Category: Writings

The homo-socio erotic camaraderie between the various ‘immortal’ friendships in Hindi cinema was interesting to observe. Two friends (invariably, there would be a Gopal) desiring the same woman, but in reality wanting nothing more than the security of male bonding, looking to
sacrifice their heterosexual love, without once consulting the woman has been played over and over in Bollywood. More overt expressions of bro-love were present in much earlier presentations such as Dosti- a black and white production where a blind boy sings of his friendship as being his vision. The cake in these tales of friendships in Bollywood was of course taken by Jai and Veeru of Sholay. The sexual spectrum that Bachchan has covered in Bollywood is a study in itself. There was a scene from the iconic Silsila where two friends- Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor (who was once called Bachchan’s favourite heroine), reminisce about the time they used to shower together in the nude, and then decide to bathe together again after many years (in Kapoor’s bathroom that has hostel-style line showers ready) and make off colour jokes about not bending to pick up the soap.

As far as drag goes in Bollywood, the five best are Biswajeet in Kajra Mohabbat Wala, Mere Angane Mein (again Amitabh in various costumes), Rishi Kapoor in Rafoo Chakkar, Aamir Khan in Baazi and Kamal Hasan in Chachi 420 (Mrs. Doubtfire)- the sexualized performances that these portrayals put forward were conveniently couched in the need to escape power structures or to save oneself from imminent harm. The same went for female to male drag in Indian films. Be it Annie in Ammayane Satyam or Meera Jasmine in Rasa Thanthram, the need to cross gender lines were always explained away. A man in a dress escapes the villains because
the body capable of threatening villains has to be male. A woman in male attire will escape harassment because men only bother assaulting women. The hero in drag would also flash his fake boa feathers at villains who would reciprocate lustfully while elsewhere, in another movie, the hero cannot explain why he is attracted to this lissome boy. It’s all a mid-summer night’s
dream! A more explicit exploration of same sex or trans sex relations would take place under the guise of one of the characters being excessively possessive of the other.

This was largely the scene in Indian cinema till the 1990s. Possessive same sex friends, casual references, insipid jokes, hyperbolic transgendered sidekicks, all populated the scene and made a coherent dialogue impossible or even relevant. But come 1990s, and things took a radically different turn with films like Fire, Darmiyan, Daayra, Bombay Boys, Tamanna. There was also Maharani, the intersex Madame of a brothel in Sadak, and the cross dressing Lajja Shankar Pandey (played by Ashutosh Rana) whose villainy nicely offset the one-sided portrayals that were soon to follow. Much has been said about the importance of Fire in the LGBTQI+ discourse in India. But personally, I would say, it was Sancharram that actually made a move in
the right direction.

Where Fire hinted that it was the dissatisfaction arising from the breakdown of heterosexual relationships that led the two women to fall in love with each other, Ligy Pullapally’s film sought to present two women who wanted to be with each other because they actually could not fathom a life with anyone else. And yes, there was a male character lurking around who was the
one who plotted to separate the two women as he thought that it was not “right”. The film is significant when placed in the background of lesbian suicides reported in the media at the time and the case of the same sex couple from Kerala, one of whom underwent a sex change operation. I would opine that a lot of ground covered by enlightened portrayals like Sancharram, was lost with Chanthupottu and its caricature of an effeminate man. Such was the crassness of the film that Chanthupottu became yet another slur for transwomen or effeminate men. These presentations were also an oblique way of pointing out that something about non- heteronormative sexuality didn’t feel “right”.

It took Malayalam cinema nine years to take a shot at redemption with Odum Raja, Aadum Rani (2014) and Njaan Marykutty that most of the transpeople of the state felt was their story. The film ran to packed houses and set a benchmark in terms of character development. However, the
issue remains that, when there are so many transpeople in the state, quite well known people at that, why go in for a cis-gendered male, mainstream actor? As in the case of Dileep in Chanthupottu, it becomes more about the person than about the people. The transformation mesmerizes and makes ‘authenticity’ judges out of viewers. Nevertheless, a step forward is a
step forward I suppose. Mumbai Police dropped queer love like a bomb but troubled one with the way the character comes to terms with his gayness. It was like a request for forgiveness. The incongruous My Best Friend is an episode best forgotten. Moothon, however celebrated its queerness and used its interiority to play out a love story. It all felt ‘right’.

This obsession with ‘not right’ or “unnatural” is what the next wave of LGBTQI+ films worked to negate with films like My Brother Nikhil and I Am. The settings of the films and the socio- economic backgrounds of the characters mattered a lot as they served to drive home the fact that
it is not only the decadent rich or the drug addled lower classes who can nurse such desires, the antiseptic middle class loves just as beautifully in different hues. This normalizing can be further seen in Honeymoon Travels, Page Three and a number of films where lives go on and sexuality
is just a part of their existence. Making gay love stories is in way a brave move because in a man’s world, lesbian stories are easier to make as they can just be seen as catering to the viewing pleasure of heterosexual men, but gay films bring with them the under current of threat, emasculation, the feeling of being less than men if there is any emotional involvement by the
male viewer with the story. A close examination of homophobia reveals a latent fear of being ‘approached’. The hyper-sexual homosexual is out to get the cultured, sexually righteous heterosexual- that’s the thought that runs on a loop.

