I was the very first male dancer in my entire town.
Fortunately, my mom and dad never stopped me.
We didn't have that gender barrier.
People used to come back and say, "Okay, why are you doing it?"
"What is the purpose of it? What do you want?"
"Where do you want to take this forward?"
"It will turn your boy effeminate."
You know, all that kind of situation.
My father was like,
"Okay, anyway, this is somewhere culturally rooted, right?"
I was able to explore the idea of what I was feeling.
To this day, they never said, "Oh, you should stop this!"
When I came out to my sister,
for maybe that one moment
there was a shock, there was a point of, you know, not understanding.
But by that evening itself, she had understood my experience.
She had understood that I was always
who I am saying now to be.
I found that very affirming for me
because, before that, all other experiences were in that mold,
where when I came out to people, they wouldn't believe me.
There was a lot of violence in my family.
The constant abuse, the insults, you know…
it was very severe.
I guess it was my destiny to struggle.
To tell you about my family and my village,
my family has migrated to several places.
There's a place called Simbal Shroth nearby.
And we've been living in Dudhala Dayalwala for the last 24 years,
which is also my birthplace. We've settled here now.
Though I was in class 11, my interest was in dolls
and the utensils that my grandma bought for me.
I would sit in a corner playing with them.
Then I dropped out of school.
I was rid of all the tensions of trolling in school.
I started attending the weddings that used to happen in the neighborhood.
I had a school friend. Her name was Asma.
I had a small makeup kit, like kohl or mini lipstick.
I used to leave home with those two boxes.
And over at Asma's house, I would take some cream,
She would apply kohl from my box. I applied lipstick, and so did she.
And we would leave together.
Then people started complaining
that his cheeks were red.
"These two apply something on their faces."
People started complaining regularly to my father.
I don't know what came over my father, but he took my stuff…
and burned it.
There was a Punjabi lady who used to stitch fabrics.
She was my mother's good friend.
My mother spoke to her.
"Teach him and take him with you.
He will come home in the evening."
One day, we were working,
and a trans woman came there.
When she was leaving, she looked back.
I still remember. Her name was Kavita.
She asked my name.
I said, "Arif."
Auntie said, "Her name is Teena."
She said, "Okay, Teena, it's a pretty name."
She went to a shop and bought chocolate and candies for me.
She would come quite frequently.
I had been with Auntie for a year,
but I only learned basic work there.
I was perfect in it
because my focus was not on her. My focus was on Kavita sister,
waiting for her to show up with chocolates and candies.
So…
when things escalated,
and I started attending weddings again.
Daddy was wondering, "What is to be done?"
One day, he asked me,
"What's on your mind? You have quit your studies.
What do you want to do?"
I said, "I don't want to do anything."
One day, there was a serious fight at home.
That day, Daddy raised his hand against me.
He thrashed me
because I am in this body,
and my behavior is that of a girl.
And that's why he thrashed me so brutally.
I was told, with folded hands, "Please leave from here."
So…
I left home.
In order to become a woman,
I became a part of the Kinnar community.
I didn't have anybody to guide me.
I chose it myself,
thinking that if I became a part of their community,
then I might also change like them.
When I was 19 years old, I completed the ritual and chose my guru.
Gradually, I started changing myself.
I grew my hair long.
During this period, another drama was going on at home.
The atmosphere at home was stressful.
There is only one son, and even he is behaving like a woman.
He is growing his hair long and doing his eyebrows.
No parents or siblings would want this.
That one's brother or a family member becomes a Hijra.
I have become mature. I have seen the world.
So I feel that they were right for their child,
and I was right for myself.
I have realized that now.
I didn't realize it then.
Back then, I used to get angry.
There used to be several quarrels.
I would leave home
and return at night only to sleep
because if I stayed at home, I had to hear the same taunts.
"Cut your hair. Behave like a boy."
Because I hated the word "boy",
I didn't want to hear that word for myself.
And they wouldn't call me a girl
because they already had two girls at home.
