“When we look back on our childhood, we want to remember the good bits. I can’t do that. I was sexually abused when I was seven, because I was so feminine”.

That was Laxmi speaking at press meet to launch her book’

One would predict that the autobiography of a transgender would be an angry, emotional stringing of traumatic experiences. But Laxmi defies all cliches with her book, as she has done with her life. Me Hijra, Me Laxmi, is the celebration of an attitude that has cocked a snook at convention.

“But my life isn’t a tragedy. I was born into an upper-caste Brahmin home, I was treated like a son, I went to college, I’ve had many jobs. I’m not going to sit and cry about what happened, like some Meena Kumari. I’m like Cleopatra — crown yourself honey, don’t wait for the world to do it for you,”

Me Hijra, Me Laxmi unspools her life. From a sexually conflicted young boy to shattering the straight world to become a hijra. And on the way is the harassment by the police, leery men and hijras who preached against safe sex. She honestly pens her own heady days spent chasing men and the limelight.

Till she finds her calling in fighting for the rights of others like her. Laxmi unapologetically raises questions that conformity dreads to answer.

Yes, it is true that I was like a woman. My mannerisms, my walking and talking style were all feminine. But why was it so? I did not know. I wasn’t of the age to answer this question. Loner that I already was, I drifted even further into my cocoon.

I was first sexually exploited when I was seven. I had just recovered from yet another bout of illness and gone to my hometown for my cousin’s wedding. I carried all my medicines with me. My family was around, and so were other relatives, for Indian weddings, as we know, are gala affairs accompanied by much hubbub and fanfare. The house was overcrowded. The adults went about their business, attending to this and that, while we children romped around. As we played, an older boy, a sort of distant cousin, lured me into a dark room and … I was too young to understand that he was molesting me.

Laxmi is not resting on any laurels here, because life has taught her that the tough road has a way of ambushing.

“I’ve been a boy, a homosexual, a drag queen and now a hijra. Put me in any container and I will take its shape,”