And where are transpeople placed in all of this? While screens smoke and hiss with same sex loves, the transgender plays the role of a nurturing parent, claims cultural validation, seeks civil rights and draw parallels with gods and goddesses to establish an objective corelative. It is worth
noting that their long battle for constitutional recognition speaks the same language. Navarasa, Naan Avan Alla… Avalu are vital examples in this regard. But this is not to take away from the struggles of the trans community who have had to struggle against decades of being comic relief.
Super Deluxe, is a stupendous effort in this direction, as it takes contemporary discourses on sexuality and family to a different level. The age-old prejudices against transpeople, their exploitation and the heinous crimes they are often forced to do are presented very sensitively. But there is also the issue of the voice of the wife of the transperson. Her patient waiting all those years seem vindicated by the return of the parent of her child. Period. And that’s problematic. The words spoken by little Raasukutty, the transperson’s son “Be a man, be a woman…just bl***y be with us”, sends a beacon of hope across to lots of transpeople who left home to live their realities The line also signals, how the ‘cataclysmic, salvation denying act’ of queerness should be viewed- fluid, self-determined. . The Malayalam Aalorukkam talks of parental expectations of their children who escape to live their lives—lives that can never be understood when viewed through a moral telescope. The film which won Indrans a State Award for Best
Supporting Actor narrates the story of a father yearning for his missing son, only to find he is a married woman. The film was also awarded the National Award for ‘Film on Social Issues’.

The last decade saw queerness being treated with a lot of nuance and complexity and the art of Rituparno Ghosh had a lot to with that. His trilogy, Arekti Premer Golpo, Memories in March and Chitranggadha- the first two he acted in, the last, he directed too, explored trans lives, the process of coming out and finally, the autonomy over one’s body. While all the films are
technically, artistically and thematically brilliant, Chitrangadha becomes a manifesto for trans people or actually any person. The protagonist undergoes surgery to alter his body for the sake of their lover and then wants to revert because it impedes their dancing which is their life, their
passion. At a time when transpeople are asked to furnish proof of surgeries to be ‘called’ women or men, this film becomes especially poignant. Sexuality should not have to come with an address and pin code.

The last five years has seen a quantum leap in terms of the quality and effort that has gone into making queer films. The rise of OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Alt Balaji, Zee 5 has helped as they host content too risqué for mainstream audiences (read as- who would like to pretend to be scandalized by morals running loose and unlaced). The Other Love Story, Romil and Jugal, Made in Heaven are some examples available apart from YouTube where sometimes you may find gems such as Aalorukkam, and yes, Fire.

Though the coming of age and coming out films such as Kapoor and Sons, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, Loev are critically and culturally relevant, what stood out was Aligarh. The struggle of Prof. Ramchandra Siras who loses his job and his privacy when policemen barge into his bedroom and catch him in a compromising position brings back the spectre of the fears that pervaded I Am and made a strong case for the Right to Privacy Bill in India. While the world around him has been going crazy defining queerness and homosexuality and theorizing sexual performativity and what not, Siras tells a young reporter, “I don’t know what gay means. There is no word in my language for what I am.”

The matter of fact conversation made me smile at the mountains of words we create on a daily basis to talk about what is and what is not.  And here was a person with a nameless feeling, getting on just fine till someone chose to label him. I think unselfconscious behavior should be a fundamental right. The road to getting there, however is paved with words and movies. The above post makes no pretense of being complete or exhaustive, but I cannot simply go on without taking about cinema from other regions, chiefly, Maya Mridanga, based on a novel of the same name by Syed Mustafa Siraj that talks about the lives of the Alkaap performers of Bengal. What starts as a female impersonation, crosses over into the everyday and nothing is the same ever since.Rajkihini, among other thing looks fondly at a lesbian relationship in a brothel.  Nagarkirtan, Khejdi are films that bring love from the remote corners of the country and tell these stories like they should be told. Without melodrama, without prejudice, without self-righteous back stories.

An organisation I would like to draw attention to is the KASHISH Arts Foundation that has been hosting the Mumbai International Queer Festival for over a decade now. The festival director, Sridhar Rangayan, himself an acclaimed film maker, has created a very vocal space for Queer cinema in just a decade. Today, the festival and its founding agency are at the forefront of cinematic activism in the country. The practical and social difficulties the evolution of this festival might have witnessed makes it a revolution. A movement.

