The Mumbai local train is rarely a space that could turn into a stage. It is a chaotic carriage that sways through the city. Yet, when Krishna Mohini steps into a ladies’ compartment on the Western line, you can expect performance art. The rhythm of the tracks meets her ghungroos, and a performance begins that demands respect. This is not the kind of begging often associated with the Hijra community; this is an artiste using a public space as her stage.

The guiding principle for her performance is her now-viral statement: “Main bheek maangke nahi kamaungi, mein apni kala dikhaungi [I will not earn by begging, I will show my art].” Krishna Mohini’s story begins in Delhi. At the age of seven, she was abandoned by her father. She recalls the memory of a twin brother and the painful suspicion that her gender identity was the cause of her displacement. “I think they saw one kid was normal, one was abnormal,” she says, “Perhaps they considered me abnormal and left me on the road.”