Meet Aryan Pasha- the young lawyer from Delhi who is quickly becoming an inspiration for both the LGBTQI and the bodybuilding communities.
The 27-year-old transman has recently bagged second prize in the Men’s Physique (short) category of Musclemania India- the local chapter of an international bodybuilding championship.
While the last few years have been rewarding for Aryan, life has never been easy for the young muscleman who until the age of 18 was considered, by everyone in the world except the only person to whom this really mattered, a girl.
Aryan’s journey:
Born Nyla in 1991, Mr Pasha says he realized very early on in his childhood that he was “trapped” in the wrong body. He felt comfortable in the company of boys and would insist on wearing a boy’s uniform to school.
“When you’re a child you don’t know the difference, but I just knew that I’m a boy,” Mr Pasha said in an interview with Scroll.
His natural masculinity often made him a subject of ridicule and bullying at school and socially. But unlike many transgenders in India, Aryan found support and gradually acceptance from his family and later also friends.
At the age of 16, Mr Pasha decided it was time to transform but it took two more years for his transition surgery to actually take place.
Once done, he claimed that he felt “strong and confident,” as he no longer felt “uncomfortable with his own body.”
A few years after the transformation, Mr Pasha came out to the world as he longer wanted to hide his true identity and also because he felt not every transgender in India has the kind of support he has always had.
At present:
Today, Aryan is an accomplished lawyer, a fitness enthusiast who dreams big for both the LGBTQI community and the bodybuilders.
On one hand, he wants to be an active part of the trans conversation in India and to help people like him embrace themselves, at the same time he also wants something for himself- to lift the barriers.