Speaking of film makers brings us to our poet for this edition, Jayan K. Cherian is a person who transforms his words into films. He has two full length films to his credit, Papilio Buddha and Ka Bodyscapes. Both films broke new ground in Malayalam cinema due to their themes and presentation. Papilio Buddha set in the Adivasi settlements of Kerala is a hard look at the ways caste becomes intertwined with social, political and sexual citizenship. The film made some bold statements through its presentation of native Buddhism and through placing Ayyankali at the heart of the Dalit struggles for land rights in the state. The film was a pushback against mainstream political ideologies that exclude Dalit conversations and seek to foist a homogenized means of protest irrespective of cultural sensitivities. Cherian’s film referenced the system of punitive rapes that were taking place as a means to defeat the struggle for land rights. Ka Bodyscapes, continued Cherian’s eye for rooting out the rot in society. Bringing together the themes of censorship, obscenity, moral policing and sexuality, he traced the connect between them. Though the film was primarily supposed to be about love, it became an eye opener about jaundiced perceptions and society’s eagerness to denounce what it does not understand…or think is ‘right’.

He reveals that he does not have a poetic process. He writes poetry but he would rather make films. And it must be quite a compulsion as while he had taken poetry at his undergrad level, he went on to do a double major in film from City College, New York.

Cherian wrote poetry in Malayalam at a time when there were hardly any openly gay poets in Malayalam. And the few and far between ones were called a very derogatory name that roughly translates as ‘backdoor poets’. Having left for the US when he was 21, Cherian would send in his poems unfailingly and had one of his works published in a leading Malayalam magazine of the time. It elicited very positive responses from a number of people. One of those who reached out to him was a young boy who went on to become a renowned artist and activist, Aryakrishnan Ramakrishnan- who has found a mention in one of our previous posts (creator of the Sweet Maria Monument). Incidentally, that was the first and last time Cherian was published in Kerala, he revealed, laughing hard at the memory. The boldness and historical relevance of his works sat lightly on him as he talked about the struggles of finding an audience for Ka Bodyscapes upon its commercial release, the Malayaliness of the Malayali, Americans who don’t understand caste dynamics and so on.I found Jayan K. Cherian to be a man at ease with himself.

This ease is reflected in his poems too. The sheer physicality of his lines complement the delicate lines of love that he draws. In these words, you will find pain, love, conversations, the conundrums of a lover, questions people like to ask. You might also stumble upon a God. All you need to remember is that these are word cinema.

Sonya J. Nair
Editor

First, it is important to look at the timeline of the legal battle in 1994, an NGO, ABVA (AIDS Bhed Bhaav Virodhi Andolan) files a petition against Article 377, which lies dormant till 2001 when the Naz Foundation too files a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Article. In 2004, the Delhi High Court dismisses the case but in 2006 takes it up again as per the directive from the Hon. Supreme Court of India. Affidavits are filed by, among others, Voices Against 377. In 2009, the Delhi High Court renders 377 not applicable to consenting adults leading to counter petitions being filed. In 2013, the Hon. Supreme Court strikes down the 2009 verdict.

Global Rage Day is observed in over 30 cities against this action. The slogan, #nogoingback trended. It is indeed beautiful that places like Sydney, Toronto, Boston, London, San Fransico, New York, Hamburg, Berlin Mexico City, Cambridge among others joined Indian cities in the protests.  In 2014, a curative petition is filed and the historic NALSA judgement delivered. In 2016, more petitions are filed and in 2017, the Right to Privacy laws demand a re-examination of the idea of privacy of an Indian citizen. In 2018, the Hon. Supreme Court finally decriminalizes same-sex love between consenting adults. This long-drawn battle, all for love!

Second, it becomes imperative to look at India in the nineties. Globalisation had arrived and was here to stay. The then Finance Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh had declared that no country could remain an island. While a number of political parties resisted this move, multinational ventures such as fashion brands and fast food chains began witnessing throngs of crowds seeing such plenty for the first time.

It was from this period on that India witnessed a new sort of social and cultural revolution. One that celebrated diversity outside of jingoism. One that looked for something unusual in everyday spaces. Remember the television ads from the period? Pidilite, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Dhara Oil, Cadbury’s and so on. There was a push for the different- a search for stories that were not being told in the usual staid manner. It was also the time that advertisements showcased rural stories, narratives of people from small towns and identified these spots as the heart of India. It is no coincidence that the Hamara Bajaj ad came out in 1989. It was about a country that had come out of the licensing raj and was taking rapid strides thanks to its citizens who were largely middle class. These were relatable stories from all parts of the country that told people that there could be others who felt like them. Who were like them.

To compound it all, the introduction of the Star TV bouquet, the MTV programmes being beamed in from Singapore, all created a multicultural cosmos right in the middle of Indian living rooms where just a decade ago, they performed poojas before televisions before the telecast Ramayan began. (A few decades later, things still remain the same…) Fashion TV was a late-night guilty pleasure and people saw not just haughty, nubile women walking the ramp, but also, a strange phenomenon- a well groomed male.

For most Indians, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Jitendra, Rishi Kapoor and finally Aamir Khan were where the chocolate boy image came to a screeching halt. And here were young men in designer wear (which could not be worn anywhere in India without attracting comment or horror) sashaying down the ramp with a glint in their eyes that set out to attract indiscriminately. The metrosexual man became a by word. Fantasy had a face to relate to.

