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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Indian drag scene is a messy place—and yet full of possibilities

There may be much more than money to blame for my inability to partake in drag, but I am not alone in feeling that the craft feels too inaccessible in India.

I fell in love with drag—where performers create an exaggerated persona of gender—at 19. It started in university, when a straight girlie introduced me to Drag Race. The show revived a desire buried under years of coaxing and control.

I was six years old when I first saw Aishwarya Rai’s decade-defining angdai in Kajra Re. After that, whenever I went to play at my neighbours’, I would lift my chubby hand and do the slow walk she does at the end of the song, twisting my wrist just so. Uncle, aunty, and didi would clap every time, and I would nod with pride. If Bhansali were in the vicinity, my spot in Bajirao Mastani was certain.

But the fourth time Aish possessed my limp wrist, my mother put an end to it. I don’t remember if it was a whispered warning or a quick slap, but there was no more Kajra Re after that. That is, until I was 12 and learning a semi-classical routine to Taal Se Taal at summer camp, bless the instructor didi’s instinctive allyship. But my mother saw me teaching my younger cousins the moves—three of them boys—and asked the instructor to teach me some ‘boy’ songs. I was forced to perform to Mast Kalandar from Hey Baby. The indignity!

Eventually, I cut away every feminine frill of my being and became a man. So, RuPaul’s ultra-American show was somehow a homecoming. I decided I would win the first season of Drag Race India.

Also read: Is there an Indian way to be gay? Most of us learn about queerness from American TV

Flash forward seven years,........

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