“TODAY, MY IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY ARE UPLIFTED ALONG WITH ME”

ANJALI LAMA, 33 Model, Mumbai

When I walk the ramp, I feel like a queen,” says model Anjali Lama, who wears her transgender identity on her sleeve. And after she was “one out of five from a total of 200 models” to get selected for Lakme Fashion Week in December last year, that sleeve is now crafted by the country’s top designers. Lama moved from her village in Nuwakot, Nepal, to Kathmandu and worked as a waiter, but she was teased for resembling a woman, both in appearance and manner. One day in 2005, she approached two transgendered people on the street, expressed her desire to be like them and there was no looking back. Encouraged by those around her to take up modelling, Lama, who worked at the community centre for the LGBTQ community as a human rights activist and counsellor, won a Miss Charming title in a beauty pageant meant for transgenders. “I was on the cover of (Nepali magazine)

The Voice of Woman and that’s when my career began. But I would constantly get rejected only because I was transgender,” says Lama. So, she decided to move to Mumbai, where she stayed with a friend, after quitting her job at the community centre and gathering all her savings. Having been unsuccessful twice in Lakme Fashion Week auditions in Mumbai, the third time around, she did things differently. “I watched my old audition tapes and also the videos of models who got selected. I did this over and over again,” she says. She noted down minutest of details—how to walk, what to wear, what amount of make-up to apply, the right shoes and the right outfits. “I had put on too much make-up the first few times. I practised day and night for ten days in front of the mirror. And on the day of the audition, I got selected.” Today, she wears whatever makes her comfortable. “I wear comfortable clothes and apply basic make-up.” Lama has now been on three fashion magazine covers in India.