I was not much of a sports person. I never liked football or cricket, I just really loved and enjoyed playing basketball. I started playing for fun and my school got me to join the team in grade 8, and I played till nationals.

I also got selected for internationals, but I didn't opt for it because they were making me play for the women's team and I didn't want to do that.

A lot of people told me that I was at a level where I could make a very good career out of it. But dysphoria kept hitting me, and I had to stop. I thought I'll play a bit in college, but that’s when dysphoria was at its highest, so I stopped playing after high school.

Still, the sport also brought in huge amounts of euphoria. Just like every trans masculine kid tries to perform how their brothers and fathers live, I was trying to do the same in basketball to get that feeling of euphoria, by copying the style that my men friends used when we played together.

But that feeling never lasted for long. The school would always say, "You have to play on the women's team. You have to play like this. You can't do that."

The worst part was that I always played with the ‘Size 7' ball, but they’d make me play with the ‘Size 6' ball instead because that was assigned for the women's team, and 'Size 7' was for men’s. Any time they commented on this, it would hit me really hard, and I was like, "Let me play with the Size 7 ball. It's not like I can't carry it or I can't dribble it. So why are you judging me on my capability of playing with that ball?"

I don't know how it was relevant, it was just a difference of one number.

The dysphoria, discrimination and sexism was coming from the people, not the game

I used to play basketball for my satisfaction and euphoria. But there were a number of other imposed binaries that used to make me feel really dysphoric.

Your gender assigned at birth would determine the ball you played with, the set of rules in the game, the jersey you wear. The men’s team would wear a vest with half shorts. Whereas the women’s team wore a three-fourths long shirt and with shorts that were quite longer than the men's shorts.

I was like, "It's a sport. We have to wear similar jerseys. It’s one thing to change the color, but why are you changing the entire jersey?"

Until I was about 12-years-old, my family didn't put a lot of pressure on me to dress like this, walk like this, talk like this. There were transphobic situations, but they didn't impose a lot on me about having to live in a certain way.

It was in basketball that I realized "I am assigned female at birth. This is my place in society” and became aware of being perceived as a so-called secondary gender.

But I wouldn't blame the game for this, because the dysphoria, discrimination and sexism was coming from the people, not the game.

I played till nationals and I played for India. In grade 12, I got selected for the international team, but realized that I would be recognized as a basketball player who plays in the women's team. I couldn’t deal with the dysphoria that came with that. So I completely shut off myself from the sport and stopped playing.

I really loved the game, I still do. Whenever I get a chance, I get the ball and hit a court.

My relationship with the game was really good. I really enjoyed playing whenever I used to play alone, even when I was in school. If someone else came along, I used to feel really uncomfortable.

Even today, I don't play with anybody.

Many trans folks would love to play if sports is made accessible to us

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t quit basketball as I really enjoyed the game. But facing dysphoria around people at that time was really difficult, and I'm glad that I quit for the sake of my mental health.

I didn't have the vocabulary to express the pain I was going through in school. I didn’t know how to describe how uncomfortable I was. They would have never understood. I wish I had the kind of vocabulary that I have now.

Sometimes our coach would shuffle the men’s and women’s teams so that we could all practice together. The men players would space-hog the court, but there was still the least amount of discrimination. I really enjoyed those moments.

I hope we can remove those gendered barriers that are set in the game. I hope we can remove the concept of teaming up members according to gender specifics. Especially on a large level, I hope we can change the rules of the basketball world.

There's this notion that a woman who’s trans, might not be interested in sports, because feminine people don’t play sports. But with the trans folks coming to our shelter home, we often play cricket or football on weekends, and they say, "I really enjoyed. Nobody gave me a chance to play like this."

It's not that queer and trans folks don't like to play sports. There are a lot of us who would love to play if we can make it inclusive or accessible for us. It’s just that we usually don’t get the chance to play in a way that’s comfortable to us.

The way mainstream news talks about athletes is like 'this woman has a masculine body and that's why they can play sports.'

Even if that person is a woman, and is playing really well, they have to portray that person as a masculine person. Why is that so? How can you put masculinity or femininity in sports?

We need to change that narrative and remove these ableist and binary gender norms in sports rules.