of a place of a time

when people will speak up we don't need no leaders

like mushrooms we will be with mycelium that goes deep into our souls connecting us all to freedom

come my loves let us dream

I wanted to show you my favourite shades of sunset My best pictures of the sky. To have you sit next to me in my terrace and tell you about the thoughts I had when you weren't here yet.

I wanted to tell you how much my friends mean to me. To tell you about the hundred times I hesitated to tell you all this.

Read all of my letters to you. The times you broke my heart. Unaware at first, but knowingly the next.

I wanted to tell you about my favourite books and why elio and i are the same depressed cowards. To read you my favourite parts of the book. To have you stand next to me and hold my hand while a rainbow of colours flutter around us.

To kiss you in the crowd, with people that wear their hearts on their sleeves. In the rainbow colours. In a little flag on their chest.

I wanted to love you in unimaginable ways. Ways that the writers would want to take a note of. Ways the musicians end up jealous of the melodies we make up. In ways that's never heard of. Never seen.

I wanted to make a new meaning of the three words that i never told you. I wanted us to have a meaning that's only ever known to us. Because I know if they do too, it's not ours anymore.

I wanted to have you stand in the best spot in my room and find every single colour that swims in your eyes and paint it. I wanted to memorise when and why your eyes change.

I wanted to make love to you until I see a different colour in your eyes and paint the exact ones. I wanted to travel far and wide and know every single mark on your thighs. I wanted to have you kiss me until all that revolves around me is you. The time, the weather, the noise. To let everything be you. Only you.

But you disappeared before i could even have a chance to tell you my name. The one only very few know.

oh friends! no one will lead us, fund us.

somewhere somehow on the road, the road to freedom, we will find ourselves walking together, you and I. sharing bread and ideas. freely

I don’t know what love is; So when I fell in love With a boy, I became My mother. I gave him my all. Love became labour for me. I also cooked, cleaned, and Did all the laundry. Give sex when he wanted. And eventually my love withered. I learned the hard way That love doesn’t stay If I feel unseen. So when I caught him cheating, I didn’t scream; I didn’t beg; I kicked him out. I got drunk, and I Cried my heart out alone In my bedroom. I could not get out Of my bed for Months. Because I felt my love Just wasn’t enough.

I don’t know what love is; But when I look at my friends, Navigating through life, My heart fills with warmth. I could never handle them suffer, Or be in discomfort, Or struggle in any way. It took me years to figure out How to be present for them. And how sometimes Letting them figure things out On their own Is the kindest thing to do. Maybe love isn’t just About actions but also about Inaction; letting things go. But again, if I don’t reach out I get complete silence from Most of them till they need My help with something. Maybe love comes with Terms and Conditions attached About how useful are you To people, or worse; That they are not really friends In the first place.

I don’t know what love is See, I have been cruel to myself. I skip meals, I struggle making Boundaries, I give labour Till my body breaks. Maybe love comes at a cost. I chase the grand love Poets write about But I never see it in the world. I have seen men philosophise About love and fail to practice What they preach. I have seen women enslaved In the name of love. I have seen women begging To be Witnessed for the Labour they do for love. I have seen women Spend their whole lives Searching for someone to Just hold them lovingly. And I have also been all Of those women.
Maybe love is just fantasy of men Who discards the labour it takes To love somebody in their entirety. Maybe love is just work Noticing, Being Kind, And Picking up after each other. Maybe Love can’t exist alone; Maybe Love is a collective. I read in a book that the First sign of love was someone Who carried someone with a Broken leg and waited for them To heal. But now we need Self-help books and reels on Social Media to tell us How to fall in love with ourselves.

Maybe I don’t understand What love is yet. Maybe I’ll never know what Love is. But that is okay, I am gonna Seek it out anyway. And when I am old and frail and on my deathbed; Ask me once more about What Love is. Maybe I’ll have something Better to offer than this Lousy rant of a poem.

The AI data are spoils of theft – the pictures you shared, stolen; the text on websites, stolen; the writing by millions of authors, stolen; the brilliance of millions of creatives, stolen; Emotions, memories, associations, labour, histories, Stolen! By the Empire of AI.

The AI algorithms are powered by millions of data workers – Sorting, labelling, selecting, guessing, checking, to lift out the words that might hurt or hate, to sift out the pictures that are unsafe,
for low pay, long hours, and no job security, traumatised by what they must bear and see. Hear it from Wilington Shitawa! Don't hear it from me.

The AI technologies make predictions, based on patterns in the data – What is the next word in its output? What should be the colour for that pixel? What will you buy next, see next, like next? Do you want prediction to be your information?

Families denied welfare in the Netherlands. Black people denied healthcare in the USA. Poor neighbourhoods turned into crime hotspots, Asylum denied because the lawyer used chatbot, Palestinian man arrested. “Good Morning” translated as “Kill them.” AI Snake Oil for the people, AI profit for the bosses. Injustice structured by algorithms, coded by engineers, sold by billionaires, administered by the State.

They sell it as intelligent. And we are all so excited. Oh! It can do this! Oh! It can do that! We did not pay the writers, the designers, the artists, the singers, but we will pay for AI slop?

The AI Con Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Machine! Machine that can think like a human!! Only better!!! The minions of the empire have long tried to decide who to declare intelligent and who to deride.

We are all intelligent! All the people! So are rats and pigs and cows. Owls and chickens are intelligent, and fish and crabs and snails. Mosquitoes are intelligent. Mushrooms are intelligent. And plants are intelligent.

They make food from sunlight and water and air. Plants are fucking intelligent!

Ayesha (Ayush Gupta) is a science educator with no training in writing poems. Ayesha thanks Wree for encouraging her to express creatively with abandon and for feedback. If you want to search for the references within the poem without using AI, please feel free to use search.wree.space. This poem was published in the 2026 issue of Anantar magazine.

I keep having bad Mondays. As i sit at midnight with my write-ups incomplete, Hurriedly noted down to not forget it Not having time to remember it, I'm thinking of all the times my words were my walls.

Words are my form of expression but they're also the walls of my fort I go to when i refuse to talk to anyone. And now I don't remember what i started to write about.

With music tuning me out and when they fail my thoughts take over, i barely identify the pattern.

My life sometimes feels like a ball of yarn that can never be untangled, often rolled around by a cat too arrogant and dead to notice my screams

And I try to find a corner to hide. Try each yarn but I keep going back to the state of numbness. All I wish for your arms around me and for you to wait while i slowly come undone.

There's a fire burning around me and my eyes try to find yours before finding a way out. Foolish of me to think you'd be the rescue team.

And I keep hating every writing of mine, so i offer them to the fire.

Waiting for it engulf me, until all but your eyes is all I can see.

I sit in the front But I feel like I'm in a corner Watching everything happen Like it's all on tv and I'm not part of it

I lean closer For there's blood connecting us all The blood is alarming enough to attract attention

I switch channels Everything is rainbows and unicorns Everyone's hugged and loved All gain attention and understanding

I come back And realise I don't belong In a dark room With no light in the end of the tunnel

I look at my shaking hands And wonder if i deserve them I open up my brain and check for the dirt they expect me to carry

But I only see yards and yards of Yearning and withering sunflowers Polka dots and red frocks With ribbons that don't match

I let go of the space scientist dream When i understood I'm Pluto A dark disappearing rock that's Supposedly a part of a family

What's wrong with Pluto? Was the title It just belonged in a different galaxy is all

I hope Pluto realises it soon.

একদিন, সেই কবে, সেই কোন দূরে, দিগন্ত থেকে কিছুটা মাঝামাঝি দাঁড়িয়ে ছিলাম। আমার হাত দুটো ছিল সিঁদুরে লাল, ভর্তি ছিল মুঠোয় করা একটা মন। আমারই হবে হয়ত। পৃথিবীতে রোজ কত মন ভাঙে। রোজ কত মন আর জোড়া লাগে না। রোজ কত লোক হারিয়ে যায়, রোজ নেমে আসে অন্ধকার। এ আর এমন কী?

সেই ভাঙা মনের কুঁচোগুলো আজও জোড়া দেওয়া হয়নি। হাত দুটো আজও সিঁদুরে লাল। মনের কুঁচো অংশগুলো বেশ আছে, তবে! শুকনো, গোলাপের পাপড়ির মতন, একতাল মন খারাপের মতন। মন খারাপ কি তবে এরকমই দেখতে হয়?

আমার মন ভেঙেছে বহু যুগ আগে। এখন মন বৃদ্ধ হয়েছে, বার্ধক্যের অবহেলাতেও সে দিব্যি থাকে। এখন আমার চোখে কাজল, কাজলের আছে তীব্র তেজ, মিশমিশে কালো রঙে চোখে নামে রোজ রাত্রির শেষ।

ভেবেছিলাম মন নিয়ে একদিন দিগন্ত হেঁটে যাবো। মন গেল ছেড়ে চলে, মাঝপথে। আমি এখন কাজল পরি, আমি আজও মাঝপথে।

মাঝে মাঝে ভাবি অ্যাবিসের কথা। কেউ কি জানে অ্যাবিস কোথায়? তার ঠিকানা কোথায়? রাত্রির চেয়ে ঘন তার শূন্যতা, কাজলের চেয়েও ঘন তার কালিমা। কেউ কি জানে অ্যাবিস কাকে ডাকে? জানা আছে তার গল্প কী বলে?

তাই বলছি, অ্যাবিস থেকে দিগন্ত ফেরার রাস্তাটা, ঠিক কতদূর, কেউ কি বলতে পারো আমায়?

Lately I've been chasing the high of people's voices. Be it video calls or audio calls or podcasts. So much so stay, I can barely sit with silence anymore. I can't even sleep with it.

Perhaps I'm too scared to sit with my own thoughts? Too much of a coward to lay out all my decisions in the dark and wonder where it all went wrong? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But i know this.

There once was a time when I desperately wanted peace and quiet from everything – my parents house, my hostel, the city traffic, the thoughts in my head.

Gone are the days when i reached my hand out, another reached out. Tiffin boxes always full of food and hostel rooms so loud and messy with our laughter and unwashed laundry.

Gone are the eyeliner training classes from you and late night snacking that always ended up in one of us getting sick.

Gone are the days when i’d come home to your hi, how was your day? Was that client too annoying today as well?

Gone are the days where I had people around me who didn't mind my loudness and weird laughter. Heck, they were weirder.

Gone are the days that I'd go out for a walk to seek some silence.

Now I live alone and mask the loneliness with all my Pinterest posters and post-its on my wall to physically move myself from the bed.

Really, all I do is go to my empty apartment and the only thing that welcomes me is the light I never switch off in my kitchen.

I fell into a rabbit hole of my own memories. It's weird.

I have tried so much to hold on to every single moment

It's so obvious from the videos.

And yet I've tried to enjoy it at the same time. I was wise enough to know I'd miss it. But i didn't want to. I mean if i lived it to the fullest i wouldn't miss it, right?

I still do, though. I wish I could go back to my college days, running on the road at 11pm to get a bar of chocolate, dancing my heart out at an auditorium and smiling in a way that's so careless of me.

Now I'm tired by 7pm, have to get drunk to dance like I did and smile like everyone's watching when no one is.

Is this what growing up is? Is adulting so lonely that I miss myself more and more everyday?

Is being free just an illusion?

I need someone that's willing to walk through a storm to give an umbrella to me.

I need someone that's so hot looking (to me) and so kind and whenever we fight we just talk about it and get over it

I need someone i can hug. Not those meaningless, contactless awkward hug. A full on proper one, the kind that cures a bad day.

I need someone that's knows me so much that nothing I ever do fazes them.

I need someone that wants to make my own decision and be there for me if (when) it gets fucked up.

I need someone like the man I met in my dream. The man of my dreams.

I need someone that makes me so blush that even alcohol loses to that face.

Speaking of, i need someone that gets drunk with me and listens to me 10x worsened rambles.

I need someone that looks and acts like the pilot in my dreams, ready to take over anytime a disaster is about to happen. But waits for my signal first. I'm too adamant to let someone take over my problems.

I need someone that's so rich. Rich in health, in ideas, in love and happiness. A little bit of money that can get us by too of course.

I need them to be pet lovers too. I'm so running a shelter that's a home to so many strays.

Someone that sees how much I try to be better.

ஒரு குழந்தையின் முதல் ஏமாற்றம்.

அம்மா தன் குழந்தையைக் இருக்கி அணைத்து “ஒன்னும் இல்ல, ஒன்னும் இல்ல” என்று சொல்ல

பின்னாடியே நர்ஸ் வந்து ஊசி குத்த அவன் கதரி அழ.. ஆஸ்பத்திரியில் ஒரே கூச்சல்.

ஆனால் இன்னும் பல ஏமாற்றங்களை அவன் சந்திக்கும் போது அவன் அம்மா அவனை கட்டி அணைப்பால் என்று நம்புகிறேன்.

இல்லன்னா என்னமாறி தனியா ஆஸ்பத்திரியில் வந்து காத்திருக்க வேண்டும்.

டாக்டர்க்கா அம்மாவுக்கா என்று தெரியாமல்.

I have had quite a few in person discussions regarding AI in my personal day to day life, and I want to highlight a few of those.

My local grocery and cigarette shop is run by a millennial. He is quite friendly a lot of young people frequent his shops and engages in conversations on various topics. A few days back, he asked about my opinion on AI. I mentioned AI is a marketing term and an actual ‘intelligence’ and asked further about why he is asking about AI. He mentioned about a guy who is very specifically pro-AI was talking about how there will be no need for coders and artists anymore because AI is getting so good, it will just replace those people. There were other people in the shop, and all of them got into a debate about whether AI will replace the people or not. The shopkeeper, Pritam and a few other customers vehemently denied that AI would replace any humans because they saw AI as a tool, that needs other humans to maintain it. If something made by AI is also breaks down, we will also require actual humans to fix it. I agreed. This is an argument you can’t deny. But he was also lamenting that the guy was quite adamant about the fact and was dismissing everyone’s opinion about it. We laughed at his naïveté and engaged more in the conversation of what actually is AI.

People intuitively know that there is nothing intelligent about AI but they find it hard to express how or why. I decided to show him this nifty new tool by google called https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com

This tool by google is actually a veiled effort by google to train their neural network to recognise human doodling. There is a quite a bit of gamification going on. The tool is like an online Pictionary, where the user is given a prompt and they have to draw it. The neural network accesses a database full with other doodles and tries to guess what the user is drawing. The user is given six prompts and after it, the tool shows the user the prompts and the drawings together along with other doodles users across the globe has done.

We played one game or one round, and I purposefully drew a few completely haphazard drawings so that the algorithm could not guess what I drew. It provided random guesses during the rounds. But after it shows the answers, We could see the algorithm was trying to pick a few lines from the haphazard doodles we have done and trying to calculate the probability of that shape be a labelled doodle from it’s database. Even if it has nothing to do with the prompt. Pritam realised by seeing the answers that the AI was trying to match our drawing with already existing doodles made by other humans. The database the AI have access to has doodles with their corresponding labels on it. When a user draws something, it checks the database and tries to match the drawing with a doodle already existing on the database. Since quite a few objects in the real world would look the same in a doodle format, the AI calculates the probability of a user-submitted drawing with various doodles it matches in the database. At the end it would return the label of the doodle with the highest probability match with the user-submitted drawing.

Here is an example of a correct guess:

Here is its reasoning:

Here is an example of a wrong guess:

Here is the reasoning for it:

Have you ever been so hungry, That the food you hated so much Felt like the best thing in the world? It stopped making your stomach lurch.

Have you ever been so hungry, That it just made you nauseated? But you couldn’t really puke, And tore your throat instead!

Have you ever been so hungry, Neither coffee nor nicotine could douse it? You curse any and all gods, For giving you an appetite

Have you ever been so hungry, That your mouth got progressively bitter? From you bile; and all you could do Was to make your belt tighter.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you punched yourself in the gut? And then you’re still hungry but also in pain? Yeah, that move wasn’t smart.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you just went to sleep? Hoping not to wake up tomorrow Because this life? it doesn’t come cheap.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you traded your body for a meal? It’s not a real choice, if that’s the only option! IDK about others, but this is what i feel.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you had to crawl back and beg To your abusers? undoing every progress; And that knocked you down another peg?

What do you know of starvation? Do you even know how to cook? Who are you to preach about shit, When all your dialogues come from a book?

You call me brave, powerful even, But also an uncouth ticking time bomb. I may not have the means as you, But you’ll never know where I’m coming from!

then you start researching about wellness centres and destination travel, and eventually you come across me and something clicks. there has been at least someone in your life who have mentioned me to you, and you decide to come over.

you love me. you get to explore my different parts with a slowness you never knew could be possible. you roam around my main street, browsing books in the library or trinkets in the commercial district. you can watch movies in the cinema hall or watch plays in the theatre across. there is grass here and that is greener here. you can’t believe what you are seeing while exploring many of my secrets in sultry afternoon you have whispered in my ears how you are never going to leave me, how you are moving back here so you can be with me forever. stay here, take up work here. or maybe you just wanna plough me all day in your small patch. you think i’m fertile and you can grow gold. but all of those are talks. maybe bravado of a hopeful soul who just found out living like this was a possibility? i have freed you and you haven’t realised what this freedom entailed yet? in a way i think that is my fault. i have schools and colleges, but you came here to heal, not get educated. but i am bad at communication anyway, kids from my town often choose other colleges anyway. i doubt you’d like them either.

eventually you do get a grasp of things. collect yourself. sometimes it takes three months, sometimes three years. but eventually you leave. go back to the same city or to a different one. healed and ready to face the world. you promise me that you’ll come back and that you have to leave because the world is different and i won’t understand, how could i? i am already here and people here don’t wanna put up with me. i have become the mistress you won’t talk about to others. maybe your friends are now relieved that you don’t blast the daily chat about how moving to this town will solve all their life problems.

maybe you will come back from time to time, between your other affairs. and you know i’ll be here waiting for you. i can’t move on silly, i’m a town.

সন্ধেবেলা ক্লান্তি ঠেলে যখন সেই নিজের বানানো পোড়া লাগা ঝিঙে পোস্ত আর মাইক্রোওয়েভে গরম করা বাসি ভাত প্লেটে ঢালি, মায়ের কথা বড্ড মনে পড়ে। আজকাল বড্ড নিজেকে স্কুলের প্রথম দিনের বাচ্চাদের মতন লাগে। মায়ের কাছে যাওয়ার কথা মনে পড়ে, মাছের ঝোল দিয়ে ভাত খেতে ইচ্ছে করে, বাবার সাথে বাজারে গিয়ে রুই-কাতলা দরদাম করতে ইচ্ছে করে। নিজের অসফল খাবারের প্লেটের দলাগুলো মুখে নিয়ে একমনে ভেবে যাই এসব। আচ্ছা, মা খেয়েছে তো? আর বাবা? ওষুধপত্র ঠিক করে খায় তো? দুজনেরই তো হাই প্রেসার, বাবার আবার কোমরে স্পন্ডিলাইটিস, মায়ের পায়ে আর্থরাইটিস। বুড়ো-বুড়ি দুটোর জন্য খুব মন কেমন করে।

ছোট ছিলাম তখন, ভেবেছিলাম এই পৃথিবীটা এতোই বড়, সবটা দেখতে হলে পাখি হতে হবে। পাখি হয়েছি। পাখি হয়ে ঘর ছেড়েছি। ছেড়েছি আরো অনেক সুখ, মনের মানুষ, রাগ-বিরাগের আবেগ, মান-অভিমানের লোকজনদের, কঠিন কত সম্পর্ক, মিষ্টি কিছু ভালোবাসা, মন ছুঁয়ে যাওয়া কত বন্ধুত্ব... সবকিছু পাখি হবো বলে। এই এতো বড় পৃথিবীতে প্রচুর পাখি ওড়ে ঠিকই, সবার কি নাম হয়? সবার কি ঠিকানা হয়?

দিনের শেষে সব পাখি বাড়ি ফেরে। ঘরে ফেরার দিন কি সব ফেরত আসে? মানুষ গুলো, মুখ গুলো, আবেগ গুলো, ইচ্ছে গুলো, ভালোলাগা গুলো, ঝগড়া গুলো... সবটা না হোক কিছুটা কি ফিরে পাওয়া যায়? কেউ কি সদর দরজায় দাঁড়িয়ে বলবে “এসো মা, ঘরে এসো”? কে জানে!

Labonno was rolling on the floor. Parul was not expecting her to react this way. She was expecting Labonno to be more sympathetic towards her predicament about dating apps. Labonno took couple weeks before visiting Parul again.

In the meantime, Parul has matched with quite a few men. But almost all of them has either ghosted her, or turned out to be some kind of creep.

“You are such a cute little girl”, Labonno was kicking her feet up. “You know, I’m almost 24 now. I’m not so little, it has been like 8 years since we met.”

“There, there” Labonno was on her feet again patting Parul’s head. “You are just hopeless when it comes to talking to men. Also… a bit… desperate” Labonno said the last part very carefully.

“But I am desperate.” Parul said meekly, “At least, that’s honest.”

“Sure,” Labonno said, “But not everyone needs to know that, you just need to find a man also desperate enough to marry you.”

Parul bit her lips. She was not sure whether the last part was an insult or just a fact. Labonno can be very blunt sometimes. Parul decided to get clarity on something that has been bothering her for

– “Labonno” – “Yes” – “Do you have a partner?” – “I don’t run a business.” – “I mean like are you single or taken” – “Why do you need to know?” – “Just trying to figure out whether you can actually help or not.” – “You asked for my help, It was not my idea.” – “I know, I was just, I don’t know, you don’t seem like the type who likes men.” – “Well, I don’t” – “So, like how can you help me get a match with a man?”

Labonno laughed again, it was a hearty laughter.

“Why does it matter? All relationships are essentially the same thing”.

Parul was flabbergasted. This was not what she was expecting. “How do you mean, they are the same?” She asked back.

“Well, if you look at it, all relationships require someone to take care of the house and someone to earn a living. The genders of the partners might change, but the roles stay the same” Labonno replied.

– “That’s kinda regressive, what if both of them work? and divide on the chores?” – “Yeah, that happens, albeit rare. But that’s more like roommates with benefits than a marriage. People generally marry for three reasons: one, to get a free labourer for home while they advance their career two, Someone to breed their lineage with three, To climb to a higher social status by virtue of marrying into it or through their kid. For you the men won’t get the second two options. You are much more likely to get a husband sooner if you are to be a homemaker trophy women. Men tend to like younger women, and you are conventionally pretty.”

Parul only heard the part ‘conventionally pretty’ and has already blocked out whatever Labonno said beforehand.

“Hihi thankssss” Parul was giddy. She handed her phone over to Labonno, “You are the expert, do whatever you want. Get me a match”

“You only heard the pretty part, didn’t you?” Labonno was laughing. “You trans women are so traditional and detached from any kinda feminist ideology.”

– “Labonno…”, Parul was more put together now. – “Yes, Parul” – “You make a lot of sweeping generalisations” – “Yes, those are fun to make in jest, but all situations and people must be treated as a case by case basis. It is just easier to generalise when you personally don’t know them. Like for people on the internet” – “I don’t get it, but it’s okay, I am a dumb woman anyway” – “Parul”, Labonno’s face was stern. “You are now forbidden from making self-deprecating jokes. You are not dumb and never had been.” – “Whatever you say” Parul was covering her smile with her hands. She was not sure about the feelings in her belly. It was like a queasy feeling but something that didn’t feel ill. Parul chalked it up to her bad eating habits.

Labonno sat with Parul for the next three hours sorting through various matches in a few dating apps. The men there were pretty quick to reply. However, many of them unmatched quickly as soon as they realised Parul is a trans woman. Quite a few just flat out asked if she is a prostitute and if she is, what would be her charges for a night. Labonno grimaced and was trying to hex them, but she didn’t know enough personal information about the men to do that.

Some of the men agreed that they are fascinated by trans women and kept praising how brave Parul is. But Labonno again unmatched straight away with those men and that created a fight between her and Parul. Labonno was insistent those men are just fetishising the experience of Parul, but Parul refused to agree. Labonno eventually heaved a sigh of disbelief and said, “You know what, it would serve you best if you experienced some of these things yourself, who am I to deny you trauma you are set to inflict upon yourself?”

Soon enough, Parul was inundated with questions like whether she has ‘the surgery’ or not, how big her penis is, and whether a man sucking on Parul’s dick would make him gay even though Parul is a trans woman.

Quite a large number of straight men were expecting Parul to fuck them and that was making Parul question her own femininity. Labonno refused to engage. She said, “I’m not your mother, you need to navigate this yourself.” She seemed a bit aloof to Parul, who was getting anxious at the detachment of Labonno.

Labonno did point out that subby straight men are normal and getting pegged doesn’t demean either their masculinity or Parul’s femininity. Parul just comes with pegging machinery pre-attached. But Parul was quite distracted and dysphoric and was on the verge of crying.

“I don’t go on dating apps for this, I never have a good experience” Parul was almost sobbing.

Labonno hugged Parul from behind. She didn’t say anything this time. It was a tight hug with a lot of warmth. Labonno’s head was near Parul’s shoulder and she could feel Labonno’s warm breath in her neck. Parul held Labonno’s hand and broke down in silent cries.

