Revathi was born as Doraiswamy in Namakkal district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and was assigned a male gender based on physiology.
She preferred playing with young girls over boys and dressed up as a woman in her mother's clothes, distressed by the feeling of being a female trapped in a male body.
Her personal and social hardships affected her academic performance, and she had to drop out of school as a result, having failed the tenth grade.
[1] However, when she first met a group of people from the kothi community during a school trip to Nammakal, she felt a sense of kinship and decided to run away to Delhi with them so that she could be true to her gender identity.
Though she could finally be true to her gender identity, Revathi discovered the harsh realities of life as a hijra, where social exclusion, violence and sexual assault were all too common.
[10] The American College in Madurai has included The Truth about me: A Hijra Life story as a part of its third gender literature syllabus.