Achal Dodia has participated in the Travel Log programme with The Third Eye for its City Edition. He writes and draws from Vadodara, Gujarat. This comic is the first of a three part series on looking at spaces through a queer lens.
About 15 km north of Toranmal, on the border of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, lies Sindhidigar village. You have to cross several rivers – big and small – to reach it. Jhalkar is a small river that flows between the borders. In fact the villagers believe that the river divides the land into two separate states and the river is why these states exist.
I don’t know what time of day it will be when you get this letter, but whenever you do, please sit under the branch that hangs over your balcony. And read it there. You have tall buildings before you – colonies of concrete – and banners and billboards that talk about the development of the city. But, perhaps, that branch will help you feel a little bit of what I have felt in the jungle.
I am a conspiracy theorist of my atiya body by Kuumpiilei is the third step in the author’s Yaang-Huuk-Uun (YHU) project. It began in 2019 and started with the support of BangaloResidency-Expanded, an initiative of Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore. The author worked with the SouthEast Asian (SEA) community as a resident at Zentralwerk in Dresden.
Abhishek Anicca is a part of the Travel Log Programme with The Third Eye for its City Edition. The Travel Log programme mentored thirteen writers and image makers from across India’s bylanes, who reimagine the idea of the city through a feminist lens.
All eyes were on you as you hopped on one leg, bending to pick up the piece of limestone or tile used to play the game. Hop, hop, hop. Maintain perfect balance, bend down, pick up, return to the starting point. Hop, hop, hop. Don’t fall down.
