She didn’t arrive on stage by accident. but by necessity. In the glow of Delhi’s nightlife, Hash Brownie learned how to turn vulnerability into spectacle, fear into confidence, and glamour into a presence.
Hash Brownie’s journey as a professional drag queen is inseparable from questions of independence, femininity and survival. “I did make up for the first time when I was nine years old. I used to sneak into my brother’s wife’s makeup counter. Even if the shade didn’t match, I would still use it.” By the time she was twelve, makeup had already become a source of confidence.
At seventeen, she moved to Delhi. “I wanted to live life on my own terms. I started working in a call center.” Financial independence proved transformative. “I could buy makeup of my own. I could live the way I wanted.” Growing up femme had been difficult. “I used to get bullied. But I always embraced my femininity. I never tried to suppress myself.” Delhi, she says, opened something essential. In 2015, she entered Kitty Su, the iconic LGBTQ+-friendly nightclub housed inside The Lalit Hotel, now considered a cornerstone of the city’s queer nightlife and drag scene. “The night I came here, my life changed forever.” Watching drag artist Derrick Barry perform, she remembers thinking, “I don’t think I can ever reach that level,” while feeling, simultaneously, “this is where I belong.” That sense of belonging mattered deeply in a city where Section 377 was still law: it is a colonial-era law criminalizing same-sex relationships in India until it was partially struck down in 2018. She recalls being harassed by a policeman. “He started touching me inappropriately. I was very scared.” The experience became a turning point. “That night changed something in me. I was more confident about embracing myself.”
Her first performance at Kitty Su came on August, 2018. “My drag is a mix of Indianness, goddesses, Bollywood, mujra.” She also channels her Black heritage. “I never saw my mother’s face, so I try to imagine what she would be like. Maybe she would look like me.” Hyper-femininity, she insists, is intentional. Today, she is also part of Kitty Su Beauty, a project she describes as destiny. “Working with beauty has always been a dream for me. I don’t see myself doing anything else.” Makeup, especially during lockdown, became survival. “I would do my makeup every night and go live. This was therapy for me.” Delhi remains central. “I do not see myself anywhere else. Even though everything is crazy, it feels like home.” For Hash Brownie, drag is not escape. It is arrival.
Photographer, Ashish Shah