In 2006, Indian track and field athlete Santhi Soundarajan, who bagged the silver medal in the women’s 800m race at the Asian Games in Doha, was compelled to take a sex verification test and was stripped of the medal when she failed. The public humiliation, insensitive media coverage and lack of government support affected her mental health, leading to suicide attempts.In 2009, South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, who won the gold medal in the women’s 800m race at the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, came under similar scrutiny. Her test results were leaked but the South African government, unlike its Indian counterpart, rallied behind their athlete. However, she was barred from competing in the 800m race at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 because her testosterone levels were regarded as too high.Sapan Saran. Photo: Special arrangementIn 2014, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, a champion in women’s 100m and 200m races, was dropped from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and Asian Games in Incheon, after her eligibility to participate as a woman athlete was questioned due to hyperandrogenism. Instead of backing down, she appealed against the Athletics Federation of India and the International Association of Athletics Federations in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.Playwright and director Sapan Saran has woven the stories of these women into a play titled Ottam: Born to Run, which was staged at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa on December 14. It revolves around the life of a fictional character called Akai Amaran, who is a composite of real-life people. She is a sportswoman from the Paraiyar community in rural Tamil Nadu, who overcomes caste and class discrimination to become a leading track and field athlete and then finds herself in the throes of an unexpected challenge when she is asked to take a sex verification test.Here are some excerpts from an interview with the woman who wrote and directed the play.I enjoyed your play Be-loved, which was a heartwarming, thoughtful and funny exploration of queer love. You brought in references from a variety of Indian queer voices, ranging from Josh Malihabadi, Bhupen Khakhar, Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita to Aditi Angiras, Dhiren Borisa and Akhil Katyal. After seeing Ottam, it seems like you are consciously building a body of work about the reality of queer lives in India. Is that true?I understand why it feels like that to you and others who have been following my work but the truth is that I started working on Ottam way back in 2015 when news reports about the Dutee Chand case were coming out. Be-Loved began to take shape only a couple of years ago.The first question that struck me was: How can anyone define what it means to be a woman? I started chasing that question and it led me to many people and stories. As a writer and theatre person with limited knowledge of sport, I was also interested in learning about that world.It was only after someone, who saw Be-loved and knew of Ottam, remarked, “Oh so this is your second queer play”, I realised that Ottam too is a queer play! I guess that it was not a conscious choice and none of this is by design. I see myself as a theatremaker and storyteller.Between opening Be-loved in 2023 and Ottam in 2025, I directed Drama School Mumbai students in a contemporary staging of the Sanskrit classic Mrichhakatika, a site-specific piece called Venus Beauty Parlour and Apollo Gym at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), a Badal Sircar play called Beyond the Land of Hattamala with children from a juvenile observation home, and a performed reading of Palestinian playwright Dalia Taha’s Fireworks. All of these are stories of courage, resilience, resistance, dissent, reclamation and hope, as are Ottam and Be-loved. If at all there is a design, this is what it is. I lean towards such stories, subjects and characters.Why did you choose to create a composite character, blending elements from different real-life sportswomen’s stories instead of telling the story of just one athlete?From the moment I dived into research, it was clear that following the life of a single ‘real’ person would limit this exploration to the lived experiences of that person. My interaction with Dr Payoshni Mitra, who advocated for and assisted Dutee in fighting for her rights, pushed me to look at a larger canvas and not just one story. I hope that Akai will remind audiences not only of Dutee but also Caster Semenya, Santhi Soundarajan, Serena Williams, Maria Patino, Hima Das, Catherine Switzer, a young girl they might have seen playing on the street, and even themselves if they are women. Hopefully, they will also see that Akai is her own person.A scene from ‘Ottam’. Photo: Courtesy Serendipity Arts FestivalWhat was it like for you to understand the scientific nuances involved in sex testing, and then incorporate them while keeping the storytelling engaging? It was challenging from an artistic point of view because the more I read, the more I thought to myself, “Oh my God! This is super confusing. How do I break it down for myself even before I weave it into my script?” Understanding the scientific nuances was quite a journey. I read several books, articles and medical journals. Many of them are controversial and almost every single one of them has been criticised for some or the other reason. The four books that address scientific complexities from a sociological perspective are Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, Alice Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger, a volume called Gender Testing in Sport: Ethics, Cases and Controversies edited by Sandy Montañola and Aurélie Olivesi, and also Michel Foucault’s Herculine Barbin.You shared that what got you started was this question: “How can anyone define what it means to be a woman?” Where did that lead you in terms of your own identity?I am glad you say this because, like many other women, I too have experienced what it means to be marginalised. Any woman that you speak to will tell you that, at some point in her life, she has been told how to talk like a woman, walk like a woman, be like a woman. Because of these experiences, I lean invariably towards stories where these become pertinent questions.A scene from ‘Ottam’. Photo: Courtesy Serendipity Arts FestivalIn the stories that you encountered, who was doing most of the policing around what it means to be a woman? Did you find people of all genders or mostly men doing it?The patriarchy is doing it. However, in this case we are looking at not just societal patriarchy but also systemic patriarchy, which is worse because it is coded into law making and execution. That said, it is also true that the so-called support structures around women athletes are full of men. I remember