Sometimes I wish I hadn’t quit basketball as I really enjoyed the game. But facing dysphoria around people at that time was really difficult, and I'm glad that I quit for the sake of my mental health.

I didn't have the vocabulary to express the pain I was going through in school. I didn’t know how to describe how uncomfortable I was. They would have never understood. I wish I had this kind of vocabulary that I have now.

Sometimes our coach would shuffle the men’s and women’s teams so that we could all practice together. The men players would space-hog the court, but there was still the least amount of discrimination. I really enjoyed those moments.

I hope we can remove those gendered barriers that are set in the game. I hope we can remove the concept of teaming up members according to gender specifics. Especially on a large level, I hope we can change the rules of the basketball world.

There's this notion that a woman who’s trans, might not be interested in sports, because feminine people don’t play sports.

With the trans folks coming to our shelter home, we often play cricket or football on weekends, and they say, "I really enjoyed. Nobody gave me a chance to play like this."

It's not that queer and trans folks don't like to play sports. There are a lot of us who would love to play if we can make it inclusive or accessible for us. It’s just that we usually don’t get the chance to play in a way that’s comfortable to us.

The way mainstream news talks about athletes is like 'this woman has a masculine body and that's why they can play sports.'

Even if that person is a woman, and is playing really well, they have to portray that person as a masculine person. Why is that so? How can you put masculinity or femininity in sports?

We need to change that narrative and remove these ableist and binary gender norms in sports rules.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta]