My my, am I really in India or just dreaming things ?

Thanks to the Internet, I have managed to avoid a lot of mundane travel to pay various bills
like Property Tax, Metro Water charges etc. Infact, even for other utilities which do not have
a website that accepts payments, I could avoid sending out cheques by doing an online money transfer to their account directly via Netbanking.

But one place I still could not avoid standing in queue was the payment of electricity charges. The TamilNadu Electricity Board (TNEB) payments needed to be paid every 2 months.
Ofcourse the line is not long since they computerised the bill payment many years ago, but
still it was a chore that I could do without.

So, I was very happy when a friend told me that TNEB had recently built-in an online bill payment facility on their website and today I decided to give it a try. Since I needed to
register myself as a new user, I click on the "New User Signup" link, which leads me to the following page.

I glance through the details that I have to key in, and remember that I don't know the "Consumer number" which is one of the main entries to be made on the form. I decide to

make a note of the number later and come back again to register myself.

I am about to close the webpage when my eyes lock onto the "Gender" option. All my life,

I have seen only 2 options for 'gender' in the thousands of forms that I have filled. But here

I see three options - the new one being 'Transgender'.

Coming from a resistant-to-change Indian public enterprise, this surely startled me.

I mean, I do not remember seeing such an option anywhere else in India or other countries. Yeah, India has quite some Transgenders and I read somewhere that Tamilnadu has the most numbers, but to actually see a gender option for them was so surprising.

I know people (both normal people and celebrities) who have protested against forms asking

for information about a person's religion or caste. But most governmental forms still ask for

this information. I am aware that there are many NGOs that are working for the upliftment

of Transgenders who are shunned by society. And there is quite some governmental effort happening for their benefit in Tamilnadu, which might explain their inclusion in the form above.

I am not sure how the transgenders feel about this, but I am guessing that they might be pleased. If so, a laudable effort on the part of the government.