Where we see video explorations, co-created, curated, learner generated, to make visible various, hidden Indias.
Pastoral livelihoods are considered anomalous to the development agenda: they’re wholly invisible in the urban imagination. Though many are content to continue along the nomadic lines of their occupation, in recent years some have considered ‘settling’ in the city to formally educate the next generation.
In the last episode of the series compilation, meet Huma and Tabassum from Sadbhavna Trust, Rajkumari from Sahjani Shiksha Kendra and Shobha from Vanangana. The four caseworkers though are relatively new to doing casework but succinctly put their personal journey in words being integral part of the organisations, focused on gender-based violence cases.
Many years ago, in the hills of Nepal, 12-year-old Shuvangi walked to school with her mother, who was headed to a classroom of her own. It was a school meant for adult education, and for some time, mother and child were students together. Her mother, eventually, had to give it up in favour of the responsibilities that awaited her in the household, and with it, the possibility of a different life eroded under the weight of duty.
Queering the Pitch: Life and Times of Saleem Kidwai is a short film that traces the legacy of historian and writer Saleem Kidwai. Best known for co-editing Same-Sex Love in India, a landmark text in the fight against Section 377, Saleem’s life also opened up quieter, radical possibilities of the queer lens — ones that transcended binaries, rewrote cultural hierarchies, and made room for joy, complexity, and chosen kinship.
A friend of Tabassum told her about the river. “The first thing I saw when I went there was garbage. What will I shoot here, I thought. But then, I sat down quietly and began observing. I saw the river, the fisherman, the boat ferrying the people from one shore to the other.
In this episode of Back Story, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Amrita Narayanan explores the raptures and distress that shape women’s sexuality in modern India. Drawing from her book ‘Women’s Sexuality and Modern India’ (Oxford University Press), Amrita takes us through years of psychoanalytic work and intimate conversations with women. What emerges is a granular map of sexuality– where guilt, pleasure, internalized shame, and familial influence coalesce.
Meet Manju Soni from Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Manju has been working with Vanangana NGO since 2000 and for the past five years has been working as a caseworker in the organisation, focused on gender-based violence cases.
In our third episode, we meet Rupal Oza, a geographer who works with gender and space. In her new book, Semiotics of Rape, published by Zubaan, she talks about the making of the book, the politics of rape, the role of land and caste in cases of rape, and discusses some critical cases that emerged from Haryana in the last decade.
In this episode, meet Avdhesh Gupta from Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Avdesh has been working with Vanangana NGO as a caseworker since 1995 on gender based violence cases.
It was curiosity that led Ashraf Hussain and Ajfarul Sheikh to turn their steps towards their local madrasa, a place that they would pass by often, but had no occasion to enter.
