[continued]

Moving on to a story about nose piercings — sorry, Department of Anatomy I have nothing against you but y'all are just horrible.

My therapist said, ‘If you want to try exploring gender euphoria, try to experience what a little bit of mascara might make you feel like — not that that necessarily equates to womanhood, but why not try?’

I started doing that — I put on a bit of mascara, I wore clothes that are more floral, and got my nose pierced because in India, it's very common for women to have their noses pierced in many cultures.

So there was an exam in the Dissection Hall, there’s cadavers laid out, students were preparing, I was studying, and the HOD of Anatomy told me to get out: ‘Because you have a nose piercing,’ she says.

I wish I said, ‘So do you.’

Why is me wearing a nose piercing such an issue —it's a piece of metal sitting on your nose, its flesh.

She says, ‘It's against Indian culture and patients are not going to accept you.’

I respond, ‘When was the last time you saw a patient, darling?’

I was really mean but she was being very, very, very condescending.

I said, ‘I don't want to take it off. This is part of my gender expression. It's my constitutional right to express the way that I wish. There is no rule in college preventing this from happening? So you have absolutely no basis to be doing this.’

She convened a panel of the entire anatomy department —residents, professors: no one said anything. There were 250 students sitting there, she was screaming: nobody said anything.

She told me to go to the jeweler to take it off.

I came back later to find that I was banned from the anatomy department for a piece of metal. I broke down in the boys hostel badly that day. I’d always been a straight-A student. But for the first time, a small attempt at being myself, could hinder my access to education. That was very depressing.