Author: Lekha Sridhar

An animated figure of Sita, with big kajal-laden eyes, wearing a crown, pink lehnga, and having four hands. She holds a shell, a lotus, and a sudarshan chakra in three hands. The background is watery green.

Sita Sings the Blues

·January 2, 2019
·Lekha Sridhar

Rama and Sita are no longer placeholders for chastity and virtue, but are human and they make excessive demands on each other, they are callous and take each other for granted all the time.

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“For every incarnation of Rama, there is a Ramayana”, says AK Ramanujam in his essay ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’. So, too, there should be three hundred Ramayanas for every incarnation of Sita, the latest being in the form of a curvy, coquettish, jazz-singing Betty Boop. Nina Paley's 2012 film Sita Sings the Blues (available for free) is a wonderful,…

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In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2022 is how we can expand safe, inclusive self-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

January 2022 – SISA Spaces and Sexuality
Imagine a space where we are free to be authentically ourselves, to love who and how we want, to feel accepted, connected, and supported, and to assert ourselves against heteropatriarchal expectations around gender and sexuality. In a world riven with violences and marginalisations, safe, inclusive, and self-affirming (SISA) spaces in the context of gender and sexuality bring to life the shared feminist vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and wellbeing. Celebrating plurality, SISA spaces make room for multiple identities, lived experiences, and perspectives. SISA spaces encourage us to look within, to engage with and learn from one another, to hold space, and to evolve. In the January anthology issue of In Plainspeak, we bring you a collection of older articles around SISA spaces and sexuality, and attempt to discover newer ways of forging and expanding such spaces.

February – Sexuality and Coupledom
Wading through the dating pool, we are expected to pair off – one man, one woman, get married, and raise children. Romantic relationships within a hetero-patriarchal set-up are tangled in ideas of ‘soulmates’ and ‘forever’. Instead of The One, what if we choose to seek The Two, or even The Three with whom we can forge fulfilling emotional, sexual, and material connections? Or, being asexual, maybe no one at all for sex, but still luxuriate in intimacy? In exploring relationships outside the bounds of socio-political and cultural legitimacy by experimenting with and expressing sexuality in ways we find meaningful is an assertion of agency, bodily autonomy, and selfhood against patriarchal norms around relationships and family. The February issue of In Plainspeak attempts to examine coupledom in our social context, and unearth its possibilities.

For future issue themes, please click here.

Would you like to contribute? Send an email to blogeditor@tarshi.net with your idea. Do take a look at our submission guidelines!

Author: Lekha Sridhar

Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Sings the Blues

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