The introduction in 1994, of the Gladrags Manhunt and the Graviera (later Grasim) Mr. India contests for men, helped evolve a public discourse and consensus around male beauty in the country. Models such as Bikram Saluja, Milind Soman, Dino Morea, Marc Robinson, Zulfi Sayed etc. helped admit an urbane, groomed man. One who dressed well and was not judged for his coiffed hair or for paying attention to his body. The body on display here had a different appeal from the bodies parading around akhadas and body building contests. Their arenas of desire were also different and operated on a different cultural sphere. The male body on the ramp became the canvas on which desires and fantasies clothed in fabric (or lack thereof) were played out. It opened up avenues for a number of erotic minorities to find professions suited to their talents and accommodative of their sexualities, as opposed to working as assistants to tailors. It made it easy to dream, to escape into a world that was very different from the one’s they were living in.

The opening up of the economy also saw the rise of the NGO culture in India with foreign funding and assistance for safe sex practices and AIDS prevention. Many NGOs that are front line responders for erotic minorities toady, started off as nodal agencies for distributing condoms among MSM as they were known then- men Who have Sex with Men. (Simply and baldly stated). The launching of the magazine Bombay Dost in 1990 also helped serve as a rallying point for the LGBT community of the time. The editor Ashok Row Kavi talked about how he used to get letters from people from small towns who talked about their problems.

The takeaway one got from that statement is that, he wishes to point out that homosexuality is not something of an urban disease. And that there is now a definite way to gauge the pulse of the community. This is because while trans people had at the very least, the thin protection of cultural and religious acceptance, homosexuals were largely seen as the result of the corrupt modern or western influence. The movie Fire (1996) brought home the possible of love in very ordinary homes, away from English speaking, mansion- residing decadents. It became very confusing that EVERYWOMAN (due to the loaded, yet generic names Radha and Sita) could ‘shame’ the family. (But that is a journey for another time.)

There are studies from the nineties, conducted by agencies like the ABVA that talk about the state of affairs in the nineties in semi-urban and rural areas.

There are narratives of personal liberation through coming out just as there are crushing tales of oppression. The claustrophobic social walls within which these desires operated is apparent. More often than not, there was a fear of being considered ‘less than male’ if discovered or outed. The stories of women or other sexualities are few and far in between. In most narratives, there is the understanding that while the facility of articulation- calling oneself homosexual, transgender or bisexual was not available, the channels of physical expression had been at one point or the other open. Erotic minorities had a vital presence in non-urban centres. Those that went away to big cities, ostensibly in search of  better incomes were also aspiring for the anonymity that these cities provided that served to help them live as they wanted. Unfettered and loved. It was from urban centres that the terms and words that are so important in legal parlance, were articulated.

The point is that, the frenetic activity in that iconic decade, set the tone and temperament to help open discourses about same-sex love in India and the difficulties faced by those directly affected. It also brought to the fore, the need to congregate, form communities that could push for change. Not that these mechanisms were not already in place. But they were largely unorganized spaces. Parks, beneath bridges, traffic junctions- places that did not present much possibilities other than cruising or casual meetings. The turning point came with the vocal presences of interested parties from influential or game changing frontiers such as media and entertainment. There was sufficient ampere to be heard, but importantly, there was spending power. When contextualized in a global economy where numbers are everything, the spending as well the workforce power of the communities become massive. And this has only grown in the recent years. The onus is on corporates to be inclusive spaces as studies have shown that most LGBTQI+ individuals keep track of businesses that support their cause or have LGBTQI+ employees. A study showed that 80 percent of responders from Poland- erotic minority or otherwise would not shop at homophobic stores. The Levi’s Circles ad became one of the most watched ads of 2017, on account of the inclusivity it put forth. This translates into immense goodwill from a community that is often DINK- Double Income No Kids.

In the last decade, the ‘pink economy’ which is a term used to describe the economic power of erotic minorities, has grown exponentially. There are businesses that cater specifically to LGBTQI individuals or are enterprises that are known to be LGBTQI friendly. There are, for example, tour operators who organize travel itineraries for same- sex couples and offer holiday packages to destinations that are ‘safe’ destinations. A country like India in the pre-2018 scenario, would not be one of these, thus, losing out on potentially millions of dollars in revenues. Case in point being celebrities such as Wendell Rodricks and Keshav Suri holding their weddings (with their respective partners) in Paris as India did not recognise gay weddings. As per studies conducted by Forbes India, in 2009, while pegging the number of LGBTQI population at 4 percent of the population, found this demographic to constitute 6 percent in 2014, with a spending potential of 200 billion dollars, roughly 6 per cent of the GDP.

There are organisations such as Out for Business which describes itself as “a coalition of global companies making the case that inclusive, diverse societies are better for business and better for economic growth. The purpose of the coalition is to advance LGBT+ inclusion globally, by promoting a positive economic and business case for equality of opportunity for everyone, all across the world.”

