Home Influencer Stories Humanities The Journey of an Indian Drag Queen – Alex Mathew

The Journey of an Indian Drag Queen – Alex Mathew

Alex Mathew, the drag queen, inspires several lives by standing by his belief and owning his strength to the fullest. An LGBTQ influencer, Alex believes the stage to be his world and has a thousand dreams in his ever twinkling eyes. By always knowing there was something ‘hatke’ about him, Alex Mathew stood by his belief and his strength. An unusual man, an activist, singer, and drag queen, Alex hails from Kerala and has been brought up in Trivandrum. He spent his early years in Kerala, where he attended schooling, during which he, for the first time, explored a fancy dress competition and the stage life, which gave him an essence of his true self.

Although he loved exploringthe other side of him, the quest and fondness were suppressed by his parents, whose belief stood different from his. No sooner did he complete his schooling and went on to seek graduation in B.com in Bangalore, a city where he found the means to realize his dreams to glory. This was when he explored singing, acting, dancing by observing people, and learning from them, with no formal training whatsoever.

For Alex, Bangalore was much more than just his graduation city; it was a place where he could spread his wings and explore his passion to the fullest. During the last year of his college days, he took part in theatre and found his true calling

With no mentor to guide him, he soon went back to Kerala to do MBA, as his parents had asked him to do. No sooner did he start feeling trapped in a city like Trivandrum. He thought he couldn’t express himself. Although he found his true calling, however, he never felt comfortable exploring his passion out there, with his surroundings unaware of the exposure he was accustomed to.Battling with depression during the two years of his MBA, Alex wanted to escape from Trivandrum. Fortunately for him, he soon got an internship in Hyderabad in Deloitte and was eventually placed in the same company. This was again when he got back to exercising his passion and started his theatre practice.

He stayed in Hyderabad for 1 year 7 months when he traveled each day to and fro to practice theatre around 6 am, while he had his work shift from 2 pm to 11 pm. The constant theatre practice and its exploration soon evolved him into a theatre personality. He slowly explored the production and then went on to exploring acting and dancing

As he kept practicing theatre, it became one of the most established ways to understand how passionate he was about theatre. Soon after 1 year 7 months of his stay in Hyderabad, he got another work opportunity in Bangalore, a city he was well familiar with.

As he was shunned for his feminine attitude and accent, Alex started to practice female character roles inspired by prominent movie characters such as ‘Chachi 420’, where Kamal Hasan portrayed a female’s character. Being an observer himself, he started observing and following the behavioral traits of women he was surrounded by, even in his family.

Starting with humble beginnings, in September 2014, as a queer artist, the ‘Maya’ in Alex, grew. Although he lost jobs where organizations and their human resource team failed to acknowledge his skill set over his sexuality, he soon started managing queer artists. He believes ‘an artist needs another to understand one another.’Currently hustling online by creating videos and campaigns due to the pandemic hit situation, Alex envisions starting a chat show interviewing queer artists. Owning one’s strength like no other, the LGBTQ influencer is here to inspire fellow queer artists like him to stand by their belief and to own themselves.