Auntie!

I was once Lakshmi.

But, turning my head, whenever someone calls "Mohan" has become a second nature now.

I’m standing on a London movie set, wearing a leather jacket, watching the crew prep for the next scene. The grip is struggling with the lights, and I could probably jump in and help him, but I’m the script supervisor today. I’ve got a black coffee in one hand, and I feel the weight of a world I don’t even have to carry anymore.

Before, I was the professor who was supposed to wear sarees and play the perfect woman. Now, I’m Mohan, my filmmaker girlfriend’s slightly scruffy but ruggedly handsome assistant.

I didn’t plan for this – any of this. But then again, who does?

When my nephew came to stay with me, I was glad to see the person after a long time. But as the time went on, it’s like looking in a mirror, but a warped one? The person's gynecomastia had made them look like me before I’d lost my breasts. It was uncanny – freakish even. A part of me just wanted to scream.

But it wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.

When I went to London on that exchange trip – living as Mohan, pretending to be him – I felt something shift. I was liberated. No more sarees, no more binding myself to someone else’s expectations. I didn’t have to hide who I was anymore, even if I was technically hiding everything else.

There, no one looked at me like I was weak, or wrong, or out of place. Being a man gave me something I’d never had as Lakshmi – a second chance at life. It’s insane how much of the world opens up to you when you’re walking around in pants instead of a saree, with muscles instead of soft curves. People treat you with this bizarre baseline respect, like you’ve earned something just by being born male. You could say that’s unfair, and yeah, maybe it is. But damn, it felt good. Like, intoxicatingly good.

As Lakshmi, I had to hide who I loved. As a woman, you don’t just face restrictions, you face expectations. To marry a man. To be “normal.” To be what they want. But here, in this new skin, it was like the whole world was asking me, “So what do you want?”

I met Charlie on that trip – a brilliant theatre assistant, now a filmmaker, who wasn’t scared of me, wasn’t confused by me. She liked the sharp edges, the fact that I’d lived a life full of strange, winding roads. We had wine by the Thames one night, and I told her everything. From the gender swap to the Nephew-Mohan-as-Professor, to how I’d once been the woman Lakshmi who loved other women. She didn’t flinch. In fact, she laughed. Said it sounded like something out of a Fellini film.

She told me, “You’ve been living in someone else’s script your whole life. Now you get to write your own.”

And damn, she was right. I didn’t want to go back. Not to the woman Lakshmi, not to the professor’s desk, not to the skin that never felt like mine.

It wasn’t the lack of estrogen, the muscles, the short hair – all of that was just surface stuff. What changed, what really changed, was me. Walking around as Mohan, I realized I didn’t want to perform anymore – not for society, not for my family. I wanted to live. And being “Mohan" gave me that. I could just be. No more pretending.

When the new Lakshmi agreed to marry Professor Venkat, it felt like walking through a fog. There I was, pretending to be my own nephew. But, that was the last time I felt wierd about who I am now. Not anymore.

On set, living my own script. I look in the mirror these days and I don’t see confusion. I see a man who loves his life, his work, and the people he’s chosen to share it with.

I’ve heard people talk about gender like it’s this fixed thing, this iron cage you can’t break out of. But here’s the secret: gender is a script. A role. You can rewrite it anytime you want. The future, I think, will understand this more and more. Maybe, one day, people won’t even blink when they hear about someone swapping genders mid-life. They’ll just nod, like, “Yeah, that’s Mohan now. Cool.”