The partner companies in this venture include Accenture, Brunswick, Google, IBM and so on and their policies for inclusion are adopted by companies such as Mahindra and Mahindra and Godrej, whose Culture Labs provide valuable spaces for erotic minorities to showcase their talents. Also committed to creating better work environments are Tata Steel who have resolved to have at least 5 percent of their staff from the LGBT+ community, Infosys, Dr. Reddy’s, Lupin, Sun Pharma and Wipro to name a few. The reason I am listing out these organisations is that their work needs to be acknowledged or, if their employees need to call them out, then so be it.

These strong rubrics have a powerful impact on the way trade and commerce connections play out on the international stage and needless to say, they are a very vocal voice in influencing policy decisions in governance. When there are companies such as Apple, Google, Reuters funding studies that index cities on their ‘livability’ and ‘inclusiveness’ is a criteria, same sex partnerships being criminalized is not a good idea. It affects the sort of talent that flows into the country, as well as it causes talent to leave too. Interestingly, when an Indian diplomat was accused of violating human rights while being stationed in the US, one suggestion put forward for paying back the Americans in the same coin was to mandate that all the same sex partners of the American diplomats stationed in India be arrested using the anti-gay laws in place in India. There cannot be a better and more visible example of the ways laws are twisted in order to commission vengeful action. When transposed onto the life of an ordinary gay citizen of this country, the law becomes a terrifying and humiliating proposition. That was 2013.

There is a definite connection between the way the LGBTQI+ discourse evolved in this country, gained political citizenship and constitutional presence through economic validity. Manvendra Singh Gohil, talks about how he explained to politicians in the only language they understand- money- about the huge losses the country incurs by maintaining this stranglehold on sexualities.  Interestingly, for the final verdict in 2018, the. Government of India left the decision to the wisdom of the Supreme Court. But said that the court must adjudicate only and only on the constitutionality of the Article 377 and not on related issues such as natural orientation or marriage and inheritance. There are so many layers of meaning and signification here. After all, rights when won, must be unequivocal, not concessionary.

It is true that LGBTQI+ people can now live and work with greater freedom. Many companies are offering medical insurance for their partners too. This makes them more productive citizens. Importantly, it makes them economically contributing citizens as they are mentally and physically in better shape to work or relax with their loved ones. Destinations previously closed to them are now opened. This does not mean that their problems have vanished. It means that one of their biggest enemies has been rendered toothless. It means that they are one step closer to living their life as they are supposed to live- free, at ease with their feelings and bodies. They can exist as physical, tangible beings, in tangible spaces. They still will have to go to Paris to get legally married though…(just saying).

Aditi Nagrath’s poems celebrate this freedom. The body and the limitlessness of desire occupy centerstage. She asks vital questions about creativity.

• Eat the poem until there is little else left of you
• Eat yourself until there is little else left of the poem
• Poem yourself until there is little else left to eat

(What do you do with a Poem?)

Elsewhere she claims that “The poet is a madwoman is a cloud.” (What is a Poem that a Woman is not?)

Aditi completed her Master's in Clinical Psychology in 2018, and is training in expressive arts therapy and working to build access to arts in education. Currently living in New Delhi, she works as an education counsellor and uses her free time to teach and write poetry. Her work has appeared in Noble/Gas Qtrly, Monstering Mag, among others. Her first collection of poems, Beyond Survival, was published in 2015 through Condensed Matter Bindery & Press.

She writes to be heard. And to remember. Her works are personal journeys into experiences. And to articulate the intensity with which she feels. As a poet, she is generous in letting the reader claim the poem. She offers her works to us, to take freely, whatever we want. “At best, I wish for my poems to be like the rain-- gentle sky, distant hope, a simmering evening shared.” But the fire in her verse is easily discernible. There is raw passion and very earthy means of expressing desire.  There is the fervour of activism, the desire for freedom at any cost. At a time when love can thankfully be called so, without fear or prejudice, Aditi’s poems are indeed a blessing.  And salvation.

It is into this swirl that J. K Rowling hurled her Molotov cocktail when she engaged the world in what soon spun into a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) war. Rowling, in a tweet referred to an article that discussed the effect of the pandemic on “people who menstruate”. She called for the article to put a name to these “people”.

“ ‘People who menstruate,’ I’m sure there used to be a name for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Earlier, she had come out in support of a woman fired for her Transphobic tweet. TERF propagates the idea that Trans Women are not really women. That they ought not to claim the rights, spaces, political dialogue (whatever there is of that) that belong to women. To interpret Rowling, who claims to be a victim of domestic and sexual abuse, the act of claiming (using) single sex spaces such as restrooms, changing rooms, train compartments, in the case of Kerala- seats on buses, by trans women can unsettle women who are fragile and vulnerable or just women in general. This could lead to the whole purpose of such spaces being defeated. That it comes from a person who created a world that could be a transperson’s dream is just sad. (Just reimagine Harry Potter and you will see.)

