Girl Uninterrupted

Her journey may be an ongoing one, but ANJALI LAMA never did let the fear of social norms come in the way of her true identity. SNEHA MANKANI meets the model and finds out: Is India really ready for a gender-fluid future?

- Sneha Mankani

In a world where dystopia isn’t just experienced in the pages of a novel and good news is often outnumbered by the bad, you come across women like Anjali Lama, a transgender model, who, with their unshakeable determination have you believing that we aren’t, just yet, bereft of good over evil. This isn’t to say that the transgender community—aside from its pervading presence across various industries globally, from fashion to politics—is completely welcomed with open arms in our country. Her heart still sinks when a phone call doesn’t arrive after an audition; when a landlord refuses to let out a house because she’s neither male nor female in ‘papers’. Then there was that time when her school friends constantly made fun of her “girly behaviour” when she was Nabin Waiba Tamang, the little boy in a small village in Nepal, who was anything but that in his heart…

“As a child I always fantasised about wearing what girls wear, behave the way they do, be with them and try to be them. The desire never faded, but at that time I had no clue that I was ‘normal’ to feel that way,” Lama recalls. Under constant pressure of being taught “the right way to behave,” Lama often tried hard to be a boy, but the pretence would only last a few hours until she became her happy, girly self again.