Labonno didn’t offer any words of comfort, but she also didn’t say “I told you so”. She was just there, holding Parul, while she was having a breakdown after a very long time. Parul hated feeling vulnerable around other people. Especially Labonno. She wanted Labonno to make some sarcastic comments, but Labonno didn’t. Parul lost track of time for how long she was crying. Eventually when she got herself together, and withdrew herself from Labonno’s arms, Labonno softly said, “Go wash you face, I’m gonna prepare some food for you”

Parul wanted to argue and say she doesn’t need her, but no words came out. She did manage to say eventually that she isn’t really feeling any appetite at all. But Labonno rebuffed her. She took out a pouch from somewhere on her person that Parul has never seen before. “I’m making a special tea for you. Trust me, you’ll feel better and will get back the appetite. Now go to the bathroom.”

Parul took a bit of time in the bathroom, and when she came back, Labonno was still preparing the tea. She took out a highball glass Parul forgot she had. It now had water, and a herb with thin pointy blade like leaves, and purple leaves in the stem. It looked scary.

“That doesn’t look like a tea” Parul was trying to converse casually as if she didn’t have a breakdown over dating apps a few minutes back.

“Not yet”, Labonno said calmly. “This is Chiretta, it takes overnight to prepare. If you boil, it will have different properties.”

“Am I supposed to drink it tomorrow?” Parul was thinking of flushing it down the toilet the next morning.

“You forget you are with a witch, this is a simple magic” Labonno said calmly.

“All magic is about equivalent exchange, If I need to harness the power of natural energy, I need to offer something in return, as an accelerant.” Labonno said as matter of fact, that Parul couldn’t really understand.

“I don’t think I have ever seen you use magic other than teleporting” Parul was curious.

Labonno did a curt nod. “Well there is always a first time for everything. But shush now, I need to concentrate. Magic is also about intentionality”

Parul sat down on a chair with wide eyes like a child. The excitement of seeing magic made her forget about the breakdown she had.

Labonno was uttering somethings in a tone of whisper that Parul could not make out. Labonno whispered it for some time, and eventually she took out her right hand and bit on the tip of her ring finger. Blood drops that looked like glistening rubies gathered on the pointy nail that Labonno had on her ring finger. Then she put just the tip of the nail into the water. The blood instantly got mixed with the water but instead of it being brown or red in colour, it glowed with a shimmer. Labonno kept rotating her finger inside the glass in a circular motion and soon enough a whirlpool was forming inside the glass. Yet the herb looked like it was in still water but aging quickly. The glow eventually stopped. The water has become quite murky and dark greenish, and the herbs were not really visible anymore. Some of it was floating and looked a bit slimy.

“Drink this” Labonno offered the glass to Parul. Parul took a sip and instantly was aghast. “It’s so bitter” Parul muttered.

“It is. It is called the king of bitters, but it is very useful. I collect it from a friend. It has become quite rare now. Don’t waste it, it costs an arm and leg, you can pinch your nose while you drink it.” Labonno seems excited about the herb.

Parul didn’t want to drink it a bit, but she also didn’t wanna disappoint Labonno. She pinched her nose and chugged the bitter murky water in one go. Labonno took out the slimy looking herbs. “I have also fixed some khichdi for you, I remember it being your comfort food”

“Labonno…” Parul began to speak. Labonno was looking at her with a gaze of care Parul hasn’t seen for a long time. “These apps fucking suck, but I think, with you on my side, it might just suck a little less.”

One such thing is the “di” and the “da” Not dida. Di and Da.

The custom of marking who popped out of a vagina before you by an honorific. A mark of respect for the coincidence that the other person was born before you.

It does not matter what they did with their life.

It does not matter what personality they have.

Bully, cruel, asshole. Whatever that person might be. Our culture says that the main thing to remember is who was born before. And that should be the metric for assumed and automatic respect.

I hate it. I do not want automatic respect because I was born before someone else. I do not want to give automatic respect to someone because they were born before me.

Getting birthed before someone is not an achievement. It isn't merit.

No “da”. No “di”. That's what I want freedom from.

There are bigger things: patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, brahmanism, etc. I want freedom from. But hey on the way, lose the da and the di. Respect all for their actions. Or don't. I am not the boss of you!

Christ University, NCR

India is home to the world's largest tribal population, with 697 tribal groups and communities across the country (as per the Anthropological Survey of India). Each tribal group is distinct and has its own culture, art, handicrafts, and other distinctive characteristics, as well as a very sustainable and environmentally beneficial way of living. Indian tribes have a lot of potentials to be excellent entrepreneur assets to the Indian economy because of their rich culture and art, therefore making them a crucial element of the workforce for economic progress. Tribal handicrafts not only display tribal craftspeople’s unique culture but also provide a source of income for them. What distinguishes tribal handicraft from modern handicraft is that tribal artisans create their art and handicraft using resources from their indigenous lands and surroundings, which not only make tribal handicraft unique but also demonstrates how local resources can be used to their full potential by the creativity and culture of these tribal artists. Despite their rich art and handicrafts, tribal artisans and entrepreneurs have failed to reach their expected efficient growth over the decades after independence. One of the main reasons is scheduled tribes being the economic and social minorities and facing discrimination by the majority and privileged members of society for decades during and after colonial rule. Machine made products always have had an edge over the hand made product industries, this is mainly because of such products having good quality and being less costly as compared to hand made products. In this era of capitalisation and consumerism, fast fashion brands have taken over the traditional industries of art, fashion, clothes and jewellery. Everything is being produced at bulk level for consumers by these brands, mainly because they employ large capital and machineries which makes their products efficient and also large production costs less. Consumerism has increased the demand for each and every product and services. Brutal competition faced by fast fashion and mainstream brands: Tribal artisans, are expected to face brutal competition from fast fashion brands, this is mainly because, fast fashion brands have huge capital invested, larger parts of markets are already captured by them, it becomes immensely hard for tribal entrepreneurs to set their foot in this competition and their survival. How Tribal Entrepreneurs can help in the economic growth of India? Entrepreneurs are vital to the economy because they aid in the acceleration of economic growth by uniting the forces of production to produce goods and services. Any economy must develop a sense of entrepreneurship in its citizens for the country's resources to be utilized to their full potential. Understanding of Tribal economy can help us understand the economic and entrepreneurship behaviors concerning Indian Tribes, helping government in creating and implementing policies for SSIs n Tribal population and sensitizing consumers to include tribal products and services in their consumption. In terms of India's economic history, we can see how trade played a significant role in India for numerous centuries, even before the advent of western industrialization. All over Asia and some areas of Africa, India is known for its commerce in traditional handicrafts, art, and jewellry. Indian tribes and artisans have been playing an important role as producers of handicrafts ever since the ancient period. Before independence, Indian handicrafts (including tribal handicrafts) were in big demand across the countries. During colonial period, these industries were destroyed by british government’s Discriminatory tariff policies and Systematic deindustralisation. After independence India tried to gain back its tribal economy and handicraft industries, through many plans and policies. Government funds have been allocated for tribal development in almost every 5 year plans, mainly focusing on increasing the productivity and conditions of tribal farmers and their indigenous farming practices and helping them in training and skill development programmes Tribal artisans hold vast cultural assets in form of art, in this era of brutal competition in globalisation, it’s very easy for non-tribal brands to copy tribal designs and sell, which makes tribal entrepreneurs vulnerable and at risk, as their own art may not belong to them as some Big brand companies already took copyrighted claims over the designs. So it becomes very important to educate tribal entrepreneurs on their rights, and how they can have copyrights and patents over their cultural art, designs and products. Indian tribal entrepreneurs have a lot of potential, skills, and talent, and the growth of Indian tribal entrepreneurship is good for the Indian economy, societal norms, and it also means that Indian tribal culture, art, and skills will be preserved. Despite all of this, they continue to struggle to exist in global marketplaces. They are susceptible and at risk of failing to survive in the market due to competition from large firms. In addition to being protected by numerous rules, tribal entrepreneurs must also develop their abilities to keep up with the changing digital world and receive consumer support in order to maintain a secure position in the market. Investors must recognise tribal business talent and future opportunities before investing in their ideas and businesses. All of these can ensure the holistic growth of India's tribal tribes, as well as the development of this nation's marginalized sect. Consumers need to educate themselves to make better consumer decisions and buy from tribal artists instead of buying tribal products stolen from big and foreign brands. Support should be given to tribal artisans on online platforms and online selling websites, to better create sensitization among consumers. Moreover legal aid should be given to tribal artisans and entrepreneurs if they see other brands copying their designs and art. Angel investors and the public can play an important role to invest in the business ideas of tribal people and help their business to grow and be able to compete at nationals and international level. Capital funding and easy availability of credit through online methods need to be made accessible to tribal artisans and entrepreneurs for their business.

References

1. Mitra, A. (2008). The status of women among the scheduled tribes in India. Journal of Socio-economics, 37, 1202-1217.
2. Subramanyam, P.V. (2020). Social Exclusion, Inclusion, Integration and Development of Tribes in India: Anthropological Holistic Perspective.
3. Meena, Ms. & Chaturvedi, Ankita & Gupta, Sachin. (2021). OPPORTUNITIES IN TRIBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP & MSMES.
4. Srivastav, Nirankar & Syngkon, Rickey. (2010). Marketing Management and Entrepreneurship Development in a Tribal Dominated Economy: A Case Study of Small Scale Industries in East Khasi Hills District of Meghalaya, India. SSRN Electronic Journal. 10.2139/ssrn.1817302.
5. Dr. Devath Suresh (2014) TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH FIVE YEAR PLANS IN INDIA – AN OVERVIEW.
6. D.C. Sah, Ashish Bhatt, Tapas K. Dalapati (2008) CHRONIC POVERTY IN REMOTE RURAL AREAS
7. Ram Pravesh (2016) CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF TRIBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA
8. Holt, D. B. (2002). Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(1), 70–90. https://doi.org/10.1086/339922 Neha Sharma, and Dr. Ruchi Goyal. (2017). “PRADHAN MANTRI JAN DHAN YOJANA (PMJDY) – A CONCEPTUAL STUDY.”International Journal of Research – Granthaalayah, 5(4), 143-152. Ministry of Tribal Affairs- Government of India https://tribal.nic.in

Parul has never been more frustrated with witches and their shenanigans more in her life. In the last month alone Labonno has teleported unannounced inside the house multiple times a week. She seems enthusiastic about matching Parul up with a man.

“You know, I have read bloodsuckers are nicer, they ask before they get inside a house.” Parul has scorned at Labonno once.

“Well bloodsuckers don’t wait around to collect their debts” Labonno snapped back.

Parul didn’t say anything, it was already worse that Labonno was invading her private space more than normal. She didn’t wanna start an argument again.

“Why are you sending that hand icon as soon as you get a match? that makes you look lazy and desperate.” Labonno said looking over Parul’s shoulder. Parul was just swiping on a dating app.

“I mean what else am I supposed to do?” Parul asked meekly.

“Don’t text them first. Ever” Labonno was stern. “You are looking for a husband. Not a lover.”

Parul wasn’t expecting this line of thought from Labonno. “Are they separate? I thought you marry someone you love.”

Labonno was chuckling. “No silly girl, you marry for social status, not love. If people married for love, the world would have been very different.”

“I’m sorry, I wish to be married to someone who loves me. That’s the dream of every girl.” Parul retorted.

Labonno laughed. It was a dry laughter. As if she was frustrated with the naïveté of Parul. “Do I need to remind you that you were not even planning to get married, you wanted a husband to get the adoption process going.”

“Yes, but since I’m getting married, I thought…” Parul interjected but Labonno cut her off. “I’m not done.” Labonno continued, “Your government allows couples to adopt, that is the social status you get from being married. Your focus should be getting my debt paid off. Not side quests like love.” Labonno took a pause but held up the right index finger to not let Parul cut in. “Also, you don’t find love when you seek it out. You need love to find you. Which is not gonna be possible for you given how you spend all your days cooped up in this tiny home”

Parul had no words to say. Labonnos words cut deep, but at the same time there wasn’t any lies in what she said. Parul couldn’t argue back so she decided to focus more on the app and started swiping aggressively.

Soon enough, the app showed a message saying Parul has exhausted all her available free swipes and whether she would like to buy a premium subscription to continue swiping. Parul heaved a sigh of frustration.

“Maybe I should buy a subscription.” Parul said to herself. She then turned to Labonno and said, “Maybe it’s time for you to go, there’s nothing more gonna happen. I ran out of swipes and I’m not gonna pay money for matches”

Labonno didn’t say anything. She just teleported with a crack. Parul heaved a sigh of defeat and lied down on the floor. Trying to get a match while someone was looking over her shoulder has given her a lot of anxiety and it was only now dawning on her that this situation is likely to get even worse.

Parul didn’t realise how long it has been till she got a notification from her phone. A match has texted her back.

Parul looked at the message from the notification. It said, “girl you look hella fine, what do I do to call you mine?”

Parul cringed at the message, and instantly took a screenshot of the notification to send it to Labonno before realising that witch doesn’t use a smartphone.

Parul opened the app, and quickly typed, “Awwwwwwww, you can put a ring on me, and call me whatever you want.”

As soon as she sent the text, the match started typing. the three dots kept popping up and down for a good amount of five minutes. Vanishing in the middle for couple times. The waiting was crucifying. Parul’s mind raced around to figure out what possibly could he be writing that takes so much time. After a while a sole word popped up.

“Bet”.

Parul was confused. All that typing to write just this? She didn’t know what to write back to this message. She thought for a bit, and typed out, “I don’t mind if you take me to dinner first though.” and hit send.

She immediately got the response from the app that “You can’t send messages to this person anymore”. It took a bit of time for Parul to realise she has been unmatched. Parul was angry now. Why bother writing something that you obviously don’t mean? She through her phone in frustration and decided to make herself a bowl of cereal. She kinda missed Labonno now. She really wanted to know how would Labonno react to this interaction. She hurried back to her phone again and picked it up to take a screenshot for reference. Then she realised the app deleted the chat as well when the dude unmatched. She was inside the chat window so the app couldn’t say anything to her face, but once she exited the app, it made sure to make it look like no such interaction occurred.

Parul went to the app store and gave the app a one star review out of spite. It was late. She needed to cook dinner. So she decided to be mature, and hurried off to peel vegetables. She was seething, but she was also looking forward to venting to Labonno.

parul never thought in her wildest dreams that witches are real. Let alone how persistent they could be. It was a moment of desperation when she made the deal. But now, in her dimly lit kitchen, Labonyo, the witch, was nursing a glass of goat milk and staring at her with judgemental eyes that felt like it was piercing her soul.

Parul was sixteen, homeless, living off scraps from local shops, and sleeping in benches in bus stops. She wanted to just live and no payment was too high. So when the witch asked for her firstborn in exchange for her getting to live a life she wanted, she agreed without hesitation. She wasn’t thinking of having a child in the first place. Parul saw love as a tool for patriarchy designed to control women. And as a self-made women, being in love felt like a bigger betrayal than cheating a centuries old witch out of a deal. She thought this as a bad credit card debt. She just never realised out of her naiveté that credit card companies also have hoodlums they call the debt collectors, and at this point, Labonyo was feeling less like a witch and more like a debt collector doing a home visit.

“Parul, were you always planning to cheat me out of our deal?” Labonyo’s words felt calculated. Parul wasn’t expecting a direct question like this. She fumbled and couldn’t come up with an answer.

“What is given, can be taken away” Labonyo added serenely, “All your progress can go away instantly, and you won’t be sixteen again either.”

“I didn’t mean to, I was just…” was all Parul could master before Labonyo cut her off.

“I know what you’re gonna say, ‘Oh i never wanted to fall in love, I can never have kids’ — I knew that. Your firstborn doesn’t have to be biological. Just someone who see you as a mother. All this time, and you still don’t think how much power our choices hold.” Labonyo took a big sip from her glass of milk.

“How can I adopt without being married? This is India, trans girls like us aren’t allowed to adopt” Parul mumbled.

“That seems like a you problem, Parul” Labonyo interjected. “You figure that shit out. I need my payment. I have been nothing but generous to you, but I simply can’t keep providing free service, can I?”

“I’m not asking you to provide free service…” Parul started to speak.

“Bitch, please, you were totally planning to default on the debt, I have lived for over five hundred years, I have seen stupid people like you who thinks they can scam a witch” Labonyo was not taking any excuses today.

“Okay fine, just help me get a date then, and I promise I will get an adoption process going as soon as i’m married and give you the baby when they turn seven, as promised” Parul begged.

“Your dating life is none of my business and no, I can’t keep helping you without anything in return. My other coven members are starting rumours and they are not good for my business.” Labonyo was dismissive as she took a bigger sip from the glass. She seemed distracted.

“Not help, just tips.” Parul was desperate. “You want this solved fast? Me too.” Parul took a pause. She was calculating her next words very carefully. “Not to self-victimise, but your debt calls aren’t nice. I’d really like if you didn’t just teleported in the middle of my kitchen any time you please. It’s unsettling”

“Again, not my problem” Labonyo seemed a bit irritated.

“You are also saying people are talking about how you can’t collect a debt.”

“Who is saying that? I have a perfect collection score” Labonyo seemed very agitated now.

“You just said your coven is saying stuff”

“That’s none of your business, and for your information, that’s not what they are saying. They’re just saying that I have been…” Labonyo bit her tongue in the middle of the sentence. “You don’t have to worry about what they are saying. This doesn’t concern you. You should only be worried about your debt to me.” Labonyo suddenly was very focused on her glass of milk.

“That’s what I’m saying” Parul was confused at the tone of Labonyo, but she was also seeing a chance she didn’t see before. “You are a very experienced woman, I just want tips on how to be a proper woman. You know I didn’t grow up socialising as one. you know, girls help each other.”

Labonyo didn’t say anything back. Parul continued, “Just help me be more feminine, help me with dating, if i get an adoption going in a year, you can be assured of my payment, and the rumours about you will also stop. It is a win-win for us”

“Don’t think I do not see what you are trying to do, I’m not stupid” Labonyo was surprisingly calm. “But yes, I do think this might be the best solution for me too.” She continued. “I will give you tips, but one year. If you are not engaged within a year, all bets are off”

And with that Labonyo teleported with a crack and without a goodbye. Parul heaved a sigh of relief. How in the world witches are real and why do they need your firstborn? Parul made a mental note to ask this to Labonyo the next time around.

Shetland had been one of my favourite recommendations for people getting into the genre, but after Karen Pirie’s explosive first season, I can say that Shetland has a very good competition now.

Karen Pirie is one of the main female crime solving characters created by the Modern Queen of Crime Val McDermid. I really like her writing because she incorporates feminist and queer themes from her lived experiences of being a radical feminist and a lesbian. So more often than not, her characters operates under the extra pressure of optics and patriarchy.

Karen Pirie is no different, her office nickname is Box Ticker, because the boys club in the police station considers her a dei hire. To be honest, In the first season she gets the job because she is a woman, and she is picked because the actual murdered, who is in a higher position in the police force, never really thought she could be up to the job.

I think it is safe to say that the first season of Karen Pirie exceeded all expectations so much so that, other streaming services scrambled to make their own version of cold case procedurals as soon as possible. Netflix came out with Department Q with Matthew Goode, and Prime literally cancelled Bosch: Legacy to give more value to their similar show Ballard with Maggie Q.

I was kinda sceptical with the second season of Karen Pirie to be honest. But this month I had been a bit ill, so I found that a good excuse to binge the whole of Season 2 in one go. It is again a three episode season with one and half hour episodes. And it retains the same structure of going back and forth in the past to the present.

Unlike last season, the victim this time is not a working class woman. It is about an heiress of one of the biggest oil baron of Scotland. Catriona Grant. James Cosmo, who you might know as ser Joer Mormont from Game of Thrones or as Farder Coram from His Dark Materials plays the role of the Grant family Patriarch with utmost believability. He has been so good that our blunt to a fault detective couldnt figure out what he could have been hiding.

This season was a lot more predictable, as the series progresses you could spot some of the chinks in the armour, and guess which direction the story is going. Yet, the ending will still surprise you.

This case opens up after a surprisingly well preserved dead body is found in an abondoned quarry. That man was in possession of Catriona’s car keys, which he used to kidnap her. A kidnapping that happened 40 years ago, in 1984. Karen did find out eventually that Catriona was already in on it on the kidnapping and asking for the ransom, but eventually they also find the dead body of hers as well, throwing all speculations out of the window.

This season is more about class war than anything else. The Grant family has secrets, and they would go to any lengths to keep them from coming out. It doesn’t also hurt that they have all the resources and the money to undercut the detectives and sabotage the investigations. They did it last time, and tried really hard this time as well. However, they did love their daughter and grandson, and would not have harmed them either. Grant’s businesses put multiple miners out of work, so it could have been about a revenge from the unionising miners as well, or could be the crime family that is known for their ruthlessness in Scotland.

I really like scottish productions. their cinematography is very beautiful and having picturesque small towns seem like an added bonus. There are a lot of new actors who I do not know, and that is honestly refreshing. Chris Jenks as Mint, or Karen’s new puppy is actually a very lovable himbo.

I also need to point out that when most american procedurals are basically copaganda, british shows often take the route to show how much corruption there is in the police force. Sure, Karen Pirie is not as dark and heartbreaking like Red Riding, or as hellbent against corruption as Line of Duty (fuck the last season), but it still shows the cracks quite clearly. However I do not like the fact that the show pushes one bad apple rhetoric. However, I guess I can look the other way since their portrayal of systemic racism in scotland is quite realistic.

Val wrote 8 novels about Karen, so I guess we can expect six more seasons to come. I do not mind waiting for couple years for new seasons, and I do think the breaks help a lot. I hope the show is renewed again.

I also like the politics of Val. Queerness in her writings exist as a matter of fact, and generally has no bearing on the story. Which is extremely refreshing in the claustrophobic queer tv show genre where everything rotates around it. Queer people are more than their sexuality, and I’m really glad the show stays true to the source material.

I do recommend you watch Karen Pirie. It doesn’t treat the audience as stupid, and often it shows the audience a lot more context about the characters than the detective without divulging any extra details. That is extremely hard to do and the show-runners deserve praise for executing that flawlessly. If you have liked procedurals like Shetland or Broadchurch, you’ll feel at home with Karen Pirie.

Nothing is universal, but some trends are visible: NGOs are scared. Their funds are drying up or they know will dry up. Their ideas dried up some time back. They are trying to squeeze the dried up ideas to get some more juice (Rupees) out of funders. NGO leaders keep repeating that the community is not interested, not invested, as justification to not do anything other than what they have already been doing. They are literally having to bribe the community to attend their events. Events are mostly designed to be photo-ops that can be used to seduce funders. Learning, growing, being, becoming, these are hardly part of these workshops, trainings, and events.

The community is left in a lurch while agendas lacking courage are debated ad nauseam in meetings and conferences. The public is neither consulted nor informed.

We need a different style of movement. One that is distributed, leaderless, employs wide range of tactics, connects a wide range of ideas and demands beyond identity politics. We need movements – plural – in street corners, living rooms, offices, neighbourhoods. We deserve unruled movements. And no one else will give them to us.

Before I proceed I should mention that my observations and conclusions are all anecdotal in nature based on my lived experience, and is in no way empiric. I am writing this piece to start conversations.

I was in a relationship with a trans man for almost 3 years. We bonded well and were compatible. But during this time both of us realised that we were polyamorous, and confided that to each other. I wasn't romantically interested in anyone except for him at that time despite being polyamorous, and I told him the same. We gave each other consent to date other people as well, given if we have a clear conversation about it first.

A month after this conversation, he broke up with me over text. Our mutual friends tell me that he has been dating another man for a while, and the other person was a better partner for him than I could ever be. I was devastated.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one who went through this. Many of my friends have been cheated on, with their then partners using polyamory or open relationships as an excuse to betray the trust of their partners.

As a polyamorous person, I know this isn't polyamory. This is lying, this is cheating, this betrayal. Polyamory is nothing but a flimsy shield. But my friends, who are monogamous, do not know that. They think that polyamorous people are liars who are hypersexual and won't hesitate to break hearts just to get their sexual fix. So my friends and other queer people develop a disdain of polyamorous people based on their negative experiences.

On top of that, some unethical polyamory practitioners treat minorities as a trophy, a game achievement. They become chasers for trans women and men and caste and religious minorities, approaching them with ideas of roleplay the person isn't comfortable with. The disdain grows.

Similary, some monosexual people hate bisexuals. They associate bisexuality with promiscuity and lying behaviour, because their bisexual partner cheated on them with a person of a different gender.

From the past discussions it should be evident that queer people are also prone to biases about fellow members of the community based on anecdotes. The same is for how some people think of nonbinary people.

