Mobina left Koovagam in mourning after wearing the tiara just a few days ago. After being adjudged Ms. Koovagam, she became a widow as custom demanded that Aravan, her divine husband, must die a day after their marriage. Every year, Aravan, son of Arjuna, marries many transgender persons like Ms. Mobina during the festival in the Koothandavar temple in the village in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu. All are then widowed, symbolically, as a legend from the Mahabharata gets played out amid revelry.

Aravan agrees to sacrifice himself before the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, but puts forth the condition that a woman must marry him before his death. Krishna takes the avatar of Mohini and marries Aravan. She is bride for a day and, after Aravan’s death, becomes a widow.

“We too fall in love, though we cannot have children,” Ms. Mobina says. Before the priests broke her bangles and cut her thali, she stole the limelight, having won the beauty contest prior to the wedding. Preethi, also from Chennai, finished second, while Subashree from Erode came third.

Ms. Mobina, the second of four boys, was brought up as a girl by her mother. She showed all the traits of a transgender early on. Her parents consulted doctors. Later, trans-advisers counselled the family. She was advised hormone treatment and surgery. After graduating with a first class in civil engineering, she found work at an NGO working for people of the third gender as an advocacy leader. She left home and saved money to undergo the surgery that would transform her into a woman.

“The transgender community struggles for survival and acceptance from society and even from their own families. We wish we could change this. If we get a minimum wage for a living, most of us will not go for sex work or beg for our livelihood,” she says.

Ms. Mobina is grateful to Sudha, a transgender person who has adopted her. Her father occasionally visits her as the family mends ties with her. She is now looking for a better job and dreams of a career in modelling. But, most important, she wants to be accepted by her parents.