walking into an office with Santhi where she was going to meet her lawyer. There were four or five other people in the room. All men! Most coaches are men. Most technical officers, facilitators, referees, sports doctors, physiotherapists are men. The Union minister for youth affairs and sports in India is a man. I think that we cannot ignore the overpowering presence of men and the huge gender disparity in the field of sport.I am curious to know what Dutee and Santhi think of the play. Have they seen it?Sapan Saran (L) with Dutee Chand. Photo: Courtesy Sapan SaranI am grateful to Santhi and Dutee for allowing me access into their lives. I met Santhi in Mayiladuthurai and Chennai, and her mother in Pudukkottai. I met Dutee at the Gopichand Academy in Hyderabad. We roamed around Char Minar on a Scooty. We visited the Golconda Fort together. I saw her taking phone calls, giving interviews and attending a party. These were rare opportunities. During the research process for this play, I met doctors, activists and lawyers in addition to athletes. They gave me insights that I could not have gathered from just reading.As a theatre maker with a social conscience, it was important for me to invite these women to see the play but I also realised over time that it may not be what the other person actually wants. I imagined that they would want to see how they are represented but did not think about how it might be a reminder of trauma. Especially with Santhi, my sense is that she might not want so much proximity to the play itself, even if she was open to chatting with me about her life occasionally. Being in the audience would have been a totally different matter. It would have drawn attention to her, and she does not want that at all.Music plays a significant role in Ottam. Why was that important to you, especially the parai, an instrument associated with marginalised communities in Tamil Nadu?I think that music has the innate ability to express more than words in a condensed, metaphorical way. It was clear to me that, in the case of Ottam, music would also help establish the cultural roots of the story and the protagonist. Satish Krishnamurthy composed the recorded tracks that are written by Raghuram Godavarthi. While these are such rich and colourful tracks that undoubtedly transport us to a vibrant Tamil Nadu, I think it is the Oppari, a funeral song written by Adalarasu, that plays a key role in creating an emotional space for the protagonist.Adal and I met on one of my research trips to Chennai. It was one of those meetings where you instantly know that it would translate into a long-term collaboration. Adal is one of the most passionate performers and educators that I have met. He responded to the potential in the story of the play much before it was written. He is part of the parai reclamation movement, an anti-caste social and cultural movement. He says, “The parai is not a musical instrument. It is a science.” He is from the Paraiyar community, and belongs to the third generation of cultural performers.What kind of preparation or research did the actors have to put in?The performers come from diverse backgrounds ranging from Ambedkarite performing traditions to alumni from institutions like Lalit Kala Kendra in Pune, Drama School Mumbai and the Academy of Theatre Arts at the University of Mumbai. The rehearsal process went on for two months, and included documentary film screenings, readings, discussions, orientation workshops, folk and parai training sessions with Adalarasu, a team interaction with and talk by senior sports journalist Sharda Ugra on women in sports, a session by theatremaker Sri Vamsi Matta on understanding caste, a session on the intersection of sports and queerness led by Sameera Iyengar, and a training module with Mumbai-based athletics coach Cyril D’souza, which included beach and track training. The play was mounted only after this ground work.Sapan Saran (fifth from right in top row) and Santhi Soundarajan (next to Sapan in blue) with Santhi’s students. Photo: Courtesy Sapan SaranWould you mind talking about the economics of creating a play like this?(Laughs.) At first, I did not look or wait for support. I just started working on the play. I travelled wherever I needed to go for research at my own expense. I spent a fair amount. Later, I got a research grant from the India Foundation for the Arts in Bangalore, and financial support from organisations like CREA in Delhi and Point of View in Mumbai. The script was ready by 2019, and we were going to open the play but the Covid-19 pandemic hit two weeks into rehearsals. For a while, I did not have the financial and emotional strength to go on. My attempts to restart failed but the script of Ottam was published in a book titled Ottam Aur Anya Natak (Ottam and Other Plays).We began staging it this November. Ottam is a tough production to stage. It is mid-scale production. We are based in Mumbai but the venues in Mumbai where we can perform it are limited. The travel team size is 15, which means 15 return tickets to buy for outstation shows! It is also quite niche in its theme and setting, so it is not easy to line up a series of public shows.We began this conversation by talking about your play Be-loved, which is light-hearted and celebratory, so it is easy to find resonance with. Ottam is weighed down with pain and grief. How has this affected audience response and receptivity?When I started working on Be-loved, I came across some incredible books and writings on queer love, queer ideas and queer history. These stories required a theatrical form that could present them in all their fullness. This allowed for the coming together of movement, poetry, storytelling, theatre and music. We knew we had to celebrate queerness by embracing it in its entirety with its joys, confusions, contradictions and strengths. Vulnerability and desire sat next to loss, wit and satire. We knew we had to share these stories not as victims but as human beings – flawed yet complete – like everyone else. This led to a tone of unapologetic celebration!Be-loved enjoyed instant success, which is rare. Ottam is different. It confronts the forces that stop a person from being celebrated. Ideally, you should leave the theatre aching or angered. It should lead to self-reflection and critical thinking as individuals and as members of society.If people programming for a festival are thinking mostly in terms of how many seats they can fill, they are likely to pick Be-loved over Ottam. It can be performed for 25 people or 800, and we have done the whole range. I would love for more sports people to engage with Ottam.Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, educator, and literary critic. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Borderlines: Volume 1 (2015), Clear Hold Build (2019), Fearless Love (2019) and Bent Book (2020). He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.