Biksu is a graphic novel that has enjoyed unparalleled success in the Hindi reading world. It tells the story of the late Vikas Kumar Vidyarthi aka Biksu and is based on a dazzling letter he wrote to his cousin, artist Rajkumari.
How do objects become precious to us? How can one object hold the multitude of our desires, dreams, fears, aspirations and inhibitions– sometimes pushing us away and sometimes propelling us towards itself?
Of course, it was the perfect beginning: a group of deaf children showing off some exceptional drumming, and that too related to Carnatic classical music.
The first time the idea of recording the night was floated to the DE’s was during a workshop in Delhi, where on a cold November morning in 2021, the DE’s were asked – What is it we can see at night? What is it that happens at night that reveals something new to you about where you live?
We learned about photosynthesis five times. Every year, from Class 6 to Class 11, I forgot the exact definition so I had to relearn it even though I knew the concept. In the same way every year, I had to relearn that the boys in my class would sniff me out.
Hameeda has participated in the EduLog programme with The Third Eye for its Education Edition. EduLog mentored 12 writers and image-makers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh to remember – in the present continuous – their experience of education through a feminist lens.
In this series, we bring you gender stories from Nirantar’s archives as well as from the Hindi fictional world at large. These stories have been used in facilitation by various gender groups, and are also great conversation starters for difficult, tricky and conflicting issues that emerge while working with communities.
It was 1989. I think. I had been asked to speak to a group of women who worked in NGOs across Tamil Nadu. The meeting was organised by Legal Resources for Social Action (LRSA), a group in Chinglepet not far from Chennai. I was to unpack the historical contexts of legislation that pertained to women’s lives.
I once had a student who didn’t speak much and said only what she wanted to say and even then, very little. She wasn’t shy or afraid to speak. She was just so careful with words that she refused to speak until she knew exactly what she wanted to say.
It is a warm April day in New Delhi. The session we are about to conduct is our third with girls who attend a bridge course in a resettlement colony. The course helps girls who have dropped out or never enrolled in school to come on a par with the literacy and learning levels of those in school.