They tried very hard.
Black magic and sorcery,
praying, observing fasts.
They were putting a lot of pressure on me.
It was a kind of harassment.
I used to live among the Kinnar community.
I used to observe their problems,
the sort of torture they faced at home,
or how they were tortured here.
People coming from good families
have to roam around barefoot under the sun and beg.
After seeing all that, I decided no matter what happened to me,
even if my parents beat me, I would not leave home.
I was even administered shock treatment
in a government hospital.
When you have violence in the home, it suppresses you.
They blame you for spoiling the family name.
They make you believe that you are not worth it,
that you're worth all the badness in the world.
Even theirs.
Surviving that itself…
was a great feat.
Then, gender would take the front seat.
But yeah, it was very hard for that six-year-old.
They drive you crazy by saying that
you deserve this violence, beating, and insult.
After a point…
when your visceral response emerges,
one day you push the other person.
Like, "Enough, this can't go on."
That was at the age of 22 or 23. You know.
Till then, it went on.
That's when I learned how to fight.
The 377 judgment was struck down in 2018.
We were all partying and enjoying.
I didn't know what exactly that meant to me,
but I was still kind of enjoying it because everybody was happy.
Like, homosexuality is legalized.
There was a reporter asking each and everybody,
"What do you identify as? You know, what is your reaction?"
The journalist asked, "What are you feeling?"
I said, "Yeah. I am happy, you know." And then he said,
"What do you identify as?"
I was like, "What do I identify as?
You know, I think I am gender fluid."
So that's the very first time I opened it out.
The next morning, it's in the newspaper.
"21-year-old dancer comes out as gender fluid."
My father called me and asked, "What is gender fluid?
Is it like a potion that people drink and change their gender?"
I had to explain it to them.
They might not get the word even today.
They might not understand if I use it.
But I say that I don't feel like being a man or a woman.
I think I am both.
I am kind of fluid between both of them.
I don't have an urge to change my body.
I am happy with whatever I was born with.
It was easy to communicate about gender first
and then sexuality.
Sexuality is still seen as something that is very out of society,
but gender is something they can at least buy.
For the very first time, I was exposed to the idea of drag
when I went for a walk at Bangalore Pride.
There were a couple of drag performances.
I think I was doing drag…
I never saw it with the English lens of drag,
you know, just dressing up and singing or performing.
I have been doing it for ages now.
But to dress up like that, to look that beautiful
or to look, you know, how they are presenting it, takes a lot of money.
I was researching about drag
and trying to compare it with, you know,
the Indian aesthetics of drag, whatever is happening.
An article on Queerty talked about different styles of drag.
You are just presenting yourself as something that is very confusing.
And the idea of confusion of gender performance
is something that will intrigue people.
So that was something very interesting for me.
So I was like, let me just try this.
So I dressed up,
and my father was the one who was recording it.
I performed the entire thing.
Eventually, what exactly happened was I was putting my work out.
My mom and dad usually follow social media as well.
So they were seeing it and they were kind of happy.
They never came back and questioned me,
"Why are you doing it?"
I think I am very lucky
because I was supported by my parents.
Imagine, I wouldn't have been a drag artist.
I wouldn't have even, you know, thought about
presenting anything in public.
I would have died in my 20s or 30s.
I had some connections with trans people already.
I knew where they lived,
but I didn't feel like going there.
I stayed at the petrol pump.
Then suddenly, their car arrived.
I started crying when I saw them.
I told them what happened.
They said, “No problem. Come. Sit.”
As soon as I entered their home, I wondered where I had come from.
We used to live in small huts,
and this house was something straight out of movies.
There was a big chandelier, sofas,
and huge staircases inside the house. It was so luxurious.
I was flabbergasted.
I forgot the beatings I had received.
I stood staring at it.
Someone summoned me. “Guru is calling you.”
I went upstairs.
She said, “Come. Sit.
What do you like?”
I said, “I like to do makeup.
I like to apply henna. I love dancing.”
She took out the makeup kit.
