I was not much of a sports person. I never liked football or cricket, I just really loved and enjoyed playing basketball. I started playing for fun, and my school got me to join the team in grade 8, and I played till nationals.

I also got selected for internationals, but I didn't opt for it because they were getting me to play for the women's team, and I didn't want to do that.

A lot of people told me that I was at a level where I could make a very good career out of it. But dysphoria kept hitting me, and I had to stop it. I thought I'll play a bit in college, but that’s when dysphoria was at its highest, so I stopped playing after high school.

But the sport also brought in huge amounts of euphoria. Just like every trans masculine kid tries to perform how their brothers and fathers live, I was trying to do the same in basketball to get that feeling of euphoria, by copying the style that my men friends used when we played together.

But that feeling never lasted for long. The school would always say, "You have to play on the women's team. You have to play like this. You can't do that."

The worst part was that I always played with the ‘Size 7' ball, but they’d make me play with the ‘Size 6' ball instead because that was assigned for the women's team, and 'Size 7' was for men’s.

Any time they commented on this, it would hit me really hard, and I was like, "Let me play with the Size 7 ball. It's not like I can't carry it or I can't dribble it. So why are you judging me on my capability of playing with that ball?"

I don't know how it was relevant, it was just a difference of one number.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]