As a Bharatanatyam dancer, one of my favorite pieces is Ardhanari—depicting Ardhanareeswara: half man/half woman, half Shiva/half Parvati. Form shifting is part of South Asian religions.

On January 30 1948 I was a student of class six in a remote village in Odisha A few months before the national flag was hoisted in our school by Headmaster to our ...