India has been home of many identities that exist beyond the binary. On top of that, due to imposition by the state, some trans women and men consider themselves to be a “third gender”; and they can become fully a woman/ a man by undergoing bottom surgery and HRT. But, describing one's gender as “nonbinary” is relatively modern and confined to urban middle class queer circles. A lot of working class trans people feel betrayed when they see UC middle class nonbinary individuals being celebrated for their transness even though they haven't done any meaningful work to uplift the members who are in the grassroots. This betrayal develops into bias, that the people who call themselves nonbinary are just calling themselves trans for social clout, they aren't “real trannies”. And it doesn't help that some nonbinary individuals use their assigned gender at birth to defend themselves from valid criticism from trans women. They, intentionally or not, play into gender essentialism; by potraying themselves to be inherently “soft and pure” for being AFAB, and making AMAB individuals to be inherently “violent”.

It should be clear that these biases are made by observing people who are using their marginalized identity as a shield to absolve themselves of their wrongdoings. It's not the fault of the identity, its the fault of the person. As a collective we need to do better by protecting the ones who are the most at risk and asking for accountabilty from the ones who hurt us.

আর একতা কি ট্রান্স মানুষ রা জোখুন পাসপোর্ট নবায়ন বা ভিসা জননো পাসপোর্ট জমা করচে, ওদের পাসপোর্ট জাপ্টো কোরা হবে, ফেরোদ পাছে না।

আমড়া থেকে টিজি কার্ড উদযাপন করচি। কিন্টু, ইউএসএ এর অস্থিরতা দেখে কি আমাদের ভাবা কথা না: সরকার/স্টেট সে তথ্য তা নিয়ে কখুন কি করতে পারে, সেট কি আমরা জানি?

Bolche je hijde kothi ra ga er rong phorsha kora jonno ekta medicine nichhe jar bishesh podartho hochhe Glutathione naam er ekta chemical. Eita amader liver e samanyo bhabe toiri hoye. Liver er oshudh hishabe eita'r proyojon certified achhe. Eita te dekha geche ki kichu khetre ga'er rong phorsha hoye. Eita te rong phorsha korar jonno “wonder drug” hishabe bikri kora hochhe. Onek skincare treatment e o dewa hoye.

Kintu daam onek pore. Effect dekhte gele to ek bochor treatment nitei habe, 15 khana treatment o hote pare. Ekta treatment er daam, jaiga jaiga te depend kore, kintu 3000/– teen hazaar taka o hote pare. Aar skin er upore effect baniye rakhte hole treatment niye jete habe. Na hole, abar aager obostha te chole jabe dheere dheere. Bochor e 36,000/– theke 84,000/– dam porche treatment er, depend kore koto ta nichho.

Glutathione er market onek bodo. Onek jon nichhe to. Article e bolche ki Delhi, Maharastra, Punjab e praye 45% community nichhe. Aar non-community manush, film star, celebrity, era o nichhe. 2024 2 praye 117 crore taka'r market chilo Glutathione'er.

Lokjon nichhe to ki sundor lagbe, partner habe, customer habe. Kintu article e jei hijda kothi der interview korlo ora eita'o bolchilo ki ja extra kamai korche seta to treatment nite'i beriye jachhe. Kintu onek peer pressure ba community bhetor theke chaap o achhe – phorsha lagte habe, cis-women er moton lagte habe.

Medicine er side effect o achhe. Long term use korle kidney te effect hote pare. Especially kenoki ei treatment ta injection ba saline drip er sathe deya hoye, tablet ba syrup noye. Seta te side effect howa chance besi. Tai treatment nile o, doctor dekhiye neya utchit, kidney testing korate hoye. Kintu article e jei hijde kothi der ke interview korlo tara to bollo ki onek jon i doctor na dekhiye naye – fees aar testing er poisa beche jaye, keu besi side effect niye bhabe na. Ek jon bollo ki amra aar koto din banchbo, side effect bhebe ki habe.

Through a hurried life, Her presence compels me to pause and savor.

Why is it that I cannot look away? Like colors blending seamlessly into nature, Her essence merges gracefully with simplicity.

Moment by moment, She proves that the beauty of humanity Is the source of boundless joy.

Even after she departs, Like eyes sensing light even in darkness, Her absence lingers, traveling with her presence.

The warmth of her breath mingling with the air outside Gently caresses my solitude.

The places etched with her images Turn the mirage into a profound truth.

In my frozen world, Her realities melt away, leaving me bereft.

Where have you gone?

My contentment fades Without witnessing your playful innocence.

My peace turns to emptiness Without beholding your soft smile.

My hearing falters In the silence of your absence.

Where have you gone, My woman? Where have you gone?

Sometimes it has air At times it is fair Tales and toils it has been bare But dare someone to hear!

It's not fragile out there, It’s not brutal either; It’s not nice out there If nice is what you are

Still dare and dare Dare to care Since it’s only fair To show that you spare All your despair And tears that are queer.

We need to learn to see how power operates. How it sustains and reproduces oppressive structures.

How do you?

There was a woman standing by the door in front of me. I noticed that she was wearing a green kurti, pink sweater, and duppatta. I was wearing a green salwar-kurti with dupatta. Our eyes met and I passed a smile. She smiled back. But then she looked at me, puzzled. Then burst out in a laugh (not a boisterous laugh, no sounds, but a laugh that was mocking me). She looked away, then looked at me, and then laughed again. I asked her, in English, “Are you ok?” She said, “yes, I am OK.” I was annoyed. I stood more firmly, looking glassily straight ahead. Her eyes scanned my body and my chest. Then she laughed again. She started communicating with a similar-aged man standing across from her. They were traveling together. He was wearing brown slacks and a patterned deep blue button-up shirt. He looked a bit embarrassed. I had a bag slung over my shoulder and a water bottle in my hand. I clutched them tightly. She could see that I am uncomfortable. She laughed openly at me now.

I wondered what I should do? Doing nothing or moving away did not seem like an option. What happens if I protest? What's the chance that people might beat me up? Would I be able to handle it if this situation escalates? I felt alone.

The train was crowded. A couple of men standing beside me were noticing what is going on. I whispered loudly. “oshobho.” She scanned my genital regions with her eyes and laughed. “Rude.” I said more loudly, “Lajja kore na ei dhoron’er byabohar korte?” The man she was talking to called her to his side. She went and clung to his hand. She laughed again, and started talking to him about me. Everyone around could hear her talking about me. He wasn’t engaging, but she continued to try to get him to also make fun of me. It had been about 10 min since the journey started. It felt like an hour. I looked at the men beside me and said “ki dhoron er oshobhota, dekhuun” Their faces were like stone. But her boyfriend sternly told her to shut up. She complied but was angry at him. 

It felt a sort of victory, and I started smiling. She then started to quarrel with him about other things. Quarrelling with her companion was her way of registering protest. Seeing her cling to him and quarrel with him at the same time, I felt kinda sad. It felt like she was trapped in his protection. It felt so strange. We could have been friends, right? We could be collaborators on challenging patriarchy? And here we were, both protected by a man.

And those wild foxes bleed music from their veins As their feet graze Against the sweet hawthorns you planted for me When we found ourselves drenched in the soft summer rain That soon turned into a hailstorm of huge calamity. Without clarity, I lost you.

You were lost in my lies, While I wasn't there with you.

You should have been singing I should have been listening.

They search deep for a sweet Soulful sound that melts the ears, And years of time pass for them to meet The avalanche of emotions That sorrow brings into the threshold Of our skies where lies impatient Boreas and all the love that his mournful soul Has to offer to this willful ignorance of a childish heart.

Like a child I leap and scream your name into the heavens Where spark-birds fly limitless into the arms of Life

And you, among those rimless clouds, my love Smile back at me like I'm the treasure that you hunt And not me who searches a shelter by your irridescent feet

Hysterically, the cadavers are cropping into your bones like stitches of woolen yarn, and you are smoking the snow smelling earth as if you are ashen by your winter. You don't know your name and not your blooming monstrosity, but it's rising flames into the loins of your empty bosom and as if you function as humane as nature you are puking bile.

I am not thinking about you but you are flashing in front of my eyes like faeries and nymphs on feast and inside the claustrophobic walls of my cosmopolitan house I find you the ghosts of English past. The fireplaces are so burnt with coal and wood painting the red on bricks and yet,

you flash like the sorcerer of my life, and yet, this is my monstrous cosmopolitan forests and the walls keep shrinking.

I fear that someday this hallucination of the past is all my today exists with truth. And when tomorrow I open my eyes it's a blank canvas so bright that even my shadow scares my soul to set a foot on earth. Maybe, I am thinking too much with nothing concrete but my city around me. But the cold shrine of winter moon on the swimming pool feels like slithering reptile scales, and I am soaked in all vile liquid and I am consuming it like a supple and galloping meat with a mouth and no air to fill vacuum space in me.

If someday you vanish from the throbbing cells of my antelope brain, and truth is not poison of my morning juice, and breakfast tastes like bakery in all its bloom, will I know my name and the sews I stitched on my gaping wounds, would seem like paper cuts of childhood games?

You have no mouth on your face now, and I don't remember you crook of nose but your spiraling eyes like the storm of the seas, resemble enough to the turbines of the laundry room, and I am staring too deep into the glass cages of whirlpooling fabrics as if you are looking at me, asking me tricks of your existence. And never when my spring break comes, once again, I set my eyes outside the door, hoping a drop of rain would fall on me and it would smell like the joy of soil, sorrows of the sky and ending all hopes of the sun to rise into the oblivion. Just like it used to when days were juvenile and trees were saplings. They needed sun. The sun couldn't face them because the skies wailed horribly.

I name you Michelangelo. You created me this pretty when I was soil and calcium of bones. But you are no artist and flawed like him. I call you so because in the history of my glory your existence will be mammoth. I am me, because you saw me then. But you'll be lost and barely remembered except your creation, the stapled scars of prude boyhood, and so lost will be your face, like so mouthless it is. Soon your eyes will be crawling with maggots and you will be consumed. Rotting the rotten, you'll be into the soil; in the calcium I came from, yet you'll be acid, and churning into the wheel of your eye; and I'll never look at the hullabaloo of soft fabrics in the laundry room. You'll be Michelangelo; forgotten and remembered; and I'll be the paintings of Rome, talking tales of mythology as if you built me in a day.

The death of my mother’s daughter haunts the city park. Autopsy was done, she was lying by the curb Her womb was blood Cervix torn Later she was killed Emptying the cervix that labored for her. The death of my mother’s daughter made me question Why was I my mother’s daughter? Why was I killed?

The dead body of my mother’s daughter Lies beside my motionless mother Not a tear Not a life In those eyes, Eyes that once had rage A rage I once Used to share.

Where was my father? Why was he not here? For I was a corpse lying Not the princess Whose world he conquered.

The death of my mother’s daughter Pained me more, as I lurked Like the gust of air. My life was lost, What I left was despair.

No boy, no lover No crime, not any violence A kill had occurred And an act unfair Who would you blame? Who would you name? Who would you call out Label him insane, He who never was Bereft to make the claim?

The death of my mother’s daughter Killed a few more Alive they looked While only I was who burned. No rage was cooler than that pyre No screams were calmer than those flames No life was better than those ashes

The death of my mother’s daughter, Quicker than the rape of mine. Would you call it a crime? Would you sleep on my shine As my body was agile Voice seemed fine, Yet Night and day Body and mind, Ruins of toils Chafing my loins, Ruins of toils Calling me to spoils.

The death of my mother’s daughter Was an end I desired For my mother perished Why a daughter Why a maiden Why no omen Why no evil Why her cradle Left so barren Why her husband Sobbed no spoken Why her daughter A tragic token, She wept And mourned enraged, My mother’s daughter left no trace For all the perils To her devil entrails Burned with ashes Neither evils nor remains No just crime could ever pertain.

My father’s daughter had died in vain A conqueror so vague Loss beguiled the pain in might Not life, nor light No home of mine My father’s daughter had died, And in death I couldn’t even smile.

Note: I write in one flow that ends up with alot of different things. I find solace in my writing format which is scattered and unstructured. Its likely that everything will not be understood or communicated well (grammatical errors that i missed), i will be happy to share what i meant.

I named myself Ellgie for a reason; and I keep justifying its meaning for me, the impression I had. I am aware its too much to handle if i say an insta reel gave it more meaning. Some of you might have seen this diary i have with text I wrote, “Abhiti, Ellgie/Ell, I will get more names and still remain nameless”. I am not quoting whats in a name. But the name Ellgie for me, comes from fear that I wish to cherish fully at some point. Presently its questionable if I own it; I am on a spree of claiming it. I am in no hurry to reach there because the reel i mentioned, opened more ways to look at it. https://www.instagram.com/p/C5WFMsjOPSN/ – Read the caption. Sometimes its easy to decipher nature's way of looking at you. The most non-judgemental, warm and cosy, like home. Nature is alot of things for me and not just plants and animals; its everything that earth is providing, beleiving in human conciousness and ofcourse humans are proving them wrong. What it did for me! Its encouraging me to ask for support, to say i feel lonely some days, to cry out in front of people if i want, express my displeasure and so much more as it progresses. I think of community not as a unit; i remember we were taught whats community and its everywhere you belong. I wrote somewhere that community and social work doesn't function together because for one there are feelings involved and other is limitation on what can be offered. Ohh! and another way to look at is how 'I and us' is in community and 'they' in social work. For me Ellgie is Algae (unicellular, there is so much diversity that they can grow on land and water, there is no ancestor, doesn't need another set of chromosome to reproduce – Wikipedia). Little explanation to that is alone works for me, i will exist, no lineage to carry-anwerable to no human and i can have cats without me producing them but they are still my kids. Every possible thing where i am not attached to anything, anyone – alone is accepted. Althought, what a turtle shell does, baffled me to a point where I was almost questioning, how can just ask for some person to be present when i am in need and vice versa. I can offer help when asked and i can ask for help. It isn't easy but i am striving for it. And thats where community works, not sure if social work really offers the same support of love, empathy, you are annoying but i care for you, showing up, not bound by labels or relationships. Names speak alot for our identity, mine generating from queerness in me and that surrounds me. You don't always know, what brings meaning to your existence. And thats where i see myself being hopeful for microseconds.

from the brilliant mind of Nida Manzoor comes the desi diaspora representation I wish I had in my childhood. it is brilliant because it doesn’t claim to be a portmanteau of desi culture, but it focuses more on the identity of the second and maybe third generation of the diaspora. they ARE british, but their baggage of being brown without pandering to people living in global south has been superbly executed. it is also the experience of being muslim. and the diverse cast has been able to put up something heartfelt that tugs at your heartstring.

the first season has been mindblowing. I have discovered it because i keep looking for offbeat series, and then Nida debuted her feature film – Polite Society, and to see desi women doing action while donning anarkali has healed something in me i never thought needed healing.

But Lady Parts is something else altogether. Western studios suck at making musicals, let alone musical TV shows, Glee is kinda okay, but by no means that can be used as a standard. But Nida, with her understanding of bollywood brings something refreshing and fun to the genre that often stays underused.

Anjana Vasan has been making big splashes in the world of western multimedia world for some time.we saw her in small roles in Spiderman: Far From Home, and in Sex Education, and post the first season of Lady Parts, she had important and main roles in the last season of Killing Eve and Black Mirror respectively. and if you are coming here after watching her there, it would be very difficult to place her character Amina, but once you give it a bit of time, she fits the role of girl-next-door, goody-two-shoes, boy-crazy Amina perfectly. Her comedic timing is extraordinary, and not surprising given her theatre background. and her narration keeps the pace of Lady Parts very exciting.

I have couple issues with the second season of Lady Parts, one of them being Mumtaz’s growth, it felt Mumtaz records became a success overnight, and had no issues getting a space, which from the past narrative for season one and half of season two, makes no sense. it felt quite rushed and unrealistic. the other part being Amina going back to the obviously toxic brother of Ayesha, Ahsan. i hope there is vindication in season three, or I will throw hands.

season two perfectly depicts the struggle of indie groups and musicians, and how predatory mainstream record labels can be. It has been already established the record labels have been fuck all to say the least. multiple legendary musicians has died penniless and/or on the streets because of their predatory practice. Even though it was a short stint, those practices are clearly visible in the few episodes. the outcome was quite expected tbh, Lady Parts doing something similar like radiohead or arctic monkeys fit perfectly as a British alternative rock group. Despite that, it was extremely fulfilling to watch.

It has pretty amazing queer rep too. both Ayesha and Saira are queer, and it is clearly visible there. Ayesha’s very lesbian relationship has progressed quite a lot, and the interpersonal struggles have started to bubble up. I expect to see more of that in the coming seasons. i can’t help but feel that Saira would be trans masc adjacent, and i think that would be amazing avenue for Lady Parts to explore. a tboy from the diaspora would also be one of the first representations in western media.

i want more of Lady Parts, and i’m not satiated enough. i want more episodes too, and i want more shows featuring the struggles of diaspora in different formats, like Lady Parts, or Man Like Mobeen. tbh, kinda would love to see Guz Khan or Shazad Latif in Lady Parts hehe. would be pretty amazing.

Its bizarre.

I had no idea a simple letter, a mere alphabet, would hold this much volume in my letters.

You have no idea either. Probably never will.

I miss back when L was just an alphabet. Now it occupies more than half of my notes, my patterns to the folders of you, the passwords to my door, my heart.

And while you're just a kilometre away from me, i can't help but think what will happen if I just go up to the office in my pyjamas and talk with you about what's kept you up there for so long.

You'll ask how I got to leave so early and I'll tell you all about my day. Even the anxiety attacks too.

We'll go to your favourite spot for dinner, mine for dessert. And I'll come back to my hostel in that horrid bike of yours, but enjoy the ride. My hands in your hair. Yours on my hips. Ah, I'm a hopeless romantic. And a tortured poet.

But if you asked, said come, let's go. I'll leave all my half burnt writings, my clothes with your thoughts woven in them, my books with your name on them, I'll leave it all and blindly follow you. For you're the fire, I'm just a stupid moth.

Seriously though, what would you do if I came right this instant to the office?

I am a 20-something trans Bengali butch, living in Kolkata, India. We are an endangered species.

I ramble about books and media and representation and other seemingly ~asinine~ things that people have told me are frivolous pursuits. I use dating apps to talk about eco-feminism and intersectionality with other queer desi people, as there is no gay bar in my neighbourhood that caters to middle-class socially anxious trans sapphic folk like me. I also like writing love poetry and melancholic, slightly wistful romances about Bengali girls in love and Bengali trans queer kids in Catholic School.

I feel like I have been given a key to Pandora's box with this blog, and thus, my friend has unleashed a monster. You will be subject to my poetry, and you WILL read my opinions. I hope you will listen to what I have to say. Sometimes, my ramblings might even make sense.

Hey L,

I'm on a train and I'm thinking of you.

And I want to tell you what will happen if i decide to be brave.

I'd start off by asking you out for a tea, coffee for you? Whichever you prefer. And I will ask you to continue what you were saying when I was pressed up against you, no- the first time.

You barely spoke the second time. Which by the way, will be my next question.

I'd ask all about your lessons, little wins, failures, your first love, your friends back in college and school. And if you still talk to any of them.

I'd then ask how many siblings you have. Are they cunning like mine or sweet like the ones that came for me, but from another mother? I'd ask you about your parents. Are they typical like mine or are they whatever I'm imagining right this instant.

I'd then ask about what hurt you the most when you were a child. Because if there is one thing I find relatable among people, it's their pain. You see, this will help us get closer. And i get to prove myself that I'm not a coward anymore.

I'd ask you about what kind of business you're interested in. And while I ask you this, I'll probably get lost in the stories I'm spinning of both of us in my mind. For you're great at whatever you do and I will sit with you and admire each of your successes and failures. Perhaps we'd retire on a nice farm back at home and we'll sit on our balconies sipping something sweet.

After this story ends, I'd ask you what kind of people you've met. Strangers, friends, relatives. But speak of only your favourite ones. Because if I am not what I am now I'd have written poems about my favourite people that'd stun the poets.

I'd ask you too many questions in between and i sometimes get lost in myself. So feel free to slap me. Or kiss me. Whichever you prefer.

I'd then tell you about the moments I was being sneaky for you. When I asked little details of you nonchalantly. Pretending as if that's the last thing that I care about. I'd tell you it was the most difficult moment to not care.

I'd tell you about the times i kept watching your photos discreetly on screens. When you were right beside me but was too shy to look you in the eye. I'd tell you how once again I realised that i should never choose acting as my career even if my life depends on it.

And if i think this seems like a journey that'd lead to a destination i want to cherish, I'd show you this and ask you out again.

What a waste this would be if you turn out to be a Man. I hope you would just be you.

If you have been in left-leaning trans and queer online circles then you most probably have heard someone or something being described as “gender”. The term gender, in this context, means having gender expression worth of envy. If you see a person and you feel like emulating their gender expression, then you'll call that person “gender”.

More often than not, 'gender' is reserved for androgyny and perceived gender nonconformity. People of all genders are capable of being 'gender', but gender conforming folks are often reserved to be 'transition goals' for binary trans people. 'Transition goals' imply that the person expressing that feeling is willing to achieve their aesthetic targets with both long-term transitional healthcare (HRT, surgeries, exercise) and short-term gender affirming care (makeup, hair styling, clothing) while gender is reserved for the later goal. Again, with vague, still-developing queer vernacular; both of these terms have an overlap in use and target.

'Gender' ascribes an ideal in queer thought, no matter how subjective. So, I asked my friends who they thought of as 'gender'. Before I continue, I should mention that my data is anecdotal in nature, but it is still able to provide necessary insight into our biases, and the inferences are noteworthy. All of the people who answered are active internet users and part of different online queer spaces, and are within the ages 18-30.

Across the board, the answers featured men and masculine presenting people. They also happened to be white or had light skin, and can be described as thin. Even when people mentioned women or non-men as their examples of “gender”, they had lighter skin and were not fat. In the scope of my query, I struggled to find anyone who did not fit conventional beauty standards who were defined as “gender”.

As trans and queer individuals we mostly exist outside societal norms of gender, sexuality, and love. But that doesn't imply that people in the community won't inherit other forms of bigotry, let alone queerphobia and transphobia. By viewing people who present in a masculine way as “gender” more frequently, we inadvertently extend patriarchal views; where being a man is seen as a neutral being but being a woman or a nonbinary individual is seen as inherently gendered and othered. The oppressive systems at play view a thin, white, able-bodied cis man as the neutral, natural being; and anyone else as a deviation, an anomaly, something to be marked as different. And it sucks that even 'radical' queer activists subconsciously buy into these systems.

This inherent bias is seen when you ask someone to give you a piece of clothing that is not gendered. They are more likely to hand you a suit than a sari, even though they claim to believe that clothes have no inherent gender. Similarly, a shirt is a neutral piece of clothing, but a thobe, a yukata, or a kurta are “cultural” clothes; despite all being clothes are commonly worn by various groups of people.

Complex questions that inquire about societal and cultural norms, and questions the veracity of different biases that exist within us seldom come with simple answers. But that doesn't mean all efforts will be futile. We can start by questioning why we think of a certain gender as the natural being and others as a marked deviation, not “normal”. The steps after this questioning are even more complex, involving attempting to deconstruct the way gender is viewed in society. There is one step that is simple, and that is ensuring transphobic cis queers never get a platform.

My brain is wired. There are a couple diagnoses and I don't want more. Ultimately, the wires in my brain are entangled, keep switching, some are different colors and some are invisible. I don't want to delve into the challenges I face to exist in a pretentious non wired world but the struggles of claiming my wired-ness.

I am not really sure what is more difficult. I get annoyed when I see other people keeping their response to themselves. Although, when I go back to my visual self, I see the fear and shame evidently from my childhood and five years of law school. I had a mask on to not be myself; the fact is I never knew who I am. It made it easier to be whoever I wanted to be (common word for it is projecting). Those were equally sad days, but they were the days of unawareness from discouragement to get aware.

I would deflect from projecting once in a while or when I felt safe with my beloved friend from the time. She is the person who helped me start unveiling myself; to see that everything I think or speak is not silly. Then it was her, work colleagues and work that I was immensely faithful too. I loved what I was doing irrespective of the routine, I could truly see myself and my wired brain complementing and coexisting. Once my boss, while talking about a matter in Court the next day, was agitated and asked me if I am even understanding or just nodding. I think he knew how I used to feel about doing what we were doing but he expected me to express that feeling.

“I've just learnt to accept my feelings, how do i express them. Is it necessary? Is nodding not engaging or expressive.” It's only a few years (could be 2, 5, 10, 12 years) that I realised my way of perceiving the world is common; even its presence is very explicit but it's always unacknowledged!

I unapologetically address myself a late bloomer; the shade, light, water I received was unproportionate, there were storms and untimely rain but assessment is based on growth. The more I learnt how behind I am from the unwireds and after it stopped making any difference, I was still sad but it was tube lightening. I adore the person I am and this constant push to pretend upsets me and when it doesn’t affect others in similar situations, it upsets me even more.

Being wired has broken me, hence I can only be broken into more pieces instead of being fixed. I don’t see any point in being fixed or healed because it's not possible; but also because the process of healing will make me resilient and to pretend. I don’t want to put so much effort into molding myself when I can continue to be upset and still exist. It can't be just me who have been unknown to myself for so long that it's now ruthless but yet joyful to explore further.

Was this the expression my boss was expecting while he is amazing at pretending? Humans are complex and when it’s 'char log', it gets even more complicated.

