On January 18, 2025, Varta Trust’s mental health peer counsellors organized a community dialogue called ‘Queer Worldmaking in the Face of Conversion Therapy’ at Kalinath Angan in South Kolkata. A report on the dialogue (Queer Worldmaking as a Form of Resilience) was published in the February 2025 issue of Varta. The authors of this series of articles participated in the dialogue as speakers. Meera Dhebar, a researcher and therapist based in Canada, was visiting Kolkata. She co-presented with Aritra C., a clinical psychologist and doctoral researcher based in Kolkata. This article series, based on email exchanges between the authors after the dialogue, is their way of extending the conversation on queer worldmaking into the pages of Varta. Look out for the series over the next few months.
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Dear Aritra
I am curious to see where this exchange leads us, and am glad that you are open to this idea. After having such important conversations while I was in India, I am glad to find time to reconnect and talk about our experiences.
This last trip to Kolkata was so incredibly meaningful, and I still smile when I think of how a letter I wrote to Counsel Club in 1995 was able to lead to our meeting in 2025.
In so many ways who we are, the lives we have led, and the disciplines in which we are now located are so vastly different.
I was born in Canada and have lived my whole life here, but have always felt a deep connection to the country of my parents’ birth, and a longing to be part of Indian culture. I have returned to India many times throughout my entire life, as a child, teen, and adult. However, a lot of the connection was broken by wanting to be in queer relationships and part of the queer community in Canada. I never felt fully seen and understood in any one place at one time, and often did not know how to reconcile the different parts of me, seen, unseen, and unknown.
When we first met and talked online, we were both surprised at how we were facing similar challenges and issues in our professional and academic work. When we came together in person for the Varta Trust event on January 18, 2025, we again spoke and presented as if we have been co-teaching for years. I particularly liked an excerpt from a report on the event written by Meghjit Sengupta and Surjo Pramanik. Meghjit’s take on the event as the moderator of our dialogue captured the experience well: “How do people go about with queer worldmaking, how do they find that one minute of solace, and how do they try to expand that one minute into several were a few of the major takeaways from this event for me. Worldmaking through friendships, conversations, music, and safe space constructions on an everyday basis coloured the conversation as Meera and Aritra exchanged glances with me and with each other.”
Because sometimes in this very cis-heteronormative and heteropatriarchal world steeped in discourses of othering, a few moments of solace in being seen can provide enough joy to carry us through the moments of isolation and disconnection. I consider our gathering on January 18 an example of this, and was glad to have you by my side.
In solidarity
Meera
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Dear Meera
It is lovely to hear back from you, especially after we have both had some time and space to look back at the memories we made.
I really enjoyed the time that we spent together, however little it was. I go back to the memories we made after the event on January 18, at the rooftop pub that overlooked an amazing skyline. They are going to shut down rooftop cafes and pubs in Kolkata soon. The municipal orders have been out. I am glad I could visit What’s Up Cafe before it shut down. I had heard so much about it from multiple sources.
Meeting you was sobering as you have navigated queerness in a very different timeline. This fascinates me!
I have dearly missed queer elders while growing up. This is perhaps something you would resonate with as well because most of us grow up in heteronormative family structures here in India. With you, I think I may have met one and I cherish that. The Counsel Club letters have always seemed to me from a distant past, a history I find myself going back to at many queer events here in Kolkata and India. However, when I conversed with you, it seemed very real, like it happened only a while ago.
Our conversation on conversion therapy intrigued me honestly. True, we are separated by geographies, by rights and opportunities available to us. However, here we are fighting the same battles, talking about them, and strategizing together. What could be better than that?
My interactions with conversion therapy survivors in Kolkata have ended up creating such rage inside me that I cannot even begin to put words to it. I have felt helpless and dejected so many times with the scenario here in India. What troubles me particularly is that some queer individuals indeed think that they are good being ‘converted’ into straight people. I wonder what depths of internalized shame does that to you, and when I see conversion therapy proponents take full advantage of that, my blood boils.
Meghjit’s opening words during the January 18 event still ring in my ears: “Before experiencing conversion therapy from medical personnel, we inflict it on ourselves through conforming and forcing ourselves to echo the norms around heterosexuality, masculinity, and femininity.”
I wonder what the remedy to this is. How can we combat such depths of shame that are targeted at the self? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Warmly
Aritra
To be continued.
The space that houses What’s Up Cafe in South Kolkata today was at one time (in the 1990s and 2000s) a guest house and a popular venue for weddings. In 2000-01, Counsel Club, one of the earliest queer support groups of India, organized the first of its paid parties as fundraisers at the guest house. Read more about it here – Editor.
About the main photo: A scene from the community dialogue ‘Queer Worldmaking in the Face of Conversion Therapy’ held at Kalinath Angan in South Kolkata on January 18, 2025. Photo credit: Pawan Dhall. Email icon credit: Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash
