Get Inspired: Meet six agents of change from Kolkata

Standing Tall
MANABI BANDYOPADHAY, 49, Principal, Krishnanagar Women's College

Hair held up in a bun, big red bindi on her wide forehead and thick framed spectacles perched precariously at the end of her nose, Manabi Bandyopadhyay strikes a fi gure of intimidating productivity. "Back to civilisation" after teaching in Jhargram for 20 years, Bandyopadhyay claims to be at her wits' end with the constant media and public atten-tion. But through it all, she retains a sense of humour. "Have I checked the email? No, ever since I have become a female I have had no time to check emails," she says over the phone.

The girl inside: Born Somnath, the youngest and only son after two daugh-ters, Bandyopadhyay says she has disappointed her parents. "They had such hopes for me, named me after Shiva too, but I wanted to take up dance and wondered why I wasn't worshipped in a Kumari Puja," she says. Her parents didn't have a say in her sex change operation-a move on which she decided after she had been working as a professor for eight years. She was both the local oddity and the pariah at the college in Jhargram. "Everybody knew me and yet no one would give me shelter. Am I a man or a woman? What were my genitals like? That was a daily obsession with certain colleagues," she says.

The third sex: She lives her life as a woman, and when she fi rst applied for the post of principal, she picked female in the form, as there was no other option. Later, she had to fi ll another form which the option "other" in addition to male and female. "I picked other, as according to the Supreme Court ruling I am an other and transgender. I wanted to see if I would get this post despite it," she says. Everyone is up in arms against it she says. "They had a problem because I was a feminine man fi rst, then a "mannish" woman, and now the transgender community has a problem because I live like a woman-where were all these LGBT labels ten years ago when I was living this life?"

Serving Seniors
SHIRSHA GUHA, 39, Director, Deep Probeen Porisheba

The beginning: It all started in 2013 when Shirsha Guha came to Kolkata to visit an old relative. "She used to have so much joie de vivre. But when we met her she was a shadow of her former self. She had lost self confi dence and she was lonely and iso-lated," she says. That is when the idea of starting Deep Probeen Porisheba (DPP), a company devoted to providing care and com-pany to the elderly, occurred to her. Born in Denmark, with her formative years in the Caribbean, Guha had always wanted to do something in "her own country". "We started in Salt Lake and did whatever we could to set it up while on a short holiday in Kolkata. I would then keep coming back every two months to see how it was going," she said. But it was when her army offi cer husband chose Kolkata for a two-year peace posting that she decided to come back at the helm of DPP. With almost 70 members, DPP provides solutions to problems the elderly often face.

A friend in need: With youngsters working outside Kolkata or maybe even the country, it's the elderly who get isolated. "Even having an army of caregivers in the form of ayahs, nurses, drivers and maidservants isn't enough," says Guha. "What they need is an equal companion. Our employees or sahayaks are graduates and sometimes even medically trained. They come with a thor-ough background check and are there to escort them when they need to step out, all for a nominal fee," says Guha.

Education For All
MUKTI GUPTA, 35, MD, Mukti Group and president, Help Us Help Them

Practice teaching: If children can't go to school, the school must go to the children. That was the thought behind the School On Wheels, a school that runs on a bus, travelling to three different locations in the city to educate street children. Over 100 chil-dren study in the bus, which goes to Park Circus, Rashbehari and Rajabazar. The brains behind the project, Mukti Gupta runs The Park Plaza Hotel in addition to running another free school for children at Mallickpur, about 80 km from Kolkata. Education has always been a cause that is close to Gupta's heart. She was just a 12-year-old when she started coaching poor children in English and Mathematics for free. "I have always believed that the one thing that can solve many of the country's problems-unem-ployment, crime rate, poverty-is education," says Gupta. A bus worth lakhs wasn't the cheapest strategy to help educate street children, but Gupta made it work by approaching the CSR divi-sion of Tata Motors.

A fine balance: She believes in providing a com-plete education to the needy. For the Mallickpur school, she tied up with NIIT to give them a computer lab and make them technologically savvy. There is also a swimming pool where a national level swimming coach has already reared a few district and state level swimmers. In the bus, there's a fl at screen television to help the children watch educational as well light-hearted fi lms, and a harmonium for music lessons and cupboard full of board games. "You can't draw in children to a school with just studies. Children are the same everywhere," says Gupta.

