There’s one line from the first season of Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready—the American comedian’s six-episode showcase of handpicked standup comics for Netflix—that really struck a chord with Ritushree Panigrahi. It’s when Flame Monroe, a comedian, actor and self-described “female impersonator”, discusses the intersection between her gender identity and her vocation. “I am a comedian that happens to be transgender,” Monroe says. “Because if I wasn’t transgender, I would probably still be a comedian.”
“[It reminded me] that our sex is not our complete identity,” says Panigrahi, the first Indian comedian to come out as a trans-woman. “It’s just a part of my identity.”
Panigrahi broke into the Indian comedy mainstream in 2023 with a standup video titled Coming Out, which documents her journey towards self-discovery and self-acceptance with effortless charm and a keen eye for incisive observations. She’s a regular highlight on the lineup for Navin Noronha’s Queer Rated Comedy shows, and performs often at Mumbai venues like J-Spot and the Habitat.
She juggles comedy with her day job as a lawyer and diversity, equity and inclusion professional, and also works as a queer rights activist. In conversation, she comes across as a confident, self-motivated high achiever. But she had to overcome a lot of self-doubt and societal challenges to get to this point.
Growing up in the small town of Padampur in Odisha, Panigrahi always knew she loved the performing arts. As a child, she loved telling jokes and also had a flair for the written word. She wrote short stories, poetry and satire, and some of her sports articles were even published in local newspapers. She was also a confident public speaker, regularly emceeing the prize-giving ceremonies at school and at local sports tournaments.
But, she says, she also felt that she was always in a “state of confusion.” This was small-town Odisha in the 1990s, when the internet was not easily accessible and nobody had heard of concepts like gender identity and the gender spectrum. Panigrahi knew something was amiss, but she didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to understand what was going on. “I knew that I was feeling like a woman,” she says. “But I didn’t know that I am transgender because the way they teach us about the transgender spectrum in society is very different to what it actually is.”
After finishing high school, Panigrahi moved to Bhubhaneshwar to study law. In Bhubhaneshwar, she gained access to much more literature about the gender spectrum, and realised that her body dysmorphia was a result of not being able to be her true self. But the worry of what people would say, and how her family would respond, kept her from exploring her true gender identity in public.
When things started getting serious on the marriage front, I felt I was killing someone within me.
Bhubhaneshwar was also where she first discovered standup comedy, watching clips by George Carlin and Russell Peters on the newly-launched YouTube, alongside Indian comedy TV shows such as The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. One evening, she went to a Bhubhaneshwar café to watch an open mic that a friend was hosting, and found herself enchanted by a particular comedian’s performance. “He didn’t give a damn about who was listening to him and that’s what I loved,” she says.
That inspired Panigrahi to take her first step on the comedy stage, performing satirical material that she had written for her blog. She won that first open-mic (“kuch dete nahi the lekin winner bolte the“), and that opened the doors to a career in comedy. Soon, she was hitting up every open mic and lineup show in the city.
The joy and pride she got from these performances was a little tainted though, because she was still going up on stage as a cis-het male. It felt like she was living a dual life. “When I started practising as a lawyer, the first thing I did was rent my own house,” she says. “On weekends, I would close the door, draw the curtains and dress up and do my makeup. All the things that I wanted to do since I was a child.”
When her parents started looking for a girl to get her married to, she finally realised that she had to come out to them. So far, she had been held back by the fears that so many LGBTQ+ people face—the prospect of her parents’ disappointment, the spectre of being ostracised from her only family. A study conducted by the Kerala Development Society on behalf of the National Human Rights Commission concluded that 99 percent of transgender people face social rejection on more than one occasion, including within their family. So Panigrahi’s consternation was not misplaced.
“I kept telling myself that what I was going through was just a phase,” says Panigrahi. “But when things started getting serious on the marriage front, I felt I was killing someone within me. I started getting panic attacks and started seeing a therapist.”
It was around this time in 2019 that Panigrahi attended the Delhi Pride Parade. This was the first time she stepped out in public as her true self. “I got out of the cab at the venue and I felt that inner peace that I was searching for since childhood.”
That watershed moment convinced Panigrahi to finally let her family in on her secret. As it turned out, all her fears were unwarranted. “They were extremely supportive in my journey to come out as well as my standup,” she says. “Especially my two sisters. They really helped me a lot.”
Coming out to her audience was the next big step. During the COVID-19 years, Panigrahi—who had since moved to Ahmedabad for a job—started doing online shows on Zoom, alongside pretty much everyone else in the comedy scene. “These online shows were very helpful for up-and-coming comedians from small towns such as myself,” she says. “We got the opportunity to perform with the big names from the Mumbai comedy scene without travelling there.”
These big names included Jeeya Sethi and Navin Noronha, who quickly became friends. In 2021, Ritushree finally worked up the courage to perform as herself, for an online version of Noronha’s Queer Rated Comedy show. “But I told him don’t put my name or face on the poster,” she recalls. “Because I was still very afraid. But it felt so liberating to finally perform as Ritushree.”
She quickly became a fixture on other online shows—particularly Jeeya Sethi’s Women Slay Sundays and Wednesdays—performing as Ritushree. When the COVID-19 lockdown finally lifted, she took her show on the road, and in 2023 she released her debut YouTube video. It immediately went viral.
She’s now working towards her larger comedy goals. The first is to become established enough that she can quit her job and become a full-time comedian. Then, she hopes to become become the first Indian transgender comedian to win a Grammy and perform at large arenas à la Kevin Hart.
But she knows it’s easier said than done, especially in India where trolls are always lurking around the corner. “I shouldn’t say this because it might be discouraging for some queer people, especially trans people, but being a transgender woman in comedy in India is extremely challenging,” says Ritushree. “I never faced as many challenges in my life as I did since I came out as a trans comedian till now.”
She attributes these challenges to the attitude of the largely straight-savarna audiences of the country. “They think that as a queer person you’re only allowed to speak about queer issues,” she says. “And when you do that, they start saying you only talk about queer issues, why should we watch you. Even if you see the troll comments on my content, they’re all targeted towards my gender. Nobody is talking about my comedy. I will never forget, one person had commented saying, ‘The jokes are great. If you weren’t transgender I would have laughed.'”
This isn’t limited to comedy viewers but even people within the scene. The comedian believes she’s had the privilege of working with some great producers across the country but has felt a tinge of transphobia from a few select producers in Mumbai. “I felt like this was reserved for me but I came across some female comedians who told me that’s how they function,” she says. “So at least they aren’t discriminating on the basis of cis and trans. They just hate women.”
However, Panigrahi is hopeful about the upcoming crop of queer comedians, especially with the strong support of Noronha and Queer Rated Comedy. She credits Noronha with creating a safe space for queer comedians to try their hand at an art form that is otherwise plagued by gate-keepers and internal politics where it takes years to get a spot at a decent venue. As more and more queer comedians get up on the comedy stage, they pave the way for a more diverse and inclusive comedy scene.
“This isn’t just limited to comedy,” she says. “People are being vocal and coming out all across the board, including Bollywood and big social media celebs. They are telling people about our stories and experiences. This isn’t just about comedy. This is a social change and nobody can stop it. It’s happening and it will continue to happen. But this is just the beginning of the journey. We have a long long way to go.”
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