Olterra on Park Street was painted in colours beyond the rainbow as a strong, stirring and impactful discussion was underway at ‘Unlearning The Toxic Habits Of Stereotyping’ presented by t2 in association with Kolkata Pride and Smirnoff Lemon Pop Non-alcoholic on June 19. In the second edition of t2’s one-of-a-kind annual Pride event aimed at visibility, dialogues and inclusivity, individuals from all walks of life poured in to witness the iconic set of panellists talk about the toxicity of stereotypes, their journey and more. The panel, moderated by Navonil Das (Nil), co-initiator of Kolkata Pride and co-founder of Dev R Nil, and Anindya Hajra, co-initiator of Kolkata Pride, was packed with hope and backed with queer rage. Panellists included trans-queer activist Sudeb Suvana, Cannes 2024 Best Actress award-winner Anasuya Sengupta, clothes-maker Kallol Datta, trans queer activist and Himachal Queer Foundation initiator Don Hasar, food consultant Rukshana Kapadia and fashion designer Aditya Mohnot.
Edited excerpts from the engaging and impactful discussion…
Nil: Suvana trains people in farming... so, Suvana, when you saw people being kind of embarrassed because they were farmers, how did you tackle this stereotype?
Sudeb Suvana: The way I grew up, I realised that the security of occupation is very important for a person to stay alive. As a trans person, it is very easy for your sexuality to convert into your only identity. Being a trans person, I work with a lot of trans people but that doesn’t mean I don’t work with others. In our society, we continue to see a stringent division of occupations for men and women. In such circumstances, I wanted trans people to have a stronger grip over their professions so that could be part of their identity too. When I began, I would also have to make sure of the skills each person is equipped with and what they wanted to do.
Second, I genuinely wanted to find a profession where the division of roles on the basis of sex is absent. In India, until now farming is an occupation that does not discriminate or divide. So, we first started with mushroom farming. Funnily, this one time someone was calling one of the people working with us and when asked what they were doing, they said they were cutting vegetables at someone’s house and were just going to cook. Can you imagine that the stereotypes ran in a way that being a domestic help was viewed in a better light than being a farmer?! Today those same people proudly say we are farmers and they say the same at their houses too. But to reach here, it took a lot of time and it took us a long process to hold on to the dream, the vision very strongly.
Don Hasar, a trans queer activist from Himachal Queer Foundation shared experiences about his work, Kallol Datta makes a point
Nil: We, from within the (LGBTQIA+) community, are trying to break the stereotypes. We are trying to educate and encourage people to choose farming and multiple other professions instead of working as domestic help or asking for money on the streets. It is a very long process…
Suvana: Yes and there was another stereotype that we had to break. We discovered stereotypes in layers. Another layer was that when people chose farming over other jobs that would give them a lot of money in a short period of time, that was a challenge. To make them realise that it is the satisfaction of the job that really matters was definitely something.
Anindya: Anasuya, I was wondering that as actors, we are always expected to rely on stereotypes which derive from a maze of identities expressing themselves. In what sense then do you feel it is a reflection of truth where you continue to stay connected with who you are?
Anasuya Sengupta: What feels truthful to me while acting or performing is embodying a character. The first step I take is embracing that it is a human who I am playing, before all the divisions, which I feel shouldn’t be there but I understand that they are there. It is an attempt to pick up the noise and be where I personally would want the world to be. As I said, so many different marginalised communities apart from the queer community have had to make that noise and gather strength just to exist. It is appalling. Just my work couldn’t change it but it can change a part of it. When we talk about stereotypes, I think me being here on this panel in itself is the biggest stereotype broken.
Nil: Yes, you are here as an ally. The speech you gave at Cannes resonated with all of us in the room so, thank you for that speech. We need more allies onboard! Anasuya won the Best Actress award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year for her role in The Shameless where she plays a character of a woman who is in love with another woman. You should all definitely read the synopsis of the film and watch it.
Anasuya: Yes, I dedicated the award to the queer community across the world and all other marginalised communities. I said they are so bravely fighting a fight that they really should not have to fight. I believe in that fight and I am willing to keep making the noise. As I get older, I understand how it could work better and how it could get better. I think joining hands, being friends and standing by each other is the way forward.
