Caught in a conflict of identities

Some ageing community models, who identify themselves as transwomen, transmen, and gender non-conforming individuals, got a platform to be a character of their dreams while subtly challenging the way sexuality is perceived by society, writes Babli Yadav

Sarvana, a Bharatnatyam dancer

Shobha as Indian God Shiva

Shantiamma went under the knife 37 years ago. She doesn’t remember the date but remembers that Indira Gandhi had died that day. “My guru performed the operation for Rs 150,” she said while makeup was being applied on her wrinkled face before the big shoot. “No one has ever been so nice to me,” she added.

Having gone through the pain of castration, torture by goons and lawmakers alike for just being born as a transgender, she was elated to transform herself for the lens and look like an ancient Indian mythological character.

She was one amongst 12 elderly transgenders, chosen for Truth Dream, an art project which opened at Bangalore International Centre last month. Put together by Payana, an organisation working towards protecting the rights and dignity of the sexual minorities community and Maraa Arts and Media Collective, the event showcased a photo exhibition, live performance and a short documentary intended at blurring the lines between dreams and reality for transgenders and make society see them in a different light.

Shantiamma was accompanied by Shobha, dressed as Ardhanarishwara, an avatar of Hindu God Shiva who is part man, part woman. For Shobha who got married at 21, birthed three children and eventually walked out of her marriage to be true to her identity as a transman, it was not easy to depict this conflicting duality on stage but Shobha did it nevertheless.

On the one hand, while the project gave these ageing community models who identify themselves as transwomen, transmen, kothi, and gender non-conforming individuals from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu a platform to be a character of their dreams, it also subtly and playfully challenged the way beauty, gender and sexuality are perceived by society.

Revathi, a transgender rights activist, author and a popular representative of the community portrayed her true dream of being an authentic Tamil bride. An eloquent Revathi, on stage, not just declared her love for the creator and expressed her desire of being his bride but also performed a classical dance in his praise.

“In our day-to-day conversations, we talk about begging, getting beaten up, partner problems, family related issues but nobody brings up their dreams or desires,” said Chandni, one of the participants and the founder of Payana who came up with the idea around September last year. What followed was an elaborate process of crowdfunding, workshops on counselling and characterisation, costume and background design and many rehearsals. Since the project was inspired by the participants’ cinematic experiences, giant 8ft by 12ft screens were hand-painted by city-based artist Basavachar S to create a backdrop scenery for the shoot.

“We wanted them to actually go back to their dream where cinema was a space of fantasy. The purpose of the backdrop was to offer a visual landscape, the place where the dream actually occurs. We decided not to compromise with digital prints as painting allows for a lot more depth,” explained Ekta Mittal of Maraa whose team handheld the project from start to finish and also conceptualised a book titled Kannadi taking inspiration from the Truth Dream project.

She reiterated that the idea behind Truth Dream “wasn’t to make people sympathetic towards the community, but let the audiences dismantle their own opinions about certain marginalised communities.” Furthermore, while identity was just one aspect of the project, focus on oppression, caste and class discrimination and ageing were other points accentuated.

The project not just received financial aid on crowdfunding platform Milaap, it also gathered backing from the Funds for Global Human Rights based in America and Global Human Capability Fund.

Apart from Shobha, Shantiamma, Revathi, Chandni, the exhibition featured Bernie, Sarvana/Shakila, Bhanu, Lakshmi, Nadhiya, Devi Parveen, Reshma with a collection of black and white and coloured stills captured by photographers Rudra Rakshit Sharan and Jaysingh Nageswaran.

“We fought for our rights and made a better life with more opportunities for the younger community people, but us older people couldn’t realise some dreams that we had for ourselves in the prime of our life. Our life became a fight, a struggle. This project is a blessing for my generation of people,” Revathi said.

Are there more dreams in store, we ask? “There is so much talent within the community. We’d like the idea of our very own theatre group which can help us in taking our stories to people. Payana had successfully organised a job fair three years ago. We’d like to create more job opportunities for people from our community,” revealed Chandni while adding that a tiny dream is to travel abroad with friends from the community, especially to Thailand and learn about the trans healthcare setup there.