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. The series concludes with this article.
Read the first, second, and third articles in the series here, here, and here. In the first two articles, the authors exchanged ideas around queer worldmaking and queer elders, and discussed how to deal with the challenge of conversion therapy. In the third, they talked about learning to question presumptions – their own and those passed on through academic training. In conclusion, they touch upon ideas and emotions around moving forward with queer worldmaking. While Meera is hopeful of deeper engagement with her students and guiding them to become queer allies, Aritra talks about friendships and allyships as the essence that can help queer people cope with the precarity and loss in their lives.
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Dear Aritra
It has been many months since we have exchanged letters. For this I apologize, as I was very much enjoying our conversations. The day after I returned to Canada from Brazil, I began a one-year term teaching public health at the university, and that has occupied most of my summer, my time, and my thoughts. But in wanting to close out our dialogue for now, I started by reading through our letters from the beginning. It was lovely to return to them.
Looking back at both my trips to India and Brazil, I realize how fortunate I was to be in queer- filled and queer-focused spaces, supporting discussions, ideas, and clinical practice. While all four of my hosts in Brazil were queer professors, the talks I led to share queer worldmaking were new for many of the participants. I heard time and time again that the students did not have enough opportunity to engage in such discussions, and they were grateful that I could hold space for them.
Now in my academic programme where I teach, I have returned to what we may call ‘regular life’, and not queer-filled in the way that our hearts and spirits need. I truly appreciate what I was able to experience through my two years of post-doctoral research, as part of a queer team, led by a queer supervisor, working closely with queer colleagues.
Where do I want to go from here Aritra? I have this one-year position, and I am truly unclear. I love my small clinical practice, counselling clients, and supervising practitioners. Recently, I have been counselling a queer, racialized couple. They are beautiful, young, and in their first long-term relationship. They are eager to move through the world with love, creating a life together that is vastly different from the families they were a part of growing up. They are thrilled to be able to have someone like me as their therapist, who openly names how their lives and relationship have been shaped by racism, heteronormativity, and cisgenderism, and who gently guides them to trust their values and beliefs.
At the same time, I love teaching and finding ways to engage my students in the theories, concepts, and ideas I hold so close in my heart. I want to mentor and guide them all to be queer allies and activists. I insert queer-focused readings and teachings as I know how important it is to integrate this kind of knowledge, and how much it means to queer students. A young queer student was excited to learn queer theory after a reading on queer diagnoses and critical healing. It is in moments such as these, when I know I have inspired a student, that teaching energizes me.
So, my future is still open in many ways – with many directions and opportunities yet to unfold. And then Aritra, another part of me also wants the freedom to move and travel; to again see the wonderful people I met in Kolkata, and in Brazil.
How can you and I continue to make change, to agitate, through support and love – how can we collaborate – to build queer communities and changemakers? I will not be coming to India this year, and so will have to wait one more year till we can meet again.
Recently, I shared with you that my partner’s mother passed away and I had to come overseas to help support her through it. You sent me such a wonderful email expressing your condolences, and signed it “With love”. This touched me and brought tears to my eyes, for this speaks to our connection. We started something together Aritra, and it is not yet complete.
With my warmest wishes, and a big hug coming across the ocean to you in Kolkata
Meera
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Hey Meera
I did catch the big hug. Sending a hug right across to you!
I am glad we are picking up this exchange exactly from where we left. A lot has happened on this end too.
As you speak of your partner’s mother passing away, I am reminded of the precarity in our lives. One moment everything is fine and then it suddenly isn’t. And what is worse, it is often beyond our control.
I did not imagine that I would end up writing about death and dying. However, I was in intense and prolonged interviewing this year with a reputed digital queer magazine for an article on lack of dignity around trans deaths in India. I was mourning a friend through these conversations, who I believe I lost to structural violence on multiple levels. These conversations were through text, virtual interviews, and phone calls.
Interestingly (or not quite!), when I got the news of your loss, something resonated with me as I still grieve for my friend in the most ordinary daily moments. It struck me that most often, we take and each other’s presence for granted, till we cannot anymore. Ocean Vuong’s book title seems to perfectly capture the essence of this – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
Meanwhile, my PhD coursework is about to commence soon. It feels strange to go back to classes and lectures after a long time, now that my days are mostly about the hustle around the mental health startup I am part of and seeing clients in a row. However, I am gathering my nerves to take it on and finish the coursework.
As I keep thinking of our transient presence, I feel that ‘queer worldmaking’ shall be the thread that binds us together – no matter what we do, individually or collectively. Meera, there is such solace in knowing this that I cannot put it in words. Maybe such an effort is a disservice to the wealth of solidarity that is only felt deeply within – a solidarity in terms of a shared vision and worldview and a desire to materialize it.
I am fortunate to have known you and I wish we can make the most of our acquaintance. Yet, I do not want us to be frenzied into a laborious pressure to do things, as the world often demands. On that note, let us halt our exchanges for some time and soak in life on our own terms. Maybe, we can pick up our thread again in the future and see what we can do together again.
Till then
Aritra
Concluded.
About the main photo: A glimpse of queer worldmaking from the feedback board at the ‘Rongdhonu Mela’, an inclusive queer-trans and disabled flea market and festival organized at Taltala Ground, Kolkata by Sappho for Equality on November 22-23, 2025. Photo courtesy Sappho for Equality and Nilanjan Majumdar
Email icon credit: Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash
