Body and Sexuality
Since we get to see hundreds of thousands of faces over the course of our lives, we know that facial features can take all kinds of shapes and colours and textures and combinations. We don’t see people’s genitals nearly as often.
आख़िर यह कहने का क्या फ़ायदा कि मेरा शरीर मेरा है जब असल में हमारा मतलब यह है कि मेरा शरीर आंशिक रूप से मेरा है और बाकी शरीर मेरे माँ-बाप, जिम, मैं जिन लोगों को चाहती हूँ और वे मुझे नहीं चाहते उनका, मीडिया, समाज और अनगिनत अनजान लोगों का है, जिन्हें लगता है कि वे मुझे राय दे सकते हैं और बता सकते हैं कि मुझे कैसा दिखना चाहिए।
For transgender persons the body is a very critical juncture where a lot of trans politics happens, given the fact that a lot of our identities in terms of gender do not match how we see our bodies.
Body is born, as a collection of many parts, into the various collections of bodies. Different combinations or collections are projected onto various historical, spatial and temporal dimensions, out of our needs, desires and capabilities.
It is unusual to find films that focus on older people, especially women, given our obsession with youth, ‘fit’ bodies and beautiful faces.
Our bodies become the form and medium through which we present ourselves to the outside world, engage with it, interact with it, perceive it and are perceived by it.
Waxing my body for the first time last year to have silky skin like the women on Veet’s box but ended up with rashes instead.
Like some perverted Pavlovian desire,
the wafting smell of fresh soap
that fills up the air in the bath
has my pupils dilate when walking out.
For me, pregnancy was a strange state of being so present and so aware of my body, while at the same time being separate from it. This experience really did a number on me during those nine months and during the postpartum period.
The simple truth is that my body and I are having an affair. We each obsess about the other, ask questions and desire each other so much, that it often borders on the shameless. My body is more in love with me, I suspect, than the other way around.
For the last seven years, I have been working on a body of work titled Hotel Rooms themed around fluid male sexuality, mental health, queerness, and challenging deep-rooted societal gender binaries.
वक़्त के साथ मैं समझने लगी कि सिर्फ़ शोषण नहीं, उससे उभरने की प्रक्रिया के साथ मेरा रिश्ता भी मेरा ‘औरत’ होना तय करता है। सदियों से ‘भारतीय नारी’ को हाशिए पर रखा गया है और उसे स्नेह और स्वीकृति सिर्फ़ तब तक दी जाती है जब तक वो अपनी ‘औक़ात’ के बाहर न निकले।
मैं 9वीं कक्षा में थी, जब लोग मेरे शरीर के बारे में जो कहते थे वह मेरे अंदर उतरने लगा। मैंने पहली बार रुककर ध्यान दिया कि दूसरों की नज़र में मैं कैसी दिखती थी। यह अपने बारे में सचेत होने की शुरुआत थी, और ख़ुद से असहज होने की भी।
That’s all the big roles and ethics
All there to fulfil.
Another task,
Another box to tick
Another concrete path to rush
Quick, simple and straight.