Note: Maybe the writing style did not make sense. If you want to get sense out of something I said, reach out. If you disagree, please break my notions but if you’re offended; you're welcome.

In the love of the world I thought, was a beautiful place. I want to surprise myself, and know what I am capable of. I don’t want to give up, not right now!

With hope in despair.

In our ever-evolving world, progress in understanding gender and sexual orientation has brought to light the interconnectedness between queerphobia and misogyny. The belief that these prejudices are distinct fails to recognize the deep-seated roots they share.

Introduction: Unveiling the Connection Between Queerphobia and Misogyny

This topic is definitely a departure from the vibes of ARTable where we focus on the science behind many artforms. However, there has been a lot of activity in this sector of social science recently. I wanted to use my platform to talk about this because it is more than just a discussion for me; it's a narrative that resonates deeply within my own life. To those who have followed my journey through these digital pages, it's no secret—I am queer. Specifically, I identify as non-binary, a declaration that encompasses my belief that the confines of gender roles are restrictive and limiting. For me, it means that my capabilities, ambitions, and domestic skills aren't defined by any societal expectations; I can effortlessly juggle multiple jobs, manage my livelihood, spoil my loved ones, and cook and clean just as proficiently as anyone else, irrespective of gender.

My journey, however, has not been without its challenges. Having navigated the world for the initial nineteen years of my life presenting as a woman, I am no stranger to the nuances and struggles tied to misogyny. The experiences of being perceived, judged, and sometimes diminished solely based on societal expectations of femininity are deeply ingrained in my story.

Additionally, my time being out and proud within the vibrant online LGBTQIA+ community since 2016 has exposed me to the harsh realities of queerphobia. I've witnessed the prejudice, the discrimination, and tragically, the loss of individuals from my chosen family—losses that were initially attributed to queerphobia. However, as I delve deeper into these unfortunate occurrences, I've begun to unravel a stark truth: what I presumed to be solely queerphobia was often nothing but misogyny cloaked in different attire.

Every passing year brings the heartache of losing someone from my community, and with each loss, I've come to the realization that beneath the facade of queerphobia lies the stark reality of misogyny.

This profound understanding has fueled my exploration into the interconnectedness of these prejudices, urging me to unravel the layers that intertwine queerphobia and misogyny. It's a journey of introspection, education, and advocacy—an endeavor to shed light on this intrinsic connection and pave the way for a more inclusive, empathetic, and equitable society.

Join me on this exploration as we uncover the hidden threads binding queerphobia and misogyny, and embark together towards a world where every individual can embrace their identity without fear or discrimination.

The Intersection of Queerphobia and Misogyny

Queerphobia, the prejudice against individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+, often mirrors the discrimination experienced by women. At its core, it stems from rigid societal gender norms and stereotypes. Misogyny, the hatred or prejudice against women, is frequently intertwined with the discrimination faced by individuals who identify as queer.

Reinforcement of Gender Roles:

Both queerphobia and misogyny find their roots in a society that rigidly enforces traditional gender roles. Women are often expected to conform to predetermined societal standards of behavior, appearance, and roles, failing which they are subjected to various forms of discrimination. Similarly, individuals within the LGBTQIA+ spectrum often face similar expectations to fit within societal norms related to gender and sexuality.

For instance, gay men might face ridicule for not adhering to stereotypical masculine behaviors, while lesbians may encounter discrimination for deviating from the traditional roles assigned to women. Transgender individuals challenge these gender norms even more significantly, experiencing discrimination and violence for not conforming to the gender assigned to them at birth. This rigid enforcement of gender roles perpetuates the idea that deviating from these norms is somehow wrong or inferior, leading to both queerphobia and misogyny.

Power Dynamics and Control:

Misogyny and queerphobia share a common foundation in power dynamics. At the core of both prejudices lies a desire for dominance and control over marginalized groups. This control aims to maintain existing power structures, often established by cisgender heterosexual men. Individuals or groups that deviate from these norms are seen as a threat to this established hierarchy, resulting in discrimination, oppression, and violence.

In both contexts, the control mechanisms differ but originate from the same patriarchal system. Misogyny operates to maintain male dominance over women, while queerphobia seeks to maintain heteronormativity by marginalizing LGBTQIA+ individuals. The fear of losing control over societal norms and structures perpetuates these prejudices, leading to the systematic oppression of both women and queer individuals.

Understanding these intertwined mechanisms is crucial to dismantling these prejudices. By challenging societal expectations of gender and power dynamics, we can pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable society—one that embraces diversity and rejects discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

Overlapping Prejudices

Challenging Gender Norms and Sexual Orientation:

The overlap between queerphobia and misogyny becomes starkly evident in the discrimination faced by lesbians. Their sexual orientation challenges the societal norms of heterosexual relationships, but it goes further. Lesbians, particularly feminine-presenting individuals, challenge traditional gender roles by engaging in same-sex relationships. As a result, they often experience compounded discrimination, facing backlash not just for their sexual orientation but also for defying conventional gender expectations.

Heightened Discrimination Against Transgender Individuals:

Transgender individuals encounter multifaceted discrimination due to their divergence from societal gender expectations. They challenge the very foundation of binary gender norms, and this challenge is met with substantial resistance. Transphobia, a form of queerphobia directed specifically at transgender individuals, often intersects with misogyny as these individuals might face discrimination and violence for not conforming to the gender assigned at birth.

These terms are crucial in understanding the nuances of discrimination faced by transgender individuals. Here's an explanation for each:

Transmisia:

Transmisia is a broad term used to describe the prejudice or discrimination against transgender individuals. It encompasses a range of negative attitudes, biases, and actions directed towards people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Transmisia includes societal beliefs, stereotypes, and systemic barriers that contribute to the marginalization and oppression of transgender individuals.

Transmisogyny:

Transmisogyny specifically refers to the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, targeting transgender women or individuals assigned male at birth who identify as female or feminine. It highlights the unique discrimination and oppression faced by transgender women, often stemming from both transphobic attitudes against their gender identity and misogynistic attitudes against their femininity.

Transmisogyny encompasses the specific experiences of discrimination faced by transgender women, including societal marginalization, violence, exclusion, and the denial of basic rights, all rooted in a combination of transphobia and misogyny.

Transphobia:

Transphobia is a more general term describing the fear, hatred, or discrimination against transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals. It encompasses a wide range of negative attitudes, behaviors, and systemic prejudices directed towards people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Transphobia can manifest in various forms, including verbal abuse, physical violence, denial of rights, and social exclusion.

Understanding these terms is crucial in recognizing the specific challenges and discrimination faced by transgender individuals, particularly transgender women who experience transmisogyny—prejudices compounded by both transphobia and misogyny. Addressing and challenging these prejudices is essential in creating a more inclusive and supportive society for all gender identities.

Impact on Mental Health:

The compounded effects of facing discrimination from both queerphobia and misogyny significantly impact the mental health of individuals within these marginalized groups. Research consistently shows higher rates of anxiety, depression, and trauma among LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly those who identify as women or feminine-presenting.

The constant exposure to discrimination, societal rejection, and prejudice takes a toll on mental well-being. The fear of being ostracized or facing violence solely based on one's gender identity or sexual orientation leads to heightened stress levels and emotional distress. The lack of acceptance, understanding, and support exacerbates these mental health challenges, often leading to severe consequences, including higher rates of suicide and self-harm within the LGBTQIA+ community.

Addressing the mental health impact of intersecting queerphobia and misogyny necessitates creating safe spaces, providing adequate support systems, and fostering acceptance and inclusivity. Offering access to mental health resources specifically tailored to the unique challenges faced by individuals dealing with these intersecting prejudices is crucial in mitigating the adverse effects on their mental well-being.

Empathy, understanding, and dismantling societal prejudices are fundamental steps towards creating an environment where everyone, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, feels valued, respected, and supported in their journey towards mental wellness.

Challenging and Unlearning Biases:

Education and Awareness:

One of the primary steps in dismantling prejudices like queerphobia and misogyny is education. Creating awareness about the interconnectedness of these biases, their impacts, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities is crucial. This involves educating ourselves and others about diverse gender identities and sexual orientations, challenging stereotypes, and promoting empathy and understanding. This has to be a personal undertaking at an individual level for everyone, especially allies. The LGBTQIA+ community is tired, overworked and needs other adults to introspect, realize and push for changing the societal structures that have created discrimination, divide and destruction of diversity.

Advocacy and Support:

Active advocacy for the rights and inclusion of marginalized communities is essential. This involves supporting policies and initiatives that promote equality, diversity, and inclusivity. By amplifying the voices of LGBTQIA+ individuals and advocating for their rights, we contribute to creating a more just and accepting society.

Intersectional Approaches:

Recognizing and acknowledging intersectionality is key. Intersectionality highlights how various forms of oppression intersect and compound, affecting individuals differently based on their multiple identities. Understanding this intersectionality helps in developing more inclusive approaches that address the diverse needs and challenges faced by individuals experiencing multiple forms of discrimination.

Personal Reflection and Unlearning Biases:

Individually, it's essential to engage in introspection and challenge our own biases. This involves examining our beliefs, prejudices, and behaviors that may contribute to perpetuating queerphobia, misogyny, or any form of discrimination. Being open to unlearning societal norms and consciously avoiding language or actions that reinforce stereotypes is crucial in creating a more inclusive environment.

Creating Safe Spaces:

Establishing safe spaces—whether physical or digital—where individuals can express themselves freely without fear of discrimination is pivotal. These spaces foster a sense of belonging, support, and validation for individuals across diverse gender and sexual spectrums.

Empathy and Active Listening:

Practicing empathy and actively listening to the lived experiences of marginalized communities fosters understanding and compassion. It involves acknowledging the struggles faced by individuals due to societal prejudices and working towards creating a world where everyone feels accepted and valued.

By actively challenging and unlearning biases at both individual and societal levels, we contribute to the creation of a more equitable and inclusive society. It's a continuous journey of self-reflection, education, advocacy, and empathy—a journey that leads towards a world where everyone can live authentically and without fear of discrimination based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

In conclusion, the intertwining of queerphobia and misogyny reveals a complex web of discrimination deeply rooted in societal norms and power structures. Recognizing this connection is the first step towards fostering a society that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusivity.

As we navigate this journey, let's commit to challenging these prejudices, advocating for the rights of marginalized communities, and creating spaces where every individual—regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation—feels valued, respected, and safe. Together, let's strive for a world where authenticity is celebrated, where biases are unlearned, and where love and acceptance triumph over discrimination.

By dismantling queerphobia and misogyny, we pave the way for a future where everyone can live authentically, free from the constraints of societal expectations, and where differences are not just tolerated but embraced as essential threads in the rich fabric of humanity.

Let's continue to stand together, amplify marginalized voices, and work towards a more compassionate, understanding, and inclusive world for all.

Despite this setback, let's take a moment to celebrate Chandrayaan-3's remarkable achievements. Picture this: a flawless lunar touchdown followed by the rover's tireless exploration, and a series of groundbreaking in-situ scientific experiments. The mission has been a testament to ISRO's expertise and dedication, even in its young age.

In a remarkably short lifespan since its establishment on August 15, 1969, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has emerged as a powerhouse in space exploration, overcoming economic hurdles within the country to achieve remarkable milestones.

Compared to NASA, founded on July 29, 1958, ISRO began its journey more than a decade later. Yet, in this comparatively brief period, ISRO has etched its name in the annals of space exploration, displaying astounding resilience and innovation.

India's economic challenges have been no secret, yet against this backdrop, ISRO has soared to unparalleled heights. From launching India's first satellite, Aryabhata, in 1975 to scripting history with the Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan) in 2013, ISRO has continuously pushed the boundaries of space technology on a shoestring budget.

Chandrayaan-3 came knocking with a budget of ₹600 crores. Sounds hefty, right? Well, brace yourself because here's the zinger – some of India's blockbuster movies, like the epic Adipurush, flexed budgets soaring over ₹500 crores!

Yep, you heard it right. A mission to explore the lunar surface nudged in just above what some big-ticket Bollywood movies splurged on their grandiose spectacle. Adipurush, shot in mind-boggling 3D (if you're curious about how that's done, give me a shout!), flaunted a brand-new technology in India. It's a cinematic marvel backed by some stellar artists, not just on-screen but behind the scenes too.

While we're zooming to the Moon on a lunar rover, it's worth considering how far we've come in the graphics game. Remember those 'Jaani Dushman' and 'Naagin' days? Take a nostalgic peek at Adipurush, not just for the storyline (although that's a bonus!), but to witness the stratospheric leap in graphics, taking us lightyears ahead in the movie-making cosmos.

While the cosmic hotline awaits a response, like a Nag waiting to grow into a human, and the rover takes an extended siesta, the knowledge gleaned from the rover's in-situ chemical analyses, provides a precious glimpse into lunar secrets. This journey signifies not just a story of communication challenges but a remarkable odyssey in unraveling the mysteries of our celestial neighbor.

So, as we look forward, let's hold on to the spirit of discovery that Chandrayaan-3 has ignited. Its achievements pave the way for future cosmic quests, reminding us that despite temporary setbacks, the pursuit of knowledge among the stars never truly ends.

Queer and trans rights activists bring up this quote to remind everyone of the Stonewall Riots in 1969; where a bunch of trans women, gender non-conforming folk, and others under the LGBTQ umbrella rioted against the cops unjustly arresting and detaining them. The quote serves as a reminder to the contemporary LGBTQ community that we had to fight to be seen as human; and we came here by rioting and protesting, not by appeasing the establishment.

The quote is even more emphasized in the last decade, where a rise in queer visibility has led to the original sin of late-stage capitalism — converting another facet of human life into a machine to maximize profits. Every June, major companies change their social media profiles to feature the rainbow flag to celebrate pride month – only to take it down swiftly on the first day of July. The discourse around companies using rainbow pride vocabulary and imagery is nuanced, as large companies adopting these aspects of queerness in their works signify a cultural shift towards queer acceptance. However, the LGBTQ community realises that these companies are doing so only to cater to them as a market to extract value from, not out of genuine care and well-being of the community. Last year, Bud Light, a beer company, sent popular trans woman influencer Dylan Mulvaney a custom-made set of cans featuring her face on them. After this event triggered a tsunami of transphobic backlash against Dylan, Bud Light offered her almost no support and made her face a vitriolic transphobic campaign against her, which is still ongoing. Similarly, Target took down their Pride collection or put them in the back of their stores when right-wing consumers threatened a mass boycott and sent bomb threats.

The effects of rainbow capitalism are not limited to rainbow coloured inventory or merchandise with different pride flags pasted on them. In pride parades hosted all over the world, floats dedicated to different companies move alongside community members to signal their flimsy support. Left-leaning queer people find it ironic that a company like Lockheed Martin, famous for aiding the suffering of millions across the world through wars; signals via their float in parades about how they care about minorities.

Leftist queer people are also critical of the catering to police in pride spaces as well. It is worth remembering that the Stonewall riots started as pushback against police brutality, as mentioned in the beginning of this essay. Queer people, especially gender non-conforming queer people and queer people belonging to other minorities all over the world have been victims of police brutality, and members of the community still face physical, mental, and verbal abuse in the hands of police forces. It can be jarring, even traumatizing to see abusers of the community being celebrated and welcomed in our safe spaces.

Lately I started to feel that my city, Kolkata, had a relatively small queer community compared to other cities; with no dedicated queer third space for us. I also started to feel that my local pride was getting too sanitized, and the call to clap for cops before a parade left a sour taste in my mouth. Then I saw people from other cities complaining about their local pride parades as well, every person having their own grievances.

My queer friends who live in the US, Canada, and the UK; all were united in their disdain towards their local pride parades being overly catering towards corporate sponsors. Some of them stopped going to pride events since the COVID-19 pandemic, as they were immunocompromised and they felt the lack of mask mandates in mass gatherings like pride parades put them at risk. A friend from Canada told me how they felt the community was side-lined when their local parade was full of huge corporations all asking for their slices in the Rainbow capital pie.

I've also heard grievances aired online and in person about how some people insist on making pride “clean” by doing away with depictions of kink and explicit sexuality, and to make it more palatable to the average cishet individual. This in-community pushback comes from members, who possibly have internalised some bigotry themselves; who want to assimilate into the cisheteronormative society and paints themselves different from the members who have different gender expressions and ideals about navigating in the world. These individuals often tend to forget that homophobes, transphobes, and queerphobes will express hatred and harm queer and trans individuals whether they assimilate or not.

Even in India, people have faced issues with how their local prides adopted certain measures. I wasn't the only one in the crowd who was dismayed when we were encouraged by our local pride to cheer and clap for police officers. When organisers of Mumbai pride asked for no “political” posters and slogans — they faced unanimous backlash from the community. Many queer people reminded the organisers that pride is inherently a protest, and inherently political. It will be ignorant of members of the community to not talk about religion, caste, gender, disability, class — as all causes are intersectional and liberation for one means liberation for all. When some right and centre-leaning queer individuals expressed their distaste at the pro-Palestinian liberation slogans at Delhi pride parade, they were quickly shut down by the rest of the community.

As a younger queer and trans man whose interaction with the rest of the community was mostly limited to the online world, I had an idealized view of what the queer community in person would look like. But as I grew up and interacted further with the community, that idea has been shattered. I've seen pride catering to our oppressors, members of our own community oppressing others based on race and caste, and even queer individuals who cause harm to others. I've seen people talk about being in the forefront of pride parades who would go on to misgender and deadname all the trans people around them. I know individuals who have been disillusioned like me and barely interact with the community as a result.

Maybe it is inevitable that the community will have people who only care about their own safety over systemic queer and trans liberation. There were cis gay men who were wary of the Stonewall Riots and a small group of cis LGB folks now claim that the involvement of trans people in Stonewall is history being rewritten to erase cis LGB folk from history. There are trans spaces that emphasize on the ability to pass, and ask trans individuals to follow hyper strict guidelines so that they cannot be 'clocked'. There are people who welcome corporations at pride as they hope corporations will help us get legislation that protects the well-being of the community, and communicates to the outside world that being a bigot is not profitable and hence not 'okay'. Maybe there are better ways to make the community safer, more inclusive, and in touch with our histories and realities; while acknowledging the ideas different from us and taking steps accordingly. Sometimes it's okay to not have an answer, and figure out your own answer from introspection and observation.

In late-stage capitalism, every aspect of human life is monetized or is about to be monetized for maximum profit extraction for the benefit of the capitalist class. This stretches everywhere from the proliferation of the subscription model to pay in perpetuity, to the push for people adopting multiple modes of income to afford a liveable wage. It might seem that the social media we use are an exception, as all of them can be used without paying the company any money. (This ignores services like Twitter Blue and Youtube Premium. Although both Youtube and Twitter punishes the user for not buying a subscription by pushing ads; they can still be used and curated without Premiums.) In reality, the social media companies extract user data and try to maximize use time in order their profits from selling data and enticing advertisers.

Almost all social media algorithms emphasize use time/watch time for the growth of content creators on that platform. This is why Youtube and Instagram have adopted the Tiktok style of short-form content that adapt to the user's preferences and can be scrolled through endlessly. On top of that, a lot of social media companies have figured out that inflammatory or radical content helps in maximizing their retention rates. The push for more users and use time, in turn, for more profits; have made social media algorithms promote bigotry, disinformation, and hate.

Although there were (and still are) corners of the internet that house the downright genocidal and White/Hindu supremacists, the mainstream discussion of people being led further right by social media and Youtube started with the “alt-right pipeline” on Youtube circa 2016. Before that, Youtube saw a surge in anti-feminist content thanks to Gamergate, where a few women video game journalists faced intense vitriol for discussing the sexism and misogyny baked in the video game industry and community. This content primed a group of Youtube users, mostly men; to be receptive of racist and White supremacist lectures. It was shown that following the thread of Youtube's recommendations, one could go from a video bemoaning “the feminists ruining ghostbusters” to a video that calls for genocide of Black people and Muslims.

There have been detailed debates about whether the alt-right pipeline was a mere catalyst for people who already harboured bigoted ideals or a tool to radicalise the apolitical and the centrist towards the far right. But the far-reaching effects and the constant backlash made Youtube reconfigure their algorithm and ban prominent right-wing and neo-Nazi creators. But just because the creators and the major spaces were disrupted and destroyed, doesn't mean that the members of the community stopped being Nazis. They still spread their hatred on social media, often targeting different minority groups as they pleased. The concept of BJP's IT Cell, a group of BJP members/supporters who organise mass harassment campaigns online and hashtags to spread their fascist ideas is well-known by everyone who is somewhat online in India. These spaces of hate learned to better hide their tracks.

In 2021-2022, all major social media platforms including Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube shorts were being used by self-proclaimed alpha male Andrew Tate to spread his vitriolic misogyny and use that misogyny to recruit men and boys as downline for his pyramid scheme. The scheme involved mass reposting edits and snippets of his interviews across fan accounts made by his fans, and redirecting others to join the downline. This phenomenon, just like the earlier alt-right movement, led to a widespread uptick in men expressing their misogyny and this hate even reaching boys as young as 10. The success of Andrew Tate's violent misogyny model inspired multiple copycats, spreading and cementing his ideals further. Although most of Tate's social media accounts have been deleted for violating terms of services, he is still held in high regard by his fans, who now downplay or dismiss his history of human trafficking and sexual abuse of vulnerable women.

Around the same time, people started to notice that on Youtube shorts, Google's “competitor” of Tiktok, it was inevitable to land on right-wing content while scrolling through Shorts; even though the users have not engaged with any sort of right-wing content and have reported on seeing them. This observation, however, has only stayed on an anecdotal level.

Last year, Elon Musk promised free speech when he took over Twitter. As his pro-“free speech” promise he reinstated the accounts of Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, and others who had their accounts removed for egregious violations of Twitter ToS. This, along with Musk's own right-wing ideals that he expressed on his own account, made Twitter a viable space for the far right to congregate. These accounts could then push their tweets on top of others' tweets by subscribing to Twitter Blue. This blatant display of bigotry made a lot of Twitter users, who were mostly racial, religious, caste, and gender minorities, leave the app; while others had to curate their timelines to prevent platforming hate. Despite pushback and criticism from a huge fraction of the user base, Musk continues to change Twitter to fit his ideal of a right-wing social media utopia, with accounts whose usernames call for sexual assault of racial minorities being able to buy premium subscriptions and “documentaries” promoting transphobic ideals being shown as mandatory ads to all users.

In the new wave of uptick of bigotry, it's mostly Twitter and Youtube Shorts that draw the ire of people criticising them for platforming and pushing such content. But there is another major platform that is allowing hate to fester in its own way. Instagram reels, Facebook/Meta's Tiktok alternative, has been noted by some users to have a notoriously gross comments section under the videos. People throw the N word around with zero regard and as a silly joke, some even mashing them with other slurs to fit the person whose video they are commenting under. It's expected to see a “you okay lil-” under the comments of every child doing something “cool”. Minority creators almost always get comments that attack them or invalidate their experiences, be it trans people existing or non-White people showing their cultures to others. Sometimes sparse but persistent hate comments can snowball into hate campaigns. A few days ago, on November 21st, Pranshu, a queer 16-year-old took their own life after being subjected to homophobic bullying because they wore a saree.

I looked up Pranshu's news on Twitter to better write this article, and under a tweet declaring the news of their death, there were Twitter Blue users expressing thoughts ranging from “we do not care” to flagrant queerphobia. These comments shadowed comments from other users expressing grief and rage over the death of the queer teen. A similar fate befell to Brianna Ghey, a trans girl who was also 16, was murdered in a transphobic hate crime. Users mocked her name and deadnamed her, disrespecting her in death. Twitter is also now the epicenter of the Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian “Pallywood” conspiracy theory, which claims all the videos showing the plight of Palestinians are faked by a group of crisis actors. Supported by the Hindu Right in India, this conspiracy theory is also spread by Israel's Twitter account.

One can decide to stop using social media altogether, but unless a mess deletion campaign is agreed upon; the decision will just be a personal solution and not a systemic one. Social media like Twitter are still used to mobilise and spread news about activism and the world at large, and Palestinian reporters and civilians are using Twitter and Instagram to show their life under ethnic cleansing to the world. Perhaps the best “solution” is heavily curating one's social media experiences and hoping for systemic changes; for as long as the socmed companies prioritise profits over user experience and are run by billionaires with their own agenda, surges in hate speech will be a regular affair.

Disclaimer Welcome to intuitive cooking. These recipes are to unleash the chaos in you. No measurements, just vibes

I learnt to make daal at 24. I was instructed by a friend over a video call because I didn't want to Google it. They taught me how to make it in the style their mom made it – the Bihari style. Then my mother told me how we don't do all that in the Bengali style. So I learnt two very different processes of having daal. I'll list both down below.

What I find interesting is that both cultures developed side by side and yet we have so many differences. Industrialisation of the country has only made the gap bigger instead of bridging it. It saddens me so much. Especially when from all over the world we're getting reports of governments assassinating their own citizens, I think it's really important as a nation that we embrace the strength in our diversity. Our cultures, histories, languages, differences and similarities are what make us unique and interesting. This is why colonisers have chosen us over and over and over. Yet, Indians have always managed to assimilate our oppressors into our society, gently redirecting them from pillaging to seeing us as equal traders. We need to remember the sheer power Indians hold in the world. Our greatest exports – intellect, spices, rice, human labour – are what the world functions on. I truly believe the day we reconcile our inter-cultural differences, we will be unstoppable.

