time, Kajal had joined an NGO managed by Alliance Company as a project manager in Ashraya, and was later promoted as project director.Also,Kajal was invited to speak at various forums on issues that the transgender community faces, and in one such event, Abhishek Shetty from Radio Sarang in Mangaluru, got in touch with her. “He asked me if I wanted to be a radio jockey and I could not believe it for a moment,” exclaims Kajal.
On November 21 2017, Kajal’s voice rang out on air for the first time as she anchored ‘Shubhamangala’, a show that raises issues related to the transgender community.
Soon after, in another feather on her cap, she was cast in a role in ‘ICU Noduve Ninna’, a play by HP Raviraj at the Rangabhoomi theatre in Udupi.She had set break new ground once again by becoming the first transgender person to act in a leading role in a film.
Kajal is emphatic about her mission to work for the betterment of the transgender community. Looking back at how her life has shaped in the past year, Kajal reveals her plans for the future saying, “I don’t want to be the only Kajal who makes her name in the mainstream and breaks stereotypes. I want my community to grow and have many such Kajals. I want to empower them enough, to not see any of them standing on the road begging or getting into commercial sex work due to dearth of jobs. And I will use every platform to demand an equal right to a dignified life for each of them,” she concludes
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