There were several eye shadow palettes and brushes.
There were several items.
She asked, “What things can you use?”
I said, “I don’t know all this.”
I had only two things that I used to apply.
She laughed loudly. I still remember her laughter.
She said, “Fine. I will teach you.”
I completely settled down there.
I could wear whatever I wanted.
I bought frocks for myself.
I wore girlish footwear and put on makeup
because there were no restrictions.
We got a small wig for me,
and we used to lovingly make two braids in it.
She treated me lovingly like a child.
They started taking me out
to gatherings and various programs trans people went to.
I actually got to know that community.
When I went to the gatherings, their behavior also changed.
They would become gurus,
and I would become their disciple.
They had to show people,
“No, I am adhering to the roles of society.”
They formed their different community
because they didn't get equality here.
But the inequalities they generated for themselves there…
There are many things. If any glass vessel breaks,
they have to pay for it.
It's a kind of penalty.
If you cover your head with somebody's veil,
that is considered the gravest crime.
The person whose veil you have taken becomes your guru.
For a young kid like me, who was leading a normal life,
protecting myself from all these things was quite difficult.
When I understood those things,
I realized that I had left one community and was living with another.
This life is luxurious,
but are people really seeing you like that?
Are people giving you the respect you want and deserve?
I think you always know, you know…
Who or what sort of people you like.
At least gender-wise, not like, other preferences.
So I was experimenting like a lot of gay men who were doing it around that time.
And… I made a move on somebody,
and they didn't appreciate it.
And then they went and told my parents.
Everyone in my family knew that this happened.
So I am a big family embarrassment because of this.
After that, my parents took me to a psychologist/hypnotist.
He was like, “You know why your parents have brought you here?”
I said, “Yeah, I know."
I was like, "It’s because of my sexuality.” And he's like, "Yeah."
My parents said, “We didn’t do anything wrong
while raising Rishi.
Our 'son,' you know, is normal.
And Rishi can't be like this.
There is nothing wrong with our upbringing.”
And… this was scary also because
I didn’t know how hypnotism worked.
He asked me to focus on the pressure of my fingers being intertwined
and just focus on that feeling, and how it feels,
and listen to his voice.
And I am like, I am doing that
because my parents are outside, and they are paying for this, and I have to.
But he's like, "I can hypnotize you into being straight.
I can put you in a sort of trance."
The other type of trance.
Sort of mind space.
"And you will lead your life normally."
And I am like, "What I am leading right now…
What sort of life I am leading right now is normal.”
And at this point, I was super confident
because I had walked up in a sari
and had started being an activist.
So that confidence level, that boost was there.
So I could fight this person head-on.
One, one and a half hours into the conversation, we just…
And he was convincing me to come back.
Then my parents came in,
and they were also like, “You should come back to this person.
Very good. Very nice guy."
We've never had a conversation
from this period to that period about what happened.
When I tried to make a move and this person…
Who I am, what do I feel? Nothing.
We've never had any conversations regarding that.
They just wanted to "cure" me
and not sit down with me and have a conversation.
How was that going to work?
I don't have any good memories of childhood.
There was no teenage.
There was no childhood.
There was no sport. Zero sports.
No enjoying with friends.
No going out with friends.
No school trips.
Nothing.
Very lonely. Under a dictatorship
where life was being decided by others.
When I was born,
my mother wasn't really happy to get married at all.
She didn't want to give birth to children.
She started looking at me as a person even in my childhood.
I was thirteen years or something
when I first heard of the Leela-Urmila case.
I actually went running to my mother.
And my mother's response was,
"How wonderful if women could marry each other!"
And next to her, my aunt was standing,
who was like,
"Women should not marry women."
"Only men should marry women."
So I was very confused that day.
Then it was the kind of men I had seen in my house.
So our house was like a railway station.
Anybody who came to Bangalore would end up being in our house
for an endless number of days.
And I would…
I would feel like, you know,
I want to get out of the house and never come back home.
