“I wrote my first song when I was just nine—I composed it myself, too,” said Madhav Shankar, a smile tugging at his lips. When he performed the song for his classmates at school back in 2010, they were stunned. “You should’ve seen their faces… I was a quiet, nerdy, timid kid. They couldn’t believe I was singing my own composition!”Madhav, now 26, was assigned female at birth. Growing up in the village of Vallikkunnam in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, he knew he was different from his peers, but he did not know how to articulate this dissonance until much later in life. “I had long black hair, and I hated it,” he told queerbeat about his early years. He gravitated towards his sibling’s wardrobe. “From childhood, I loved wearing my younger brother’s clothes,” Madhav said. “His T-shirts and pants were always my favourites.”The day Madhav sang for his class was pivotal in his journey towards becoming a musician. Until then, he said, his classmates had always excluded him. When he developed a crush on a girl in his class, for instance, and showed her “special care,” his classmates responded with suspicion. He was ostracised and bullied for being “like a boy,” he added.“Neither the boys nor the girls saw me as one among them… I still remember taking sweets, tamarind, and sugar to school just so that the other kids would talk to me. I was desperate for friendship,” he said.But after the performance, Madhav experienced the validation and recognition he had longed for. It was a pivotal moment that shaped his decision to become a musician.As he journeyed through a lonely childhood, music became Madhav’s refuge, his source of joy and comfort.Sreehari O, his younger brother, recalled growing up listening to Madhav sing along to songs playing on the TV and radio. “I think it is one of the core memories I have from my childhood,” he said.Madhav Shankar.By the time Madhav turned 23, he had an undergraduate degree in music and was teaching at a music school. Having a job and a salary finally afforded him the freedom to pay attention to his body, which had always felt like a contradiction to him. In 2022, he began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to align his body with his gender identity.But as Madhav began a journey of affirmation that he had waited his entire life for, he was also confronted with loss. As his body transitioned, his voice began to change as well. To hold onto his dream of being a musician, he found himself forced to rebuild from scratch.Gender transition is an act of affirmation, of building the self that one has always known. For Madhav, this process unsettled another fundamental aspect of his identity—his singing voice.This is Madhav’s account of finding and losing parts of himself, and how he has been navigating this complex transition, as told to queerbeat.Finding himself“As a teenager, I never felt anything for boys,” said Madhav. “I had a huge crush on [the Malayalam actors] Shobhana and Manju Warrier. I liked their feminine energy.” He didn’t find the courage to express his feelings to the girl he had a crush on in school. Yet, as the years went by, he felt more and more certain that he was only attracted to women.Madhav’s family—his mother, brother, and aunt—knew nothing of his sexuality and gender dysphoria. He confided in a cousin when he was 16. “She casually told me I might be transgender. The word hit me. It gave a name to my self-doubt and intensified it,” said Madhav.In 2016, Madhav enrolled at the Swathi Thirunal College in Thiruvananthapuram for his bachelor’s degree. Despite his growing clarity about his gender and sexuality, he decided to try fitting in with his assigned gender—he was tired of the incessant bullying he had experienced in school. “I acted like I had feelings for boys, just to make them [his peers] believe that I am a girl,” said Madhav. Despite Madhav’s efforts to fit in, he was bullied in college as well. By the end of the second semester, Madhav said he was “depressed and stressed” and had started self-harming.In his second year of college, Madhav entered a romantic relationship with a female classmate. She was the only person who was kind to him in an otherwise hostile environment. “It was my first ever love,” he said. His girlfriend quickly became his “support system”—an ally in his struggle with his gender identity.Meanwhile, Madhav bought a smartphone for the first time. He started reading about trans people online—including Adam Harry, a trans man from Kerala who had become a pilot. “The knowledge that I could live as a man gave me great hope and aspiration for my identity,” Madhav said. “It even gave me dreams to lead a family life with my girlfriend.”Madhav began to research HRT—the process, the cost, and its effects on his body. Now that he knew it was possible, he was determined to align his body with his gender identity.After Madhav finished his bachelor’s in 2019, he wanted to find a job as soon as possible and save money to begin transitioning. But at his girlfriend’s insistence, he decided to join her in a master’s programme in music at the same college where they had once been undergraduates. By then, he recalled, the whole college had started to whisper about their “lesbian relationship.” The judgement hung over their relationship like a dark cloud.In January 2020, Madhav decided to take a break from his studies. Eventually, he dropped out of the master’s programme and started looking for work as a music composer. “I sincerely thought that it would help us to live together and achieve our dreams. But after six months, she called and said she wanted to break up with me,” said Madhav. While speaking to queerbeat, Madhav did not want to elaborate on the reason for the breakup.