One Life. Multiple Restarts.
Rayyan has been nothing but outspoken about queer rights and her transitioning journey. When she shared her story in Pondicherry, it sparked a discussion. One of us asked her “How and what can people do to create a safer space for the LGBTQ+ community?” Having spent a lot of time reading about queer history, psychology and politics, Rayyan grabbed everyone’s attention and shared something very profound.
“Humans still have primitive instincts — we’re naturally scared when we see something we’re not familiar with. Seeing variation has always been believed to be ‘bad’. And the way around this is to allow ourselves to be more exposed to said variation.”
“Don’t be opposed to the queer community when you see them being themselves freely. It’s our duty to challenge the mind constantly and adjust to the newer social norms of living — for eradicating homophobia and transphobia to racism and casteism from the planet.”
She shared her goals for this decade: “enabling the queer community to talk about our struggles, thoughts and dreams. The more representation we will see in the mainstream world, the easier it will get for the younger alike older generations to be themselves.”
Rayyan’s professional goals led her to work with the world’s top advertising agency — Ogilvy & Mather in Dubai, where her team won the Cannes award for one of their campaigns. As Rayyan opened up about her life’s journey to us, she went on to add, “I wasn’t content with it though. Despite the success, I was still battling depression. Something was still missing from my life.”
When she moved to Bombay a few years ago, she was on a quest to explore herself further. During the lockdown, she spent a lot of time reading about queer history, and politics, and exploring a lot of documentaries. One of the Netflix Originals called ‘Disclosure’ changed her whole life.
Disclosure is all about trans people and non-binary representation in mainstream media. When it was released in 2020, it received a lot of attention as it highlighted the positives and negatives for queers living in a world that’s (very) slowly opening its arms to the LGBTQ+ community.
This show helped her access a few memories from her childhood wherein she (then, he) had wished to transition into a woman. Hailing from a conservative Muslim family and growing up in Dubai, she never saw any representation of queer stories, and over time, this dream of hers, submerged into inaccessible parts of her brain.
Rayyan was relieved when it surfaced.
“Moving to Mumbai gave me a new life, and I don’t ever regret it.” India is much more open to the queer community when compared to the Middle East, and this exposed her to so many new facets of life.
“Watching the documentary led me to be where I am today”, she said with a sparkle in her doe-like eyes. She went on to add, “Such interventions in life make us want to pause everything in life and self explore. And that’s exactly what I did.” Rayyan headed to a rejuvenated forest in Vanvadi, where she would spend her time hosting camping nights, working on the farm with the villagers there, and meditating in the lap of nature. “I landed upon many realisations and epiphanies about life, how I wanted to live my life when I went back and what impact I wanted to create in the world.”
When she came back, she chose to turn her life around. Speaking about this journey, she said with her signature wide grin, “I am grateful to have restarted my life from scratch. Today, I am this bold, confident self because I am winning at life.”