Patruni Chidananda Sastry on fatherhood, fluidity, and everyday joy in 'In Transit' and beyond

On a Sunday marked by tributes to fatherhood, Patruni Chidananda Sastry sits in their Hyderabad home, reflecting on a quieter, more personal revolution. “My child is three now. They’re talking, singing, becoming deliciously weird. In many ways, they’re just like me,” says Sastry—a drag artist, classical dancer, software professional, and parent. According to them, joy isn’t just incidental. It is deliberate. It is chosen. And increasingly, it is political.

This layered reality is captured in In Transit, a new docuseries from Tiger Baby Productions, which follows nine queer and trans individuals across India. Sastry’s story—woven through scenes of drag performance, domestic life, and city spaces such as Lumbini Park—offers a portrait of a life that refuses easy binaries. Their inclusion in the series, however, was anything but inevitable.

 

In 2022, Sastry was approached by a production team working on a similar series. It promised to highlight queer identities through drag mentorships. Though Sastry was filmed, the segment was ultimately scrapped. The reason, they were told offhandedly, was aesthetic: Sastry’s drag didn’t align with the “look” the filmmakers sought. “They replaced me with someone from another city and called them a Hyderabad-based artist,” they recall. It was disheartening.

That moment stayed with them. So when Deepti Nagpaul, a journalist and researcher working on In Transit, called to ask about the trans landscape in Hyderabad, Sastry was cautious. They told her not to bother pitching their name. “I don’t have a tragic story,” they said. “I don’t think people want to hear about queer joy.” But the pitch went through, and not long after, a team of three arrived from Mumbai, spending a day in Sastry’s home. There was something different this time: the crew included queer people themselves, not just in front of the camera but behind it—on the production floor, in direction, design, and editing. The gaze, Sastry says, felt safer. “No one asked me to exaggerate. No one mined my pain.”

What followed was a collaboration. The shoot, originally scheduled for December 2022, was pushed to January 2023 to accommodate Sastry’s partner, who was then six months pregnant and facing medical complications. “The team made adjustments—filming at home when needed, ensuring someone was present to support my partner while I was on camera. That kind of care is rare in any industry,” Sastry adds.

 

Filming unfolded at places that held meaning: the clubs where Sastry has performed for years, the public parks where their activism began, the quiet corners of a home layered with expectation and love. Through it all, there was no attempt to alter who Sastry was—not in costuming, not in lighting, not in narrative direction. Sastry explains, “In the past, I’ve had people tell me what to wear, how to do my makeup for the camera. Here, I showed up in my drag, and they simply found ways to light it.”

That integrity extended to the show’s ensemble: non-binary partners navigating faith, bisexual religious leaders, queer couples raising children. Sastry saw in them echoes of their own intersecting identities—Hyderabadi, alternative drag performer, parent, activist, technologist. “We carry many lives within us,” they say. “You could be queer and deeply spiritual. A drag artist and a coder. A trans person and an environmentalist. These stories are not opposites. They are layers.”

And yet, even as platforms like In Transit widen the aperture of representation, Sastry notes how queer narratives remain hemmed in by expectation. “People assume we must always have struggled. That our lives must be sob stories. But that’s not the whole truth.” The more radical narrative, they argue, may be the one of contentment. Of chosen families, sustainable careers, and creative autonomy. “People like us exist,” they insist. “We’re living well. And that should be seen too.”

 

Still, Sastry is not naïve about progress. In the corporate world, where they work in software and consult on inclusion, representation still clings to surface-level gestures. “There’s been a political shift globally,” they note. “After the rollback of protections in the US, a lot of companies—especially those with American roots—have grown more hesitant. Pride month becomes a box to tick. Inclusion ends at the newsletter.”

Even so, visibility matters. Especially when it alters relationships closest to home. Just the day before, Sastry received a message from their older sister—someone who once struggled to understand their identity. “She said, ‘I finally watched the series. I didn’t know this was the kind of work you do. I’m proud of you.” Sastry pauses. “She’d never said anything like that before.”

