Welcome to Our Imagination
Kolkata, the city, has been shaped by its location, the wars that have been fought via its ports, the waves of migration from across the borders, and of course, the ubiquitous British presence and its shape shifting morality.
In this episode, Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own travels to the tehsil of Ajmer, Kekri in Rajasthan, and meets Annu, a 31 year old woman who gives it her own meanings.
Jyoti was the first girl from her village, Sawau Moolraj in Rajasthan to migrate to the city for a better education—a decision taken by her parents because the village had no such infrastructure. Since then, Jyoti has been an outsider-insider, moving in and out of her village home.
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.”