Anyway, getting back to daal. My go to is the Bengali version as you'll see it's easier and quicker. The Bihari version is for days when you need comfort in food but also therapy in the preparation. I'm usually lazy and believe in one pot fast cooks but some recipes are so close to my heart, I can't help but share. I know a lot of you also hate chopping and extra prep time but if you have the opportunity and energy, do try the Bihari version of the recipe. You won't regret putting the 15 mins of extra effort.

Ingredients – Bengali version

• Paanch foron
• Mustard oil
• Turmeric
• Salt
• Moosur daal
• Water
• Pressure cooker

Instructions

• Wash the daal
• In some heated oil in the pressure cooker, put the paanch foron in and let it sputter for a few seconds
• Drop in the daal
• Add salt and turmeric powder and let the water dry off. Stir occasionally
• Add water, at least double the amount of daal (this one is a little more flowy. On setting aside for a while, the chonky parts of the daal settles at the bottom, creating my favourite warm drink in the world – daaler jol which literally translates to pulses' water)
• Close the lid of the pressure cooker
• Wait for 3-4 whistles
• Let the pressure release on its own
• Serve over hot rice and with some onion, tomato, cucumber salad dressed with lemon juice and salt

Ingredients – Bihari version

• Tej patta
• Dried red chilli (my preference is Kashmiri, it adds a layer of smokiness to the daal that's just irreplaceable)
• Onion
• Garlic
• Tomato
• Green chilli
• Mustard oil
• Turmeric
• Chilli powder
• Salt
• Moosur daal
• Water
• Coriander
• Pressure cooker

Instructions

• Wash the daal
• Add salt and water to the daal and let it pressure cook
• Wait for 2-3 whistles
• Chop onions, garlic and green chilli
• In a pan, heat mustard oil
• Add tej patta and dried red chilli
• When they start to sputter, add garlic
• As the raw garlic smell disappears, add onions and a little more salt
• When the onion turns translucent, add chillies and tomatoes
• Cook till all the vegetables look wilted
• Add turmeric powder, and red chilli powder
• Fry till you can't smell the raw masala anymore
• Open the lid to your pressure cooker once the pressure is released
• Vigorously break down the daal pieces with a daal masher
• Add the scorching, sputtering chokh/tadka/temper to the daal and stir it in
• Garnish with some freshly chopped coriander
• Serve over hot rice and with some rice+sabudana papad

What about millions of our own country people? People whose lives look like ours? Children who take auto rickshaws to school? Adults who haggle over the price of tomatoes and curse their fate when they step in a pothole? What about those who share your name but will be forgotten because we care more about morals and justifications of genocide instead of people who save their last bite for their children??

Fuck Palestine? Fuck you.

অবশেষে, টুনি বাতি নিভে যায়, - মিসাইলের আঘাতে মৃতদেহ পড়ে থাকে নিস্পৃহ দেবতার পায়। মা হারা শিশু কাঁদে আকাশের পানে চেয়ে শত শত তারারা বোমা হয়ে পড়ে থাকে মায়াভরা গোছা গোছা গোলাপের পাশে। ম্লান হয়ে আসে গান যুদ্ধের দামামায়, শুধু একরোখা মহাকাশ চেয়ে থাকে; অনাহুত পরবাসী নিজেদের ঘরে। রক্তের উৎসব হানা দেয় মন্দিরে, দালানে। শত কোটি জোড়া চোখ চেয়ে চেয়ে মরে যায় স্বপ্নের আশায় এক গোছা ধ্বংসস্তূপের আড়ালে। মানুষের হাহাকার বারে বারে ফিরে আসে পাহাড়ের গায়ে প্রতিধ্বনিত হয়ে। দিন যায়, রাত যায়, রাজাদের টেবিলে প্রজাদের মেদ আসে সুস্বাদু রসে। যুদ্ধবিমান উপনিবেশ করে মেঘেদের সীমানায়। তবু পৃথিবী ঘুরতে থাকে, আর হিমবাহ বেয়ে চুয়ে পড়ে চোখের জল। মানুষের হাহাকার পৌঁছায়নি ব্রহ্মাণ্ডের গভীরে, শুধু একগোছা লাশ পড়ে থাকে সুদূর গ্রহের কোনায়। কে বা চেনে, যে বা জানে, কে বাঁচে, কে বা মরে, অবিচলিত এক আকাশের নিচে।

Mother, if you look in the mirror under the dim yellow lights at 2 am, Do you ever feel like you're a slightly distorted, less violent version of your own mother? That you're made of the same broken shards of her tears, only in a different light? Or that the blood you pump is tainted in that same weary fluid in her womb when you resided in her, in search of a home that she didn't have too? Your words, your gaze, your voice reverberates her angry stance, Polished and garnished into an ugly blade of decades of oppressed pain, Mother, your hands do not wash the blood she painted you with. Mother, my hands tremble for I see that blood trickling into my veins too, Slowly, and steadily, slithering like a python in its firm calm embrace. The pain shivers me head to toe, flowing like an eternal river since the beginning of time, From mother to daughter, from daughter to mother, In a gyrating loop of a repeated motiff, And we're both stuck here, mother. Mother, when I stand in front of the mirror, I see my reflection tainted in yours, Your reflections tainted in your mother, Outlined and filled in a repeated motiff of hurt and pain and regrets, And an unbridled rage lodged in a brittle shell of love. Mother, are we russian nesting dolls of pain, with our mothers inside our form? I crash on the floor and you come out of my broken shell only to open your dusty lid and show me your mother inside. Hey mother, did your mother's love burn you like stepping into lava too? For, I see you mouthing my words unconsciously, unknowingly, unintentionally, As I do yours, when you cry at night spilling out all the lost happiness you could've not lost if your mother knew better, That I could've not lost if my mother knew better than what she knew to be better. And I cry out asking why did you not know better but this hollow sky answers only with rain, Mother, how could you have known better?

Mother, I hold your hand and my body shrieks coldness and hotness simultaneously, My brain overwhelms itself in understanding the contrasting extremes, As I look at your fiery eyes and find a hurt child only. Mother, we compare lives as if we're commodities in competition in a market, When we're just like each other yet so different and far apart yet so close, My head spins to make sense. Mother, I was born before my birth, in your scars, the moment you did. Mother, I do not know what can satiate this pain, But mother, I need you to see me, see me, see me. For I cannot.

I contained myself when I was 9 in a burqa, so I could hide the stench of blood clots my dad decorated on my back. I learnt to shrink in a space only in heaven they heard me sing

I have lost too much of myself to keep people in my life. Can you see, I'm nothing but a backbone now? How dare you tell me to bend?

Thank me for not setting the whole world on fire for what it did to me.

When I asked for help, all I got was hurt as if I was snow white on a poisoned apple I had to became the witch.

My Nani told me, every woman is a lamb after dark and every man out there is hungry Do you see? I am still here after he took chunks off me when he put his long nails on my neck.

There's still so much of me left.

Do you see the statue they made of me in the clouds? Do you hear the collective consciousness whisper ideas to me? Do you feel the mark mercy left on my forehead? Do you smell the stench of a thousand suns on my skin? Do you taste the burn when you savour me and tell me to go back to the ice as if I was a corpse And he was alive?

I can't live where I want to in my budget but a family can? The bias that house owners have is just pathetic. I live in a house currently which is quite an inconvenience to me. I tolerate it because of my freedoms. But I realize now, my freedoms have been illusionary. They're dependent on such basic things.

I tolerate it when the voltage issue makes my house look like a dimly lit Pecos or for some a haunted house. I tolerate bad plumbing. I am constantly reparing things around the house. Rich people keep disrupting my routine. Nobody helps clean but everybody helps destroy this house's floors, switches, my mugs, and walls. Some rich vegan girl who hates adult lady terms broke the toilet seat and has not paid for it. She drank a lot of almond milk in my house for free.

I asked a bunch of painters to come paint my house and they'd rather paint for Instagram than the friend who gave them gigs that made them famous.

I'll do it myself.

I want carpets but it's ground floor and there's too much dust plus my friends seem to never respect the fact that wet shoes are not welcome inside. I want creepers but there's no direct sunlight. Artificial light is at the mercy of poor connection in this house. A few basic things in this house are so dysfunctional. I don't even have a locker to keep anything locked.

I want to cook but there's no air in the damn kitchen. They've closed the chimney. No exhaust fan. Everything sticks because of it. Dust on top of that.

Dry sinks, welcome cockroaches. Keeping the drains clean is also an issue?

There are no shelves with doors. There's no logical arrangement to keep anything in the kitchen.

The hall has out of place really fucked up shelf that keeps hitting me. The mattress on the floor restricts me from brooming because it is too damn heavy.

I hate changing the lights in this house again and again. White light looks bad. Yellow light looks bad. What lights should I put in this damn house?

The shower has an issue with pressure despite me having a seperate tank. I mean for fucks sake I can't even dance in the shower without hitting my elbows against something.

You live on the mercy of when water comes. Tank gets filled.

And it is bloody unpredictable.

My boyfriend says it's alternative days but it's been proven wrong too.

Plus storing is an issue. There's no place for a drum.

I can't keep the washing machine in the toilet. It's a second hand machine that is automatic and cost me only 5k. Have to keep this beloved piece of legend outside the house. People on the street can see in my house easily if I just keep the door open.

There's always water leaking somewhere in this house no matter much you tighten the valves.

I don't have a quiet corner for writing except at nights – 2:30am.

I feel like I'm suffocating in my house.

I have no curfew. I have no restrictions yet it feels like a prison of micro aggressions.

I adjust but I'm so tired. I want basic shit at least. Sunlight but no fucking noise and dust.

All the basic shit is with landlords who charge too much or only rent to families.

PGs have restrictions.

I need a room of my own. The kind that Virginia Woolf described.

Disclaimer Welcome to intuitive cooking. These recipes are to unleash the chaos in you. No measurements, just vibes

This ones for all the health conscious queers who've bullied me into caring for myself. Thank you. Without you, I'd forever be in heartburn hell surrounded by eno

Ingredients

• Crunchy fruits
• Soft juicy fruits
• Berries which aren't fruits but consumed as such
• No tomato even though it is a fruit
• Salt
• Honey
• Citrus fruit juice/vinegar
• A fruity foodie to consume said fruits

Instructions

• Chop up your fruits in bite size pieces. I used apples, guava, kiwi, bananas (peeled), and pineapples.
• Top with some freshly squeezed orange/lime juice. You can also use mosambi juice. Sprinkle some salt and a generous helping of honey.
• Mix and consume fresh.

Alternative

• You can mix some pasta amd cheese with this to make a spring/summer pasta salad.
• You can use this as toppings in pancakes.
• You can use this in custard.
• You can make boba balls with these.

Let me know if you'd like quick recipes for boba balls

The public perception of fandoms is gendered based on who make up the majority of these spaces. Fandoms of different sports teams and players, be it cricket, football, or baseball — are primarily comprised of men and interests in these topics are seen as a lifelong endeavour. No one assumes that a kid will outgrow their interest in Manchester United. But fandoms for some musical artists, media, and actors, which are majority women — are assumed to be infantile or adolescent interests one will abandon in their adulthood. These fandoms are also often labelled as “group of rabid teen girls” by outsiders, mostly men, who sometimes also engage in fandoms and interests deemed 'manly'. But this binary of gendered interests leaves everyone who don't adhere to their gendered expectation of fixations, and anyone who does not belong in the gender binary. It should be noted that women are lauded by the patriarchal society when they have “masculine” interests, and men are derided for taking interest in the “feminine” fandoms.

When I first got into BTS during a tumultuous period of my life, I tried to stay away from the ARMY (the name for BTS fans) label. ARMYs, just like any “feminine” fandoms, were seen as a horde of teen girls by the outside world; and I, who was then trying to remove any speck of femininity from me as an attempt to quell my gender dysphoria, distanced myself to not be seen as a girl. During that time, it was helpful to see trans people like me proudly talk about their interest in BTS's music and the members. They helped me dispel the gendered stigma around the fandom I had ended up internalising. I have found my place in the BTS fan community among all these amazing trans people, who have a subcommunity in their own.

To better understand the transgender ARMY community and to compare everyone else's experience with mine, I asked members to tell me about the things BTS said in the music and done that resonated with and comforted them as well as their experience in the subcommunity compared to the general ARMY community. A majority of the respondents identified as nonbinary or transmasculine and everyone were under the age of 30. A lot of the answers I received resonated with me and it was interesting to see unique views of everyone with respect to BTS' discography and their words outside of music.

A theme among the responses when asked about BTS' music was an appreciation for the members not using gendered language in their songs, a small but nice step towards inclusivity. RM, the leader of BTS, acknowledged that “The lyrics were based on rare and special things in life. So, I thought, those feelings transcend genders, cultures and barriers between people.” while talking about the song Serendipity from the Love Yourself: Her album.

Another top response was their Wings album, which talks about the emotional journeys of the members (and their eponymous fictional selves in the HYYH universe) through a universal and mature lens. The themes discuss in the album have a lot of possible queer interpretation, making it a favourite among the queer and transgender fans. V's solo song, Stigma, a musical story of a secret and the guilt born from it, reminds a lot of queer and trans readers about being forced to stay in the closet and hide their reality from the world. This reading is enforced by the line “Are you calling me a sinner?”, alluding to how non-cisheteronormativity is branded a sin by major religions in the world. Jimin's solo song Lie was also featured in a lot of responses. A respondent answered,

Lie has really made me feel seen, as someone who has performed femininity for a long time. The story Jimin tells in that song felt very relatable to my experience with religious guilt due to my identity as well as well as how vicious lying about something that may seem so dark when you know the backlash you could receive when you tell the truth, can make you feel. The song itself, the emotions it transmits, really feel like the immense anguish of being trans in a non-accepting society.

Almost all of the transgender men who responded to my questionnaire added V's solo song Inner Child from BTS' 2020 album Map of the Soul: 7 as a song that spoke to them. The reason becomes obvious when looks the lyrics. In the song, V speaks to his younger self with comfort and compassion in his voice. He acknowledges the trials and tribulations his younger self passed through that grew into the person he is today. The song crescendos to V calling his younger self “my boy” and assuring him of the bright future that lies ahead. One respondent added,

I think inner child. Specifically the line about how hard it must’ve been for his/our younger selves plus the whole “you’re my boy” line. I think my soul left my body for a bit when I heard this song for the first time. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever heard those words in a way that felt like they were being spoken to me.

Other than the songs mentioned above, people discussed other songs like Reflection, Filter, Persona, Epiphany, Answer: Love Myself. In Reflection, RM is introspective and lonely as he finds himself on a walk by the Han River. He talks about loneliness, self-loathing, and wishes to be able to love himself. In another solo track of his, Persona, RM ponders the differences between his real self and his public personas and wonders out loud, “Who the hell am I?”. The tone of self-love and appreciation of the self is continued in Jin's solo track Epiphany, where the epiphany in question is Jin declaring “I’m the one I should love in this world”; finding the beauty in his imperfect self. Answer: Love Myself is a song dedicated to ARMYs, and talks about how the members are learning to love themselves after receiving their fans' support. Finally, in Filter, Jimin talks about changing himself to woo the person he set his eyes on. In the performance of the song, Jimin plays with gender expression and freely expresses his playful and genderful self. Unlike previous songs where it's the lyrics and themes that leave a lasting impact on their trans and queer audiences; Filter is iconic to these audiences through the flirty performance which also plays with gendered expressions and expectations.

In the questionnaire, people have also detailed the words and actions of BTS that made them feel safe and euphoric. Many people mentioned the 2018 speech at the United Nations by RM, where he said “No matter who you are, where you're from, your skin colour, your gender identity, just speak yourself.” Transgender ARMYs pointed out his conscious use of the term gender identity instead of gender and acknowledged how this simple action was a meaningful one. It was also mentioned how their fashion sense and style often lies outside of the western masculine gender norms; and how they incorporate dresses, skirts, and other “feminine” clothes and accessories in their outfits. Among the transmasculine respondents, most of them agreed on how BTS were a good role model for masculinity in them, encouraging affectionate platonic bonds among men and emotional vulnerability and honesty. These unintentional actions from BTS' end helped the transmasculine fans by giving them an example of positive masculinity.

Some respondents mentioned an anecdote where BTS members were supportive and affirmative to a trans man during a fansign even though they weren't “passing”. The members are also appreciative of queer culture and art; from collaborating with queer musical artists to showcasing and owning queer art pieces. During the development of BT21, a group of animated characters designed by the members themselves in collaboration with LINE FRIENDS; the members, led by SUGA, insisted the characters weren't assigned a binary gender.

Finally, I asked the respondents how the trans ARMY subcommunity is different from the general ARMY spaces. The respondents unanimously agreed that the subcommunity, which mostly exists on Twitter; bonds over both everyone's unique perspective of BTS' artistry and their non-cisgender gender identities. Some respondents mentioned that some ARMYs are transphobic and queerphobic, which has soured their experience in general ARMY spaces. There were people who came to unconditionally accept their gender identity after joining the subcommunity, and express themselves freely. Some of the responses that reflected these sentiments are:

I think it can really depend. Overall, ARMY is very accepting but there are people who aren’t as accepting. Luckily, I haven’t come across many people in ARMY that are like that. Trans ARMY spaces are accepting, from what I have seen, and LGBTQ ones in general. I think in the subcommunities are different in the way we understand each other. Trans people can understand other trans people when it comes to experiences or finding comfort in BTS when it comes to gender and I think thats very beautiful.

The trans ARMY community is different in the way that we understand each other (for the most part) on how we feel towards bts and what they mean to us as transgender people. We can share our opinions and feelings without feeling like we will get hate or people who don't understand what we feel or think. Cisgender people cannot understand the things we do since they do not experience it. I will admit I try to stay in my little ARMY circles bc a lot of the community just isn't the same. I don't usually feel safe/welcome talking to random ARMYs because I know they do not think and feel the way I do. I much rather prefer talking to people that understand me and not have to worry about transphobia.

This can be said for the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, but I feel like trans ARMY look out for each other more. The trans community in the fandom seems to be more tight-knit. As far as feeling welcomed in general ARMY spaces, not so much. I feel more welcomed into BIPOC LGBTQ+ spaces.

I started the questionnaire and wrote this article as I wanted to tell queer and trans people who aren't ARMYs the impact BTS left on us as trans people and how they helped in accepting ourselves. A lot of people are wary of parasocial relationships and how unhealthy and unrealistic it can be, but there's almost no discussion about the positives of fan groups and communities, especially when they intersect with minority identities. There are some individual queer ARMY anecdotes and how BTS influenced their relationship with queerness, but almost none that considers the experiences of multiple individuals. This article was an attempt to document the experiences and the thoughts of transgender and nonbinary BTS fans like me, and using it as a vehicle to write about my own experiences.

The Narratives Built

In the 2019 movie, “Velaikkaran,” the hero goes to work at an FMCG company. In a rousing speech on the first day, the manager (an inimitable villain played by Fahadh Fassil) asks everyone to scream, “We’re the best!” The narrative of being good is baked into every workplace’s philosophy. But it’s a philosophy meant to raise support, not one meant to build a better world. In the movie, the villain usurps power through complicated maneuvers. The hero still wins by creating a protest that lives on in the daily work ethic of the workers. But, we want to focus on the narrative first. How often have you heard of an open, inclusive, and welcoming workplace? How many times do start-ups offer unlimited PTOs? How many times do enterprises flaunt their LGBTQ-forward credentials? The unified narrative around a “good” workplace is created to foster a sense of safety. But a safe workplace doesn’t exist in principle. This is because work is not optional and is necessary for survival. In the same way, anything that is mandatory can never be safe. It has already violated every sense of consent. Sure, there are moments of respite, but that exists everywhere. Think of the times in schools where we’re taken on trips. Or the tiny spaces within the prison where the community plays together. Exceptions, in this case, prove the law. Crafting these exceptions (team fun days, casual Fridays, etc.) is to create a sense of community and safety where there isn’t any. In “Velaikkaran,” the hero realizes his workplace creates toxic chemicals. It’s poisoning the community it serves. On the other hand, he realizes that he’s in between these circumstances, being faced with defective products and costs rising on all fronts. While not as explicitly, how many of us can say that what we do isn’t harming someone down the chain?

Why does work suck?

We often see work as a unique relationship. This starts with the family. We have started viewing work as a family outside the family. So, the low pay and the underappreciated work hours all make sense in the large picture of the family. We’d sacrifice for our community, for our family. But, we’re not working in the family or having fun. Reframing work as a fun part of life is a difficult thing to do. It’s mechanical, most people work in an assembly line where they contribute one small portion repeatedly. And without the spirit of collaboration or the spirit of coming together. The spirit of work today demands that you have fun, that you create a family around your co-workers, and live your life with them. Your social apps become an extension of the workplace and suddenly you’re in a company town.

Against Work

One of Graeber’s central arguments focused on “play.” He observed that animals played with one another, even in nature, without goals or scores. Think of puppies engaging in small fighting competitions only to make up and lay with each other later. Think also of how cats often engage in small, silly explorations into the places they know very well. We did this as children, too, playing randomly, without scores, and without a uniform goal. In a way, you don’t want to go beyond that. You don’t want to build hierarchies and scorebooks and tire yourself out. The life against work needn’t be perfect, Community-led playing is a great way to move beyond work. Today, many systems can work without us putting in work at all. Focusing on creating an experience where you can have fun and do something collaborative is great. This can be anything from painting to writing to discussing knowledge. The point is to have fun while creating or destroying something (“Destruction is inherently a creative urge after all.) You won’t be alone in history to find these collaborations more efficient than normal work. For example – The Spanish Civil War brought together Anti-Fascists from all corners of the world and succeeded in thwarting the advance for a time before an overwhelming force.

Your Future and Mine

Many a communist rejoiced with the emergence of AI. The perspective was simple: if AI can automate our work, we can spend our lives doing something fruitful instead. However, this is a short-sighted view of the world. AI, Bitcoin, and other tech revolutions that promise an apparently free-er future are also gated by tech. Plus, the tech itself depends on a lot of energy and electricity. Both factors can complicate our future of the planet. I don’t advocate for AI because most of my comrades can’t afford or access with, and unless we remove the gating, we can’t dream of this future. And even with equal access, we might not want the future it’ll build. Being without work requires community. It might not be available to you right now, but you’ll have to build layers of mutual aid to survive without work. And these can’t only be urban or rural either. Your connections must transcend borders and limitations and grow like a rhizome to defeat work. But, you can, because I want you to. And you will, because you have will.

This is not really a review, it is more of a prediction. first of all, i am glad gojo is dead. like yeah, gojo already said once a ten shadows user and a limitless user fought and they both killed each other. this time it was ten shadows user megumi plus king of curses sukuna. gojo stood no chance. also, i was bored of the prolonged fight. it went on for months. jujutsu kaisen was more fun when gojo was sealed to be honest. plus gojo stood no chance. sukuna has much more experience fighting, and megumi has mentioned that mahoraga is one shot only. the shikigami user would die because mahoraga wont ho back. and we know that mahoraga needs to be destroyed in one shot, by exposing it directly to the cursed technique once as sukuna did. gojo didn’t know that. not only he exposed his own technique to mahoraga multiple times, at the end destroying mahoraga with hollow purple meant he literally gave sukuna a second chance, just like how sukuna gave megumi a second chance to take over his body later. and also, if someone like gojo, with six eyes, who can see anything, can’t see this attack coming, it is pretty dumb to expect the reader would see it coming. just my two cents.

however i see how the fans are clamouring about the death. that is why i’m writing this. this will be my prediction. i am too elite to write it in a reddit thread. but i will definitely post link to this article if my prediction comes out right.

i think people don’t realise that, in the jujutsu world, the most powerful beings are not jujutsu sorcerers. it is the people who has no jujutsu at all. people like toji, or maki. toji almost killed gojo, and he would have succeeded, if he knew gojo can work reverse cursed technique. maki literally wiped out the whole clan of hers full with jujutsu sorcerers. they literally are monsters.

they can’t also be controlled after death. Kanjaku will never possess gojo because his brain is not equipped to handle the information six eyes receives. but no one has tried to control a limitless user before so nobody knows whether it is possible or not, but the bodies of jujutsu sorcerers can be controlled after they die. the only exception are people without jujutsu. toji couldn’t be controlled.

but why am i saying all this? because yuji, the youngest son of kenjaku, is divine intervention personified. yuji is a product of experimentation. Kaori had the power of gravity, that did not pass down to yuji. he was born without any jujutsu. yuji already had superhuman strength, speed, and durability. megumi pointed this out in the first chapter itself about how yuji is like maki. but neither maki nor toji ever displays strength anywhere close to what yuji showed before ingesting the finger. he broke world records in shot putt. toji was the fastest, but he became fast after rigorous training. yuji didn’t need that.

gojo also mentioned that eventually sukuna’s cursed technique would be etched on yuji’s body. which means beside being the strongest human without jujutsu, yuji would also be channelling the cursed technique of sukuna.

here is the thing, sukuna can heal bodies like any other curses. unlike humans. and in his supreme power he had four hands. two for channelling cursed energy into techniques, and two for fighting. sukuna never yet had four hands here. sukuna also had a lot more experience fighting others than gojo.

however, no one like yuji has been there in the jujutsu community. he is a literal product of experimentation, when kanjaku took over itadori kaori’s body. yuji hasn’t yet realised that himself. here is where jjk start looking like fullmetal alchemist to some extents. however, gege tries really hard to break shounen stereotypes, so i am hopeful something or the other is going to happen. we also need to take stock of what yuji wants to live by. he wants to die surrounded by his loved ones, unlike his grandfather. but here is the thing, everyone dies alone anyway, death is lonely. you can be lonely surrounded by others and be misunderstood. what yuji wanted was to be around people who understood him. The first to go was Nanami. he is dead. the second to go was Nobara, as she is beyond getting healed. it was probably her who could actually deal damage to sukuna or kenjaku significantly in her prime. her technique is that much powerful. the strawdoll technique is overpowered in my humble opinion and others don’t even see it coming. next to go was matsumoto, and then megumi. megumi needs to die to get rid of sukuna. because yuji can’t be taken control of just like toji, but megumi is not like yuji. so megumi is gone as far as i’m concerned. and yuji just saw magumi kill gojo mercilessly. people who understood yuji are all gone. all of them. thus, yuji is alone anyway. yuji need to understand that.

but then again yuji is young. he will meet people who will understand him better than all of these people. yuji needs to give himself the chance of living a fulfilling life. once yuji understands that and realises he is like toji or maki, but better, he is going to be unstoppable. that is all.

personally i would love to see yuji’s domain expansion, and i think either yuji or megumi is gonna grow two more hands. i’d rather it is yuji. that would make more sense to me as those extra two hands would be specifically to channel sukuna’s cursed technique that has already been etched.

let’s see what happens. i am extremely excited to see what happens in chapter 237 and i personally hope the manga ends by chapter 300.

even then i remember not getting satisfied with the story, however, haven’t seen a bengali movie with such interesting dialogues before. it was a semi musical, where characters spoke in couplet. and yes, the crude sexual puns were funny to me as a teenager.

