On Independence Day last year, Durga Gawde shifted to Bengaluru. The move was an act of desperation and rebellion that the 24-year-old sculptor and performance artist now looks back with newfound equanimity. “My parents didn’t quite know how to haul me out of the pain I was going through ever since I came out as a non-binary gender-fluid person. I wanted to move away from everyone so I could actually get to know the real me.” Besides being quite a mouthful for a category name—unlike man, woman, transgender—the non-binary gender-fluid label also means that Gawde prefers being regarded as ‘they’, not as ‘he’ or ‘she’. “I sometimes feel like a man, sometimes like a woman, and I can shift from one identity to another in a matter of minutes,” they say. “I can sense the switch. When I feel like a man, I am more aggressively focused on what I want to do, but when I feel like a woman I am more nurturing and instinctively compelled to think of others as a priority.” Though it may be baffling to imagine what it feels like to be a gender-fluid person in a female body, it is easy to see the obvious duality that defines Gawde’s appearance—closely cropped auburn hair tamed to a fine bristle on the sides; flawless, hairless skin with a smidgen of a stubble drawn on that delicate chin; thick eyebrows; and androgynous form clad in a black polka-dotted shirt and denims. In the bustling cafe where we meet, public scrutiny is a pulsing, breathing thing as people sitting at other tables try not to stare—half in awe, half in amusement. Gawde laughs at the thinly veiled prejudice targeted like so many laser beams. “I travel in local trains all the time and I am used to it. I often see a sudden non-verbal conversation erupting between people when they look at me and then at each other. There are days when I still struggle to deal with all of it and wish I was back in the US. Someday, I’ll go back and teach at my college, the Rhode Island School of Design,” they add.

For now, though, there’s much in India that consumers Gawde’s time—besides teaching assignments in art colleges, there are elaborate performances, like the three-hour solo that they did recently in Goa, complete with moustache and bright lipstick; at Lakmé Fashion Week (for Bobo Calcutta); and drag king acts at clubs in Mumbai (Gawde is India’s first drag king, by the way). “I wore my dad’s olive-green suit for my last act in Delhi,” they tell me.

Though Gawde’s famous artist parents (Usha and Sunil Gawde) are completely supportive of their only child—“they are the best part of my world”—romantic relationships are still a minefield of sorts. “I’ve had wonderful bonds with both men and women, but all these constant shifts in hormonal surges don’t make me exactly easy to live with,” they say with a chuckle. The one subject that works like a pinprick to Gawde’s sunny countenance is the subject of LGBTQ rights. “I dislike that term. Why should there be a separate term for rights of queer people? It is f****** human rights!” It would be easy to run away to a land that is fair and equal, but Gawde is bent on staying here to make an impact on the queer dialogue. “I want to make a difference here,” says Gawde before striding away into the night. There’s a bit of a swagger and sway in that walk, but it’s the gait of a warrior who will never give up a good fight.