Gazal Dhaliwal

Gazal Dhaliwal is an Indian screenwriter who wrote the screenplay and dialogues for Vinod Chopra Films’ Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, starring Rajkummar Rao, Anil Kapoor and Sonam K Ahuja. Previously, she worked on Alankrita Shrivastava's critically acclaimed Lipstick Under My Burkha as the dialogue writer and she wrote the dialogues and co-wrote the screenplay for Qarib Qarib Singlle, directed by Tanuja Chandra, starring Irrfan Khan and Parvathy. She also wrote additional dialogues for Wazir that starred Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar.

She is also a public speaker and LGBTQ+ activist, who has spoken openly about being a transgender woman in several talks and in the media – most famously in an episode of the Aamir Khan-led talk show, Satyamev Jayate.

Early life and education Gazal Dhaliwal grew up in the city of Patiala in Punjab and was born to Bhajan Pratap Singh Dhaliwal and Sukarni Dhaliwal. In several interviews and talks, she mentions how for as long as she can remember, she always felt like she was a girl. However, growing up in a culture that celebrated a highly macho form of masculinity made it increasingly difficult for Gazal, who was bullied with homophobic and transphobic slurs. At the age of 14, she secretly went to a counsellor but was found out by her father, after which she told him about her identity. Gazal mentions that although her father acknowledged it, he thought that it was "a phase". When she was 17, cyber cafes connected Gazal to the internet, and she found out about gender dysphoria and sex reassignment surgery. However, it was a distant dream, and prevailing stigma and the lack of awareness pushed Gazal to run away from home and board a train to Delhi. However, she was terrified, and finally returned her parents' calls and promised to return home.

While at Xavier's, she and a few friends created a 20-minute documentary on transgender people, which interviewed doctors, psychiatrists and other transgender people in India. After it was released, she travelled to Patiala to show it to her parents. It was after this that her parents agreed to a sex reassignment surgery. She then spent the next three years undergoing sex reassignment and finally had the surgery in 2007, after which she returned to Patiala and worked at an advertising agency. She has also spoken about being okay with the constant tag of "trans woman" that is added to her many professional achievements as a scriptwriter. "In the professional world, I want to be known for my work rather than my status as a transwoman. My gender cannot be my only identity when I am writing a story because a story has no gender. Having said that I have a substantial reason to be okay with the tag 'transwoman' scriptwriter because I know the importance of the visibility of a transgender. Our community does not have enough representation which is very important," she said in an interview with Business Standard.