Anindya: For me, the takeaways were to embody and to fortify and in a world which is dealing with war and genocide. The kind of human courage we see on display where children are being bombed in one part of the world. So it is not about textbook queerness. We fracture and rupture that conversation in so many ways. We are contesting so many human positions irrespective of gender, identity, race, caste etc.
Nil: Taking it from identities, Sappho For Equality is completing 25 years this year and we celebrated it yesterday. Someone who has been there with Sappho For Equality from the heydays is here on the panel today. Rukshana, you have been a part of the queer community and the lesbian movement for so long. What sort of stereotypes did you have to break as a food critic, food consultant, food writer, so many roles?
Rukshana Kapadia: I was born in 1972, studied in Loreto House down the road and grew up at a time when there was no Internet and the library was our only source of information. When I was around 14, I realised that when we went to all the fests, my friends were crushing on other boys but I was crushing on my friends. I did not even know what was right or wrong or what was a lesbian but I just knew I was different. Luckily, I come from a family which believes in education and equality between men and women. Possibly, because I am a little bit mad, I have always been an outgoing person. I have always been a tomboy. Like, I was given a doll when I was young and I remember throwing it out of my grandparents’ window of their fifth-floor apartment. I rather preferred cars. Being a tomboy was cool in school because I used to have a lot of people following me, unlike my male queer friends who were in turn harassed, tortured and shamed. I think I was very lucky.
That being said, as I tried to find my feet in society while simultaneously trying to comprehend who I was, it was a very lonely journey. Considering I am an absolute optimist, there were still very dark moments because you never knew who to speak to or connect with. I think it was not until I was 18, I hesitantly came out to a cousin and luckily I was met with acceptance. A lot of women my age have not been so lucky and they inspire me to be a better version of myself. Going forward, I went to work in a male-dominated industry. The F&B space continues to be one of the heavily male-dominated spaces.
Nil: There have been whispers of stereotypes behind your back. Have you encountered any of those?
Rukshana: If you are effeminate, you are always tortured and harassed and if you are very butch like me, people are afraid and they are worried until they get to know that you are just as human as them. A lot of the times when I am asked what is my religion, politics and background, I say it is just about being kind and being human.
Anindya: What is the takeaway from what people understand about our identities? It’s also a certain kind of reading is never neutral, I would say. All our readings are sort of culture-specific. They are rooted in a certain time and space. I kind of relate to somebody who was asking me this question as to how has the city changed. I mean, has the city really changed? Of course, it has. And of course, it hasn’t. So as much as we kind of navigate, you know, these like mushrooming cafes and stuff and all that, it sort of represents a certain kind of growth in the city. You also sort of encounter mindsets that haven’t really grown. So the more things change, the more they remain the same.
I go to Adi as someone who has been in a very familiar space. He has walked the first Pride Walk, the Friendship Walk, which is turning 25 this year...
Aditya Mohnot: I didn’t think it was anything courageous at that time. It was this young boy who was just excited about doing whatever he was doing. I’ve also been somebody who’s been awfully privileged in the set-up where I’ve grown up. Whether it’s my parents, whether they knew what the differences were, they just let me be who I was. Friends in school also just accepted me for who I am. Of course, there were names called and what people today would call bullying, but did I feel that? No. Was I excluded from things that they were doing? No. So I’ve been one of those privileged people.
I cannot speak for anyone else because I was not excluded from things. I did not even think of the word bullying. This is a language that I might have acquired over time and I might be using it today and as a six-year-old child who entered school or a teenager in school who was called “Mohini” did not feel it because when the entire school would scream “Mohini” they would be cheering me at least! That’s the way I have always heard it. If that was their perspective that’s theirs but not mine so I just felt more empowered, you know, (by) the fact that everyone could call me “Mohini” on the stage and (I would) do whatever I was doing so I’ve never really felt excluded ever. And I know this comes from a very very liberal space, not everyone experiences it and from what I’ve heard over time and experiences, it’s very very different from most of the other people.
Anindya: It’s also what meanings we had made then and what meanings we have made over these years. It’s like how back when I sort of look at my experience of being bullied and sort of singled out in school, in an all-boys school and growing up as gender variant, we didn’t have words like trans etc. back then. I feel like now I have made sort of peace with a lot of my schoolmates. So we have a school group here and those bullies then are now my biggest protectors. The change comes from within, the change comes from who we are to be able to find a voice and that shift has happened somewhere down the line.
