UjaLa la land

Just another couple on the internet The Supreme Court of India recently expressed its inability to provide the rights of marriage to the LGBTQIA+ community. The community has been asked to knock on the doors of the legislature, with the Judiciary only being able to provide so much (protection from police harassment and discrimination in all institutions of the country). At the same time, members of the ruling party call the entire movement an 'urban elitist movement' making the bleak prospects of recognition of queer marriages pretty apparent in India. It can be discomforting to learn that a section of society has been denied rights that are so central to the lives of the rest of the country. Out of 132 countries that have decriminalized homosexuality, only 32 have legalized same-sex marriage, and yet the ramifications of the same are larger for a country like India. However, when I put this news in the context of the heated discussions on the 'decreasing relevance of marri...

Preface -  This piece was written for an ekphrastic writing (Musings on a picture) competition organized by Blue Q uill. I had never imagined myself as a wife, neither in stories nor in play. It was the first time I tried to see myself as a grief-stricken wife. My own creation affected me in so many ways. However, the best part of writing this was getting a wild card entry into the creative writing club of Miranda House, whose anthologies continue to be warm, inclusive, and, poignant.     Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940) The pain escalates with these gradual realizations thrusting on me, one by one, day by day, bit by bit that what you did in reality, in the world I despise, in the time when we were apart has been beyond my most paranoid confabulations. I remember your breath and how it coalesced with mine, the fragrance of our love making and how it matched and surpassed those of flowers I tucked in my buns while leaving. And when I left, you le...