Because, one, there was the sexual abuse that I went through by them.
And second was the behavior itself.
I felt very uncomfortable with these people around.
I am damn sure they thought
that I wouldn't become a good Kulin Brahmin woman
because my mother wasn't.
So the same fears were being dumped on me.
See, the question of my gender did not come in front of them.
It was my mother who spotted me standing and peeing one day.
And she just… She was this crack person
who wouldn't punish me or any such thing for these things.
She just said, "Oh, I also tried it in my childhood. It didn't work."
That's all.
So my father, my guru, and my mother's guru…
These three men were very different.
And I really…
If at all I ever felt I wanted to be a man,
I wanted to be a man like my mother's guru.
Or my father.
Men who were not that aggressive, screaming kind of people.
And very genuinely soft.
And childhood went like this in severe loneliness.
Initially, it used to…
That's when I became very…
You know, very…
I am very scared of loneliness.
Like, you know, when Kishore Kumar sings in the song…
When I remember you! I feel lonely even in a crowd!
It feels exactly the same.
Can we cut?
Sorry.
For me, transitioning was initially going very well.
When I started getting hormones,
I had changed a lot physically.
My parents also have understood me.
This is one whole year after I came out to them.
Through that journey, I had passed. And the final step
was actually going for gender-affirming surgery.
It was a seven-hour-long anesthesia.
It's a pretty intense surgery.
After the surgery happened, I opened my eyes.
The first thing I realized
was that one of my legs, my left leg actually,
had completely lost sensation.
Suddenly, it made me question everything.
Movement as a privilege was something that I had lost.
What had happened was a nerve had
basically been cut or disengaged during the surgery.
But then, how it is treated is that they let the nerves grow back.
So as they grew back, I used to have
an electric sensation in my leg.
And I used to cry out in the middle of the night.
And that is when I really found the fact
that my parents had actually accepted me.
The care that they had for me…
It came out completely.
What I had thought long back was that
my parents wouldn't really be a part of my journey.
But at that point in time, those four months
of them being there for me were essential.
And not just from the perspective of my body healing,
but I think the relationship that I had with my parents.
We had a lot of conversations during that period.
And they could see me at my most vulnerable.
Here is their child believing in an idea so much
they had gone through a sort of rebirth, a sort of death.
If she is telling us that this is how it is, they completely went in.
I have a younger sister.
I wanted her to marry first
so that the pressure was not on me.
And now, it so happened that I was 21.
I had completed my graduation.
And then the family starts pressuring you to marry.
At that time, my mom was too much into,
"Now you should start seeing grooms.
If you start now, you will find a suitable groom after three years."
I was just like, dude, you have no idea.
My dad has always been like, you know… No, women should study.
Though whatever he has been all his life with his wife,
he is just very different as a father.
On just this factor.
That no. I will educate my daughters.
I will make them capable enough of living independently.
So that is what he always dreamt for us.
And then my mom used to say, "Look. Have a look."
And I got very irritated
because she almost started making my biodata.
I was like, "See my face.
The boy will say, 'Why are you showing me a boy?'"
Then I just told my dad, "See, this Sunday we are going to talk.
See, dude, I am not going to be happy getting married
because I don't feel like it.
Okay? I am not… I don't like the idea of marriage."
So then I said, "See, even if you force me
because that is what is happening from your partner,
I might have to do it, forcefully.
But I am definitely not going to have sex with my partner.
I am not going to behave like a wife to him.
He is going to be unhappy.
When the son is not happy,
the mother is the unhappiest person on this earth.
My mother-in-law will call my mother and say, 'How your daughter is?'
She will instigate her.
And then, finally, they will fight like cats and dogs.
And then what will happen is that finally we will get divorced,
me and my husband.
But I will end up at your place with you in this house.
So then people will know me either as a divorced daughter
or an independent daughter.
So now, you tell me. What do you want?
I am okay with either."
So he said, "Independent daughter."
So that's what I did. I used full patriarchy
to manipulate. And there is no shame in that.
