Where feminist theory comes out to play, where the ism itself is gloriously complicated in the actual living of lives; radical, messy, round shapes in square holes. We look at collectives, communities, protests, articulations of self and everyday, paying attention to seasons and emotions, finding the feminist cosmos in raindrops.
Writer Mahasweta Devi inherited a quarterly journal from her father that published poetry and essays — a well-meaning publication in the ‘Bhadralok’ register. In her hands, Bortika (meaning ‘light’) metamorphosed into the voice of the dispossessed: seeking writing from rickshaw-pullers, shift workers, Adivasi school-teachers and well-informed village residents.
The digital world was supposed to give us the freedom to exist as we are, as who we can be. Yet, we’ve seen patriarchal structures underlying the way intimacy is shared online. Dating apps animate the romance of seeing our fullest selves — but do they continue to be liberating opportunities? Or is this one more way of getting locked into an identity?
Crime reporting, though long considered a ‘hard’ beat to be covered by serious (read: male) reporters, is a core part of Khabar Lahariya’s grassroots journalism. For one reporter, being put on the crime beat took her back home. Suneeta Prajapati discusses the strategies and compromises that allowed her to carve out a niche in journalism and earn a place in the hearts of many girls from rural India.
Neha Dixit is a freelance journalist who, in her own words, has investigated topics of social justice, gender and politics for the past 16 years. After Neha’s undercover investigations, audacious encounters, and many formats of work, how does she now understand crime?
Since 2016, Neetu Singh has been engaged in long-form reporting, working with Gaon Connection till 2021 and currently as an independent journalist with her YouTube channel, ‘Shades of Rural India’.
Legal sanctions permit little, if any, breathing room for queer intimacies. And yet, such experiences of desire survive in silos, real-world or digital. Cybercafes, anonymous chat rooms, and dimly-lit apartments are all witness to the loneliness epidemic — exacerbated all the more for queer folks despite recent protections.
The TTE-queerbeat Fellowship Programme is a collaboration that seeks to produce, mentor and platform stories by queer folks in Hindi. These stories explore sexuality in the rural context, through the facets of consent, desire, romance and risk, and aim to understand how debates in the wider sexuality discourse and grassroots organisations speak to the realities of queer individuals outside big cities.
This interview reimagines the contours of the city. Mukul Sharma offers us an alternate history of Chandigarh through Nek Chand’s contribution to it, and positions Dalit eco-narratives as a lens to widen the scope of environmental justice.
This is an excerpt from the chapter ‘Anthropocene: “Modern” Chandigarh, Nek Chand, Rock Garden and Dalitbahujan Anthropocenes’ in Mukul Sharma’s Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice (2024).
In drama school, we used to spend a lot of time standing around. Now, as soon as I say that, I imagine a chorus of actors yelling at me, saying, “C’mon — we weren’t just ‘standing around’!” Of course not. I meant, we were arriving into neutral bodies — shedding, lengthening, becoming… the ready actor. I think. It’s hard to fully say.