As a cis-gendered woman, I have not had a second thought about using public facilities. It is a sort of a version of white privilege. Thanks to Rowling and the TERFs, I recall a very disruptive scene from the web series, Pataal Lok, where a woman prisoner discovers that her cellmate is a transwoman who has not undergone SRS. There is a huge row and the transwoman is assaulted by the police. And then is put in another cell with her male partners in crime. Now the self-identified woman becomes a long-haired man. All by exiting through one door and entering through another.  The female prisoner can be heard threatening to sue the Police Department citing the horrible things that could have happened to her. In my conversations with transpeople from Kerala, they tell me about the struggle to get a separate cell for transpeople in police stations and jails. They succeeded. But in the wake of everything, the success seems problematic.

Transkids are often harassed when they try to use the school restrooms of the gender that they identify with. To set a separate restroom for transkids would be the kind of social distancing that qualifies as social segregation. Using single sex spaces is again not an easy choice for transpeople as they have to be mentally prepared to be asked to leave or be given a wide berth or be abused. They end up looking in the mirror less and looking out of the corner of their eyes more.

I have asked a few of my trans friends about which restrooms they use. They answered. At one point, I realised it was not polite. It was not the done thing.  Just because they have come out and identified themselves doesn’t mean that their lives have to be roadside hoardings. Their activism is their choice and doesn’t necessarily have to translate to revealing details of their personal lives.

At the most organic level, the Rowling controversy reopens debates around who is a man or a woman and the ideas of self-identification. One can’t expect a transperson to pull down their pants at every given turn to show they have undergone SRS. And to expect SRS of every transperson is to subject them to compulsory medical and mental interventions which is an imposition on their person. It imagines a uniform code for bodies and that all transpeople have the means for SRS- like the aforementioned water and soap.

I am told by a member of the Transgender Justice board that in India at least, the F to M transition is a daunting task with two main surgeries that are carried out in two stages. The first one takes about six hours if not more and the person is placed on ventilator support till the next leg of the surgery. The procedure is risky and painful. Not to mention expensive. Then they have to appear before a board comprising a medical doctor, a psychologist and a member of the community to get an identity card that says Male. The same is the case with M to F transitions. This is what a person will have to go through in order to use a restroom meant for men or women. That’s why passing judgement on what people should and should not do with their bodies is a version of white privilege.

Interestingly, Rowling says that had she been born thirty years later, she too would have transitioned to “escape womanhood.” This again positions the trans identity as an escape route meant for those who feel powerless (Transmen) or don’t know how to handle the power they have been given (Transwomen). Not only does this train of thought push for gender binaries, it also forces one to unconsciously validate certain power relations. It also enforces spaces of solidarity between restroom using men or women by ‘protecting’ them from assault by trans people. I would imagine this is all happening in Hogwarts where there are no Lesbian or Gay people using bathrooms. Or where cis-gendered people won’t rob men or women in a place where they are at their most vulnerable. Of course, we need to understand that these views are shared by Rowling and a lot of people the world over which has necessitated the observance of IDAHOT (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia).

Our poet for this post couldn’t be featured at a better time. Daya Gayatri is a transwoman who made history by being one of the first transpeople who joined college in Kerala. Daya is pursuing a Bachelors Degree in Malayalam at Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam and is a very vocal part of the student governing body. Assigned male at birth, she experienced gender dysphoria from childhood. This coupled with harassment and abuse caused her to leave one college and join Maharaja’s, where the situation was not very different. Finding no way out, she decided to kill herself, an attempt that was thankfully, unsuccessful. Later, she eked out a living doing odd jobs and at times even drinking water out of restrooms to fill her stomach. Increased interactions with other transpeople helped her understand herself and this gave her life goals. She had her first surgery done and was setting money aside for the second one.

That was when disaster struck in the form of a police raid on the lodge where she was staying. Though she was not present at the lodge during the raid, she was summoned and framed for alleged unlawful activities. The police allegedly took away the money she had saved. The case came to the notice of transgender activist and celebrity makeup artist Renju Renjimar who posted her bail. She took the young Daya straight from the police station to the theatre workshop being conducted by the National School of Drama, where the play Parayaan Maranna Kathakal (Never Told Tales) was taking form. She was given a part and also composed a song. We have featured it here. She has performed the play at several national and international festivals. She reveals that one of the turning points in her life was when she was reunited with her parents after they watched one of her shows.  It speaks volumes about the transformative power of art.

Renju Renjimar, has taken Daya under her wing and has sponsored her surgeries- something that Daya insists people should know about. Daya rejoined Maharaja’s College after actively petitioning the Government to introduce provisions for transpeople in courses in colleges. She built a platform in spaces she was laughed out of. This is the resilience that a part of society is attempting to flush away. Literally.

Daya writes under the pen name, Mazhapennu on account of her ardent love for rain. She writes in Malayalam. I have translated the same. Her works bring to the fore, an ardent romantic. She has a Vlog and her YouTube channel is quite popular. Her poems belong to a soul on a quest to find its mate. The tone is mellow and patient. Her lament for her people touches the heart as she very gently addresses the plight of a people who have no place to call home. Her dreams and the hopes she has for her future are a far cry from the militant call for textbook definitions of male and female. She is a woman and she revels in the power this knowledge provides. Her Woman represents her struggle for life and acceptance.

