Rose Venkatesan, India's first transgender television show host, has become the first prominent Indian to have sex-change surgery. Thirty-year-old Rose, who had sex reassignment surgery in Bangkok on March 18, will officially announce her new gender status on May 6, which she says will be her "first birthday".

"I feel like a butterfly," says Rose, on her return from Thailand, where plastic surgeon Dr Thep Vechavisit did a penile amputation and vaginoplasty. "It makes me so much more a woman," said Rose, whose public debut in February 2008 was on Vijay TV's talk show 'Ippadikku Rose'.

An engineering graduate who did a biomedical engineering course in the US, Rose was forced out of her home because her parents disapproved of her cross-dressing and "other girlie ways."