However, now that i’m edging 30, a raging tranny, and have much more idea about caste identities, and feminism, i wanted to revisit the film to see whether the film has any value or not. part of it was also there to see a funny movie, that is widely praised as good bengali new generation film.

sadly, i was deeply disappointed. things that i missed as a teen was here in such a capacity, i couldn’t ignore them anymore. satisfaction can go fuck itself, i was deeply uncomfortable almost the whole movie. the film tries to be a parody, but all it does is point out the deep rooted misogyny, casteism, and hollowness of urban bengali upper caste intellectuals.

lets start with parambrata. it is evident after hearing first couple of his dialogues that he is pretentious. he has no idea about making films, but gives large talks just like a ju filmbro bodda who asks teenagers in his empty flat to discuss godard. he is making a film of which he doesn’t have the ending to. that simply points out to him being an unoriginal writer copying from some other film, who needs to change the ending to not directly plagiarise the film. any writer worth their salt comes up with the conclusion much faster than the literary devices they have to set up to reach there. it’s only copied work that struggles with ending, because reimagining ending to something you know takes a lot of experience. this is even more evident when sabyasachi offers him a story and he just agrees to it without even bothering to ask his name. i mean he wasn’t gonna credit him anyway, so why bother asking for the name? he also mentioned he wants to have a masala film. there are filmmakers who earns money to make films, and then there are filmmakers who make films to earn money. calling the latter’s work film is a reach, it is basically a product devoid of anything artistic. we can start to see which category parambrata falls in and by proxy the director himself. Parambrata quotes Tarantino, but tarantino worked oddjobs for years to collect money to make his first film, and specifically didn’t give handjobs to corporate. parambrata or by proxy the director comparing himself to tarantino is just delusion of grandeur.

let’s talk about sabyasachi. the unreliable narrator present to package the story in a sellable manner. who was apparently killed by police during naxalite movement. i mean kolkata police did kill a lot of lower caste immigrant students in kolkata for sport, and some of those police officers are now famous writers. biplab is literally an heir of a zamidar family whose ancestors built their estate by stealing from others, and he never even tries to redistribute that, never even acknowledges that. he calls himself a communist or a naxal and tries zero reparations. charu mazumdar was never killed, he was let go by the authorities, and he is called the father of naxalism. i hope you all see the casteism of bengali kayasthas and how they appropriate and take all the credits of ideas that people from the grassroots come up with. all other people associated with charu and the naxalbari movement was brutally assassinated. charu was only kept alive and let go because of his surname, he was the elite, CPI could only claim power by using his name as the ideator for the vote bank, jangal santhal or shanti munda would not have gotten the votes. nobody even knows the names of nine tiller women who died in naxalbari. whose deaths were weaponised and politicised by charu who didn’t even live there. hence sabyasachi dying in a police encounter cannot be true. charu himself died in police custody, not shot. it is simply claimed oppression, rewriting the narrative to fit the revolutionary fetishisation of the bengali upper caste. moreover, he goes to forests to teach maoists how to make bombs, but gives the blood money to parambrata to make the movie after meeting him for the first time? without even trying to get to know him better or his politics?that is just caste nepotism. if he gave that money to maoists, it would have serve the society much better, but he won’t do that. because he is not a revolutionary. he only cares about the class and caste. communist my ass. he is a liberal, who is left leaning in talk, but actually a conservative when it comes to money.

now let’s talk about the women of the movie. they are peak example of “r/menwritingwomen”. there are only two women in the main ghost cast. one is a kept woman of the family from a bygone era, and the other one is someone who committed suicide from modern times. they did not allow the middle aged man who committed suicide, but the old man melted seeing this young kid and remarked how she reminds him of his granddaughter. that is just fucked up. even from the dialogues she loses the individuality.

here, both the women are always accompanied by men, and the only time they are alone for a single scene, they talk about men. yeah, the movie doesn’t even make an effort to pass the bechdel test. a famous topic among the film bros of kolkata who use it to shit on bengali tv serials. there are two more women, one of them is enamoured by parambrata, something self aggrandising men think about women who work around them, and the other is a marwari housewife who does an item song. there is no reason or justification as to why this happened except a one sentence explanation by the narrator later. this is known as insulting the audience, and in fan culture it is called an asspull. as the defining moment is done off screen, it is firstly bad writing, and secondly it considers that the audience is not smart enough to realise that. also, why would a housewife do an item song just for revenge and let him go after? what kind of story is it? you are literally setting up what teenagers call a KLPD? ending doesn’t even make sense

i cant even write much about the women because there is nothing interesting happening with them or by them anyway. they are always dependent on the men around them. it’s one of the most misogynistic movies i have seen. some of the dialogues literally refer to swastika’s vagina to illicit laughter. was the script written by virgin incel teenagers or what? the women has only one purpose in this film, either act like a bimbo to illicit laughter or sexualise their own bodies for the gratification of men. there doesn’t happen anything else with them, there is no character growth for any of them. not that other characters have any, but they still get some kind of roll to play. in the climactic scene, both these main ghost characters are missing anyway.

all the other characters except parambrata and sabyasachi are shown as stereotypical examples of their community. their services satisfy the patriarch, and that is why they get to stay in the house. much of the comedy of the film stem from this stereotype, which basically is punching down. it is akin to gay men who think it is their solemn duty to shit on women because they don’t fuck one. however, the lack of self awareness of the director makes both parambrata and sabyasachi the stereotypical bengali intellectuals whose politics is only at a surface level, mired with upper caste ignorance and positivity that lacks working knowledge of politics. even satyajit ray did the same mistake in ganashatru, he completely removed the politics from the original story he adopted it from, trying to make it about religion, something that doesn’t really affect the bengali upper castes. it comes from a saviour complex mixed with chasing trauma.

all of this comes from unchecked privilege. the guitarist dude can talk about how casteism and untouchability is bad and how the rickshaw driver should be allowed upstairs, but it is just a talk, nothing really changes for him. he is at the bottom rung and your think that living for eternity would make the ghosts more socially aware, but it seems bengali upper caste men are more interested in maintaining the social hierarchy even after death. making the bengali adage that your behaviour doesn’t change even after your death a reality.

the film makes it a point to mock people with disabilities, and people from lower class. it makes pramod pradhan with speech disability to reduce his name to pond (asshole). and he would say wrong educational stuff to showcase how illiterate he is. similarly, TK Guchhait has that particular surname just before which he stutters to make a poop joke. this film is more like Prem Aggan, where there was a joke about how jay mehra should be gay mehra. one of the worst script writing in my honest opinion. whoever wrote it didn’t understand the assignment and failed in his job. to quote tom cruise, “a nutless monkey could do this job better”.

Privilege is when you willingly get beaten by police in a protest march for political clout knowing full well that come what may, police wouldn’t kill you because of your surname. grassroots activists do not have that luxury. thus upper caste upper class urban educated people can appropriate their work and pretend to be woke by talk, but they aren’t really interested in changing the system. upper caste men are the oppressors. they can’t be left leaning without giving up their family, surname and all other privileges. thus almost any communist from upper castes with good family relations are there to muddy the movement and derail it. the guillotine doesn’t judge the caste.

parambrata getting the money and kickstarting his career is more comparable to how upper class upper caste worthless men launch their filmmaking/photography career with their family’s blood money. who has to appropriate others’ stories to fit their own narrative. by proxy it is the director himself.

the only redeeming quality of this movie is its dialogues. most of which is punching down comedy anyway, but the couplet system was something new in bengali cinema itself. i guess that is the reason the film was popular amongst the urban upper class folks. this movie has been remade in hindi and has been a resounding flop. understandable, good films has good content, this has nothing. certain highly memed tv serials has better content than this garbage, as they get translated to multiple other regional languages and always does well with the audience.

i’ll not increase the review much. for a vapid film i have already word vomited a little too much anyway. i’d give this film a 1 out if 10, if i were to give a round number.

see you all soon.

Not the Common Man

Atlee and Shankar's movies have a common thread. Their heroes look common but aren’t. They’re also good fathers, husbands, boyfriends, and other things. There’s no need for complexities here because the story is simple. It’s the story of a superhero is saving people. And if you could slap a pair of tights on Vijay in “Mersal,” you’d have felt the same. This follows Rajnikanth, Vijay, through Kamal Hassan (in the recently released “Vikram,” he shakes off a knife wound like nothing). SRK is following the same thread. He could have died a thousand times over in Jawan. But the story doesn’t need to make sense. The standard connection lies in them being the “common” man. Vijay’s character in Kaththi comes to mind. Of his two roles, only one is a superhero. The other one gets beat up and doesn’t have a way to escape prison, but the superhero can solve problems in a second, create a revolution with his words, and do so much more. Looking at “Revolution in Everyday Life,” we’re not discussing things that Vijay or SRK do in these movies. The all-powerful nature of the hero drives the plotline forward. And this has been a trope in Action movies forever. Forgive the blasphemy here, but in Kurosawa movie, when one Samurai cuts down everyone else, or when the outlaws win again in a Billy Wilder movie, it follows the same thread. Creating “Legends” out of ordinary men by covering them in plot armor is a time-honored legacy in movies. It can manifest in two ways. * The authority figure – A policeman doing the right thing (think Salman Khan in Dabbang) * The non-authority figure – An ordinary man taking on the ever-present system (Vijay movies in general) Movies from the South have long created these mythical characters in opposition to hierarchy. The “CM for a single day” trope was exploited in “Nayak” so efficiently. “Nayak” also shows that the system catches up with you eventually, and then you need to do things in queer ways to defeat the system (in this case, a brilliant Amrish Puri.) In Jawan, the system catches up to SRK even after the big win. And an all-out fight gives him the final win. It’s also an excellent metaphor for how the state works. Movements can drive changes but are silvery veneer on the rotting legislature underneath.

Of Illogic and Other Scenes

Illogic is the thread that ties a lot of masala movies together. This is by design because you can’t imagine these heroes to be the same people as us. No one looks at “Singham” and fantasizes that the pot-bellied cop in the neighborhood is the same person. No, it’s an ideal they follow and someone they aspire to become at the end of the day. SRK crafts this illogic with expertise. In the movie, the narrative often impressively shifts from him. When someone complains about him, his followers tell his long-winded story without breaks. He manages when he comes to the jail, and the ground applauds. In showing backbreaking work done by prisoners, we see him participating in the work. In a way, the “illogic” that Atlee crafts in his films is that of idealism beyond reason. This idealism might seem alien to anyone who follows the logical traps in capitalism; for communists and anarchists, this idealism is the core of our philosophy. But, no, the film isn’t communist. It defers to authority and depends on the Army and Police to mette out its justice (even if illegal, the authority figures are the only ones shown as being just.) The critical point to focus on in the film is that idealism is essential to drive changes, and it can make a significant dent. In this case, the stories of the girls who surround SRK help in a significant way. So does the collective disillusionment with the “system.” At points in the film, it’s said that if the system wanted to do right, it would. That’s where the film fails because the truth that Atlee won’t admit in movies is that the system can’t do right. It must be broken down from the outside to make the change. Something that SRK does in the film. This is also illogical, but an ideal system would do this. And if nothing else, masala movies are a function of belief.

Having fun and loving it

My partner is not a fan of SRK. But, in the middle of the film, we discussed how the performance seemed platonic by default. Even during implied sex, SRK looks more like a friend. He does not have lust but admiration in his eyes. And it doesn’t take away from the chemistry either. The film is filled with small, consequential details like these. SRK spends a long time having fun with his costars. The director has fun putting in dialogues from other films and creating long references that don’t make any extra additions to the movie. It’s a fun film because it seems like a collaboration between the people involved. When the blood drop falls into the dirt in the first scene, you feel the cameraman, who has waited for a shot like that for years, laughing. You also feel joy in the dialogues. “Naam to Suna Hoga” hasn’t sounded this joyful since the 2000s. And when other people have fun, having fun yourself is so much easier, which is what matters. Beyond philosophy, beyond long speeches, “Jawan” is about fun in the movies in a way we haven’t had in a while. Part of that is because of the heavy-handed politics that demand un-fun to be a part of Bollywood films throughout.

Nationalism isn’t Fun, yeah, really

In early 2014, Akshay Kumar could do no wrong. He had a long string of hits and was firing on all cylinders. But that fell short in the decade since then. It appears that nationalism is a strong story, but no one likes seeing the authority win repeatedly. Because, at the core, we all understand that the state is wrong. We have understood and internalized that fact quite effectively over the years. Even staunch bhakhts are aware of corruption and the small ways in which they miss out on their chances. They just blame the wrong people for it because of propaganda. But, the overarching story of authority winning is less resonant than other stories. This is why films like “Pushpa” and “RRR” work. They’re stories of people rising against the system and not for it. Thus, nationalism must hide behind the pretenses of rising against the system, craft separate narratives, and try to win that way. But it's no longer working, and the people are looking back at SRK. This isn’t a win, but it's something to celebrate, and we haven’t had one of those reasons in a decade. And that’s why “Jawan” works, and I love it. I love it so much.

Disclaimer Welcome to intuitive cooking. These recipes are to unleash the chaos in you. No measurements, just vibes

Ingredients

• Noodles (I used wheat maggi for the masala, you can also use maggi masala separately)
• Eggs
• Soya sauce
• Spring onion
• Ginger garlic paste
• Chilli flakes
• Coriander
• Salt
• Sesame seeds

Instructions

• In a pot of water, simmer soya sauce, spring onion and ginger garlic paste
• Beat eggs with salt in a bowl
• Add the eggs slowly in the simmering mixture
• Increase the heat and stir the contents occasionally in intervals of a few seconds
• Drop the noodles and the maggi masala and stir to mix it all up
• Once the noodles are cooked about 80% remove from heat
• Add chilli flakes and coriander and mix
• Transfer to serving bowl
• Sprinkle a little bit of sesame seeds and spring onions to break the texture and serve piping hot

Alternatives

• You can use vegetable stock or chicken stock instead of water
• You can add vegetables or chicken or paneer or tofu to enrich the soup even more
• You can add a half boiled egg on top or a sunny side up or crisp fried bacon to the side to increase the protein intake
• You can add black peppers to the eggs
• You can temper the soup with some coriander seeds, curry leaves and peppercorn

But why do I call?

Most Indian children can relate to the daily call to their mothers and fathers. We’re used to calling people and always being in sync. We tally our numbers, discuss our dues, and then match up against everything. But there may be a deeper reason. Why is calling the family so important anyway? Why must we always know about each other?

The History of Everything

Family Keeps Watch

In the beginning, when the joint family was de rigeur, the eyes followed you everywhere. Of course, people built a community instead of a mother and father and child dynamic. But, then, we need to argue about what a community does. In all senses, these communities hadn’t killed the cops in their heads. So, they ended up creating rules and laws. Thematic guardrails became entrenched. And since people aren’t infallible, these guardrails came from a long line of guardrails, from the leaders, politicians, and everyone else watching the proceedings. The result was that the unit, the smallest unit, became subject to surveillance, and every single day became a jail. The family home was comforting. It provided all the essential comforts a man might want but ate off their morals and needs as it went forward.

It goes nuclear

When families became smaller, larger communities were built. These were built with gossip, with words, with vague whispers. Soon, people became used to watching their steps everywhere. The fear of living in a city where your parents are is also exacerbated by this very gossip. This very structure keeps increasing and eating everything in its path. So, when you smoke a cigarette, you’re not afraid of your mother finding out. Because your mother doesn’t go through that road because that isn’t how it’s structured, but if you’re worried a friend of hers will see you, they will notice. Then, it will ricochet from there. Become an entire thesis on how you’ve destroyed your life and have nowhere to go. And soon, you’re suffering everywhere.

The Panopticon

The concept is simple. It is a central tower that watches every prisoner all around the tower. So, you can never leave its gaze. Everything is reduced to brutal efficiency. If you think social media is a voluntary mode of this, you are right! The same principle repeats itself with social media, and then it causes a lot of conflict. So, you can wear your political badge with pride (and liberals will surely congratulate you for being brave), and suddenly, two people in your college will want to kill you one day. Private spaces are increasingly rare in this life. I do not know if my parents will read this blog and if they’ll decide to throw me out.

The policing construct

The family always polices you. It doesn’t do it out of love. It doesn’t do it out of respect. It doesn’t do it out of care. It polices because that’s what it knows how to do. In the history of things, the family has never been permissive. In the community, it was permissive because when you get a mixture of parental figures, the authority divides itself repeatedly, and you get weak authority, something you can depend on to grow.

So What to do

Nothing might be a silly answer. But, it is an accurate one. Not doing anything might be the best bet for you. If you stay still and never move, the family never has questions, it never polices. But you need to have questions, and you need to create conversation. You need to take action and move into a better place. So, what do you do? You create shields. You never leave trails. And then make your own way through the space. Of course, there’s no simple way out of this. So, you acknowledge the faults, the cracks, and everything in between. Then you grow. You grow despite policing because nothing else is possible.

A little bit of context. I met both of them through social media, separately and instantly connected with them both. They're both intelligent, interesting people and they both came across as empathetic (one more than other) people trying to make the best of a shitty situation (living amongst cishets yuck). Oh I loved them both so much it physically hurt. They were my first signs of adult friendships, a field I've failed at spectacularly for most of the time before this.

Things escalated quickly after that. My friend told me they like my other friend and for the first time, things started to fall into place. I never had healthy romantic relationships to look up to, so I modelled mine after theirs. Imitation is the best form of flattery, after all. My ex left but my friends were happy and I was hopeful that the next time, I'll do it better.

After a few months, I met my partner and forgot all about modelling my relationship after my friends' because my partner knows healthy relationships. He's always known them.

My friends got engaged. I was so over the moon with happiness, I cried. I mean it's not a big deal, I cry about everything but I was so happy for them. Both of them have had lives of varying levels of difficulty and this felt like the relief they needed. This probably seems a little weird but it had been a while since I'd known them at this point and I started to think of them as my family. Like they're my blood and flesh.

And it all changed. With one phone call. I wanted to scream at the one who broke up. I wanted to tell him he took away my family. He broke my trust in people. Oh I loved him so! My friend who will never hurt anyone knowingly, my friend who protects everyone like his own. He's lost and I'm angry about it. I didn't want to lose him. I needed him to stay the same.

Worst of all, he proved nothing is constant. My whole worldview is shattered. All my life through every up and down I always tried to believe that people are inherently nice. My partner once asked me how come I wanted to live with him even though all my experiences sharing a living space with someone has been so horrible. I told him it's because not everyone is the same and everyone can find it in themselves to be a little nicer. I guess the opposite is true too. I don't know how to go on with that. I don't know how to live everyday knowing that people are not driven by morality but by needs and wants. All my life I have believed people will rise to the occasion if needed. That we'll always do the right thing if offered the choice. My friend having to move forward after this is proof that I was wrong. I do not like being wrong.

Disclaimer Welcome to intuitive cooking. These recipes are to unleash the chaos in you. No measurements, just vibes

Ingredients

• Aata (Wheat Flour)
• Any kind of refined oil/ghee
• Baking powder (optional)
• Salt
• Sugar
• Black pepper powder
• Leftover veggies chopped really tiny (carrots, beans, cauliflowers, cabbage, radish, etc)
• Cheese (optional)
• Water
• A steamer/a deep dish, aluminium foil and a lid

Instructions

• Mix aata with a little salt, a pinch of sugar and baking powder
• Pour oil on the mix and then slowly add water and mix till the dough is easily removed from the sides of the dish
• Now dust some aata on a flat surface and knead that dough like it's not a dough but your English teacher from high school who simultaneously virtue signals young children and possesses the wrongest moral compass (As you can see, I'm still holding on to quite a bit of justified anger)
• Set it aside when the dough is soft and supple to touch. Think of the texture if you were a cis male author describing a lead female character
• Chop up your veggies real tiny
• Mix in your cheese, salt, sugar and black pepper
• Roll out the dough and put a tiny ball of stuffing in it and shape your dumpling
• The salt will draw water and we'll mix it with some in the bowl we want to use as a steamer. This can be used as a base for a soup. You can also add some vegetables to it
• If you do not have a steamer, you can cover a deep bellied dish with aluminium foil, poke a few holes in it. Place the dumplings on the aluminium foil and cover it with a lid
• Steam the dumplings for about 30 mins
• Serve hot with any spicy chutney

Disclaimer Welcome to intuitive cooking. These recipes are to unleash the chaos in you. No measurements, just vibes

Ingredients

• Bread
• Egg
• Potato
• Cucumber
• Mayo
• Cheese
• Salt
• Jalapenos
• Pickle (refer to Alex Arson's Pickle Rage for the recipe)
• Black pepper powder

Instructions

• Boil potatoes and eggs for 12-14 mins.
• Peel and mash them along with some diced cucumber, mayo, salt, black pepper. (Do not add salt if you're setting the mixture aside for a while as it will draw water from the mixture. Instead, add the salt right before assembly.)
• Slather some mayo on the bread and toast it.
• Add cheese, sandwich filling, jalapenos and pickle and cover with another toasted bread.
• Toast each side again to melt the cheese.
• Cover with a muslin cloth if you're putting it in a tiffin box to absorb extra moisture so your sandwich stays crisp.
• You can add lettuce between the bread and the filling to reduce absorption of moisture. I didn't have any on hand.

The Anatomy of Violence

Let’s assume we’re all living our lives normally. That in the brief history of everything, there has been nothing wrong at all. But then you realize that things are not as they were before. I think to recognize state violence, you likely need to flip the switch. Just think of what you’d consider as abuse in a relationship: * Verbal abuse: Cursing you, using slurs, using a variety of words to get you down * Emotional abuse: Bringing you down again and again * Isolation abuse: Leaving you alone * Food/money/other abuse: Depriving people of food, shelter, or monetary gains If you see this list, you will see that the state has been violent throughout. That personal violence has been an ongoing problem for you, and every time a politician curses you out, says hijra-mukto Jadavpur and something else, and every time they beat you up or deprive you of property that is already available and so easily given, or put a pre-requisite of money for any socialization.

Building Understanding

The second phase of uncovering state violence is creating understanding at every level. Now, this is admittedly difficult. We often don’t realize the violence being done to us because we can’t understand how something drives such inhuman conditions at the outset. Maybe because the level of abuse is not measurable, the idea of measuring is difficult, too. So, you spend a lot of time trying to bridge the gap between your relative ethics and the objective morality of the state. The point is simple: if you have a constant state of ethics that guides you, you’re better than the state. And because you’re a good person, you think no one else also violates this set of ethics. This isn’t true. The state will be a greater evil because it needs to be the greater evil. It needs to be something more than the average person. So, it creates chains of responses that deprive you of everything you desire. It creates frameworks that work against you directly, and then it continues to do this repeatedly for the next eighty years until you die.

