Common cause, kiss of freedom in Kolkata pride!

Insight, Clickhappy! Dec '15
By Prosenjit Pal and Pawan Dhall

Photo credits: Prosenjit Pal, unless mentioned otherwise

The ‘14th Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk’ on December 13, 2015 was many things for many people – an expression of not just queer pride but also solidarity with diverse social causes. Demanding intolerance for social exclusion of any kind, it broke new ground with participation by many youth and student groups and a ‘Hok Chumban’ / ‘Kiss of Love’ campaign at the end to protest moral policing anywhere and everywhere. While the walk route took Pawan Dhall down memory lane to 1999 (the year of the ‘1st Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk’), Prosenjit Pal celebrated his very first queer pride walk in his home town with camera in hand.

Taking on Section 377 persecution

Advice - Rights and Laws, Dec '15
By Kaushik Gupta

Reader queries

I’m a writer and need help for an article on legal issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. I heard of an incident before 2009, that is, when the legal status of homosexuality was the same as today after the December 11, 2013 verdict of the Supreme Court of India on Section 377, Indian Penal Code. At that time, a young lesbian couple was dragged by their parents to a District Magistrate. The two women, both adults, were living in a flat, away from their parents, and both were pursuing respective jobs. Their parents took the help of cops to catch them and despite their unwillingness, the District Magistrate forced them to return to their parental homes.

‘O ma, how queer!’

Vartanama, Oct '15
By Pawan Dhall

Goddess Durga as Ardhanarishvara in a puja
organized by trans women in Kolkata
Photo credit: Pawan Dhall

It is queer when more than a dozen social researchers from different South Asian countries have to travel to Bangkok in Thailand to train for a study to be carried out in South Asia. More so when the focus of the study is on sections of society that often identify as ‘queer’ (a term that signifies a non-normative gender or sexuality). Well, yours truly was one among the researchers and so this editorial was inevitable!

Freedom fair and square

Insight, Happenings, Oct '15
Sukhdeep Singh recounts how 19-year-old trans man Shivy, a student of neurobiology, won an emotional and legal battle against his parents’ transphobia and trickery to marry him off forcibly

Delhi, October 5, 2015: When Shivy (born Shivani Bhat) came to India from USA with his mother in July this year, little did he realize that his own family would turn against him and make him a ‘prisoner’ in the country. What followed was a riveting story of exemplary courage shown by Shivy and a number of queer activists in Delhi who helped him escape his family’s clutches. The story culminated today in an equally brave verdict by the Delhi High Court, which directed the police to ensure that Shivy got back his identity and travel documents from his family and was able to return to USA.

Shivy (second from left) at a media conference in Delhi, September 25, 2015
Photo credit: Nazariya Queer Feminist Resource Group

Reflection

My Story, Oct '15
Pratulananda Das shares how mathematician Alan Mathison Turing’s life story inspired him to come to terms with his own sexual orientation

All photographs provided by Pratulananda Das

I remember the day vividly when I could not keep my eyes off the young man working in a paddy field. It was drizzling and my younger brother and I were huddled together under an umbrella on our way to school. As I grew older I realized something was ‘wrong’ with me. That puzzled me. I felt frustrated that I never had an explanation for my lack of interest in girls, while the simplest of ads showing a man in his briefs would attract me for seemingly no reason. I guess being born in a conservative Bengali family did not help much in terms of understanding what I wanted from life and what would help quell the restlessness within me. I had no one to confide in and share my anxieties with.

Qatha: Brother queer brother (part 2)

People, Sep '15
By Pawan Dhall and Soma Roy Karmakar

All photographs from the family albums of Sanjib Chakraborty
(in the picture) and Rajib Chakrabarti

Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in time and bring forward diverse queer voices through a series of interviews, which will provide a landmark to Kolkata city's queer history. Typically, the focus will be on the queer scenario in Kolkata during the growing up years of each interviewee – how it was to be queer in Kolkata in different decades since the 1960s till more recent times. The effort will be to bring forward a mix of the well known and the lesser known voices. Apart from the excerpts published here, the project also aims to publish a collection of the interviews in different formats. All interviews are based on informed consent and where requested, all markers of identity have been removed for reasons of confidentiality.

This issue brings you the second and final part of an interview with Rajib Chakrabarti, a teacher, 46 years old and a resident of Kolkata, and his brother Sanjib Chakraborty, 42, a health worker and queer activist based in Guwahati. In the first part of the interview (published in the August 2015 issue of Varta), they talked about the difficult times and small pleasures of life that saw them through to self-discovery, self-acceptance and discovering each other as gay persons. In this part, they talk about coming out to their mother and sister, connecting with queer support forums in Kolkata, and their vision for the future.

Challenging queer ‘cures’

Insight, Jun '15
Psychiatrist Dr. Ujjaini Srimani, advocate Kaushik Gupta and social activist Bappaditya Mukherjee on how to tackle grievous, illegal and unethical attempts to ‘cure’ queer persons

Reshma is 19 and lives in Tangra, Kolkata (some markers of identity changed to maintain confidentiality). Reshma is a trans woman affected by relentless family violence because of her non-conforming sense of gender and attire – so much so that she has started contemplating suicide. Matters came to a serious head recently when she was beaten up by her brother and parents and threatened with eviction from home. This time she mustered the courage to report the matter to the local police station with assistance from Kolkata Rista, a Kolkata-based support forum for trans women. But she was in for a shock when the sub-inspector at the police station sided with her family members instead (though he did record a General Diary based on her complaint), and exhorted them to get her ‘treated’ for the ‘disease’ she was suffering from, even if force was required. If any doctor refused to treat her, he promised to speak to the doctor to ensure that Reshma got the ‘treatment’ she required to become ‘normal’ (euphemism for ‘heterosexual man’).

A thought for Ma and Baba

Insight, Feb '15
By Pawan Dhall

“When I first came out to my family, it wasn’t the easiest of journeys – as is generally the case with many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. However, the basic difference that I found in my journey with so many others’ is that my mother, to whom I came out initially, never felt as if her dreams had been thwarted,” says Debjyoti Ghosh, a young advocate from Kolkata currently studying human rights in Budapest, Hungary.