 Once upon a time, I went around to several medical shops in my neighborhood, asking for sleeping pills. I didn't know the prescription name. I was 12 years old. And I was naive enough to think that I could acquire the means to a painless suicide just like that. Well, as you can see, my mission was not successful. But in case some of you are wondering why a 12-year-old would want to let go of every possibility that human life has to offer, I'm going to let a picture answer your question. This is a picture of me when I was 12. And for those of you who don't know what is that on my head, it's a turban, which all Sikh boys are expected to wear. You see, I was not born a girl. I was born in a perfectly healthy male body. But since as far back as I can remember, I always felt without even a fragment of doubt that I was a girl. So my biological sex was in constant conflict with my psychological gender, my emotional identity. And it was almost two decades into my life that I figured out that this is actually a recognized medical condition known as gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder. Science doesn't have any real answer for why some people are born with gender dysphoria. But some researchers have tried to find out the estimate of the total number of such people. One such research done in 2011 by Gary Gates, who's a scholar at UCLA, concluded that 0.3% of human beings are gender dysphoric. That's a really small percentage, isn't it? But let's look at the actual numbers. 21.3 million people on the planet suffer from gender dysphoria. It has almost as much as the entire population of Syria or Sri Lanka and just a little bit less than the entire population of Australia. Coming to India, the most recent census for the first time did account of the Hydra population in India. Hydras, as some of you may know, are a very out and very visible socio-cultural community of gender dysphoric people in South Asia, including India. Now, most of these people have been ostracized and rejected by their families and hence are forced to live at the margins of the society. So this census found out that the total number of Hydra population in India, which most activists believe is a very modest estimate, is half a million people. To give you a faint idea of what it feels like to be gender dysphoric, I'm going to request you to consider a scenario. Just imagine that you being exactly the person that you are today, the same likes, dislikes, habits, dreams, the same kind of desire for the kind of partner that you like. Essentially, nothing is different about you, except a dictator comes and tells you that you have to live as a person of the opposite sex and nobody will ever know who you really are. Allow me to use some stereotypes and cliches to explain this better. So if you're a man today, you have to grow your hair long. Your facial hair will stop growing. You have to wear saris and dresses every day. And you have to pee sitting down. If you're a woman today, well, for starters, you have to pee standing up. And you have to give up the diamonds and the Instaglow facials and the mani pedis. And you have to wear shirts and ties to work every day. And you will never be called mother. Imagine living that facade, not for a day or a week, but your entire life. Now imagine living like that when you were 18 years old or 12 or when you were five years old. That's gender dysphoria. Your own body is your prison. And yet you have to hide inside that prison so that nobody can see the real you. So that they won't laugh at you when you walk and they won't bully you or play cruel pranks on you. So that the person you secretly love won't be creeped out by you. So that the world won't call you a freak. You have to hide because you don't fit in. It's suffocating. It's extremely lonely. It's hopeless. When I was 12 years old, I knew in my very bones that I would never be happy. That my life was not worth living. It so turned out that I was wrong. While on the one hand you could call me extremely unfortunate for having been born among those 0.3% kids who are gender dysphoric. On the other hand, I was extremely fortunate to be born to the most amazing parents in the world. Their struggles of dealing with the gender dysphoric child were massive. But their love was never clouded by the worries of what will people say. Surely were confused. They did take their time in coming to terms with who their child was. But what they never did was deprive me of respect. Respect as their child. Respect as a human being. Two and a half decades into living with gender dysphoria later, I made a documentary film on the subject along with a few other friends. We called the film To Be Me. That film helped my parents travel the last mile. As soon as they finished watching the film, my father turned to me and said, So when are you going for the surgery? That moment onwards, they both stood right behind me every step of the way. So once my parents were on board, my extended family, my neighborhood, all my friends, everybody came along on the journey of transition. Don't get me wrong, transition was no party. It was a monster in its own right. I actually like to think of it somewhat like being pregnant. It was exciting. It was painful physically. Hormones had turned my body into a soccer field. There were days when I hated myself with passion, and then there were times when I was a bundle of love for everybody in the world. So yeah, it was quite like being pregnant. Being pregnant for three years and eventually giving birth to myself, my real self. Today when I look back, I can't help but think that my life has been a fairy tale. It's almost like a fairy godmother granted my wish and I transformed magically. Today every new person who meets me, if it's a guy, there are chances that he would flirt with me. If it's a professional contact, he or she tends to give me a little bit more attention. The world embraces me today with open arms and hearts, because today finally I fit in. But what if I didn't fit in to this box of normality in our society? What if my transition hadn't gone as well as it seems to have? And maybe if I still looked androgynous, would any regular person who meets me today be just as comfortable with me? Would the world still embrace me with open arms and hearts? You see, the point I'm getting at is that today, being the way that I am, I don't push anybody out of their comfort zone. It's probably easy to appreciate and accept me because I don't question anybody's idea of what's normal. But what about those who do for no fault of theirs? When people look at hedgerows begging at traffic signals or engaged in prostitution at night, very few look beyond the Adam's apple to consider the kind of trauma and struggle they have gone through to be who they are. We may offer them some loose change or maybe even pity, but would we offer them jobs? Similarly, the effeminate gay man and the butch lesbian are much more mocked at and ridiculed than their straight seeming counterparts. We as a society find it extremely difficult to look beyond mannerisms and appearances at the human being underneath. But you know, I really believe that people in general are good. What makes them do wrong things is fear. Fear of what they don't know, what they don't understand. Today, if the LGBT community is rejected by our society, it's because people don't identify with them. And one way to change that is telling stories, the right stories. Stories of this miniscule minority in a way that the majority can relate to. And I as a Bollywood writer find myself in a unique position to be able to do that today. To tell the stories of these misunderstood characters in a mainstream Bollywood way so that it would reach out to the maximum people. For example, say a romantic comedy about two girls who meet during the Bhangra dance steps practice of a big fat Indian wedding. Or the story of a huge crazy family coming together after years to celebrate a child's new birthday when the child went through a sex change surgery. Or maybe the story of a cop solving a murder mystery along with his super hot, constable, cumb boyfriend. Stories which entertain, which don't preach, which don't screen activism. And yet, they don't derive humour at the expense of someone's identity. They show a glimpse into the lives of these people who may seem different from the outside but are actually just like anybody else. Now, will it be easy for me to make such a film in Bollywood? Write such a film in Bollywood? Probably not until some of my scripts have become hundred-crawl movies. But I plan to stay at it. Because honestly, that is the only way I know to make a difference. To tell stories. Just like today, you know my story. And you may go and tell a few other people. And some of them might be moved. Some of them might be moved enough to help create education and employment opportunities for hijra people. Or at least moved enough to stop bullying effeminate boys. Stories can change hearts. Stories can save lives. Who knows? My story might reach a 12-year-old girl somewhere who is out looking for sleeping pills. Who knows in her very bones that she would never be happy. All she probably needs is a story. A story of hope. Thank you.