A Revathi is a

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

-based writer and activist working for

LGBT rights in India Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights in India have expanded in the 21st century, although much of India's advancements on LGBT rights have come from the judiciary and not the legislature. LGBTQ people in India face ...

. She is a

trans woman A trans woman or transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity and may experience gender dysphoria (distress brought upon by the discrepancy between a person's gender identity and their ...

and member of the

Hijra Hijra, Hijrah, Hegira, Hejira, Hijrat or Hijri may refer to: Islam * Hijrah (also ''Hejira'' or ''Hegira''), the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE * Migration to Abyssinia or First Hegira, of Muhammad's followers in 615 CE * L ...

community.

Personal life

Revathi was born as Doraiswamy in

Namakkal district Namakkal District is one of the 38 districts (an districts of Tamil Nadu, administrative district) in the States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu, India. The district was bifurcated from Salem District with Namakkal city as headqua ...

in the Indian state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

, and was assigned a male gender based on physiology. As a child, Revathi experienced violence in her school and within her family for her "feminine" ways. She preferred playing with young girls over boys and dressed up as a woman in her mother's clothes, distressed by the feeling of being a female trapped in a male body. Her personal and social hardships affected her academic performance, and she had to drop out of school as a result, having failed the tenth grade. However, when she first met a group of people from the kothi community during a school trip to Nammakal, she felt a sense of kinship and decided to run away to Delhi with them so that she could be true to her gender identity. In

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

, she met a group of people belonging to the Hijra community and began living with them. She later underwent a sex-change operation, which was considered a rite of passage to get formally initiated into the hijra household. After her operation, she was rechristened as Revathi by the guru or head of the household. Though she could finally be true to her gender identity, Revathi discovered the harsh realities of life as a hijra, where social exclusion, violence and sexual assault were all too common. She had to resort to several odd jobs to survive including dancing at weddings, begging and sex work. After some months, tired of her life in Delhi, she ran away and went back home, where she discovered she was not welcome. She subsequently left her home in Tamil Nadu and moved to

for work. While she initially took to sex work, she finally got a job at

Sangama Mekedatu is a location along Kaveri in the border of Chamarajanagar and Ramanagara Districts. From this point, about 3.5 kilometers downstream, the river Kaveri flows through a deep and narrow gorge. Mekedatu means 'goat's leap' in Kannada. Th ...

, an NGO working for the rights of sexual minorities. Here, she was exposed to activist meetings and learnt more about her rights. While she started off as a peon in the organisation, she rose in the ranks and finally ended up as the director. Two sources mention a brief marriage with a coworker at Sangama. She works now as a transgender-rights activist based in Bangalore.

Her literary work and other achievements

Revathi published her first book in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

, ''Unarvum Uruvamum'' (Our Lives, Our Words), in 2004. It is a collection of real life stories of the people belonging to the Hijra community in South India. She credits the book with inspiring other hijra writers to publish their own books, such as Priya Babu's ''Naan Sarvanan Alla'' (2007) and Vidya's ''I am Vidya'' (2008). Following this, she decided to write about her own experiences. She published her second book, ''The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story'', in 2010. The book was written in Tamil and translated into English by feminist historian V. Geetha. According to Revathi, she initially released the book in English and not Tamil to avoid conflict with her family, who featured in her book and did not speak English. The book was eventually published in Tamil as ''Vellai Mozhi'' in 2011. She cites a very prominent Tamil

Dalit Dalit ( from meaning "broken/scattered") is a term used for untouchables and outcasts, who represented the lowest stratum of the castes in the Indian subcontinent. They are also called Harijans. Dalits were excluded from the fourfold var ...

writer

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as one of her main inspirations.

The American College in Madurai The American College, often referred to as American College, is one of the oldest colleges in India, located in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. It was founded in 1881 by American Christian missionaries. The red-brick buildings, in the Saracenic style, b ...

has included ''The Truth about me: A Hijra Life story'' as a part of its

third gender Third gender or third sex is an identity recognizing individuals categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither a man nor a woman. Many gender systems around the world include three or more genders, deriving the concept either from ...

literature syllabus. In 2019, her name was put up at

Butler Library Butler Library is located on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University at 535 West 114th Street, in Manhattan, New York City. It is the university's largest single library with over 2 million volumes, as well as one of the largest bu ...

in Columbia University, along with names like

Maya Angelou Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credi ...

and

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically accl ...

and remained there throughout the fall semester.

Film career

Revathi made her acting debut in the 2008 Tamil film ''

Thenavattu ''Thenavattu'' () is a 2008 Indian Tamil-language action drama film written and directed by V. V. Kathir, starring Jiiva and Poonam Bajwa, with Ganja Karuppu, Ravi Kale, Shafi, Saikumar, and Rajan P. Dev in supporting roles. The music of the ...

''.Two trans-genders to play lead roles in Tamil films
19 May 2008, Filmibeat.com, Retrieved 12 June 2016 In 2022, she appeared in the

Malayalam movie Malayalam cinema, also referred to as Mollywood, is a segment of Cinema of India, Indian cinema dedicated to producing films in the Malayalam, Malayalam language, primarily spoken in Kerala and the Lakshadweep islands. It encompasses both th ...

Antharam, which starred Negha, a transgender actress from Tamil Nadu.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Revathi, A. Writers from Bengaluru Hijra (South Asia) people Transgender women writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Indian transgender writers 21st-century Indian LGBTQ people Indian transgender actresses Indian LGBTQ rights activists Transgender rights activists 21st-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian actresses Indian film actresses