By Matters India reporter
Guwahati, April 6, 2020: A distress call from a transgender at the Guwahati railway station on April 4 made Sister Prema Chowallur to sit up.
“I could no longer remain in my safe comfort zone of my convent. I shed my fears of coronavirus and in faith set out to respond to the call, which touched me deep within,” the member of the Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod told Matters India.
The caller had told Sister Prema, as the social worker is popularly known, that they had nobody to help them because of a nationwide lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The nun began her work with the transgender community from 2016.
“You are the only source that we can count on,” the nun recalled the caller telling her.
Sister Prema says the 21-day nationwide lockdown imposed from March 25 has affected everyone. “Many are looking for food, water and health care. In the midst of such chaos of scarcity of food items and hunger, came this cry of the transgender community,” she added.
The nun says her work has convinced her that the transgender community remains ignored by others in society.
“These are the people whom society never counts as human beings. They experience every day rejection, aversion, sarcastic smiles, and abusive words as they pass by cities and towns. So they walk through bylanes and stay in slums to hide themselves from society. It is the need of the hour for us to reach out them,” Sister Prema observed.
The nun quickly plunged into action, requesting help from the North East Diocesan Social Forum of Guwahati, her own sisters and their Wing Women Development Centre to reach out to transgender community with food items, to start.
“All of them responded without any hesitation with kits that contained food, and items such as detergent powder, bathing soap, phenyl, hand sanitizer and masks,” Sister Prema said.
They distributed the kits to the transgender community living in Maligaon, Pandu and Gandhi Basti, three slums of Guwahati, the commercial capital of Assam state in northeastern India.
Other groups such as the Church of North India, Assam Baptist Convention and the Guwahati Catholic archdiocese too pitched to reach out the transgender community living in the railway slums of Guwahati.
“The unity in reaching out to the poor and needy has made the existence of various Churches in Northeast India more relevant. The call of the Church and the need of the time are to go to the peripheries, the unnoticed, the unseen and the voiceless. We will continue to respond to them to make our existence more meaningful,” Sister Prema asserted.