Beating the Odds
TUMPA ADHIKARY, 27, Community worker, DIKSHA

True to her roots: Born to a sex worker in the red light area in Kalighat, Tumpa was written off by her school, by the man she called father and the society. It was through DIKSHA, an NGO that worked with the children of sex workers, educating them about their rights and giving them the confidence to speak up on abuse, that she found her calling. "The children would have nowhere to go when the mothers' client would come calling. If we were abused, we couldn't speak up about it. If we tried to, it would have been thought of as us becoming too big for our boots," she says.

Small steps: She tells us proudly about travelling to Delhi while making presentation in front of the boards of various grants and fellowships. Seeing this much of the world from her background is rare, but what makes her happy are the little things. "I see the girls from my own neighbourhood who grew up after me, going to schools, thinking of college and yet believing that they needn't leave their homes to be happy. They tell me that they feel they can because I could," she says.

Queer Pride
TIRTHANKAR GUHA THAKURTA, 32, Doctor and gay rights activist

Changing mindsets: In many ways, Tirthankar Guha Thakurta is the poster boy for the Bengali middle class' dream son-in-law. But this doctor and professor by profession and a filmmaker and gay rights activist by passion isn't planning to be one anytime soon. At least not until India legalises gay marriages. But that's not what his activism is just about. "The American Psychological Association adopted a resolution in 1975 that homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgement. The WHO has not listed homosexuality as a disease since 1990. Yet there are doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists who would try to treat it as a condition," says Thakurta. It is this sceptical section of the populace that Thakurta seeks to enlighten. His MBBS degree from Kolkata National Medical College and his ongoing MD in Physiology in KPC medical college makes him the perfect man for this.

Speaking up: "I was disturbed by the way we were portrayed in the media. If a boy was raped it would be described as a 'homosexual rape'. So the only time one read the word homosexual in mass media was in a negative context. When Deepa Mehta's Fire came out, I remember being deeply disappointed at the way it was portrayed," he says. This is when he made Piku Bhalo Aachhey, a film about a boy who struggles to come out to his family. Thakurta also delivers talks, conducts workshops and seminars across Bengal and often with doctors to bring more awareness about the gay and lesbian community.

Shelter From the Storm
SHAFKAT ALAM, 32, Joint Secretary, Tiljala SHED

In his father's footsteps: An English speaking science graduate from St Xavier's College, Alam could have led a non-descript life working at desk job in Kolkata. But it was his father Mohammad Alangir's dream that he made his own. Tilajala Society for Human and Educational Development (SHED) started as school for the slum children in the 1980s. Now it's an organisation that works with slums, squatters and pavement settlements in not just in Tiljala, Park Circus, Topsia, Mir Meher Ali Lane, Tangra, Motijheel, Narkeldanga and Belgachia but also outside the city limits to North and South 24 Parganas and Jalpaigudi. Alam grew up watching his father teaching and taking volunteers and foreign aid representatives across the slums to show the work that was being done.

Serving the marginalised: He teaches science and English to the children and adds proudly that most of the slum people are literate now. He is currently focusing on the rag pickers of Tiljala who he called "super marginalised". "Even the slum dwellers shun them and think them dirty. The women rag pickers take immense personal risk and there's no one to speak for them or talk to them," he says. His mission is to rehabilitate their children and to give them a sense of dignity. "They are doing a service to the city by keeping it clean. We give them gloves, proper gear and have tried to put them through various corporate institutions so they can collect better managed waste and earn a profit from it," he says. Rehabilitating them to another area or trying to teach them to take up any other work is difficult as they tend to see only the short term profit in it. They do not see the benefits of education or vocational training. "Of the rag pickers or slum dwellers, it's the women who are more willing to learn and if you educate the girls, the chances of rehabilitating the next generation is much better," he says. He was also chosen as a He For She representative to the Italian Parliament and accompanied Mehjabin Begum, a slum girl who is now the cocoordinator for the Tiljala Shed Gyan Azhar Library for destitute girls, to Rome.