The art accompanying this post is a photograph taken by ace photographer Mr. Harikrishnan G. who is currently with Manorama Publications, Kottayam. His photo exhibits- EMO, Alien and  Secret Garden opened to favourable reviews. Most of his works present human and nature-oriented subjects in their vulnerable and fragile state. The photo is part of his series titled Trans which featured Sheethal Shyam, Deepti Kalyani and Sonu from the transgender community. This photo is of Sheethal, one of the spokespersons of the community. SamyuktaPoetry thanks the photographer and the model for granting us the permission to use the photo. We think these poems and this photo bring about catharsis. As for men, women and fantastic beasts and where to find them?  RIDDIKULUS !!

Sonya J. Nair
Editor

The visual interest in the body for purposes of pleasure is by no means new. In fact, the combination of the body and art that translated into visual and sexual pleasure became so rampant during the 19thcentury that it became an entire industry. Yes, it is still an industry. London was at the heart of a rather healthy trade and pornographic (there, I said it!) material flowed to London from the colonies and vice-versa. London became the smut capital of the world and sale in these postcards flourished all over the Continent and could be bought even in family run shops. There were exotic images, some had people posing with fruit (kink is certainly not a 20th century invention). But of course, the problem of too much of a good thing cropped up and Europe was aghast at this form of commerce. This denigration of the Empire by its neighbours and the colonies themselves led to some of the most stringent laws passed by the British Government at that time.

The Cantonment Act (1864), Contagious Diseases Act (1868), were all attempts to apparently stamp out venereal diseases in the Armed Forces and by extension in the general British public. For example, in the Boer War, 6 percent of the soldiers were hospitalized due to Venereal Disease.These Acts were essential as they were basically the means to control the sexualities of the rulers by imposing regulations on the natives. The Acts served to help the colonisers hold on to their image as culturally and morally superior beings. This image was essential for maintaining their slipping hold on the colonies. Modernity had given enough ammunition to the colonies to point out the irony of denying even self-governance to Indians when the British were themselves incapable of asserting at least a moral control on their own sexual engagements. The British had to ensure a lasting impression of their cultural validity.

Art was employed to propagate this power equation. It reflected the might of the Empire on which the sun never set. George Stubbs, Edward Armitage, George Sant, M V Dhurandhar to name a few were pressed into service. An array of colonial painters set out to paint forts, boatmen, animals, native women in languorous poses, memsahibs staring out at nothing. What people did in these paintings depended on the colour of their skin. A lot was painted over. Literally.

Post-independence Indian art- not just painting- witnessed a revolution with artists such as those associated with the Progressive Artists’ Group and the Delhi Silpi Chakra. In a retrospective held by the Delhi National Gallery of Modern Art, the works of painters of the Raj were displayed with those by Indian artists such as M. F Hussain, F.N Souza, Tyeb Mehta, Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose and Amrita Sher-Gil to name a few. I even saw a Ravi Varma up close!

In the paintings by the modern Indian artists, I felt that the body had been used as a metacanvas. The narrative of the painting was placed on the body. The B.C Sanyal piece titled Old Man and Bird comes to mind. So does Hussain’s Cyclonic Silence. Now what does all this have to do with Queer Art, which is what we started the post with? The Body. Queer Art, be it painting, sculpture, installation or any other form, incorporates the body as the central subject. Even when the corporeal is not absent, it is present. Conspicuously. Queer performativity employs the body to express desire, the spaces that are off limits, within limits, claimed, discarded or left unclaimed. Queer art in India is associated with artists such as Sunil Gupta, Balbir Krishan and Bhupen Khakhar who blazed a trail through various media such as paintings and photographs. Sunil Gupta along with Tejal Shah and Naveen Kishore exhibited the Sun City series of photographs that became hugely controversial.

The intersectionality of social identities- that is- a number of aspects of a person’s personality can overlap- a person can be an artist, a parent, a civil servant and queer became pronounced with the debates surrounding the repeal of the Article 377. This recognition and acceptance of intersectionality found a presence in the Anita Dube curated 2018 edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Segments such as Dissent and Desire and the Sweet Maria Monument served to bring queer issues to performative and interactive spaces. This is very vital for ensuring affirmative avenues for gender non-confirming individuals to talk about the issues of violence, equal opportunities, love, inclusion and acceptance.

This makes queer art very political, even when it is not, or did not intend to be. Many queer artists whose works sell for high prices are not very well known as people refuse to exhibit their purchases because then they are scrutinized as procurers of queer art. Among the current crop of artists, Debasmita Das, Aryakrishnan (Sweet Maria Monument), Priya Dali, Charan, Amir Rabbani are noteworthy, among a host of others. The vast possibilities of the Internet, particularly, Instagram has helped these artists gain great visibility and voice. The support of active networks such as Gaysi, Point of View and the Godrej India Culture Lab has enabled these artists to expand their reach and highlight the disruptive and transformative quality of their work. The body occupies centre stage in their works. Sensuality is not sanitized through ambiguity, rather, the nooks and cranies of the body through light and shadows narrate stories one can only guess at. There are spaces that by the absence of the protagonist, make one conduct conscious searches. Like the Sweet Maria Monument that uses the metaphor of a ginormous underskirt as a safe space for people to converse. Maria however is absent. She was murdered by unknown persons. That it is her memory that gives people this safe space to love, laugh or talk is a lesson in the beauty of benevolence. The nuanced revelation this installation yields coupled with the stories of sexual minorities who go through life in fear of remaining unheard by society and law is staggering and cathartic. Do look these artists up on Instagram. Those pictures will be worth the thousand words (literally) that I have written.