“It was a shock. It felt like time had frozen,” said Madhav, describing the aftermath of the breakup. It took him a year and a half to find his bearings again. “When I recovered from the incident, my mind was stuck on the idea of transformation,” he said.Chasing his dreamsEven though he hadn’t formally come out to them, Madhav’s immediate family had always been aware of his queerness—it was inescapable. In 2017, when he initially told them of his desire to transition, he received no support. “We never heard such things before. It was new and a complete shock to us,” said Sreehari. It took some time to settle the turmoil in the family. “We were consumed by thoughts of what society would think. We were embarrassed and sad. But Madhav was one hundred percent sure about his decision,” said Sreehari.In order to begin transitioning, Madhav needed money. His mother and aunt—who eked out a living shelling and peeling cashews in a factory—barely made enough to support the family. His younger brother was still pursuing his bachelor’s degree at the time. In any case, Madhav recalled, given their attitudes towards his identity back then, it was unlikely they would support his transition even if they could afford to.In November 2020, Madhav began offering online music classes. Very soon, he was earning around ₹5,000 per month from the classes. For Madhav, the money represented freedom—to assert his identity, to make his own choices. “My aunt was the first person to say, ‘Earn your own money and live the way you want,’” Madhav recalled. “It was only when I became financially independent that my family realised I was no longer a little child.”Madhav finally began to live his gender by chopping his hair short and switching his attire from skirts, kurtas, and churidars to shirts and jeans. However, to be able to medically transition, he needed more money than the classes could generate. This led him to a teaching job at a music school in the nearby town of Kayamkulam, which offered ₹17,000 a month.The job was a compromise, a difficult means to a cherished end. Madhav had disclosed to his employers that he was a trans man, and they seemed welcoming initially. Later, though, they began to ask him to take on tasks that tested his physical strength—and when he struggled with them, they would taunt him, asking, “Aren’t you a man?”After three months, he left the job and joined Sahayathrika, a queer and trans rights NGO in Thrissur, as an administrative assistant. By July 2022, he had saved up enough money to begin HRT at Renai Medicity Hospital in Kochi. Over the next six months, he completed the required medical fitness tests and counselling sessions. Then Madhav was prescribed testosterone.“Slowly, my muscles grew firmer, a faint moustache began to appear above my upper lip, my periods became irregular, and hormonal fluctuations triggered mood swings,” said Madhav, recalling the changes in his body as the treatment began to take effect. While he was thrilled about most of these changes, there was one transformation that would soon become a deep source of anxiety: after three months of HRT, his voice started to deepen.Silver cloud, grey liningVoice alteration is one of the “primary goal[s] of the gender alignment process,” according to a 2017 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. A survey of 77 trans men in Canada showed that those who felt their voice matched their gender reported higher self-esteem and lower anxiety and depression. In other words, they felt a whole lot better about themselves.For the most part, Madhav was thrilled about the transition. He had become more confident in his body as it changed in response to HRT. But as his voice began to acquire a more masculine quality, his joy turned into deep worry.Generally, people assigned male at birth tend to speak at a lower pitch than those who are assigned female at birth. “This is because [their] vocal cords have greater muscle mass and length, which produces a lower pitch,” explained Reshmi M Nair, a laryngologist based in Kochi. “In trans individuals undergoing cross-sex hormonal therapy, those taking testosterone naturally develop increased muscle mass in the vocal cords, while the length remains unchanged.”The moment Madhav realised his voice was starting to change, he began to document the transformation. Every day, he would record himself singing a raga (melodic framework) or a film song, listening closely to track subtle shifts in pitch, tone, and control. His voice was husky at first; over time, it became “hoarse and croaky.”“I felt hopeless… I thought I would never be able to sing anymore,” Madhav said.Rumi Harish, a Hindustani musician and queer trans activist from Bangalore, went through the same crisis as Madhav. When he began transitioning in 2020, Rumi had been a singer for about four decades. “I didn’t know what would happen. I have seen other trans men[’s] voice changes, but I didn’t think it would affect the music,” Rumi told queerbeat.After taking testosterone, Rumi’s pitch began to drop from around A or A sharp to F, a shift from the high pitch typically associated with a female voice to a noticeably deeper tone that people think of as masculine. He enjoyed his new voice initially, he said, but a few months into transition, he developed a cough. “After that, my voice didn’t recover. I couldn’t even hold a note straight,” he said.For years, Rumi couldn’t