New Delhi: At 10 pm, drag queens Lush Monsoon and Betta Naan Stop were still getting ready for a Dolly Parton tribute at Kitty Su. An hour earlier, electronic beats and a heavy bassline had already taken over the lobby of The LaLit Mumbai as guests strolled in to sway to the Queen of Country’s iconic songs.
Betta first knew Parton as Aunt Dolly from Hannah Montana.
“Back then, I was focused on Hannah Montana,” the drag queen laughed.
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They went back to Parton after starting drag. Parton’s exaggerated hair, glamour, and excess femininity are the bread and butter of any drag artist.
“You’ve heard these songs. Your parents have played them. But then going through that in a different lens, as a different person, now you know yourself more. So when you’re listening to these songs, you kind of picture yourself expressing them in a different way,” they said.
Joining Betta and Lush at ‘The Doll House: Country Doll’ night on 11 September were artists Zeesh, Roxy Versace, Dame Imphala, Chelsei, and AfroGyal Krisha. Before the drag queens took the stage, Bollywood songs kept the predominantly male crowd on their feet. Hardly anyone was standing still.
Dame Imphala (left) and Betta Naan Stop during a performance | By special arrangement
As the queens got ready upstairs, makeup covered the tables. Betta recalled a time when getting in drag could take close to four hours. Now, on a good day, it takes her about two and a half.
The face comes first. Then body shaping, corsets and padding, clothes, wigs, shoes, and accessories. Wigs are Betta’s favourite part.
“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted long hair,” they said.
When Lush and Betta started performing, getting ready did not look like this.
“When we started, we were begging every venue to let us perform,” Lush recalled.
They got ready in somebody’s bedroom, a storage room, and once, even a metro station washroom.
“Even getting into a hotel room used to make us feel like an impostor,” she said.
The hours spent getting ready together were part of it too.
“The performance is five, 10, 15 minutes on stage, but the getting-ready process while we’re together, we’re talking together, we’re laughing. That is the key thing for me,” Lush added.
Also read: Indian drag scene is a messy place—and yet full of possibilities
Drag, jokes, joy
Once they were all glammed up, wearing a cheetah print jumpsuit with a black corset and donning blonde hair, standing just outside the venue, Betta said they were “hoping that Dolly casts herself in all of us tonight.”
Inside the club, people were dancing around the stage. Once the performances started, they crowded closer, phones held up.
Zeesh, the evening’s emcee, wore a hot-pink gown, a towering black wig, and rhinestone jewellery. Between performances, their commentary was funny and salacious. After one particularly moving act, Zeesh looked out at the room.
“Well, we’ve all been touched. Rather inappropriately, I might add.”
Chelsei was making her drag debut at the event. She performed Miley Cyrus’ ‘The Climb’. When the song ended, Zeesh brought her back out and got the crowd chanting her name. She looked emotional and happy.
“I feel amazing. I hope to do this more,” she said.
AfroGyal Krisha came next, followed by Roxy Versace.
“She is delicious. She is daring. She is Versace,” Zeesh announced.
Lush and Betta were next. Lush was bathed in rhinestones, wearing a hot-pink dress with silver fringe and a voluminous platinum wig.
The joint performance used recordings of Parton herself, where the legendary singer joked about Botox, cosmetic work, and how much makeup she wore. In one clip, Parton said that if she had not been born a woman, she would have been a drag queen.
Tarini Unnikrishnan is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)