Talking of the disruptive and the transformative brings me to our poet Saachi Gupta. All of 19 years, she has been published in several international publications such as Psych2Go, Reclamation Magazine and the December 2019 issue of Write The World’s Review, which includes their best entries. She works with platforms like the Gaysi Family and Luna Collective. Saachi has been awarded the United Nations-affiliated Karmaveer Chakra Award for her writing, and has self-published a collection of poetry ‘With Love, Or Something Like That.’

The language of the experiences goes way beyond the physical and stain the soul. While much of the world prefers Blank Verse, Gupta’s use of rhyme gives her poems a certain lilting quality that helps them leap fences with ease and elegance. They also add a certain charm to the wisdom the words contain. She can be found at #saachisassified.

This edition has been illustrated by Ms. Ruchi Sinha, an undergrad student of French at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. More of her work can be found on #not_a_pangloss.

This is why language is a major preoccupation with Chandramohan. His words are like chisels, chipping away at centuries of monolithic structures. Be it English or the songs of the subaltern, Chandramohan is been there, observing and absorbing relentlessly. Nothing escapes the poet. I was especially struck by the way these two independent works interrogate language, politics, rights and violence.

From songs cradled in our tongues
From lullabies for infants to be born
From land yet to be owned
We harvest a dream.
and
If a slave learns English language
He may venture into Monroe Island
And proclaim “Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises”
In an English accent,
And read out an emancipation proclamation.

His poetry carries cadences of what is deemed ‘impure’ or ‘defiling’.  As an act of writing back, he elevates the instruments, implements and songs of his people to the realms of the deeply primal and spiritual. The soul of these elements is inscribed on the bodies of the subaltern. This is reminiscent of the cult of the Gaana from Tamil Nadu. The anger, the protest, the sense of triumph at being alive and pushing back can be felt intensely. That Chandramohan’s satire is as vivid as his anger is evident in his poem Accident at a River. It is structured as a newspaper report about the drowning of poets and translators in the Kabini. This river has often turned red with every wave of the people’s struggles against oppressive systems and is a symbol of defiance and resilience. Chandramohan has a rather unique take on this subject.

In a sense, Chandramohan searches for his ancestry not among the socially defined paradigms of family, but among the Dalit poets before him. Many of his poems are addressed to Poikayil Appachan, the Dalit poet and reformer. Chandramohan’s iconic work, Letters to Namdeo Dhansal is the way the young poet opens vital lines of communication with the trails blazed by the Dalit Panthers. He interrogates the patronizing tone behind widely touted governmental and social ‘reforms’.

Says Rochelle Potkar in her review of Letters…, “This book, for me, goes beyond literature. Life through literature rather than the other way around, where I am reminded of us being spiritually-deprived in the way we have allowed discrimination, displaying gaps between gleaming intellectualism and real-life choices, through a gamut of actions that promote and perpetrate continuing inequalities.”

When not writing poetry, Chandramohan is busy organizing poetry meets for organisations such as the Ayyappa Panicker Foundation and the Kritya Poetry Festival. He has been featured in anthologies such as LAND and 40 Poets Under 40. He was named by the Outlook magazine in 2016 as one of the high achievers from the Dalit community.  Chandramohan was the writer in residence at the International Writing Programme conducted by the University of IOWA in 2018. He is currently working on a rap album of Dalit poetry.

Sita, originally published in the July 2001 issue of Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture (Vol.I., no.2), is part of her extensive writings on Sita in the Ramayana. Apart from published works, she has also a yet to be published study comparing the representations of the various Sitas in Chintavishtayaya Sita by Kumaran Asan, Kanchana Sita by C. N Sreekantan Nair, ‘Asoka’, a short story by Sara Joseph and G. Aravindan’s film, Kanchana Sita. Interestingly, she has translated all these literary works into English from Malayalam. The sheer scope of this monumental study reveals the scholarship Vasanthi has garnered on the subject. In an interview with G.S.  Jayasree, the editor of Samyukta, Vasanthi speaks of her Sita, who she feels ought to have been as bold, independent and self- respecting as the Sitas in canonical works.

This week, Samyukta Poetry is honoured to feature Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan and her Sita. Though we usually present a clutch of poems, the singularity of this work- the starkness of diction, the appraising tone and the nuances of thought, the way it talks about a perception or the ideal growing bigger than the original-merited a solo run. The river of words that Vasanthi lets flow, demands a cleansing flood. Fire countered with water. Sita will compel you to return and re-read.  And she will surprise you every time.