Welcome to Our Imagination
Throughout the first Covid induced lockdown of 2020, Jyoti sent us her Vlogs. She would take her phone and walk around her village, as if looking for what she left behind. As a certified shehri ladki (city girl), she found herself at an intersection of gazes: looking, and being looked at.
On Pandita Ramabai’s 164th birthday, we bring you a rare glimpse into her life as an image maker and archivist. During the 19th century widow reformation movement, Pandita Ramabai set up Mukti Mission. Here, she created photographs that only archive a precious moment in feminist history, but also challenge the ongoing conjugality project that offer up alternatives to coupledom and the traditional family set-up.
The period between 1870 and 1920 may be regarded as the high moment for pushing the conjugality/new conjugality project Nae Dampatiya Rishtey (Ek Vivahit Jode Ki Ek Nai Kalpana) across India and this is well reflected in Maharashtra too.
Nasreen looks at the metropolis of Delhi from the terrace of her house in Kashmiri Gate, the only space where she can move freely. She takes us through her private and her public as she thinks about her friendships, her various rendezvous, and her desires standing at the top of her terrace.
The windy lanes of Darjeeling is often peppered with “Aiya! Kay saro chisso hau!” (Gosh, why is it so cold!) as people hunch over small fires outside shops and at street corners. A collective excitement ripples through when the sun comes out: people hurry to spread out blankets, carpets, and pickles on their roofs and balcony railings.
I have never been to Mahabs, as they call it. I’ve been to a city that is sometimes known as Mamallapuram, and oftentimes Mahabalipuram. These three places sort of correspond, rough shape and outline-wise, and occupy the same geographical coordinates.
My neighbours had started dusting their carpets on their balcony. My mother hurriedly closed the windows and asked Maya-didi to do the same. Maya-didi had started fuming, “Yo Kami haru tah kosto cha hau, byan byan nai shuru.”
Ruhaan’s Mind Map is imagined by Kalki, a transgender activist, artist, entrepreneur, poet, actor and inspirational speaker based in Tamil Nadu. Presenting our fourth Mind Map of the series, where Ruhaan and Kalki discover that helping put the past behind us may be the greatest reward of art.
What does it mean to be a single woman, when it’s not in a metropolis? What are the experiences of being single, without the romanticisation of the urban? What is the nature of singlehood that may not yet be defined, but may be as rich as life itself?
The writer looked for queer spaces in the city. The artist looked at the writer’s room and asked what kind of queer space it was.
