Make No Mstake

Meet Shakti and Badshah, the drag kings who morphed from Durga and Bidisha, giving sexuality a fresh take in a not-so-liberal country

- Lachmi Deb Roy

In a disarmingly simple way, Shakti and Badshah are a blurred line between man and woman. They are both combined—a juddering reminder for many of us in our closed society of the whys and wherefores of the new gender spectrum. And because of them, it’s suddenly fashionable to be gender fluid—to be non-binary, to be androgynous, to be KINGS when they are destined anatomically to be QUEENS. Yes, they are DRAG KINGS—performing onstage in men’s clothing and dismantling stereotypes that make us think of queens when drag culture pops up in conversations.

Ah, if someone could tell Durga Gawde aka Shakti and Bidisha Mohanta aka Badshah were women!

Sculptor Durga was in kindergarten when the young mind tried to fathom why restrooms for shorts and skirts are different. “Doesn’t everybody just have to pee? What’s the difference?” A friend replied: “It is because some people have a pipe and some a hole.” Durga understood the shift early on and as time passed, the ‘he’ and ‘she’ got replaced with ‘they’—Durga, a beautiful woman, and Shakti, a handsome man, residing in the same body.

A day in the life of Badshah is all about channelling the king within her, performing like there is no tomorrow, winning hearts. It’s like looking at a silhouette—the shape or general outline of the body; good symmetry, relatively wide shoulders, a small waist-hip structure. Bidisha aka Badshah is a singer and finalist at India’s Got Talent Season 8. Being drag was not something she decided to—it came to her naturally. Unapologetically queer, Bidisha has always been open about her sexuality. For her, being a drag king complemented an ever-evolving persona. “I came across a YouTube video in which Landon Cider was transforming women into drag kings and that’s how I realised I could do it too.”