New Delhi, April 3 -- The first time I saw Chapal Bhaduri, it was hard to imagine him as a woman. A stocky man with a square face and thinning hair, dressed in kurta-pyjama, he looked quite avuncular. But I knew he was one of the last great female impersonators of the Bengali stage from the 1960s and 1970s, so famous he was known as Chapal Rani. Some simply called him Queen.

In his heyday even the Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar had apparently been completely fooled when he saw Bhaduri playing the mother of the 19th century poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt on stage. He asked to meet the "actress" and was dumbfounded when a man clad in trousers and shirt was brought to him.

I knew this story because it was one of the first anecdotes Chapal Bha...