Tag

Love is in the . . . memories

Vartanama, Clickhappy! Sep '16
Come autumn and they say love is in the air. Or is it in memories and thoughts triggered by scenes in another time, another place?
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Vartanama, Oct '16
Spring cleaning in any season can lead to some invaluable finds tucked away in forgotten corners. The handout below – well, excerpts from a handout – is the result of some recent random dusting of files of p...

Keep the fire burning

Vartanama, Nov '16
In childhood I remember using an assortment of toys to construct entire cities complete with houses, offices, markets, hospitals and roads busy with humans, animals and cars. Some of these ‘urban sprawls’ wo...

‘Yahan se shahar ko dekho’

Vartanama, Dec '16
Christmas is in the air, and the New Year is nigh. Given as we are to stock taking this time of the year (as if there’s not a New Year beginning every moment), can we reflect on 2016 and take away just one key...

Art in museums, films, ropes and charpoys

Vartanama, Jan '17
I think I’m passing through a happy hours phase. No, not for guzzling beer or cheap Internet services; rather this is about being invigorated by the arts in all their breathtaking range, impact and the nooks a...

Time for adult sex education?

Vartanama, Feb '17
So the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India has launched an adolescent health resource kit that includes information on sexual and reproductive health, mental health, violence, substance ...

Incremental change

Vartanama, Mar '17
Civil rights champion, political activist and poet Irom Chanu Sharmila may have lost in the recent Manipur Legislative Assembly elections. But all is not lost. Perhaps her defeat was expected, but then who said ...

Recurring dreams, random thoughts

Vartanama, Apr '17
Recurrent and vivid dreams of water have fascinated me since years, perhaps even childhood. I see water in my dreams as blue, black, transparent; still, moving, flowing; peaceful, playful, terrorizing, destructi...

One foot in the door

Vartanama, Jun '17
Adarsh Gay Bhakt, Sanskari Homo, Adarsh NRI Homo . . . a quick search on Facebook will take you to some of these posts that have been doing the rounds recently. Quite a lampooning take on queer Indi...

Planes, trains, automobiles, access and history

Vartanama, Jul '17
Four taxi and two private car trips, five bus trips, as many train rides (above and below ground) and six flights – in all I undertook 22 point-to-point journeys on a recent work and ho...

Freer, hardier, sexier

Vartanama, Aug '17
Freer, hardier, sexier! How about that as a motto for achieving a better life for everyone? A motivation where the contest is with our limitations in becoming a more just and inclusive society!
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What price vigilance?

Vartanama, Sep '17
A new media acquaintance wondered what the focus of this issue’s editorial would be. He was sure I would write about journalist Gauri Lankesh's murder. Well, he wasn’t wrong.
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Varta@50 says thank you!

Vartanama, Oct '17
Fortunate is the editor who gets to compensate the lack of inspiration for his 50th editorial with a thank you note!
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Down, but not out!

Vartanama, Nov '17
Three of the articles in this issue of Varta talk about the continued hardships faced by transgender and intersex people in India. All jab us in the eye at how far we are, as a society, in respecting the same rights that our g...

Toilets: Inclusive, safe and universally designed

Vartanama, Dec '17
To pee or not to pee – in a public toilet! Till this day any decision in this regard has sometimes to be taken even before I have left home. One of the key deciding factors is prior information on...

No Eden anywhere?

Vartanama, Jan '18
When I was asked to write the Varta editorial for this month, I was in a fix. How does one write about yet another year ending and another beginning? Should I write about the alarming levels of air pollut...

Welcome to the new Varta website!

Vartanama, Aug '16
Hasn’t the subject of gender and sexuality been done to death? Isn’t it all over the media in ever more tantalizing formats?
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Of death wish lists

Vartanama, Feb '18
Death doesn’t have to be something morbid. Especially if one considers what Rabindranath Tagore said about death being ‘completion’ and not the ‘end’ of life (or so I remember from a Hindi lesson in sc...

Little women versus patriarchy – and the winner is . . .

Vartanama, Mar '18
Morning newspapers are all about marvelling with horror at the survival challenges we as a deeply unequal society throw at our girls and women. And then I marvel some more in amazement at how so many of the girl...

When will the tide turn?

Vartanama, Apr '18
Both photographs in this article were clicked during an event organized on April 18, 2018 by Maitree, a pioneering women’s rights network in West Bengal
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State stupor in trans inclusion

Vartanama, May '17
Sumana Pramanik is a young trans woman who lives in the Nadia district of West Bengal. Keen on a legal gender identity change, she approached a First Class Magistrate for an affidavit in September 2016. This aff...

Cinema of questioning the world order

Vartanama, May '18 (long read)
The summers just got that much more intense with some gripping cinema!
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About constitutional love and great expectations

Vartanama, Sep '18

High fives and hugs yes, but the Section 377 verdict is by no means about closures!

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Far away from the madding crowds?

Vartanama, Oct '18

Shampa Sengupta stayed away from pandal hopping but had a room with a view this Durga Puja

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What’s with the pacific calm?

Vartanama, Nov '18

Post-Section 377 verdict, where’s the impatience to demand more rights, asks Pawan Dhall

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Alienation, mindfulness and the New Year

Vartanama, Dec '18

Some ruminations as 2019 takes off from where 2018 never stopped . . .

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'Lyadh'!

Vartanama, Jan '19

What better way to avoid a tedious editorial than to write about lyadh?

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How’s the ‘josh’?

Vartanama, Feb '19

Debjyoti Ghosh on why we must #SayNoToWar

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Chennai flashbacks

Vartanama, Mar '19

Sisters (1994-95) was one of the first queer activisms in Chennai, remembers Pawan Dhall

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Varta is registered as a charitable trust in Kolkata with the ADSR Sealdah, District South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, with number IV – 00322 of 2014, and with the Income Tax Department with number CIT (Exemption), Kolkata/12AA/2017-18/A/10033.
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