Nepal, Aug. 22 -- When Shirsho Bandyopadhyay's cover story Beneputul on the male queens of the Bengali folk jatra performance world came out in the reputed Bengali cultural magazine Desh in May 1992, I was in school. My mother was not too happy to see me leaf through the pages and getting fascinated by the photographs of female impersonators. The unease and hesitation of a middle-class, university-educated, college-teaching woman reflected the gender politics embedded in the social perspective towards the gender fluidity embodied by these performers. More than three decades later, Sandip Roy's extraordinary book on the life of Chapal Rani, or, Chapal Bhaduri as he is known more conventionally, captures this lived world of female impersona...