A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
In the video section, watch Tishani Doshi perform one of her most haunting and popular poems ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’. Using the movements of/in body, music and language, it is a powerful expression of Tishani’s expansive vision of resistance, freedom and solidarity in the face of violence.
Just like on a misty morning,
we both
sit
without a shred of adornment
on these ancient stepwells
and the call of the hummingbirds
offer us sensations,
imagination,
and our innocence
The film has all the makings and trimmings of a commercial thriller – a dynamic story, song and dance, an action-packed climax – and at the same time, it is a cinephile’s film.
How should I walk, what should my gait be like, what kind of clothes can I wear that will sort of cover me up…? This indecisiveness and the burden of, “What will others think?” are some of the worries, that I carried for a long time while making decisions like: “Is this going to expose too much skin?”, “Is this going to look a certain way that I may not like to present myself as?”
I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.
Expanding contexts give the word ‘movement’ different meanings and value. Physical, conceptual, technological, relationship, emotional, mental, power, knowledge, ability, access, may be amongst the contexts immediately identified.
डांस मूवमेंट थेरेपी वर्कशाप के उन तीन दिनों में मुझे पता चला कि मेरे मन, मस्तिष्क और शरीर के बीच जैसे कोई सामंजस्य था ही नहीं, और कैसे आमतौर पर पारंपरिक मौखिक कार्यशालाओं में शरीर और मन के बीच के इस संबंध को नज़रअंदाज़ कर दिया जाता है।
मैं भली भांति जानती हूँ कि यात्राएं करने से आपका जीवन ‘बदल’ जाने और ‘सबको करनी चाहिए’ के विचारों के बारे में अनेक कथाएँ और कहानियाँ प्रचलन में हैं। मैं यह भी जानती हूँ कि यात्रा कर पाना एक विशेष तरह की सुविधा, एक विशेषाधिकार है और हर कोई जीवन में यात्राएं नहीं कर पाता।
This issue of In Plainspeak while inviting us to embrace the joys and pleasure in movement, also questions the ways in which movements are facilitated or obstructed, visibilised or invisibilised, and the spaces that we must envision to find freedom in/to movement.