What A. Revathi's memoir ‘The Truth About Me’ teaches us about transgender lives

On 11 December 2013, a two-member bench of the Supreme Court dealt a body blow to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in India when they overturned a landmark 2009 judgement by the Delhi high court that had deemed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code unconstitutional. It took another five years of protests, appeals and legal arguments for the community to get the apex court to read down this draconian law. As the judgement was being delivered, Justice Indu Malhotra, one member of the bench, made a statement in her concurring opinion that has been widely quoted and shared since.

“History owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries,” she wrote, referring to the queer community. “The members of this community were compelled to live a life full of fear of reprisal and persecution.”

Eight-odd years later, India’s queer community is once again confronted with a historic injustice. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 has just been passed by both houses of Parliament. President Draupadi Murmu gave her assent on 30 March, making it law. However, large gatherings of LGBTQ+ community members and their allies oppose it because the Act undermines one of the fundamental rights of trans people: the right to self-determination of their gender identity.

For cis-gendered people, the idea of gender fluidity may be difficult to grasp. Even if it makes sense theoretically, the ground reality of being and living as a transgender person is hard to envision. The problem is accentuated by stereotypical depictions of trans people—mostly trans women who are the more visible members of the community—in popular culture, media and mythologies.

However, in the last few years a series of autobiographies by members of the community—Smile Vidya’s I Am Vidya (2013), Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015) by Laxmi, Kalki Subramaniam’s We Are Not The Others (2022) and The Yellow Sparrow (2023) by Santa Khurai, among others—has sought to convey the visceral realities of the trans experience to a general audience. One of the earliest books in this growing line of life writing was A. Revathi’s The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story, published by Penguin Books India in 2010 in historian V. Geetha’s translation.

Over the last few days, I have been revisiting Revathi’s story, which I first read 15 years ago, and reckoning with the lines of devastation that connect the past and present. Born in a village near Namakkal in Salem district of Tamil Nadu, Doraisamy could have opted for a regular life like his elder brothers did: driving lorries to deliver milk for a living and raising a family. Instead, he turned out to be what his family and neighbours labelled a “girl-boy”.

Ill at ease in his body, Doraisamy felt most alive when he dressed up as a woman and danced at the Mariamman festival in his village. Despite taunts from society, rebuke from his parents, and violent beatings from his brothers, he ran away from home and joined a community of hijras, who became his chosen family. Eventually Doraisamy emerged as Revathi (the name inspired by the famous Tamil actress) and lived an itinerant existence, cared for by her guru and nani (elders of her hijra clan) in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and elsewhere. She was also a victim of abuse and hatred from fellow hijras, who envied her for her looks and demand among her clients when she started doing sex work.

The raw, unfiltered, and often graphic narrative style of The Truth About Me can feel triggering, yet it is also the reason why memoirs like Revathi’s (and others like her) are so valuable—not just as personal testimony but also as social history. Apart from taking the reader into the inner workings of the hijra ecosystem, a complex familial structure with its unique rules and decorum, the book reveals the peculiar moral inconsistencies of the rural community where Revathi grew up. Until she was a “girl-boy”, the whole world made her fodder for ridicule, casual violence, and transphobic slurs. But once she returns home, not as a prodigal son but as a woman who has had “the operation”, the hostility transforms into confusion, even awe.

In a memorable instance, the priest allows Revathi to enter the temple of her family deity, a “virgin goddess”. It’s a place that is out of bounds for women who have not yet stopped menstruating. Since she looks no different from a woman, everyone around her assumes she is one and tries to prevent her from entering the temple, though the priest, who had known her since childhood, is wiser. Once he dispels the confusion, Revathi overhears someone in the crowd say, “You’re not like us, you’re like the goddess, unblemished, unlike us who’ve done wrong.” It is a strange moment of validation as well as denial—an acknowledgement of the difficulty the rest of the world runs into when trying to fathom the “third gender” identity, but also a form of acceptance tinged with respect towards such a person.

Revathi experiences a similar dilemma with her parents, too. While her mother is unequivocal in her disapproval the first time she learns about Revathi’s gender-reassignment surgery, it is her father who offers his support. He urges her to fight for her rightful share of property even as her brothers threaten her with dire consequences if she did so. Is this an inner voice of justice speaking on her behalf? Or is it the irrational force of parental love that finally breaks through all prejudices?

Since the publication of her book (the original Tamil edition came out a year after the English translation), Revathi has become an icon for transgender rights. Her autobiography is studied at colleges and universities around the world. It has been adapted for the stage and a version of it has been performed by Revathi herself as an extended monologue. Having joined Sangama, an NGO that works for transgender rights, she has become a leading voice among activists. Her life and career have changed in ways she could have scarcely imagined—as have the times we now live in.

In 2026, trans rights are being publicly discussed and debated, and proudly fought for. Yet, there are still many Doraisamys, ill at ease in the body they were born in, dressing up in women’s clothes, and bullied by society. Role models like Revathi braved the storms and stresses, and lived through hell, so that the younger generation can live with dignity and pride. The newly amended law not only disregards the rights of the queer community but also makes a trifle of all the pain and sacrifice they had to collectively endure to get to this point.