sing. “Disillusioned by classical music circles and the people in it (with a few exceptions), I had stopped attending concerts; I had even stopped listening to music,” he wrote in a 2024 article for Deccan Herald.Rumi searched everywhere for solutions. The breakthrough came in a conversation with noted Carnatic singer and activist TM Krishna. “He said it is like your second puberty, give a little time; it will come back,” recalled Rumi. “I started doing 15 minutes of practice and realised [that] when the voice breaks, one has to train again. I didn’t pressurise it.”Around the same time, Rajeev Taranath, a renowned classical musician based in Mysuru, happened to read Rumi’s autobiography and reached out, offering to help. “He trained me for eight months. Slowly, I started singing again,” said Rumi. Now, he sings for three hours a day and performs concerts again.“Everyone has a unique voice,” said Rumi. But in entertainment and film, music is largely performed in either a masculine or a feminine register. Historically, these are the two types of voices that have ruled the industry; it creates an artificial pressure on trans singers to mould their sound to fit one box or the other.“The industry makes you think that you are singing in some weird octaves,” said Rumi. The result? Barely any trans singers singing in their own voices, in voices that are comfortable to them.Rumi argues that there is a dire need for “more authentic trans voices on stage, where they don’t have to strain their voice to make it feminine or masculine.”The rocky road back to musicIn the initial days of his transition, Madhav felt like he had a new pitch or voice every day. He was desperate to tame his “new” voice and find a pitch that he could comfortably sing in.But before he could focus on retraining his voice, Madhav was confronted with another challenge: the loss of a family member.When Madhav first came out, everyone in the family had opposed him. He remembered, in particular, the rebukes from his 52-year-old mother, Mani. “My mother’s response was that the child born from her womb should grow up just the way they are,” Madhav recalled.They argued and fought endlessly, but Madhav remained very close to his mother. When he saw small changes in his body—small wispy hairs on his upper lip, muscles feeling tighter—he would run to Mani and excitedly tell her all about it.Somewhere along the way, while bearing witness to his transition, Mani’s attitude began to shift. “She would often respond by saying things like ‘onnu poda’ [go away, silly]. She never showed any happiness or excitement. But now I know she unlearned a lot through my transition journey,” said Madhav.In July 2024, Mani was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. “A week before we learned that my mother had cancer, I remember asking her if [she thought] transgender people feel afraid when they undergo surgery,” said Madhav. He was preparing to take the next step in his transition: top surgery. He was anxious about it but didn’t feel ready to tell his mother about his decision. “To my surprise, she said, ‘If it is something they have long desired, then it must surely bring them happiness,’” recalled Madhav. “That was the moment I realised that she had truly understood me.”In August 2024, within a month of the diagnosis, Mani passed away.Madhav’s grief was now compounded—the stress of losing his singing voice was worsened by his mother’s demise.“I began experiencing memory loss, forgetting much of what I had learned, especially music,” said Madhav. “My confidence in singing dropped, and whenever I tried to strain my voice, it caused pain in my throat.”While doing his bachelor’s in music, Madhav had mastered manodharma swarams—the spontaneous improvisations that are the lifeblood of Carnatic performance. Created on the spot within the structure of a raga and tala (rhythmic cycle), they demand technical command, imagination, and a deep grounding in tradition. Now, he had to relearn music from scratch.“Earlier, his singing had no flaws. Now, hearing him singing, we can sense he—or his voice—is struggling, and the struggle is visible,” said Sreehari.In July 2025, Madhav decided to go back to college to pursue a master’s—despite having once taught music to others, he felt he needed to relearn it as a student.“For me, doing work other than music felt like asking a dragonfly to carry stones. Besides, my mother deeply loved to hear me sing… and I promised her I will complete my post-graduate degree in music,” said Madhav. His studies and expenses are supported by a Kerala government scholarship for trans students and the sponsorship of a private individual who is an LGBTQIA+ ally.After nearly three years of HRT, Madhav’s voice has finally stabilised for the most part. Through repeated trial and experimentation, he has figured out that his new comfort zone lies in the pitch B. And now, with the groundwork finally in place, he has one clear goal: to learn how to sing in it.For a singer, the voice is more than just a tool to communicate—it is selfhood. His transition asked Madhav to choose between the body he longed for and the voice he had mastered. He chose his body and is now rebuilding the rest. With cautious hope and disciplined effort, he continues the pursuit of a voice that feels fully like his own and a song that only he can sing.Arathi M.R. (she/her) is a Dalit queer journalist based in Kochi, Kerala, interested in writing about climate justice, minority rights, and the intersections of caste, gender, and development.This article was first published in queerbeat.