Confronting Death and Surviving

Violence is difficult to understand. But, it is far more difficult to confront violence and come out alive. When you fight violence, you must build spaces where you can be violent. This doesn’t need to be exhaustive. You don’t need to knife a cop to be safe. But you need a space to scream, rant, and cry. A place where you can look at yourself and remind yourself that unethical behaviors should always be measured against the scale that the state drives at every second of the way. Also, you need to be anonymous in this space. You need to be more than yourself while simultaneously being less than. This is achievable through practice. Once you enter the space of violence, you let yourself leap. You sort through the masks you’ve worn for the state and let the real you peak from the curtain. You might argue that your real self is not anonymous, but we’re hiding so much of ourselves all the time that the real self is the only true masked representation we can find.

Defining the Space

Remember that state violence is not always physical. Remember that violence itself can grow like a fungus and control your soul. So, when you’re defining the space, it doesn’t need to be a Fight club; it needs to be * Safe * Secure * And Homely A community space where you can sing songs together is violence against the state program of isolation. A place where you make love to your partner is a violence against the state program of unlove. Heck, a place to serve food to your friends is violence against the state program of hunger.

You’ve won before. You will again

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mutual Aid groups were spreading like fungi across the lines of states and cities. People came together to cook for each other and then spent time talking to each other and building rapport across the space. This was the sign that the world was turning, maybe not upside down, maybe it never had the capacity to turn upside down. But, it was turning a little bit so as to give space for you to expand yourself, And trannies everywhere were making friends, building connections, and creating a story.

We can always create that same space again. It requires unyielding hope and an enemy we recognize and acknowledge. The first step, however, is understanding that violence exists, that it is forever, and to fight against is will never be the same level of violence because the state’s violence will always surpass yours. And your violence will always be just survival.

Capitalism and Needs

I hate hierarchy, but in the context of Capitalism, everything falls into one. My needs do, too. In search for context within which I can envelop myself, my needs were as follows - * Money – Because everything is governed by the perverse search for material to feed our basic needs * Love – Because money creates holes that materialism can't feed * Food – Because love has a way of leaving you hungry This is not to say that needs won't exist past Capitalism. In fact, to move past this philosophy, we need needs. Because nothing else motivates the human psyche like hunger and desire. But it's not that simple under the pre-established hierarchy. Since money is intricately linked with every need we have, we confuse our other needs with a need for cash. The next big salary, the next big client, the next big thing, becomes our governing motivation.

Money Usurps Everything

On a quiet evening in August 2021, I entered the workforce formally. The contract was signed, and I started working the next day. The premise was simple. > You had failed at everything else, so you now needed to write your way out. So, I started writing. And I did it well. I have always written well and made my way forward in the world. But it still missed a key point in my story. I was wrong in my assessment of the situation. I felt that money filled my need for stability. But, I wanted peace in love, in situations, and in different spaces. > So, money never did fill in the gaps, and I became incredibly infatuated with the concept of earning money instead of the need to have stability. This, then, is the central fallacy of life. Money chases us down in every aspect of life because, in terms of a hierarchy of needs, it falls on the top. Let's examine this with a few examples - 1. You need shelter, but to get shelter, you need money 2. You need food, but to get food, you need money 3. You need happiness, but you tie happiness to material possessions for which you need money This is not a condemnation of the need for material possessions. But, the summation of the fact that once you link everything you possess with money, you only crave that one thing.

When the World Ends

In 2023, I lost my job. It would come sooner or later and have sucked my life out. I was there, getting fat on a salary my paymaster's paymasters didn't think I deserved, so I was out. I would get money for the next two months and could continue being accessible. Good deal, right? I spent the evening when I got laid off searching for jobs. The core need was stability, a thing which I already had for two months, but I had already put money ahead of it because of the hierarchy. The theoretical instability that was two months away was scarier because money had already taken weed in my mind with a call for scarcity.

The Scarcity and the Abundance

Honestly, the mind never sees money as abundant. Now, you can see that as you like. But how long does the last raise in your salary take to become insignificant? This is not a function of your deserving to earn more. > Most people deserve to make more. This is a function of the fact that money is self-consuming. Your life quality will continually improve by very little with increasing money because every material possession that is 1.25x better costs 5x more. So, what seemed like a significant amount of money amounts to little when the paycheck comes through. The perceived abundance of cash is a bug, which always occurs from the outside in. Because every slight increase in life quality requires a blast of money, it looks like you're dying from the inside out.

This doesn't mean that there's no UNETHICAL amount of money

Billionaires are bastards from all sides

The point I am making is that of perception. By circling every benefit in life in increasing costs and building hierarchies that deem money the most essential, we have created a death pit we can't walk out of. Since money is always scarce, our life's missions must be connected. Forever growing, killing us.

No, the answer isn't forsaking everything

A knee-jerk reaction to learning about the scam around money is to ask yourself to give up all possessions. To adopt public property as the sole goal, to feel like desires must be cut short and tamed to build a story. This is not true. There are no positives in giving up desires. Desires are what make us hate Capitalism. In fact, we want to kill this philosophy because we desire for better. You see, capitalism has constructed its own enemy. Since the ultimate desire is Infinite money and capitalism can't give us that in its principle of scarcity, we build the opposing philosophies. If money could afford all we would ever want, we would never want Capitalism to end.

Building a new world

Next time you stand at a crossroads like mine, ask yourself, “Is money the thing I need most at this juncture?” Chances are you will answer yes. Chances are you will return to the grind and follow the same line as many have before. But, if you find other desires beneath money, those that aren't satisfied with a signature and a paystub, harness that desire. *If the need is food, learn to steal and grow. *If the need is shelter, squatting is an honorable act. *If the need is safety, a knife is often scarier than a 100 dialed on a phone. You might say these are not safe options for anyone. That's true. This isn't safe. Especially if you're queer and vulnerable from the start. But, the violence from society doesn't stop just because you're doing something legal. No one has stopped cops from killing trannies by being acceptable and smart. And finally, these are options. Illegality is mostly not fun, and there are consequences. So, if you get the chance to go there, do so cautiously. But remember, money is overrated, and the friends and community that'll feed you your next dinner are more valuable than a wad of cash and come with a lot fewer obligations.

Be safe, and remember that material possessions are so-called because they can be repossessed by a thousand stealing souls.

I have always maintained that Ragnarok is the best modern retelling of the norse mythology. even though that particular moniker stays with it, this season wasn’t really it.

i mean yes, it is directly in line to the stories it was supposed to tell, but something is missing this season, and that is possibly the fact that there actually never were a real villain to fear in this season.

okay, first some context: giants live amongst humans and surprise surprise they also run the heavy industries that destroys nature. magne, who embodies thor in the body of a teenager. apparently gods are born as humans in this idyllic norse town, but giants control it and without weapons they are probably better fighters as well.

hence the first two season was tight. it always felt like the giants, even though less in number always held more power with the money and brute strength. however thor gets his hammer made in season 2 end, and from there we will start.

we know that giants has lost a member so it’s technically 5-3 now. and the giants are scared of the hammer too much. and they can’t do anything at all. firstly, we all know what the hammer can do, but it never showed why is it so powerful that the giants are scared of it. anyway, that was probably never the intention either way.

i am just taken over by how much teenage life has to do with being the god of thunder. not just that, loki is also a teenager and half brother to thor, so that relationship also full of teen drama. the show makes it a point to showcase just how much thor is attached to his hammer, to the point he lets the hammer control him, even though it is the hammer that needs thor, and not the other way around. and i just think, doing it with a teenage coming of age lens has been pretty amazing to say the least.

this season gets more detailed about the lives of the gods and giants, and we generally stopped seeing the life around edda. but i can accept that, there wasn’t anything important there except the people, and we got a lot of those people.

it is quite weird that those people didn’t have much of a character arc. except for thor. and loki to some extents. the real transformation actually happens to Hodur.

i think the biggest part that this season tried to tell us is that, we are always scared of letting down our loved ones. but c’est la vie. that’s life. i personally think, that fear of letting your loved ones down or the fact that we have grief about missing them is the real proof that despite everything we loved them. and i also think it takes a real man to accept their own faults. it also takes a self aware man to understand the harm they have caused and how to not do this again or if possible correct the mistake already made. they put thor in this role, and especially the last episode is the creme de la creme of that.

in that regard, ragnarok keeps the story, as it should. i mean, is it a real story? or is it an active imagination? you’d need the last episode of season 3 of course, and in that regard this is kinda like tokyo ghoul, as in, the whole story makes sense at the end. i have certain issues with those kinda stories, as once you see it, it diminishes the mutiple watch potentials once the cards are shown. it can be done in smarter ways, but this wasn’t it.

i think cg also took a large hit. they didn’t really have to do a lot of cg before, but this time there is a mythological serpent that they needed to show a few times, and it looked absolutely awful. there wasn’t much other cg work, but some of the weapon throws were assisted and that could be visible. but that is more of compositing problem than bad cg, but all the same.

i enjoyed ragnarok. i think the first season was my favourite, but i would recommend you to the whole series. it’s 18 episodes and i doubt there will ever be another season as to me this was a perfect end, and unlike the last two seasons, this one didn’t end on a cliffhanger.

i’ll reiterate again: it is the best modern retelling of the mythology of ragnarok. ragnarok is the end of the world as we know it. i guess for a teenager that would be their school life.

What's the fuss about this lunar south pole, you ask? Well, it's like the Moon's “mystery zone” – a whopping 70 degrees south latitude filled with spots basking in eternal sunlight or brooding in perpetual darkness. Drama, anyone?

First off, calling it the “dark side” is a bit misleading. It's not dimmer; it's just that Earth can't peep at this side due to some cosmic lock called “Tidal Locking.” Think of it as the Moon being camera-shy, always showing the same face to Earth, except for those sneaky peeks at the lunar edges.

Why bother crashing parties on this distant lunar terrain? Oh, because Chandrayaan – 1 found sips of water chilling in the Moon's ice caps. Yeah, water! That discovery could be the first clue to a lunar version of “Where's Waldo?” – like, where's life hiding? Plus, that frozen water's got stories about the universe's wet past locked away.

And here's the kicker: this lunar H2O could be the secret sauce for future space parties. Less baggage means not lugging tons of coolants and Aquafina bottles every trip, resulting in slimmer spacecraft and less gas-guzzling. Efficiency, folks!

But, surprise, surprise, talking to this “far side” isn't a walk in the space park. Chandrayaan – 1 played hide-and-seek with ISRO back in 2009, going radio-silent around the ten-month mark of its two-year mission. No warning, just zilch communication. Cue the space mystery music.

Cut to Chandrayaan – 3: this time, it's got Vikram and Pragyan, both armed to the lunar teeth with scientific gear. These gadgets are ready to dissect everything – from the Moon's heat vibes to what rocks its surface. Pragyan's strutting at 1 cm/s, leaving the Moon's surface tattooed with India's flag and ISRO's logo – cosmic graffiti at its finest.

Stay tuned for more lunar escapades and top-secret revelations. Because, hey, the Moon's got tales, and we're here with the lunar scoop!

In the last week, India has passed rules decriminalising sexual assaults against male bodied persons. Implications of this being – if you're a 18 year old boy and someone assaults you, you will not be protected by any rights. Your body is to be used for other's pleasure at ge expense of your mental and physical health and that is legally okay. If you're a gay boy, exploring the world of kink, oh honey, you are so massively, irreversibly, fucked. If you're a trans person, existing in the society as yourself, you're fucked too.

Last week India made begging illegal. Last month, India turned down petitions for horizontal reservations for trans people. If you're a trans person, you know how everything is against us from day one. If you're born intersex, you will be given away at birth. Your only option is begging, except now it is illegal. So you serve time in jail. Where your labour has essentially no value. You will be kept in bug infested rooms in extreme conditions.

Last year a man was eaten alive by bedbugs while in his prison cell. The bugs buried into his skin. The medical officer was so disgusted by the dying man crawling with bugs that they left and threw up outside the cell. That's the future they want to write for us.

And yet privilege blinds us so, we remain silent and apolitical because at least it isn't us. Yet.

Disclaimer: Please ignore the grammatical mistakes, I will be editing it later.

If you love foreshadowing, you will have a deep appreciation for the storytelling in this movie. I believe it is not about the atomic bomb as much as it is about what the bomb reveals about humanity. The beginning sets the tone of the entire movie. The movie starts when the lead explains how stars die to his first and only student who comes to attend his class on Quantum Physics. First, he asks, “Does light exist as particles or waves?” The answer of Quantum Physics gives is both. It is paradoxical, he concludes. So does, the very existence of a star, where it is pushing against gravity, yet it needs it to exist. The moment gravity overpowers, the star ceases to exist. This is projected in the decisions made by Oppie throughout his life. He is a star who is constantly collapsing on himself.

Time and feelings of a person not being linear is demonstrated through the cinematographic choice of putting past in colour and present in black and white then once again in colour when he is older. This is present throughout the movie, where you cannot really keep up with the fast-paced nature of the movie, where characters changed perceptions are represented in their interactions with Oppie in the past and the interactions they have with the board in charge of his security clearance. The moment you see it merge in Oppie's life is when delivers a speech stating he was proud of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the auditorium, but the background shakes, everything is in colour until he walks out. The flashes of cameras transform the screen into a black and white scene.

He used communist means to reach a capitalist end. He housed the employees, he provided the janitor and the scientist, the same infrastructure, medical care and other resources. Furthermore, he used his learnings from his network that educated him about much required policy changes to create a town that could serve his capitalist goal of building a bomb and destroying the competition, which in this case is Japan. Sidenote: War is capitalist and if you disagree, just pay attention to how America, a capitalist country, built its nation on selling weapons. War has always been a way to destroy the competition.

Nolan transforms the ideologies affecting world politics as stages. 1. Socialism (the government funds the town of La Almos) 2. Communism (everybody has access to basic resources, there is collective ownership) 3. Capitalism (the dropping of the bomb)

Of course, every stage is incomplete as it abandons itself before moving onto the next stage. It also represents how Oppie had the capability to have these opposing ideologies exist in his mind, creating conflict and affecting his ability to make decisions based on what he perceives to be the gravity of the situation.

There is an ongoing dark joke throughout the movie, where other characters think the very demonstration of the negative impact of the atomic bomb will instill fear and stop war. This is proven wrong as soon as Oppie tries to use this as a justification for his action of supporting the bombings where his colleague points out, “Until someone builds a bigger bomb.” This then becomes the real threat in the movie where he constantly tries to soothe himself claiming the Hydrogen Bomb Project is just a theory. He mocks the possibility of it happening by claiming that the ideas of the colleague researching about this on his team if implemented, would result in delivering the bomb in an ox cart and not a plane. He knew it to be possible, but he refused to accept it. Not only that, but he has internalized the idea, “How far can theory go?” And he underestimates the impact of it. Just because he was proven wrong by his colleagues in the first half of the movie where mathematically it is not possible to split the atom but in reality it had already been achieved. Despite his mockery, he continues working with theory, hoping for impact. Such dissonance must paralyze a human, but it is not Oppie's dissonance, it is those who are studying him and trying to appeal to their audience's views that Nolan weaponised and presented to the watcher.

The regret he had in real life came later after seeing the impact of his actions, but the movie tries to show that it happened right after the bomb being dropped itself. In fact, it tries to imply it when he quoted Bhagwad Gita during the trial run of the bomb on indigenous people's land they had occupied and built their town on... He later requests the President that the town to be returned to the Indians but we do not know if it actually happens. It is observed when he is walking out after his speech at La Amos and he hallucinates people's faces burning, stepping in a body of a child burnt to crisp, his colleague puking and a happy couple that was making out initially immediately mourning the death of their love/child cowering in a corner. Everybody makes eye contact with him and that is what makes it dreadful.

Paraphrasing the dialogue, “You cannot commit a sin, then expect us to feel sorry for you that it had consequences,” is the moral lesson repetitive throughout the movie. Kitty, his wife, said this when she discovered Oppie's affair resulted in Jean, the communist he was having an affair with, committing suicide. It is also implied she may have been killed where you can see a hand pushing her down in the bathtub but we do not know if it is because she was a communist and the people watching Oppie were watching her and killed her, or it is Oppie manifesting the guilt he felt where he believes he killed her because she asked him to stay, and he chose his wife and children.

Nolan does something different in this movie, where he does not punish Kitty for breaking down. Instead the only few women who appeared, seemed to have been right about everything. The colleague who starts a petition against the bombing, where she tried to bring attention to the possibility of it affecting the reproductive system of women. She gets angry at the male scientists for not taking her seriously, and she exclaims, “Your reproductive systems are more exposed than mine.” While the bomb is being taken away, she is seen delivering a speech where she points our how pointless it is to drop a bomb on Japan after Hitler is dead.

She is once again not taken seriously. When Kitty points out how, Strauss is behind the whole fiasco of Oppie's security clearance being threatened because he mocked him publicly, she is ignored as a woman having a breakdown.

She does not break down when she is a witness to the board of inquiry set up by Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to frame her husband for being a spy on the grounds of him having attending communist parties meeting and having his family and friends part of the party. Plus his contribution towards the refugees in Spain. Before her testimony, everybody seemed to breakdown under pressure, but she handled it well.

The chain reaction ignored by men was noticed by women. This is what is subtly suggested.

Strauss when he concluded that his trial is a trial about a trial, we know both the instances whether it be the inquiry to take Oppie down or the inquiry about Strauss's unjust scrapping of security clearance, did not follow the rules of a trial and were solely in place to punish the accused. Strauss's opinion about Oppie in his monologue where he concluded that he gave Oppie exactly what he wanted, martyrdom. He wanted the guilt that comes with being a self-important man, but it is him projecting, just like Oppie was...

The movie ends with the conversation between Einstein and Oppenheimer where Einstein draws a parallel between himself getting an award and Oppie being rewarded for his achievements after his punishment is over. He will get a medal, he will be celebrated but that dance will be more for people who betrayed him than himself.

Oppie is not satisfied, he tells Einstein, how the possibility that the world's atmosphere could be burnt due to a chain of reactions and the entire world could be destroyed, has happened.

Just like a star, he gave the world a means to fight itself and keeping surviving against the gravity of situations, but he also created a series of chain reactions that will eventually lead to the demise of humanity.

Mom went on to talk about the neighbours and their leaky pipes and the damp walls. All I could do was nod and smile.

My 19 year old sister has travelled to {redacted} with a cult. My 19 year old sister, who has never gone to school by her own has travelled halfway across the country with a cult. My 19 year old barely out of school sister with no financial independence has gone to some remote cult compound by herself.

The religious fanaticism in our society is so pervasive that no adult thought to stop her. My parents said it's not their place to comment because she is my cousin sister. So? I would do something even if she was my worst enemy's sister. Yes, even if she was my 6th grade English teacher's sister. The fact is that she is young, impressionable and vulnerable.

She had turned to religion to deal with grief like most adults in our lives guide us to. At what point did God turn from a loving, ethereal being with infinite knowledge and kindness to a crusty old shirtless man who sees no harm in indoctrinating emotionally vulnerable people (let's be honest, people means young women) to tend to his whims? When did God go from omnipresent to living in a shitty ass cult compound in some ass crack of the country?

My sweet, amazing, naturally green-fingered little sister is in a cult. And no one seems to comprehend or care for the dangers that loom ahead.

(Update: I have contacted her, she's coming back home next Saturday, tickets have been booked. I have hidden the name of the cult and the place she's travelled to because I don't want undue attention on her during this time. She is living in a compound with 50 other women. My sister is neurodivergent as well so it's difficult to tell if she actually is okay but I'm hopeful. I will also be contacting local women's NGOs near the compound and the office she was indoctrinated at once she's home safe.)

The morning sun scorches my skin through the large window beside my bed. The sun burns; burns through my skin, makes its way to my brain, tipping it to a boiling point, like a fire devouring my gloom, destroying all my attempts to resist waking up. And just like that my mood shifts. The slumpy slumber is broken with heat and sweat. I feel the sun is magick! I feel ready. I feel up. The world feels bearable. The world makes sense again. The world feels kind. The world feels beautiful. The world feels wonderful. I feel motivated. I feel upbeat. I care about the world again.

I prance up and glide through my room, metaphorically of course. I look around and I see all the pending to-do things that have been piling up for the last three days. My double bed only has a small spot clean to fit my crouched body to rest, there are a few wrappers and too much of crumbs from my stressful binge eats, a few packets of cigarettes, a few sweat-reeking clothes, my journal and an array of academic books, notebooks and story books and my laptop, scattered around. The dishes in the sink have become a stinky hill of metal and glass. The bathroom rack is a hay short of all my used clothes falling into the mud-footprint-stained floors. I pour a dollop of cat food into the bowls for my cats. I only wash my coffee mug and a spoon to make my morning coffee. I savour it, each sip with a puff of smoke. My procrastinating for half an hour delays my mental to-do list for the day, but better late than never, right? I want to daydream because it’s such a good day because I’ve found a good song to groove to because I feel amazing and I want to enjoy this moment; yet I push and put on my chores playlist and scrub my heart out, scrubbing the dishes to perfection, taking a minute and a half for each item, scrubbing hard water stains, scrubbing through fungi, and making sure they smell good and are up to the proper hygienic standards. Twenty minutes pass by as I realise that my gown is damped from water splashes and that’s exactly when I think “I need to clean the iron silted taps!” Hence, I do what I do best, go take a smoke break as my gown dries up from the fan fuelled wind.

The music switches to indie-rock and I almost fall back into dreamland, BUT I can’t rest. I cannot daydream in peace on a garbage of a bed. My routine is easy and I am efficient, at least sometimes. But the hardest part of making a bed, is changing bedsheets. I am very particular about it. While removing the dirty bedsheet, the dust should not fall back into the mattress; the way to prevent this is to tuck out the corners carefully and then folding the bedsheet in from four corners and then lifting it off the mattress. My neurotic brain perfects the act with every change. Now, when it comes to placing a new bedsheet, I want the sheet aligned properly without creases like they have it in hotels. This particularity of how things should be, do not bother me today, I do not hate it today, I enjoy it today and pat myself for being almost a ‘perfectionist’.

Now what shall I do? After the thorough sweep and mop of the entire furniture-less apartment, I do feel tired but I also need to catch up to three days’ worth of productivity. I end up deciding to do more chores, sort the laundry, dust a bit and arrange the things back at their right place. Today, I am convicted to go home; my parents have been wanting to talk to me and spend some time for a while now.

In my undergrad, I raw dogged my depression, possible neurodivergence, anxiety, OCD and whatever else doctors fancy I am afflicted with. It obviously caused my grades to fall majorly. The only time in my life when I wasn't at the top percentile. Today while finishing admission process for the MBA, I applied for a scholarship awarded based on merit and I was told I don't qualify because my bachelor's marks were low. I have a decade long academic performance data to draw from and I don't qualify because one year when I contemplated jumping off the train on my way back home from class every single day, I slacked a little, prioritised healing over hieroglyphs on a piece of paper. Because for the first time in 20 fucking years on Earth, I listened to my body and did my best and not the best I was supposed to do. I don't mind not qualifying for a scholarship. My point is that merit which seems like such a well defined term is not based on any rules. It's whatever the one determining it chooses it means. How can you quantify anything when you pick and choose your input data?

Merit is a scam, a buzzword made up to pander to the status quo. When UC people get handouts, it's called scholarships and grants. When marginalized castes, religions, genders get the same scholarships and grants, we're called beggars, exploiters cheating people off their hard earned money with “emotional blackmail”. We're called out for monetising our identities as though our identities exist only for the consumption, romanticisation and distortion by the oppressor groups.

This is a PSA. If you're a minority, you're not void of merit. You just aren't the ones we'd like to give a boost in life. You were meant to never do great things and if you somehow manage to still do something with this wilfully broken system, well the least we can do is make it horribly, cruelly, unnecessarily difficult.

Hot and Sour Dumpling Soup for the middle class Indian.

What makes a good recipe? Everything and nothing. To me, it's one that keeps things simple with just the right ingredients, easing the load on my neurodivergent brain. That's why this dumpling soup is the perfect blend of elegance and ease – a quasi-fancy creation for when you're motivated to MAKE something but dread the fear of failure.

(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

Ingredients:

• Ginger and garlic, chopped.

• Veggies (carrots, beans, or frozen vegetables), one gree chili (split in half)

• Button mushrooms for umami flavor (optional)

• Salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar (adjust to taste)

• Dumplings (momos from your locality is the way to go, but I'll also provide a short and easy homemade method)

• Cornflour and pepper powder slurry (cornflour mixed with water to thicken the soup)

-a pinch of MSG (optional)

-coriander stems (optional)

Instructions:

1. In a pot, sauté the ginger and garlic until fragrant.

2. Add button mushrooms and cook until lightly browned, then add the rest of the veggies and cook them until they're slightly tender.

3. Pour in water or vegetable broth to cover the veggies, and let it simmer for 5-6 minutes on medium high flame.

4. Season the soup with salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar. Taste and adjust the seasonings according to your preference. Add the coriander stems too and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

5. Carefully taste test the soup to ensure the flavor is to your liking before adding the cornflour and pepper powder slurry. Adjust the seasonings if needed.

