Gazal Dhaliwal

Gazal Dhaliwal has spoken out against the controversial Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018, and voiced her support for the scrapping of the Bill as it does not grant transgender people the right to self-determination of their gender identity, and makes no mention of the educational and professional reservation quotas for transgender people. 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.

Her screenwriting debut came with an opportunity as the Additional Dialogue Writer of Wazir, starring Amitabh Bachchhan, in 2016. Since then, she has been Dialogue Writer of Lipstick Under My Burkha, Qarib Qarib Single, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, and the short film A Monsoon Date starring Konkona Sen Sharma.

In 2016, Gazal attended the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) on transgender rights in the US as a part of an 8-member team. It was the first Indian team of its kind to be part of a three-week exchange program that was organised by the US Department of State.

In 2014, she also appeared in the third season of Satyamev Jayate, a television show dedicated to discussing social and political issues hosted by Indian actor Aamir Khan, in an episode titled "Accepting Alternate Sexualities". She also made her acting debut in 2015 in the short film Agli Baar, about slum dwellers' fight for their right to land.

In 2009, Gazal Dhaliwal returned to Mumbai and wrote her first ever movie script, reportedly shutting herself up in a room and writing for 25 days straight. Although that first script has not yet been turned into a movie, since then, Gazal has lent her voice to the scriptwriting process of several big budget films.

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.

Gazal went to the British Co-ed High School in Patiala, and then pursued a Chemical Engineering degree from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur. After graduation, she joined Infosys in Mysore as a software engineer. However, Gazal's passion lay in the world of Bollywood. In 2005, she quit her job and moved to Mumbai, studying filmmaking at Xavier Institute of Communications for a year, and assisted Govind Nihalani on an animated film script.