Lean On Me...

... when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on,” sang legendary singer-songwriter Billy Withers. Who doesn’t need a girlfriend? In fact, be it friends, mentors, colleagues, bosses or mothers-in-law, women lifting each other up is perhaps the best support, therapy any woman would ever need. Femina’s Women’s Day big story brings you inspiring stories of strong bonds between women who stuck it out through thick and thin, nudging you to remember your own

MOM’S THE WORD

Transwoman Shree Ghatak Muhury, a Kolkata-based activist, entrepreneur, and actor, tells Hemchhaya De how her mother-in-law has been her constant pillar of support

Shree Ghatak Muhury had always felt she was a woman trapped in a man’s body. In 2015, fighting all odds, she underwent sex reassignment surgery, and finally felt she had become who she was always meant to be. A couple of years later, the actor made headlines when she married her childhood friend, Sanjay Muhury, who, besides her mother and grandmother, always had her back, and continues to do so. Post marriage, Shree had found another pair of strong shoulders to lean on—that of her mother-in-law, Saraswati.

“My mother-in-law was clear from day one that I should focus on my career, rather than feeling burdened with household responsibilities, which she believes should not weigh a woman down,” Muhury shares. Her in-laws live a stone’s throw away in Kolkata and are always available for assistance. In fact, for Saraswati, mother to two sons, Shree is the “daughter she never had”.

Shree further narrates that her in-laws have known her since childhood, as Sanjay and she had been close friends in school. “After the surgery, they couldn’t recognise me. In the moment, they even asked me, ‘Is it really you?’ They embraced me, having absolutely no qualms accepting the physically transformed me,” she says.