For Sastry, In Transit has become more than a show. It is an archival memory of a family in formation, of a city rarely depicted, of a form of drag not often seen on screen. Their scenes were shot while their baby was still in the womb. Now, three years on, the child laughs, sings and re-enacts their parents’ performances. “It feels like our family has been documented in time,” they say.

They return often to the idea of joy, not as erasure of struggle, but as its counterweight. “Joy is revolutionary. It reminds the world that queer people aren’t just surviving. We’re living. We’re thriving. And we deserve to be seen in the full spectrum of that experience.”

On mental health, jealousy, and the quiet realities of queer visibility

“There’s been a shift,” admits Sastry. “The biggest difference now, at 33, compared to when I was younger and just coming out, is that I finally know where the resources are. I know who to call if I need help, and I’m not ashamed anymore to say I go to therapy.”

That word—therapy—once carried with it shame, weight and a sense of defeat. But no longer. “Now, I see it as part of the process,” Sastry says. “Part of how I take care of my mental health, alongside performing, parenting, and simply living as myself in public.”

The challenges remain, only now they’re more nuanced. “There’s always this quiet hum of self-doubt and jealousy,” they admit candidly. “Especially in the art world, where you constantly feel the need to evolve, compete, and reinvent. And yes, I’ve felt jealous, especially of younger artists who are doing great work. But I’ve learned to acknowledge that feeling, rather than bury it. Jealousy, after all, is human. And if you’re honest about it, it can be turned into fuel.”

 

For Sastry, the pressure to “keep up” is amplified by their dual role—as a performer navigating drag spaces that are often youth-driven, party-centric, and niche, and as a parent and office-goer whose art now reaches more mainstream, intergenerational audiences. “My crowd isn’t just the club-goers,” they say. “It’s families, it’s people who are just curious or open-minded, queer and straight alike. But when I step into a more specific queer party space—where others are thriving—I sometimes feel like I don’t belong. That used to depress me.”

What changed? “I had to understand where I fit in. The kind of artist I am. I had to stop copying others. I had to find joy in experimentation again.”

The inequality runs deep in society—even within the queer community itself. There are people who feel left behind. And often, they are. Some artists get a lot of exposure, and others—especially those in rural areas or small towns—remain invisible.

 

Sastry cites Teena, another trans person from In Transit, from the Van Gujjar community in Uttarakhand. “Her story was so powerful and inspiring to me, but when I wanted to learn more about her when the cast was announced, I could only see limited stories, with one in Village Square, a publication dedicated to rural reporting. If she had been in a city, her story would be different.”

Location, too, plays a part in what stories get told. “Most documentaries, even those meant to represent diverse queer voices, are filmed in Bombay,” they point out. “Because it’s easier—for funding, for logistics, for casting. Even in Hyderabad, artists from Bombay are often considered cheaper or more accessible than local performers. It’s baffling.”

And then there’s the question of choice. Not everyone wants visibility. Some people just want to live quietly. And we need to respect that.

 

Still, for those who do seek to be seen, the stakes are high and the support, often, is thin. Sastry shares an anecdote from a past writing project, where producers envisioned a Telugu series with hundreds of queer extras. “They thought it would be inexpensive—‘They’re drag artists, they won’t charge much,’ they assumed. But every artist brings a team: hairdressers, makeup, and costume. The budget ballooned.”

And yet, despite the frustrations, Sastry remains grounded. “I’m content now,” they say. “I’m experimenting again. I’ve stopped measuring my worth through others. That doesn’t mean the comparisons disappear—but now I know when to pause, when to seek help, and when to just keep going.”

For Sastry, this is what evolution looks like: not upward or outward, but inward. A quiet calibration of self, art and community—on their terms.

 

Directed by Ayesha Sood, and produced by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, In Transit is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Lead Image: Patruni Chidananda Sastry

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