I’d instantly recoil at the touch, before they break into clapping their hands, sometimes playing with hair (for a blessing), while I’d quickly fish out whatever money in my wallet. Just so they leave me alone!

Where could this fear emanate from?

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Like so many cisgenders (those born into the same gender as they identify with), I have no transgender friends—never met, let alone bonded with one, through school, college, workplace….

Is that how fear/othering happens, usually? I suspect popular culture must also be a source. Recall actor Ashutosh Rana as transgender villain, Lajja Shankar Pandey, in Sangharsh—sticking tongue out, furiously rattling lips with fingers. 

I’ve been in Rana’s company at an airport once—it’s incredible how many people, in that short duration, came up to tell him they were scarred for life, by that scene! I was, as a kid, too. It’s been over two decades since. Even the equally scary brothel-owner, Maharani (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), from Sadak (1991), no? 

Both films produced or directed by Mahesh Bhatt. To be fair, Bhatt also directed Tamanna (1997), with a deeply humane transgender person, based on a Mahim man Tikku, played by Paresh Rawal. All these actors in transgender parts being cis men.

Down to the more recently loved, Vijay Sethupathi, in Super Deluxe (2019). Or the last film I watched, Haddi (Zee5; 2023)— essentially, atrocity porn, in the garb of a gangster film, which appeared more an atrocity on the audience, frankly. 

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Did they pull off a whole movie, because the lead actor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, agreed to play transgender there? Quite likely!

Do famous cisgender actors playing transgender roles actually end up mainstreaming a hugely marginalised community, as a result? You could argue that point. 

Either way, what’s a great performance, in the public’s eyes, if not furthest removed from how the actor is, as a person. And what greater challenge for an actor than to pull that off. 

It certainly holds true for former Miss Universe, Bollywood star, Sushmita Sen, as transgender activist, Shreegauri Sawant, in the series, Taali (Jio Cinema; 2023). 

Especially in the younger segment of her role, growing up as a boy, with tinge of green stubble on the face—fighting societal odds, to build a more gender-inclusive world, in general. 

Sawant was involved in the petition in Supreme Court that gave transgenders the official recognition of third gender, in 2014. The show is dramatic enough. Sen is surprisingly sorted, relatively under-stated—hardly ‘naiyka’ (a Bengali word with no English translation), that’s defined so much of her film career. 

These are considered brave choices for popular stars, given lines between their onscreen image and personal selves blur so much in public imagination. You could say the same for Yash Raj heroine, Vaani Kapoor, playing a trans woman in Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021).

Sawant, the actual person, in a cameo, famously stole hearts over a three-minute Vicks commercial in 2017, that evidently humanised transgenders more than most features/series have. You get why. What is representation, as against superficial lip-service, if it doesn’t involve representation itself!

In Taali, Sawant, the character, explains why ghettoised transgenders get forced into begging: “Look at the way they get treated in life. What are the chances someone will offer them a job?” 

This is ironic, because, presumably, nobody offered a transgender person the job of playing transgender, in a series, with a transgender protagonist? What is it, if not a job deprived! It’s not like they’ll be recruited to play cis men or women in our lifetime.

It’s a chicken-egg issue, isn’t it? In films, there’s been the fear that fewer people will show up at the box-office for a face they don’t know. On linear/network TV, with only one piece of content at a time on the screen, ratings could be a similar concern.

The OTT has got no such excuse. It is its own star system—greenlighting material for a permanent library, so diverse, that subscribers grow, and content gets discovered on its merit, eventually. 

There is the other thing that filmmaker Zoya Akhtar mentioned to me, in another context, when I asked her about a certain character in the Made in Heaven (MIH) episode on ‘colourism’, who was actually not so dark-skinned after all. 

“It’s not that the colour of the skin is all that the character will be about. They also have to be suitable (among those auditioned) for the part.”

That’s exactly what we saw in MIH, with transgender actor, Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju, playing Meher, with the same gender identity as Gummaraju. Although that’s not all there is to the character onscreen—who has a regular job, and other equally essential/interesting facets, about them. 

And what’s the point of diversity/representation in popular art, if not to generate empathy by firstly normalising their presence on screen, therefore life itself. 

There, you got a recognisable transgender face from a show then. I’m guessing, more will follow. At least the conversations have begun, making such critiques possible. 

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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