It was not too hot only eighties, and djs floated beautiful gay music

At Boystown - 40th anniversary of Chicago Pride - floats of the governor, mayor, councillors, aldermen, judges, police department (very sexy!), fire department, candidates, etc. I'm thinking, so much support from state and political actors. I'm thinking, it took a while to get here. I'm thinking, one day this will happen in India.

Dykes on Bikes. Rev, and the crowd goes ecstatic. How amazing to see once-icons. I'm thinking, did D and S get on bikes in Delhi this year.

A two year old sitting on his dad's shoulder. His mum is at the frontlines, cheering and waving and dancing. Dad waves and marchers throw beads in the direction of the boy. Dad tells him, "we have to get thousands of them. This is just like Mardi Gras - only a little different." By the end, the boy is wearing thousands of beads. Every color. By the end, he has too many beads and his mum takes them from him and wears them around her neck.

In Chicago the weekend before last

Don't quite fit into the narratives of desi writing (and, guess what, one of my panels at Kriti was What If I Don't Want to Write About India) but there was something about being among South Asian writers. Such as discovering I am not quite done being one either. No, I haven't been trying to escape my "culture", but certain modes of writing which it seems "Indian writing" has made a culture out of. Am I less Indian because they are more so? And other such anxieties about forefathers; especially forefathers. My literary heritage - ill-fittingly and not-so-snugly there I stand - after Kolatkar and Jussawala. But what about mothers of my choosing. Or sisters. Or queens. Or gay boys. Or crazy playwrights. Or companions.

All such anxieties are in all such heads, I know. Identities, I told a friend yesterday, are dubious. But isn't it difficult to remember to be cunning and edgy when using identities. Isn't it easy to want to become an identity.

But Amitava Kumar during his Q&A reminded us that we don't have to choose. Audiences - and by extension, meanings. Many meanings can be made on many different occasions. Now I sound like this. Any other moment, I will revel in sounding a clarion for something else. Then something else.

Don't let that deflate you.

At the Not-India panel we talked about much more.

Keh Mukarni

My "Archaisms" for Joyelle McSweeney's Issues in Contemporary Poetics class. Had such fun writing these. More on Keh-Mukarni at Caferati.

*

My breath snagged, fell, rose;
heart knocked against the sternum – soft blows.
He pressed against my chest – groped.
Was it a lover? No, girl, stethoscope!

*

His taut skin rippled under my fingers –
I dragged my nails light as feathers
revelling in his rough rine.
Was it a lover? No, girl, lime!

*

Tasted his wide uncouth mouth,
then, buzzed, on the love seat we slouched,
nuzzled – it was unplanned, it was a whimsy!
Was it a lover? No, girl, fifth of a whiskey!

*

I evaluated my satisfaction narrow,
his staying power zero –
still, his love for my exposed body was transparent.
Was it a lover? No, girl, mosquito repellent!

blog conversations

In Feb, this interview with Kinjal Dagli - which had then bemused me, and which already seems dated, what with twitter and other "social media" added to the fray (or I in the fray, adding and subtracting). The feature, written up by Kalindi Sheth, here.

***

KD: Your identity. Your name, age, profession, and where you live.

Monica Mody, writer, currently in the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame. I lived in Delhi from 2003-08.

KD: When did you start this blog? Why? What is it/does it aim to be about? Why such a title?

This is my second blog - I started posting on it in May 2008.

By Aug 2007 I had started to feel that "In Small Pieces", my first blog, did not reflect who I was any longer. I had started the latter in Sep 2004 when I was a very different person. Despite blogs being such eccentric, changeable creatures, I had somehow outgrown it.

Blogs for me are nets where I collect my writings, thoughts, observations - or such things as catch my eye. This is how I was using "In Small Pieces" - and funnily enough, I use "An Imperfect Blog" in a similar manner - as a multifarious net.

The blog, poor thing, has wanted to be about just this one thing or just that, at various points, but failed. So it has to be all and serve in many different capacities. It is the doppelganger of Monica the writer. Monica the queer feminist. Monica the movie-lover, the book-lover, the cat-lover. Monica the beyond labels. Etc.

It is an imperfect blog. I update it idiosyncratically. Often or not very often, depending on my moods/what is happening in my "real" life. Blogging is not my religion as it is for many people, and I used to feel quite upset with myself because of that. Peer pressure. But now finally, I own its imperfection.

KD: What does blogging do for/mean to you? Do you feel Indian women express themselves better on blogs; is it an outlet for just the modern, i-have-something-to-say woman, or can it be used as a tool for those hitherto unheard as well?

The connections one makes with other bloggers - this whole world of comments and communication - that is remarkable.

Is there a unified identity called "Indian women"? If you ever run into it, point me to it too. What do you mean by a "modern, i-have-something-to-say woman"? Are "less modern" women without things to say? Who is "modern" anyway? Please examine your categories.

Blogging is a tool. It is not messianic; it is not the solution to all troubles. Yes, it has allowed many adolescents, women, queer people, people with crazy/interesting hobbies, old women, right wing fundamentalists, you name it - to record their thoughts/observations and articulate them - and find sympathizers/allies out there - sometimes much more easily than in their immediate surroundings. Which means that blogging can be a progressive or regressive force depending on who is blogging.

