Christmas In My 40s: Navigating Yuletide In A Desi Identity
Christmas is complex for me. It’s a journey through painful nostalgia, colonised history, the morality of forgivness & questioning where I really belong.
Christmas is complex for me. It’s a journey through painful nostalgia, colonised history, the morality of forgivness & questioning where I really belong.
Salwar kameez, the ubiquitous subcontinental garment has a varied history in my own personal life.
The 1985 Tamil film ‘Sindhu-Bhairavi’ under a feminist lens shows a nuanced male storyteller gaze and some strong woman tropes. Does that make it feminist?
I come from musical history. I trained in vocals & an instrument. I’ve won prizes, performed concerts. But music is not my identity.
Reading SUGARBREAD was like eating a whole green chilli. It made me feel like I’d been punched in the gut. Satisfaction came after tears.
My journey through Valentine’s Days is full of bloody warfare, dangerous laughter, cold money and seething rage. What was it like today?
Because of the Bollywood associations, I was worried that ‘The Guide’ would disappoint me when other RK Narayan works had delighted.
If you were born in another era, who would you be? What would your personality be like? Your values? How would you survive that world? What role would you play?
I thought about my claim that my feminism eats these guys on toast then realised it was time to diversify my feminist palate.
I’ve moved away from a lot of festivals steeped as they are in religion, the biggest reason for violence & turmoil in my country right now. I was talking to a stranger yesterday when I realised just that this is a good time to remember abundance. But it only feels…