ALLAPUR (Uttar Pradesh): Draped in a bright red sari, wearing bangles, anklets, nose ring and donning other items of the solah singaar (16 ways to beautify body) from head to toe, Kailash Nath Tripathi is a man who claims to be Radha - the consort of Lord Krishna.

Tripathi now calls himself Kailash Radha. The 62-year-old former teacher in a government-run school in this village in Uttar Pradesh's Pratapgarh district, some 140 km from state capital Lucknow, has been cross-dressing for the last five months.

Tripathi says that it was Lord Krishna who "motivated" him to do this.

"Krishna came in my dream and referred to me as his Radha. To please my lord, thereafter I decided to become Radha," Tripathi said.

His Radha act has evoked strong opposition from his family members, who now shun him.

"My wife and two sons no longer live with me. They left me, as they do not like my appearance. From them (family members) there was immense pressure that I should live like a common man and not like Radha," said Tripathi.

What made the family members more furious was his decision to donate his lifelong savings of Rs.1 million to temples in the district. "Now they never come to meet me. I have also made it clear to them that I will continue to live like Radha till my last breath."

The family members however said it was Tripathi's eccentric behaviour that drove them away. "How can one live with a man who calls his wife a Sakhi (a friend). Lost in Krishna-bhakti (devotion to Krishna), my husband has no time for his family," said his wife Girja Devi.