These two processes of (a) articulating the self, and (b) finding a community have been/can be extremely powerful for certain women - women whose experiences of power might otherwise be limited. It does not matter whether these women are "modern" or "not modern" - as long as they understand the potential of this tool - as long as they blog.

Blogging should not be understood "as a tool for" but "as a tool by".

KD: Finally, is your online identity different from your offline persona? I notice that unlike several other blogs, you've put up your photograph and use your true name, right? Does it make you feel at all vulnerable that just about anybody can see/monitor you?

The self, interesting enough, does not need to be fully disclosed when blogging.

Is my online identity different from my "offline persona" (I love this!)? Of course. I monitor what goes on my blog - what I put on it - precisely because I am aware that it is a public realm. The lines I draw protect my personal life to the extent I want to keep it "private" from the "public eye". What else should I feel vulnerable about? Having certain beliefs and convictions, which might be unpopular/unacceptable in certain quarters? No. I don't worry about that because I know I have the resources to be relatively worry-free.

Many people don't have this privilege, my privileges. These could be people who, in their "offline" lives, are forced - because of gender/ sexuality/ caste/ class/ hetero-patriarchy/ other power structures - to be too nice too coy (too Indian). Who feel safer, in their virtual anonymous avatars, to express their real selves. That is sad and terrible. And yet, is it - entirely?

Crying Wolf

Shot a glass of silk potion
in annoyance
to point thermal sequences -
roasted bananas tropicalized
to a gestural yellow.

Open Space in Ranchi!

And a gender workshop using Strength in Action! Which I worked on!

Oh, this is so gladsome. My birthtown is rocking.

beyond precision

Imagine each poem as a room you walk into.

Wouldn't you want the room to be roomy?

Minor spheres

Laura Miller comes up with a brilliant term when reviewing Elaine Showalter's history of American women writers: GLANS, or "Great Literary American Novel Syndrome". Equally pleasurable is the phrase "cult of the he-man novelist as personified by Ernest Hemingway." Ah, don't we love irreverence served cleverly for the cause of feminism!

Women writing about family and relationships is still regarded as minor literature, yes, and writing the spiritual is seen with even more suspicion and disdain. Perhaps because the spiritual is marginalized merely as anti-intellectual in many of our lives.

On Minor Days

I wake up stamped
by seals

in dreams
their love like a fishnet

Hilton Gloves

Like a pair of black crows
perched solemnly
self-contained
amidst general hubub.

Ranting up the wrong street

When we begin talking about freedom of speech and expression, it is necessary to pick out the strand of radical Islamist fundamentalism but it is important to do this in a context that recognizes the concurrent existence of radical Christian, Hindu and Jewish fundamentalisms. There are enough instances of the impact these have had in recent years on writers and artists; say, for the sake of an argument, you have been out of the loop: less than a minute on google gave me this, this, and this.

Which is why I am taken aback by Christopher Hitchens' enthusiastic but lopsided article in Vanity Fair where he refuses to acknowledge anything but Islamic extremism. Is he being deliberately ignorant or obtusely ignorant? And what is this refusal if not an irresponsible indulgence in demagoguery?

Trainspotting (1995)

This is my first Danny Boyle movie. His much feted "Slumdog Millionaire" is supposed to come to Browning Cinema in March; I'm (just a little) impatient. The Hindi teasers of "Slumdog" are out as well and I want to watch that version too. It would be interesting to see what came through and what was lost in both - in the English original and in the Hindi dub.

I loved the stylistic touches of "Trainspotting", especially its heroin-laced surrealistic scenes. Ewan McGregor squirrelling himself into a filthy toilet, and finding himself in blue, clear underwater. McGregor having a heroin seizure and falling down, falling through the carpet, peering up at a carpet-rededged world. McGregor, locked in a room and in the throes of drug withdrawal, finds his bed trolleying forward as the space behind it turns into a tunnel. While a dead baby crawls on the roof.

Another brilliant scene is Spud's interview - the camera moves forward, then back, then forward, then back, dizzyingly as though mimicking Spud's jagged, imbalanced senses - also, every once in a while, cut to the interviewers and you can see them getting more and more bemused/repelled by his answers.

In these scenes it is drug use which causes reality to slip away, sometimes into horror. Drugs are not always needed, as "Synecdoche, New York" which I just saw shows; it has slipped up reality, chronology and sanity.

How could anybody say this movie justifies/celebrates drug use? It thoroughly incriminates.

3CFF website

TRI Continental Film Festival has its own website now!

Go catch some films, if you can.

Endorse the Campaign for the HIV/AIDS Bill (India)

From SAATHII:

"The HIV/AIDS Bill, which was drafted after extensive civil society consultations since 2003 and submitted to National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) in August 2006, has been truncated by the Law Ministry. Important chapters like Information, Education and Communication, Strategies for Risk Reduction and Access to Treatment have been completely deleted.

On the contrary, there is an attempt to introduce draconian measures like mandatory testing, identification and tracing of HIV positive people. Such measures violate the rights of people infected and affected by HIV, and undermine the present National AIDS Control Programme that has been formulated on a rights based approach.

The Campaign for the HIV/AIDS Bill demands that the government should reject the Law Ministry's version of the Bill and the original NACO Bill should be tabled in the upcoming session of Parliament."

Read more about the campaign and sign up in support here.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize

Mohammed Hanif won the inaugural Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize for his debut novel, “A Case of Exploding Mangoes”.

Remember Shakti Bhatt here.