By Pranay J

Meet Patruni Sastry — the unstoppable force of sequins, sass, and storytelling! A drag queen, dancer, performance artiste, and proud parent, Patruni spins everyday life into glitter-drenched narratives that break binaries and celebrate queerness with unapologetic flair. From dazzling audiences in the award-winning documentary In Transit to strutting drag into living rooms via Bigg Boss Telugu, Patruni proves art can be bold, beautiful, and breathtakingly disruptive. With them (preferred pronoun), every performance is protest, play, and pure fabulous power.

Excerpts:

Let’s start at the very beginning — what was young Patruni like? Were there early signs of the expressive artiste you’d become?

I think my first inception of art or expression was while watching a Tamil film called Padayappa where Ramya Krishna was one of the heroines. I vaguely remember that in the film, the hero rejects the heroine and she screams out loud before breaking into a dance. That was the first time I was able to understand the connection between emotions and dance as an expression of that. She (Ramya) was dancing because she was angry. It connected. I thought I need to be angry, I need to scream out loud and dance. So, that’s what I have done since childhood and somewhere that became a very dominant trait for me — to use art as a way to express my anger, to start with. That also helped me in multiple ways. When I was in school, and later in college, or at any point I felt bullied, I would break into vigorous dancing. People would call me Thaliwale Bhaiya because I used to dance on a plate which is a proper Kuchipudi art form, by the way.

When I returned, a group of queer friends and I were discussing what Hyderabad lacked. Someone said parties, and another said drag artistes. That became the starting point. My initial idea was to train others in drag, not perform it myself. But when a friend challenged me—saying I couldn’t expect others to try drag if I wasn’t willing myself—that pushed me to step in. I initially imagined being a saree-clad drag queen.

On June 9, 2019, we held our first drag show. Many places refused because they saw drag as inherently “adult” or inappropriate, but finally, a small café opened its doors. We went ahead despite rumors that the event was “illegal” or unsafe. I expected around 21 people, but more than 500 showed up. That night, I realized the true power of drag—its ability to bring people together and create something transformative.

You’ve described your drag as more than performance — almost as protest. How do you define your drag in your own words today?

For me, drag is a four-letter word which says dress resembling a gender, and I say it in the simplest way that — for a musician, voice is their canvas, for an artist, a physical canvas is a canvas, and for a theatre person or a dancer, their body is a canvas. For a drag artiste, their gender is a canvas. We create an idea of a gender, a manifestation of a gender, and we exaggerate the idea of it and present it to the audience, sometimes questioning the binaries of gender and sometimes evolving and creating an imagery, which is a manifestation, for a lot of people, of their own gender visibility.

Drag, for me, is a very agile art form, blending with any kind of performative pedagogy. And drag, irrespective of age group, colour, caste, and gender, becomes a space for everybody to explore and create an exaggerated version of gender and present it to people.

In India, drag still exists in a mix of cultural reverence and misunderstanding. How have you navigated performing in that space?

The reason why people think drag is a western import is because I’m using an English word. Having said that, in India, drag has had multiple connotations. For example, we see how men dress up as women performing traditional art forms like Kuchipudi,
Bharatanatyam, and Kathakali. You would see the same in rituals like Theyyam and Bhuta Kola, where men would dress up as gods and then navigate the idea of prophecies. You would see titillating ideas of sensuality and sexuality when it comes to Tamasha or the Lavani art.

However, people still say that drag is not relevant, and it’s always a conversation I love having because there are instances where drag is seen as a borrowed art form from India. I feel that there’s no difference between a drag performer and a Lavani dancer or a Gotipua dancer.

However, for a ticket to a drag show, I get 18% of GST charged, whereas for a Bharatanatyam concert or any kind of Indian classical dance concert, the GST is much lower. So, you see the difference between how exactly a contemporary art form is treated just because we are using an English name.

How I navigate is I try to imbibe a lot of elements from these traditional art forms into my drag, like dressing up in sarees or singing folk songs while performing, and sometimes also blending my education with classical dance and music. I do this so that people can draw relevance to an already existing art form.

You’re also a parent, which is beautiful and rare to see represented. How has fatherhood reshaped you as an artist and human?

Fatherhood has opened me to a sense of circular life. Now when I come back home, I forget whatever is happening around and I just spend my time with my kid. It is very relaxing and soothing as a parent to just watch my kid. It also helps me to redefine my art so that it is accessible for my kid as well. When I started doing drag, it was very specific to a certain age group. And somewhere in the process, I too lost the idea of creating spaces where people can get involved irrespective of age. After becoming a parent, I understood what I can do to create performances and spaces where a queer parent can bring their child too. I was lucky to have my kid at the right time, because it was the time UK and US legislations passed a ban on drag, stating it’s unsafe for children. And here I was, a drag artiste, having my first child… Although it was a very conflicting situation for me, I realized that there is a purpose behind it, which is to tell people that being a parent myself and embracing an art which most parents think is not safe for the kids, I would be able to kind of bridge that gap and join the dots and say that drag can be accessible, drag can be child friendly as well.