"I am Sowmiya The Great"

I met Sowmiya in Chennai when I went to watch the play "Aanmayo Aanmay" directed by Mangai. The play was yet to begin in Spaces, a wonderful threatre in Besant Nagar. We were just hanging around meeting many friends. Somwiya was also around and I met her. She spoke and I too spoke. 

 
I went to Chennai again to do the video interviews and Srijith our friend and a theatre director of the group Kattiyakkari reintroduced Sowmiya to us. And this is "Sowmiya the great". She is my age. Initially she said that she has training in beauty parlor work. Later we came to know that she is an actor too and has acted in some plays.   

Talking about her work as a beautician she said that because she is a transgender person many people refuse to avail her services and so it is difficult for her to work in a mainstream beauty parlor. She then started going to people's houses to give beautician services. Mangai and friends like Mangai call her home to get services. But that is not enough for her livelihood. She has the strength to keep trying and trying to establish herself as a beautician.  After she acted in a play called "Molagapodi" of the Kattiyakkari group, which got staged in many places, people started recognizing her and came to know that she is a beautician. And now many people call her for beautician work. I wish her all the best in her acting and in her career.

Naan Oru Chindu ......Sankari

Naan Oru Chindu (a Tamil film song).... she sang this for us and said that it relates to her life......Every time we would go to Tamil Nadu for work, mostly crisis intervention of lesbian, bisexual women and female to male trans people (LBT), she is there ready to work with us. She is always pleasant and also relieving us of our tensions. She always says that LBT community is not like our Aravani community. There is no support for them and so she is always ready to help in any worst crisis situation.   The work that she has done for us cannot be called as help, it is this bond of friendship and extension of the feeling of belonging that we share.

Sankari is also a theatre activist and has been part of many plays. She is now working in Nirangal an organization working for peoples' rights. Here is another wonderful friend that you all can know about.

Questioning Gender

Taejha, our dear friend and an artist who is exploring Dance as an art beyond genders. There are very few people and very few artists who bring in the politics of body, genders and sexuality in art forms. Only a few artists like Taejha are able to critique the patriarchal systems and gender restrictions on both sides (how women should dance and how men should dance) in arts like dance.

Taejha in 2011 Bangalore pride performed at the Mela and immediately my many friends and I just flocked around Taejha after performance. Taejha's body and dance movements just broke many gender rules that we could generally see in traditional art forms like Bharathanatyam and Mohini Attam. Taejha presented a piece in Mohini Attam (predominantly a woman's perfomance) and that body of Taejha expressed so many shades of genders.

When I planned my trip to Tamil Nadu for video interviews I was very doubtful if I could get Taejha's interview.  In moment of total confusion of schedule of interviews Taejha agreed for the interview and it was wonderful to spend time with Taejha. I sincerely wish Taejha continues this very interesting and questioning gender in dance.

Dance Is Their Life

These friends, Ponni and Anjali from the Aravani community in Chennai, against all odds struggled to learn Bharathanatyam and become teachers. They have established a dance school in a working class area where they are respected as dance teachers. It is now 2nd year. Initially they had only community students. Now they have people from the area, children and many others. They have 30 students and they are earning their livelihood from the school. They also perform outside and act in plays.

 The area where they teach is not an area which belongs to affluent class. It is a Dalith colony. It is a working class area where people are cobblers, vegetable vendors, people who make breakfast and take it to rich areas and sell, and so on. It is these people's children who come to learn Bharathanatyam from Ponni and Anjali. They identify themselves as women and their students also do not question them nor the area people. It is simply amazing that how Ponni and Anjali have broken the caste restriction around the traditional dance making it easily accessible to all and train students to become performers.

SMILEY

I saw her in a play directed by Mangai in Tamil Nadu. The play was called 'Anmayo Anmay' (Macho-O-Macho). She was doing this play along with other common friends like Ponni Arasu. We all from LesBiT went to watch this play in Chennai. The play was staged in Bangalore and she came and stayed with me and Sumathi in our house. It was wonderful time we spent. Then told her about the oral history documentation work on LGBTI people that we were doing and she immediately agreed to give us an interview and insisted that we stay in her house. We too agreed.

Smiley..... full of smiles and also most intense complex person who has struggled hard in life to be what she has wanted to be - an actor, writer, theatre director, one who has worked in films, activist and so many other things. Smiley lives in Chennai and is the first one in the community to have written an autobiography about the experience of transition of male to female.

Personally she is one who keeps talking laughing and entertaining and very friendly. In her house where she lives it is like a house of an activist and an artist, There is beautiful painting pasted to the mirror of her cupboard. Many photos of Bob Marley all around. She is one of the few people who initiated herself into the Aravani community and after living the life willfully came out to explore the life independently on her own doing theatre.

She before initiating into the Aravani community was had finished post graduation and after the initiation for it was her desire, followed all the customs of Aravani community even though she was very well educated. She comes from a working class and Dalith caste, who struggled hard to educate herself and also worked in a Bank. Even when we said we wanted to do her video interview and looking for a location, she preferred 'Spaces' - a theatre space where she has acted many times and said that, that place brings out her most intimate being of herself. This theatre space is in front of the Besant Nagar beach.