‘The Number of Excuses to Not Cast Trans People Is Decreasing’: Trinetra Haldar

Trinetra Haldar is an actor and a content creator who shot to fame with her YouTube channel ‘The Trinetra Method’, documenting her journey as a trans woman at the age of 22. Now, at 27, she is featured in the Amazon Prime web series Made in Heaven and a docuseries called Rainbow Rishta.

In an interview with The Quint she got candid about her career journey, the difficulties of being in the medical profession, her journey as a trans woman, the recent National Medical Commission report, how her relationship has changed with her mother through the years, and more.

Trinetra reflected on her experience after undergoing sex reassignment surgery, emphasising how it brought her a deep sense of comfort and a profound feeling of peace:

I remember waking up from surgery and just feeling like, okay, so basically, this is what I should have been born as. And feeling that sense of peace and congruence, it feels like giving birth to yourself. There is pain and there is this dramatic life event and then you look at yourself and you realise, this is me. And that's, yeah, that was a very defining moment in my life.

Trinetra Haldar to The Quint

She further talked about her decision to switch careers from being a doctor to an actor and spoke about how both the journeys have added to her life:

Was it difficult to step away from the stability of medicine? Yeah, it was. Because you get into it knowing that this is for life. And it offers a sense of respect and stability and purpose when you wake up every single day. But as an actor, that's not what life looks like. You don't wake up at six in the morning, seven days a week thinking I will save a life today. But at the same time, I have also seen how when kids reach out from the community, parents reach out and they say that this did save my kid's life on some level. It doesn't feel that different from being in the hospital.

Trinetra Haldar to The Quint

"This whole idea that you can only contribute to society in engineering or doctor ways is not true. You can contribute to people's lives very meaningfully in many ways," she added.

She also threw light on how her relationship with her parents has changed since she came out. She said:

Another really beautiful aspect of my life is my relationship with my mom. Mom and I didn't talk for many years properly after I came out because she didn't get it. Dad didn't get it either. When people see the final happy image, they don't realize what's gone into making that happen. But to now see her share like 30-year-old sarees with me. And to be like 'this is now yours and this is your inheritance', that feels incredible because you don't grow up thinking that you will inherit what women inherit, right? In the form of love, in the form of these little things.

Trinetra Haldar to The Quint

She also spoke about the recent report by the National Medical Commission which re-introduced topics like sodomy and lesbianism as 'unnatural sexual offences' in its revised forensic medicine curriculum for undergraduate students, "You are saying that bestiality and queer people are the same. It’s unfortunate that so much regressive nonsense is peddled as science and medicine to this day."

The report had also reinstated focus on virginity, hymen and defloration as a legal medical concepts. The NMC then also issued revised guidelines for its curriculum rolling back the changes.

These topics had earlier been scrapped in accordance to a directive from the Madras High Court in 2022.

Watch the video for more.