Dosas, Samosas, Mimosas...and Drag Queens!

The fabulous ingredients for the best Sunday hang with the gang.

“It’s just that the dosa has been such a big part of my identity – growing up, it was dosas everyday with everything,” confesses KaMani Sutra, the foundation behind the glamorous Drag & Dosa, a monthly boozy brunch with the campiest, gayest tunes.

Glitter runs in the blood

The concept for this drag brunch had been knocking around this bearded drag queen’s head for a long time. It finally found fruition two years ago in November, while on a sabbatical in the city. “I’d always been curious, having lived in the US for the past decade, that I hadn’t yet seen daytime drag in the country’s evolving drag scene. A majority of it had been limited to nightlife alone,” KaMani Sutra observes. And so, they decided to shake things up.

KaMani Sutra is no stranger to the spotlight. This Hyderabad native “was trained as a classical Kuchipudi dancer” in their early teens. And if you’ve got an eagle eye, you might even be able to spot them in the movies because their “dance master used to take us to be background dancers” for a couple of Tollywood films. “Then, my parents stopped me from training because I was getting too flamboyant,” they declare. They buckled down, studied computer science, “very much the typical escape” and moved to the US in their twenties.

Once in the land of the star-spangled banner, KaMani Sutra began to emerge. “At that time, drag felt like a Western concept. But quickly, I realised that I’d seen different forms of drag [while growing up]. It’s just that we never called it drag,” they tell us. “But I always had this inside of me all along since I was a child dancer,” they admit. And becoming a drag queen simply allowed for them “to tap into my feminine side.”

Christening their drag persona wasn’t sorcery, they simply reached back into their childhood and the culture around them. “A majority [of] inspiration for my drag comes from the aunties around me. Having grown up in a matriarchal family, I was always around women. Initially, I was going to call myself Mandakini but then I also wanted to incorporate my government name into my drag name,” they say. “But also I’ve always felt like aunties are seen as very hypersexual – they are hot commodities,” they add. So, it was a bit of wordplay with their given name and the Kamasutra to arrive at their drag name. “KaMani Sutra made their debut in late 2017,” they recall.

Gloss over your worries

KaMani Sutra brings their experience on the US drag scene into the spicy flavour of Drag & Dosa. The featured drag artists don’t just lip sync to the Top 40 tracks. At this event, the filmy or pop tracks are rendered exciting, remixed and peppered with movie quotes, memes and other Indian pop culture references. “It is through the life of memes I live in,” they offer. “The memes on the internet feed me, they feed me a lot and then it’s talking to friends who might have quirky ideas. While listening to a song, I seem to automatically connect to words, and then I simply play around, connecting the stories within the memes and the songs,” explaining that their mind dances differently than the rest of us.

KaMani Sutra has remixed the iconic meme line ‘What is this behaviour, Pooja?’ with Alicia Keys’ ‘Girl on Fire’ and ‘Rani Sa’ from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavaat. Or a stray line from Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss, ‘woh jo bottoms hothe hain, woh real nahi hothe hain’ mashed up with Whitney Houston’s ‘I Have Nothing.’ Queer pop culture darlings Shalini Passi, Rakhi Sawant, and Seema Aunty have made cameo appearances in these brunch mixes too. The wonders never cease. “I’m not supporting their toxic views but I’m poking fun at them,” they say. It’s a reminder “that drag is supposed to be fun” even when it is as pointed as a stiletto.

This coming Sunday, Drag & Dosa presents ‘The Fruity Edition.’ KaMani Sutra will be host, of course, and the featured drag artists will be Miss Bhenji and The Girl Who Eats. And special guest stars: Bengaluru’s own Pink Divas. We’re also promised a dance-off between the drag queens and the divas.

Remember: it do take charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, sweetie, darlings! So, drop in at an ATM, and tip your drag queens.

The details: Drag & Dosa is happening on Sunday April 26 at Knowhere, Favourite Plaza, 15, Dodda Banaswadi Main Road. Noon – 4 pm. Tickets ₹699. Book here.