Dearest Curious Reader,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fighting a tug of war with the self can be exhausting. What can I be, what can I not? What can I show, what do I even know? <\/em>Queer selves have often found refuge within the subtext of straightness. It\u2019s within this subtext that many a teen, twink and the \u2018other\u2019 have found their comforting expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Little Bhargav is going through this tussle himself, bearing the weight to be an \u2018ideal child\u2019 imagined by the adults around him while wanting to be himself. He doesn\u2019t care much for subtext or the weight of expectations laid on him, what with him being all of seven years old! All he wants is to wear colourful bangles, like his friend, and dance during Navratri<\/em>. Yet, all his father wants is to censor him and his grandmother wants nothing more than to protect him from this \u2018self\u2019 in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCertain things are meant only for girls, Bhargav,\u201d said Ba.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly, Ba <\/em>underestimated the stubborn clarity with which young Bhargav could ask questions, throw arguments (and tantrums) and clutch onto his desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike what?\u201d asked Bhargav.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet me see\u2026 like long hair, earrings, bangles, long dresses, wearing a bindi\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bhargav continues to wonder why something so beautiful to him must be hidden away. He unassumingly keeps asking the simplest questions about the world and the expression of his self within this world<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut why?\u201d interrupted Bhargav.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause\u2026 because\u2026 that\u2019s just how it is,\u201d stammered Ba, not able to find an answer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The book, The Boy Who Wore Bangles<\/em> by Riddhi Maniar Doda, illustrated by Shruti Hemani and published by Karadi Tales in 2023, gently breaks the subtext, allowing a little child\u2019s desire for self-expression to exist in the open, much to his grandmother\u2019s worry and his father\u2019s dismay. What makes Bhargav\u2019s story endearing is that the book does not treat his desire as a childish phase to outgrow or a problem to correct. The book refuses the idea that a normative childhood is only preparation for a \u201cnormal\u201d future, a decidedly straight heteronormative future. Instead, it lets Bhargav inhabit desire and curiosity in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If queer adults once searched for themselves within subtext, this book offers children (and adults!) something gentler and more direct: recognition without hiding. The story, for you dear reader, may offer a window into the kind of selfhood that is expansive and growing, without the subtleties we are often taught to embody. However, if you would still like to hold onto the comfort of subtext sometimes (I certainly do), there is space for that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While little Bhargav continues to dance in Navratri <\/em>with his rainbow bangles, there is also comfort to be found in the queer-coded and wonderfully camp universe of Falguni Pathak songs that blares through the speakers in pols, chowks, mohallas<\/em> and societies during Navratri<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are two songs, Meri Chunar Udd Udd Jaye<\/a><\/em> and Chudi Jo Khanki Haathon Mein<\/a><\/em>, for everyone who has ever understood that Navratri<\/em>, and \u201cvery close female friendships\u201d, have always carried a little more queerness than people like to admit. After all, Navratri <\/em>was never meant to belong only to straight people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Credits: Photo by Riya<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recognition without hiding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":520,"featured_media":29468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5351],"tags":[5429,5427,66,2121,121,26,1826,5428,5401,71,268,5425,5423,4425,1908,5424,25,2310],"class_list":{"0":"post-29412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-review","8":"category-the-self-and-sexuality","9":"tag-childhood-and-identity","10":"tag-childrens-literature-2","11":"tag-desire","12":"tag-falguni-pathak","13":"tag-feminism","14":"tag-gender","15":"tag-gender-expression","16":"tag-gujarati-culture","17":"tag-lgbtqia-india","18":"tag-love","19":"tag-masculinity","20":"tag-navratri","21":"tag-queer-childhood","22":"tag-queer-joy","23":"tag-queer-representation","24":"tag-queer-selfhood","25":"tag-sexualities","26":"tag-sisa-spaces"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29412"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29457,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29412\/revisions\/29457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}