6. Gradually add the cornflour and pepper powder slurry while stirring the soup until it reaches your desired thickness.

7. Once the soup is at the desired consistency, you can add the dumplings and warm them up.

8. Optionally, you can garnish the soup with julienne-cut veggies for a fancier presentation.

I bought Momos from my locality for Rs 45, which turned out great match for this soup. Alternatively, here's a simple chicken dumpling preparation.

Instructions for Wrappers

Ingredients: – 2 cups all-purpose flour – ½ teaspoon salt – ½ cup warm water

Instructions: 1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl. 2. Gradually add warm water and knead into a dough. Coat it with vegetable oil. 3. Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes. 4. Roll the dough thin, then cut into squares. Alternatively, make a long log and cut it into small pieces, then roll it into circles.

For stuffing: – 500g ground chicken – 2 cloves garlic, minced – 1-inch piece of ginger, grated – onions, finely chopped – 1 tablespoon soy sauce – 1 tablespoon oil – Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, mix the ground chicken, minced garlic, grated ginger, chopped onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper until well combined.

2. Lay out the wrappers on a clean surface. Place a small spoonful of the chicken mixture in the center of each wrapper.

3. Moisten the edges of the wrapper with water and fold it in half. Press the edges firmly to seal the dumpling.

4. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the dumplings. Cook them for about 3-5 minutes or until they float to the surface. Alternatively, you can steam or pan-fry the dumplings if you prefer.

When we think of a knife, the first visual that comes to mind is a stainless metal blade with one side tapered down to a sharp edge while the opposite side remains dull, ending in a handle made of wood, aluminum, titanium, bone, carbon fiber, stainless steel, resin, etc. Otherwise known as a regular kitchen knife. By definition, sharpness is the cutting ability of an edge. So, basically the sharper something is the better it is at cutting. So what does that mean to me? Jack {redacted}. So, down went the rabbit hole and I found a blog that explained sharpness in terms of force. And it made sense. Finer the point, higher the pressure – force per unit area. Extend the point linearly in one direction and you have the outline of an edge. So the same knife will apply more pressure on it's pointy side than the duller side. That means that sharpness depends on not just the edge thickness, but also the force applied to do the cutting, and the weight of the blade and the handle.

Once we have understood what makes a sharp knife, we need to understand what to do with it. Chop and slice are the 2 most basic things we do with a knife. And it all begins with a cut. A cut begins with a crack – the cutting edge of the blade makes a crack in the object you wish to cut. We then apply a force to drive the knife further down into the crack in the object. The edge concentrates this force due to its lower surface area and that's why you can slide down with a sharp knife easily while you'd have to put a lot more effort (force) trying to achieve the same with a duller knife.

Another thing to realise is that the cut that the knife's cutting edge makes is a smaller volume than what the non-cutting edge can fit into. This is why it's best when the taper to the cutting edge is really gradual in a knife as opposed to an axe, where your application requires more hacking than cutting. The thickness of the non cutting edge is also of interest. The taper has an optimal angle ranging from 17-22 degrees. This way you're not breaking the object along the initial cut line when your blade moves down beyond the cutting edge. You're using the rest of your blade to gently coax the two sides of the cut away from each other.

Another important factor is weight. Heavier your knife, less force you have to apply to achieve a similar result as with a lightweight knife. You can just let it slide down and thank Gravity for being just right on your home planet. However, a heavier knife will exhaust your wrists faster. So here comes something every idealist dreads – the tradeoff! Do we want a knife which will be easy on our shoulders and forearms or do we want easy on the wrist? Fortunately, finding a balance is possible.

Even though the physics of a perfect knife is absolute, the perfect knife might vary from person to person depending on their preferences, height of the person, height of the surface where they're cutting, posture, technique, objects they're cutting, a whole plethora of materials they might be biased towards. For example, for me the perfect knife to cut onions with is when the knife is in another person's hand and I'm nowhere near the kitchen.

I'm gonna be talking about Oppenheimer today, and of course there are going to be spoilers. Duh.

So, if you're a science nerd like me, you cannot walk out of an Oppenheimer without saying, “wow”. The movie, in a very rudimentary form is a love letter to the physics of the early 20th century, talking about quantum physics and radioactivity, arguably the phenomena that breathed new life into physics, thought for so long to be a closed subject; and the people behind it, Einstein, Szilard, Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg and the man himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer. It truly felt like the Avengers' Endgame for science nerds (totally didn't steal that from a friend, love you Darshna). In essence, it's a story about the science, the bomb, the politics, the physics and the egos. I wish I could have finished that sentence with “and the man himself”. And there lies my problem with the movie.

Because I am a terrible movie reviewer, I am going to refer to a scene at the right end of the movie. Robert Downey Jr. in his role as Lewis Strauss gives one of his signature monologues where he speaks about how he knew what kind of a person Oppenheimer really was, all along, and the fact that Oppenheimer, will just become a martyr in his story. I think this monologue sums up exactly how Nolan saw Oppenheimer, a person whose achievements can warrant nothing but martyrdom, someone whose achievements far encompassed his flaws.

Nolan's Oppenheimer, played by the flawless Cilian Murphy is Oppie, the father of the Atom Bomb, beloved by his immediate peers, considered the greatest scientific mind of his time, yet someone who is despised by people who were shadowed by his cult of personality, someone who is way too trusting, except for the time he is the polar opposite, but most importantly, someone, whose flaws don't feature on the silver screen, where his flaws are depicted as the whims of a master craftsman. Oppie can't admit to being Communist, Oppie can't commit to Jean and in essence, Oppie can't commit to where he stands on the destruction his greatest creation has caused. Yet, he gets away with all of it with the charisma that only Tommy Shelby possesses, and the hallucinations and flashbacks that only a Nolan protagonist goes through. But first, you need context. It's time to talk about the bomb.

An invention that awes and scares to this very day, an invention that will always be at the forefront of world politics, an invention that truly has, to an extent, prevented global conflict. A weapon that gives humanity the power to end its own race, a power befitting of the gods. Prometheus stole from the gods and gave humanity fire, and Oppenheimer gave humanity the fire that would blaze across the world, wrapping it in fear and mutually assured destruction. Nolan crafts a masterful story, like only he can, crafting the magnum opus of his work, through Oppenheimer, following him through his appointment as the Director of the Manhattan Project and his creation of the Los Alamos facility. Oppenheimer is almost considered a Messiah at Los Alamos, controlling every little detail, and crafting the deadliest weapon known to man. The music and cinematography is regal, to say the least. Everything leading upto the test detonation of the bomb (Project Trinity) is crafted to absolute perfection, as we have come to expect from Christopher Nolan. The soundplay, the lighting, the angles during the detonation cannot be put into words by my writing. And, oh, the detonation, itself, there is nothing you can do but stare open-mouthed at the screen at the magnanimity of the blast. It is cinema, as it is meant to be; something that captivates, something that holds your heart hostage, something that blows up every sense in your body.

The successful bombs are then carted away, ready to take the lives of more than 250,000 Japanese people. And we are left with a scene of Oppenheimer standing at the boundary of the Los Alamos facility, alone in the sunlight, having crafted his masterpiece. The bomb is then detonated and here is where Oppenheimer's dilemmas and my problems with the movie begin. Nolan's Oppenheimer can go through the major panic attacks having visions of dead Japanese soldiers yet having the American bravado to say “We don't know what the results of the bomb are, but I'm sure the Japanese didn't like it”. There is something about Oppenheimer that I feel that the movie couldn't resolve, for as much as Nolan likes black vs white characters, his writing of characters unfortunately rests in the gray. Be it Teller and his relationship, as well as the entire debacle on the Super Bomb (hydrogen bomb for you nerds), or his relationship with his own wife, a lot is left to be a desired about how he really feels about things. And Nolan keeps doing this, yes we see a lot of science and we see a lot of really cool Easter eggs that will make you unnecessarily proud of yourself when you spot them, but it's just, if his characters had a little more depth than going into flashbacks about events, maybe just maybe we could see Oppenheimer the way Nolan wanted us to.

The movie eventually became a tale of how Oppenheimer built the bomb to Oppenheimer vs Strauss. Nolan's Batman-esque protagonist vs Nolan's carefully crafted Batman-esque hero has to go through a shattering and scathing closed trial about his AEC security clearance, having already been ostracized about his role with launching the bomb once the Germans had already surrendered, facing betrayals, and criticism on his position, regarding the hydrogen bomb, or the Super, as is affectionately called in the movie, and in here, lies another of Oppie's dilemmas. Oppie is unsure in 1945, but in 1949, he is conflicted more still, and therein lies the the problem. I think his role and dilemmas can be best described in the scene where he meets President Truman after the Japan bombings, where he admits to feeling like having blood in his hands. Truman hands him his handkerchief and tells him to wipe it off, and tells him that history is going to remember that he dropped the bomb and not Oppenheimer. Herein lies the conundrum, Oppenheimer thinks that he is Los Alamos, and ultimately he is the bomb, personified. Yet, history will remember otherwise. This is why I am extremely happy that a movie with him as the focus was made, Oppenheimer is a complex character, and even though a lot of his flaws were overlooked, the Father of the Atomic Bomb deserves the attention of a world so perilously close to war and conflict. A message as to what science and what people can accomplish if they set their minds to it.

I love you all. Stay hydrated.

Archaeologists theorize that early humans across Asia and Europe would sew fur and skin clothing with needles made of antlers and threads made of animal sinew. An art with such humble beginnings has found its way into every moment of our lives. Thirty seven thousand years after the first human sewed themselves a piece of clothing to fight off hyperthermia on a cold winter night in Europe, another performed a simple suture on an open gash on a human shoulder in Egypt, saving another life. Humanity has since trekked a long way to develop a wide variety of stitches – for a wide varity of applications. Clothing and surgery are probably the biggest industries that uses the skill of sewing but related industries like taxidermy, book binding, fashion accessories, soft toys, beddings, upholstery also use some particular sewing methods. Whether it is a continuous stitch, discontinuous or a combination of two, all of the places they belong in, all the pieces of flesh or fabric they hold together is determined by one simple thing: tensile strength.

The “pulling force” that each stitch applies on the stitched medium and the thread needs to find the perfect balance. Tight stitches will lead to puckers – a bane we've moulded into a boon and created the perfectly easy way to create texture in fabrics. Embrace the pucker further and you end up with ruffles! How ingenious! Stitches when too loose will barely hold your fabrics together. Yet again, we found a way to make lemonade out of the metaphorical sewing lemons and invented the basting stitch! Finding the perfect tension while hand sewing is like the story of Goldilocks- it takes time, practice and observation to find the tension that’s just right. The main way to regulate the tension in your thread is to observe the way it feels when you pull on it by pressing your thumb of the fabric+thread junction. Another way of regulating the tension is to find the right length of thread. I find waxed thread that just reaches above my shoulder to be the perfect length for book binding, unwaxed polyester thread that reaches just till my shoulders to be the right length for hemming and joining stitches, embroidery thread that reached right beyond my forearm to be the right length for embroidery. A simple continuous stitch can hold a teddy bear from spilling it's stuffing and a human from spilling their guts. Many would call this a morbid juxtaposition but I find beauty in it. Sewing is often overlooked as an art form, or maybe it is overtook by its prettier sibling, crocheting in recent years. The true skill in sewing is to learn to make “tension” obey your instructions.

The two most basic stitches to play around with (specially if you're learning to sew by hand for the first time in your life) are : * Straight stitch / run stitch – lay your material down. Use your needle as though it were a dolphin jumping in and out of the waves of the ocean, only your fabric is the ocean. You will soon recognise that this is not the best way to stitch fabrics that unravel at the ends. That's when you experiment with different hems (Check out French hems). * Back stitch – again, lay your material down. Use your needle dolphin to go into the fabric and come up for air. Once you're up, backflip to the exact middle of your last dive and come up for air again. And there you have it, a continuous stitch that is a little more secure.

(Tell you a secret, back stitches are one of the strongest hand sewn stitches to exist! It doesn't unravel easily and is easy to repair.)

There's a lot more to sewing than meets the eye. Once you know how to sew you'll have to learn posture and lighting to work in. If you're taking up sewing as a hobby, remember it is an art and it deserves your respect.

Not a day goes by, when I don't feel alien in this skin that is supposed to be mine. This skin doesn't belong in places set by those in power. This skin has to prove its purpose and capabilities to simply exist. The moment you acknowledge it, you condemn yourself to a life of tyranny and suffering.

Everything will be alright.

Your identity becomes such a pretense, you cannot realise where it started, you cannot understand what is real. Questioning becomes so frequent you question your entire existence when you breathe freely for a single second. How can you live with someone else, when you can't live with yourself? Were you ever meant to belong anywhere?

Everything will be alright.

I have heard myself asking “am I temporary to everyone; permanent to myself or permanent to everyone; temporary to myself” Motionless, you feel the rot curling up on your skin, desperate to break free. The world is moving so fucking fast, people are changing so goddamn fast, things are exchanging so terribly fast “there's not enough time, or I'm just wasting my time”, you shout into winds, that will lead where you want to go.

Everything will be alright.

You may not consider yourself to be very good or directionless in your pursuit, but its okay, youre still learning. Trained to be a hardened old soul, your heart is still a cherubin, untouched, and it dares to dream. You are seen, you are loved. Yes, they hurl abuses of confusion and faux disgust, but they never could see the beauty you were able to see in yourself. You've got the whole world in your pocket, child.

Everything will be alright.

A blog which is community-owned (right now, just me) and operated. Non-Profit. Exists purely for the sake of providing a safe space to write for the community.

What Community?

The Queer community. Focusing on the trans experience of their world.

How do you know who is queer?

I don’t. That’s why the blog will always stay invite-based. I invited queer people I know. Next, users get to decide who they let in. You will be inviting people in. I trust your judgement.

Do the members need to maintain a tone or something?

Nope. Unless you put in your legal name, who will know it is you? Use that anonymity wisely. Maybe make seventeen blogs for all seventeen of your personalities with different languages, dialects, and word associations. The sky is the limit. I always wanted to start a mysterious blog where I’ll talk only in binary and Morse code. Maybe I’ll do that now once I’m free.

What is your vision for the blog?

None. The community members get to decide that. I am a facilitator. I had the know-how, so I did it. I needed a blog for myself, so I decided, why not make it available for others? You are the writer, dream up a vision and make other writers agree with you.

What about hosting costs?

It’s currently about INR 3500 to host all services minus the human labour cost. This specific blog is hosted on a 2 CPU + 2 GB RAM system, with 60 GB of storage. We have 1000 GB of Bandwidth for data. I host this blog on Digital Ocean, and I pay for extra protection. The cost is expected to go up when the blog needs more storage. I also intend to host an image-sharing service later if there is a demand. That will drive up the cost as well.

How will you pay for it?

So far, I am paying for it out of my pocket. But I have some ideas. I am also publishing books, and profits from that will be diverted to maintain the blog. I also intend to sell merchandise to recoup some of the costs as well. And beyond that, I am collecting subscriptions and donations via https://wree.quest. I have another website, which can be accessed at https://daxayoni.com, that exists to aggregate all my official publications. However, https://daxayoni.com/ will never post any article from https://daxayoni.blog.

How about the writers?

Glad you asked. You should be able to edit the styling of the blog and add custom headers and footers that stay the same in all your posts. Add your UPI address or QR code so people are able to support you directly. You can also set up Patreon or buy me a coffee to collect donations as well.

All the blogs also have web monetisation enabled. Web monetisation ensures that every time someone visits your blog, you get paid a small amount of money. It’s in its early days, so not a lot of users, but this is being proposed as a web standard. Once that happens, you can get paid without ads. You can be an early adopter with us to ensure your right to get paid for your honest work. We are also not Google searchable or trackable, and we also have no trackers beyond as stated in the privacy policy. We also can’t see anything about a user except their username, the physical space their content is consuming, and their public blogs. That’s it.

That’s it?

That’s it. If you wanna know more, you can always reach out to me. My socials are available at https://wree.quest

There are no drugs now to numb the pain Sleep which beckons me deeper into oblivion has been withdrawn by constant company and chatter that goes on around me. I do not truly hear it, or understand it as I sit and stare at the macabre forced smiles. Their smiles and consoling words, like blades some blades are funny some cause history And history is every second in time. but the others, they have this tendency they lurk in the shadows a phantom of a shadow you don't know if you have them or if you need them or that it is a part of you. Where are you I wonder, will you still come for me? I would go happily just now, Even though the vital and living hands of so many try to hold me to this place, I would fly to you my love just to feel your embrace. I have read too much poetry of late. Perhaps I should share with you... Maybe you would find me there Just like we used to.

That being said, use the syntax mentioned below as the first sentence of a new post:

# Title of your post goes here

your body or other headings go here... 

The title of this post uses the following syntax:

# How to add **Titles** to your posts

Remember that it has to be the first sentence of the blog to be counted as the Title of the post.

If you want to know more about how to format your posts, you can read our markdown formatting guidelines by clicking this link here.

Convince me with a song To long for what you want me to long Sell me myself Everybody take your pound of flesh

Convince me with a song To hope for what you want me to hope for Buy me my time Everybody go ahead and dine

Convince me with a song To wait for what you want me to wait for Love me more than myself Nobody waits this long for help

feels like crossing paths with a troll under the shade of a post that generalizes my gender's position in the world as nothing but a tool You say the main purpose of a woman's life is to have children and wish you were aborted You'd rather give benefit of doubt to Andrew Tate than to all the women he hurt You'd rather believe Eve was “made” for Adam than believe they are one being seperated by loneliness

When the padestel we built for people isn't strong enough to hold their humanity and they fall We must not strangle them with the garland of fantasy, frame them, hang them with the accusation of not being “woman enough”

তোমার নামে আমার যত উল্লাস তোমার নামে আমার হাথেখরি তোমার নামে আমার গালাগাল দেওয়া তোমার নামে আমার চিৎকার করে হুংকার দেওয়া তোমার নামে আমার মা এর কাছে কান্না তোমার নামে আমার ভয় পাওয়া বেদনা |

তোমার নামে আমার জন্ম তোমার নামে আমার মৃত্যু আমার ভালবাসা, আমার উচ্ছনে যাওয়া স্মৃতি আমার পড়ে যাওয়া, আমার উঠে দাড়ানো আমার বাড়ি তোমার কাছে, আমার বাড়ি তোমার নামে আমার ফেরত হওয়া তুমি |

তুমি হলে আমার কাঠগড়ায় দাড়ানো তুমি আমার না ঝুঁকে দাড়ানো তুমি আমার রক্তাক্ত শরীরের মিথ্যে তুমি আমার প্রেমের আদরের কাহিনী তুমি আমার বুকের পাথর তুমি আমার জলসার ছবি।

তুমি মাইকেল এর মধুসূদন হয়ে বাড়ি ফেরত তুমি সত্যজিৎ এর চা এর কাপ তুমি টেরেসার নীল শাড়ি তুমি দীঘার সমুদ্রের ভীড় তুমি কবির প্রথম প্রেম

তুমি তো মা, তুমি আমার ট্রান্সিশন তুমি আমার রক্ষাকবচ তুমি আমার তলোয়ার তুমি আমার লাল আকাশের নিচে ছুটে বেড়ানোর লাইসেন্স, তুমি আমার লাল রক্তের ভাষা।

তুমি আমার রক্ত, তুমি আমার কান্নার কবিতা। তুমি আমার বন্ধুর ডাক, তুমি আমার মৃত্যুর গান, তুমি আমার আকাঙ্ক্ষা, তুমি আমার সময়ের ঘড়ি। আমি তোমার কাছেই ফিরি, তুমিই আমার মা।

Do you know you can use markdown in the WhatsApp chat, to make text bold, italic, strikethrough, or monospace?

How to use Markdown?

Markdown is human-readable. Which means, you just need to use symbols that we regularly use in our daily digital conversations, but not necessarily while writing ideas. You can use other text editors or note apps before writing on here, to practice.

We can see how it works below:

Headings

You can create six variations of headings using the Pound (#) symbol. You need to use it once before the sentence followed by a space. The number of Pounds determine their hierarchy. For example:

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
##### Heading 5
###### Heading 6

The above command will render like the following:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Emphasis

To create bold, italic, or strikethrough text, you need to use three symbols. Asterisks (*), Underscores (_), and Tilde (~). Using a single asterisk or underscore makes the text italics, whereas using double asterisks or underscores makes the text bold. For example:

*This is in Italics*
_This is also in Italics_
**This is in Bold**
__This is also in Bold__
_This is in **Bold** and Italics_

The above will be rendered as:

This is in Italics This is also in Italics This is in Bold This is also in Bold This is in Bold and Italics

To use strikethrough, you need to use two Tildes

~~This is Strikethrough~~

As usual, it will render as: This is Strikethrough

Note that if you do not close the emphasising like a bracket, the style will continue.

Lists

We have a few options to create different kinds of Lists. For Ordered lists, you can use Numbers followed by a period like so:

1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
4. Item 4

For an Unordered list, you can use single Asterisk (*), single Hyphen (–), or a single Plus (+) sign followed by a space to create unordered lists. You can see example below:

• List number 1
• List number 2
• List Number 3

To create a nested list, you use indentation by pressing the tab key in the next line where you need to nest the item. Other syntaxes follow as usual. An example is as follows:

1. Top Item 1
   1. Nested Item 1
      1. Sub-Nested Item 1
         • Sub-Sub-Nested Item 1
         • Sub-Sub-Nested Item 2
         • Sub-Sub-Nested Item 3
      2. Sub-Nested Item 2
      3. Sub Nested Item 3
   2. Nested Item 2
      • Sub-Nested Item 4
      • Sub-Nested Item 5
2. Top Item 2
3. Top Item 3

You can keep them nested as much as you want.

Links

To be honest there are three kinds of links we will be dealing with, and two ways of showcasing them. Any text links can be put as a link as long as they're accompanied with the 'https://'. They will render as clickable links. We encourage this as it shows the complete link, making it transparent.

https://daxayoni.blog is an example.

However if you want to hide the link behind clickable custom text, then the syntax is,

This is a [Custom Link Text](https://daxayoni.blog)

Which will render as:

This is a Custom Link Text

As this is a writing platform, we do not allow Image and Video uploads. However using the link feature you can embed Images and Videos using the link syntax.

for an image, You need to use the link syntax followed by an Exclamation mark (!). The syntax is as followed:

![Image of a cycle](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1689085383708-8d62ccea8035)

Which will render as

Another example could be:

![Alt Text](https://i.imgur.com/nnmcBLe.jpeg)

The Alt-Text here exists as an accessible feature. In case the images do not load, or a blind person is navigating the website, they have a context of what is being shown.

To use images, you need to upload your images on imgur or imgbb or unsplash or similar photo hosting services that allow you to open your images separately on a new tab. You need to copy the link address to the separate image tab to use the image. Markdown images are rendered directly from the file, so you need to put in the correct address in the link. Otherwise the images will not render. We know this is an issue. We will implement a separate image sharing service in the near future if everything goes okay.

Videos are added as an embed link. You can't really add them as a regular link and it uses html. You can embed any video from YouTube as long as they are public. Here is a video about the Fediverse:

In YouTube you can click on the share button and copy the embed link and just paste it as html code just like the example below.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pX_agVMr2r0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Quotes

Quotes or most commonly known as blockquotes can be created by using the greater than (>) symbol with followed by a space.

> This is a block quote

This is a block quote

Press Enter twice to get out of the block quote editor. You can also nest quotes within quotes.

Code Blocks

To showcase codes or functions, we use the backtick (`) symbol. To showcase an inline code, we use triple backticks. These are also open ended like the emphatic syntax, so you need to close them. Example is as follows:

` ` ` This is a code block ` ` `

Which will be rendered as follows:

this is a code block

I have been using code blocks to showcase markdown syntaxes this whole time. Except the code block example itself. I nullified the syntax effect by adding a Forward Slash (\) before each of the backticks.

Tables

You can create tables by using vertical bars (|) to separate columns and hyphens (–) for the header row. For example:

| Name     | Number | Details  |
|----------|-----|-------------|
| AAAA     | 30  | Poet        |
| BBBBB    | 25  | Designer    |
| CCCCC    | 10  | Writer      |

You can also align the tables with the colons (:) as shown below

| Left Alignment | Center Alignment | Right Alignment |
|:---------------|:----------------:|----------------:|
| AAAA           | 30               | Poet            |
| BBBBB          | 25               | Designer        |
| CCCCC          | 10               | Writer          |

Footnotes

Footnotes let you add additional information or references. To create a footnote, use square brackets with a caret (^) and a unique identifier, then place the content at the bottom of the document using the same identifier inside square brackets. Here's an example:

Here is some text with a footnote[^1].

[^1]: This is the footnote content.

Here is some text with a footnote[^1].

[^1]: This is the footnote content.

You can also add links in the footnotes like below:

Here is a footnote with a link[^1].

[^1]: This is the footnote content with a [link](https://www.daxayoni.com).

Here is a footnote with a link[^1].

[^1]: This is the footnote content with a link.

Conclusion

For regular writing you would not need more than a few syntaxes. The blog is designed for a distraction free writing experience. Formatting follows the same principle. By being able to format text while typing without using any specialized menu will make some of your writing experience better and minimal. I can't wait to see what sort of things you’ll write.