Biography

Patruni Sastry is an Indian drag performer, actor, Indian classical dancer, and model. He is the founder of the online drag platform DragVanti. He is considered Indias first drag queen. [9]Zee Zest.He was born in Kharagpur, West Bengal, and later, he moved to Hyderabad, Telangana. Patruni Sastrys childhood picture with his sister.When he was 7 years old, he watched a Telugu dubbed Tamil film Padayappa (1999) in which the Indian actor Rajinikanth rejected Ramya Krishnan in a scene after which Ramya screamed loudly and danced fervently. In an interview, while talking about it, Patruni said, What fascinated me the most in the movie was a character called Neelambari which was played by Ramya Krishnan. In a sequence, upon being rejected by the hero, she screams loudly and dances vehemently. That was the very first time I saw someone dancing and I thought that if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to scream out loud and dance. It started when my mom didnt give me my favourite chocolate. I started to dance in range to ensure that I got one..His father then noticed that he was inclined towards dancing, so he asked Patruni to start his training in the Indian classical dance form under his aunt, who is a Kuchipudi dancer.From class 1 to class 7, he did his training in Bharatanatyam under his guru Kalamandalam Venkitt in Kolkata. Patruni Sastry performing in his schools function.Patruni then continued his training under various dance forms like Odissi, Contemporary, and Butoh. Patruni Sastry did his training in Bharatanatyam under Sri Kalamandalam Ventak in Kolkata, Smt Vaidehi Subhash, and Sri Hari Mangalampalli from Hyderabad. He is trained in Oddisi dance form under Swayam Pragyan Shahoo and Preeti Mohapatra. He did his training in Kuchipudi dance under Sri Siva Kumar. Patruni Sastry is trained in Butoh (an Avant grade art form) under Adam Koan from Japan.At the age of 14, he gave his first drag performance in the traditional Kuchipudi dance form. His mother did his makeup, and his father clicked his pictures during the same event.During an interview, he shared that in childhood he picked dance over PT for which his PT teacher made fun of him. He said, I remember being this way even when I was a child. When I was in class V, we had choice of attending PT class or dance class. I chose dance. I even learnt dance for about three weeks, until my PT teacher stormed into class one day and started abusing me for taking dance instead of PT. PT is meant for boys and dance is for girls, he said. That is my first memory of being exposed to gender stereotypes. Since then, Ive been encountering these stereotypes everywhere, throughout my life. I still dont understand why everything from what we wear to the work we do to how we behave is given a gender colour..In an interview, he shared that while he was in college, he started dating a girl. The first year of their relationship went well, but soon, the girl started asking him to change his dressing style and mannerism to a man. Patruni said, I was studying B Tech when I first fell in love. It was with a girl from my college. We were in a relationship for nearly two years. The first year went by okay. But soon, she started telling me what kind of clothes I should wear and what kind of mannerisms I should to adopt as a male person. That left me perplexed. The problem was that though I looked like a man physically, my sexual orientation and gender identity were not fixed. But at that time, there was no awareness about gender spectrum or gender orientation. If this battle within myself wasnt enough, there was a battle to be fought outside as well. I was even the victim of ragging and bullying in college mostly thanks to how I looked and behaved. Thats when I first began to use dance as a tool of activism..In 2014, while he was in Hyderabad, he decided to perform as a drag queen. His first performance as a drag queen was at a local caf in Hyderabad, but after that, he thought of quitting the drag scene. In an interview, while talking about it, he said, I wanted to quit this time since I couldnt resonate with the aesthetics of beauty standards and glamour of the traditional drag which we, as a country, have adopted from the West. The dissonance was more apparent because I had always looked up to traditional artists like Bal Gandharva and Chapal Bahadur as my inspiration. These aesthetics werent suitable for the changing identity of my body as I kept exploring gender fluidity..