The panelists exchanged views in an engaging discussion
I want to take my next question to Don who works in a very different setting. A lot of the queer dialogue and conversations are also stratified and get fixed in certain spaces. The new generation deals with different words and pronouns. So Don, I was just wondering, would you say that the presence of a stereotype sort of is like a currency which allows historically excluded communities a sort of a safe passage? Given the context in which you work do you think you can turn stereotypes on its head to give you a strategic advantage?
Don Hasar: Everything is very context-specific, right? And even culture would differ from space to space. And I work in a space where, you know, this vocabulary that we are using here with so much ease, the words queer or trans or LGBTQAI+ or all the other words that we use, these words do not exist. So what do you do with lives and desires when you don’t have the words? They still exist, right? Words will be there, words will not be there. New words will come. And in a region which is very challenging to live in geographically, you know, it’s very harsh climate for six to seven months in a year. It’s difficult to get out. It’s raining. It’s very cold or it’s very hot. There’s a mobility issue. Public transport is not available. It’s not that well planned. What do people do who want to express themselves?
So I think in a space like that where resources are very few, there’s also a sense of acceptability. Because over there, when we talk about community, I mean, for me, the community would not be just a queer, trans community. A community would be formed of everybody who lives there. The entire village over there is our community. And again, I think you spoke about allyship. Allyship is very important in our work. And A, we can’t cancel out people every time they’re wrong because then you’ll end up working alone. Because, of course, these terms, people are not used to these terms over there. Over there, we talk in Hindi or Pahari, whatever we talk about. So when we take sessions, even if we’re talking about the laws, legalities, and discourses, we don’t use English.
The interactive session saw the panelists take some questions from members of the audience
And B, I really believe that it can’t be just any one particular marginalized community’s responsibility to only talk about that. That’s where allyship comes in. Conversations constantly are based on just the need to survive... they understand when you have very less resources you tend to focus more on the similarities that you have than the differences. I’ll just illustrate this with an example, so where I stay, the nearest town is around 15-20km, so if I need to buy something, I’ll have to go to the person selling something from the shop next door. And in most cases what happens is we do not share the same ideologies, (we have) very different ideologies but if I don’t buy from them I’ll have to travel for 20km and if he doesn’t sell his things to me his shop will be shut down. So we accept each other with all the differences in ideologies with the hope that we can have a dialogue about being potential allies and let’s see each other as humans. You might not understand my transness, my queerness, whatever expressions I have but you understand other aspects of me.
Anindya: To come to Kallol, whose practice is kind of placed at a juncture where they have been dealing with these ideas of clothes and clothes-making initially, because that’s been their training and to the space that you’re occupying right now where you work within cohorts that have had their own sense of stigmas. And I’m sort of interested in asking you a question about fast fashion because it has its own sort of footprints, and you can sort of expand when you respond. Do you see where the question of cuts and patterns or colour, or something even as objective sounding as size, and I sort of see this as a trans person constantly being challenged by sizing charts, you know, I like particular footwear which I wouldn’t find in the kind of section that you usually sort of want me to go and buy from, so you know this question on size and these are all based on some kind of an index, an index that’s based on and which caters to a point of some global reference? There is a certain standardization of these ideas. Does the existence of these measures align themselves to certain stereotypes of body types, race, gender, etc?
Kallol Datta: I think the most meaningful thing I did with work, with my clothes-making practice, was to leave the fashion industry in 2018. Because I mean as with every other sector in the country, we keep on rewarding mediocrity. How are you even going to approach drafting a pattern for a basic Indian body type when all you’ve learned how to do is an American or a mainland European body? You go back to the traditional, right? Masters who’ve learned the craft without going to a school. Yeah, I mean that’s like a really indigenous way of crafting, like let’s say the way sari blouses are made or things like that on a larger scale, like when we talk of hyper fashion or hyper-fast fashion you’re not talking about Shein and Zara and all of that but you’re also talking about designers in India who are churning out clothes which nobody’s buying and are just constantly adding to landfills. Because that’s how the money powers always follow the money trade. And when all of that is happening, we realise we live in a capitalistic world. And there’s no coming out of it. So rather, we apply for grants and fellowships, and we take the capitalist money and we make meaningful work, which harnesses the now and captures what’s happening now in our lives.