Patriarchy should come to our use too.
She was strangely named Kanaka.
I don't know who chose her name, but Kanaka means gold.
She happens to be my mother…
But I think she is more of a friend.
She is one of the pioneer women sculptors in India,
and she wanted to live independently, doing sculpture.
It was Sunil who first discovered that
she doesn't like to be… My mother doesn't like to mother anybody.
Sunil and I have been friends for the last 20 years.
So when I told Sunil, he was like,
"This isn't anything else.
Your mother must be like us."
I used to give her a sari every birthday,
and then she was like…
Like this.
So once I told Sunil it was my mother's birthday.
He said, "No. This time I will select the gift.
You go and give it. See how she behaves."
She opened it.
It happens to be jeans and a T-shirt.
She immediately ran inside,
wore everything, and came out.
She wouldn't take it off. She was very happy.
I am like, "Why did you keep this away from me?
Because you know that I work for transgender people,
and you also know that I behave like men."
So, she is like…
"I thought you would find out."
I said, "I couldn't."
For me, she is the first person from that generation
I have seen expressing something like this.
You know, why did I even shut my mind thinking that
there could be people who would have been like this?
And they never got a chance.
That is also one reason I will never say
"I am the first trans person to do this",
because you don't know how many of them have struggled
to live a life like that.
And then she opens her mouth saying that,
"I could have been a teacher.
I could have been a painter. I could have been a musician,
but I did not want to do all that
because it can be done by any woman.
I wanted to do something very different."
She said that whenever she chisels with that big hammer
and the iron chisel she holds,
she used to feel her masculine power.
When she died…
Initially, I didn't realize how much I would miss her.
But…
by then, she had seen me as a man.
And put in the effort to call me Rumi.
While sometimes she would forget.
But…
she was more thrilled and she was waiting
to listen to my male voice.
That's what she missed, actually.
My family knew me as an artist,
but I had told my mom when I felt comfortable enough.
She also knew what I was.
A mother knows how her child is.
However, the child is, he is dear to his mother.
I was quite attached to my mother.
Yes, sometimes my mother would talk bitterly,
but I wouldn't take it to heart
because she was the only person who understood me.
I was happy with that.
I was working, doing shows,
and my mother knew that I performed "Lavani" shows.
My mother even stitched my blouse.
But I had to follow my family's rules.
For example, my mother told me that as long as she is alive,
I shouldn't pierce my nose,
or should I wear a sari and come home.
She meant that my life was outside the home.
I had this freedom,
and I was happy with that.
But gradually, the relationships… Like my sisters got married…
I didn't even attend my second sister's marriage.
They didn't tell anybody that she had a brother.
People had started deleting me.
Gradually, my friends became fewer.
Gradually, my relatives became fewer.
Then one day…
One day, my mother also left me.
Actually, I tried very hard to save her,
but I couldn't.
Sometimes I…
wonder if I lost a lot because of this sari.
I lost all of them.
They got deleted from my life.
Sorry…
In our community, we say that a sari is not merely a sari.
It's a shroud.
Once a Kinnar wears it, it stays until the end.
The Kinnar never parts with it.
That's what happened to me.
I lost many acquaintances, relatives, friends,
and sisters for this sari.
But still, I felt that…
I need to let Madhuri emerge.
Because my mother had told me
not to pierce my nose while she was alive.
But after my mother's death, I didn't need to adhere to that.
After my mother's death, I pierced my nose,
wore a sari,
and showed all my relatives that this was my identity.
Whether they accept me or not,
this is how I am going to be.
This was a very sudden relationship.
My first interaction with her was
like somebody had seen something inside me
that nobody else had seen yet.
When I got out of the car, everyone said, "That's the boy.
Catch him."
No one was listening to me.
I didn't elope with her.
She left her family willingly.
She wants to live with me.
If it's a trans person, then use them like tissue paper and dispose of them.
This is one of the mindsets.
That heartbreak was very hard to survive,
and if this love can fail,
then no love…