“As a middle-school student, I played the role of Chandramathi in the play Harishchandra . My friends said I wasn’t acting but literally living the role,” recalled A. Revathi, a transwoman who was born as Doraiswamy in Namakkal of Tamil Nadu.
After the launch of her book, “A Life in Trans Activism” (published by Zubaan, New Delhi) in Bengaluru on Wednesday, the 48-year old said that Bengaluru has been home to her for more than three decades. The book is her story retold in English by Nandini Murali, with thoughts from Revathi.
“There is no better teacher than experience, and this is exactly the story explained in the book,” she said.
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Revathi traces the atrocities on her, including the trauma she faced when she was raped after her gender change in her teens. “I identify myself as a woman. And more than that, after joining Bengaluru-based NGO Sangama, which works for the development of gender-minority communities, and Vimochana, which works on gender issues, I realised that one has to work against the intense stigma, discrimination and violation of human rights in society,” she said.
In 2003, she was invited to Dhaka to attend the South Asian Court of Women on Violence and Trafficking seminar that came her way through Vimochana. “I was excited about taking a flight, but worried about getting a passport,” said Revathi, who clarifies in the book that “until then, no transgender person had a passport”.
“Sometimes, I feel like I am chasing a fading rainbow,” she said. “It hurts to be gendered differently. Why do we have a blinkered vision that sees just black and white, even as we miss the shades of grey?”
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Revathi’s first powerful memoir, The Truth About Me in 2011, was an inspiration to thousands. But Revathi seems much happier to meet thousands through Sangama, where she has risen from being an office assistant to director. “My greatest delight with Sangama was participating in the Women’s Day celebrations held by Mahila Okkoota, a federation of NGOs in Karnataka,” she said.