Rose India's first transextual TV show host.

NYT has a story on Chennai's first transgender TV host, Rose.

By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
Published: February 20, 2008
CHENNAI, India — India’s newest talk show host, billed as the local Oprah Winfrey, hitched up her sari and looked for her stylist’s approval. “Very feminine. You look gorgeous, like a goddess,” he said, smiling reassuringly, as he braided a garland of fresh jasmine into her hair.


Rose, host of a new Tamil-language show, was once known as Ramesh Venkatesan.
“The sari is the most flattering garment,” he added, as he touched up her makeup minutes before the cameras started rolling. “It disguises manly shoulders, takes attention away from a masculine neck.”

A complex procedure even for experienced hands, the process of tying a sari is particularly hard for Rose, who was raised as a boy, and used to be known as Ramesh Venkatesan. Her mother never taught her the skill and refuses to see her wear one. Even so, the outcome was flawless.

When it is broadcast on Vijay television to an audience of up to 64 million people in the southern state of Tamil Nadu later this month, “Ippadikku Rose” (“Yours, Rose”) is expected to cause a sensation, introducing India’s first transgender celebrity to television.

The show’s director, Anthony Thirunelveli, said the half-hour talk show had been conceived as a program suitable for family viewing but would discuss issues of sex and sexuality, confronting “hush, hush, under the carpet subjects.” The first nine episodes will tackle, among other things, divorce, sex and relationships among the mostly young employees in India’s call centers, and sexual harassment.

The main attraction will be Rose herself, who now goes by only one name. A poised, 28-year-old, American-educated former Web site designer with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, she started wearing women’s clothes full time four years ago and is still waiting for acceptance from her family and society at large.

If nothing else, the show will start to propel downtrodden groups of transsexuals, or hijras, into the mainstream. Known as the third sex, most are born male but see themselves as women.

Hijras appear in positive roles in Indian mythology, but modern society has tended to be less tolerant. A majority are shunned by their families. Many find it impossible to obtain conventional jobs and turn instead to begging and sex work for a living.

“Transgenders in India are seen as immoral and evil,” Rose said, calmly leafing through the script of her first show — an interview with a prostitute about her recently published autobiography. “I will break that image by being articulate, intelligent and a bit like the girl next door.”

“This is a radical development,” she added. “There have been transsexuals in Indian movies, but always as the object of ridicule or as villains. This is the first time in the history of Indian television that a transgender person has been featured as a television anchor.”

Pradeep Milroy Peter, who leads programming at Vijay, a Tamil-language channel owned by Rupert Murdoch, acknowledged that he was nervous about how the show would be received.

“We don’t know how much acceptance there will be,” he said, straining to make himself heard as builders, electricians and lighting technicians hurried to finish the set. “We are crossing our fingers. The market has a craving for talk shows, but this one comes with a difference. It’s very experimental.”

His anxieties are understandable in a country where the boundaries of sexual tolerance are shifting daily, with much uncertainty and unpredictability. Fashion TV was briefly banned for showing too much flesh; a film star’s career was threatened after comments that appeared to condone premarital sex; and fringe political groups like nothing better than to stir noisy (and often spurious) paroxysms of moral outrage.

The channel was not searching for controversy, but executives were so impressed by Rose’s screen presence and determination to fight prejudice that they agreed instantly to give her a show despite her lack of experience.

“People here will not openly let transsexuals into their homes,” Rose said, disclosing that she had deliberately isolated herself from college friends and neighbors to avoid rejection. Her middle-class parents threw her out when she announced to a group of 40 family members, gathered to agree on a suitable bride for her arranged marriage, that she was not interested in women.

“I’d already grown my hair long and had laser treatment for my facial hair, but they were still hoping I’d act like a boy,” she said. “There was utter silence when I told them.” For a while, she supported herself by working in a call center, but her contract was not renewed after she started dressing as a woman. In the hustling streets of Chennai, she is always stared at and sometimes abused.

Recently, she has returned to live with her parents, but the pressure to conform to societal expectations remains strong. “They are like, ‘O.K., you are a transsexual, but don’t dress like that at home, and please get married.’ ” There is quiet hostility to the talk show project from her mother, who still hides Rose’s dresses and jewelry whenever she gets a chance. Only her grandmother has given her blessings for the show.

Rose said attitudes were no less hostile in parts of the United States, where she had spent three years studying at Louisiana Tech University. “There, people were aggressively homophobic,” she said. “America is very hypocritical when it comes to its stand on sexual minorities. Historically, India was very progressive about this until the British came and imposed a Victorian sense of morality, which still remains.”

Editing the program will be a delicate dance around invisible frontiers.

“The show will be groundbreaking, but we have to think about our audience,” said Mr. Peter, the Vijay television executive. “South Indians are very reserved, very conservative.” Sex before marriage might be discussed, but only in the context of college graduates, not anyone younger. Gay rights would be tackled in the abstract, but not gay relationships.

Rose said she had no desire to shock, but just hoped that she would be watched.

“As a person, I am very open, but this is a big television channel which goes out to millions of people,” she said. “We don’t want any bad reaction.”

She said she felt it would be fine to talk about hormone therapy and her coming sex change operation. But discussing her true feelings about marriage, for example, would still be too much of a taboo.

“If you were to ask me, I would say that marriage is unnatural and causes most of the problems in married people’s lives,” she said. “But marriage is such an established concept in Indian life, I won’t be able to question it. I don’t want to frighten people away. I want to reach out to them.”