My fragile health, however, did not prove a damper to my love for dance. I love dancing. In childhood, Bollywood songs invariably set my feet dancing to their tune. As a result, in school I was always selected by my teachers to perform on stage. The stage had a hypnotic effect on me. Once on it, I would forget who I was and danced to a frenzy. Nothing, not even my chronic breathlessness and cough, acted as a deterrent. I thus came to regard the stage as an oasis in the desert of ill health. But my flamboyance on stage made some people uncomfortable. In patriarchal, misogynistic cultures such as ours, dancing is seen as a womanly pursuit. So I was teased. People began to call me a homo and a chakka. They couldn't see the cathartic and therapeutic effect that my art had on me. All they could see was that though I was a man, my body language was that of a woman. Yes, it is true that I was like a woman. My mannerisms, my walking and talking style were all feminine. But why was it so? I did not know. I wasn't of the age to answer this question. Loner that I already was, I drifted even further into my cocoon. Occasionally, I peeped out of my shell and opened up to a few trusted friends. These were my classmates—both girls and boys who were with me at school. Then there was my cousin Vijaypratap, whom we affectionately called Dadibhaiya because he kept a beard. He lived with us and was much older than us. But he loved us dearly and we thought of him as our eldest brother. At times he escorted us to school and brought our tiffi n boxes to us at lunchtime. He also helped mother with the household chores. In my sickbed, I chattered with him non-stop. His job was to give me my medicines at the right time, skipping not a dose. When Dadibhaiya got married, his wife Chaya also came to live with us. Soon, they had a daughter, Sonu. She was such a bubbly and healthy child, a veritable toy to us. We teased and pampered her. My brother Shashi, an ace prankster, would throw her up in the air and let her gently tumble to the ground, sending us in splits as that roly-poly of a baby landed on the floor. Then tragedy struck. Dadibhaiya contracted jaundice and died of the disease. How I cried when he died. Dadibhaiya was so compassionate. No one understood me as well as he did. To me, personally, the loss was irreparable.

R Raj Rao

Slapdash Sexuality

Third Sex, First Voice