This year, at the juncture when I was thinking what will be my future after the ALF (Alternative Law Forum) research work, a friend suggested the OPEN SPACE Fellowship for Civil Society and Youth Outreach by CCDS (Center for Communication and Development Studies, PUNE). I applied for the fellowship. While working on the fellowship given by ALF, I was feeling the need for creating our own histories, our trans stories and our own experiences to be documented by ourselves. This I felt especially when I was writing and rewriting the chapter on Female to Male trans people; how we get invisiblized because we do not have a legitimate history or mythological back up, how our histories are written by people who may or may not empathize with us and if we are written, how we are made exotic. It was a close friend who recently asked me if she could document my life in a day from morning 6 to next morning 6. I felt weird as to why I was asked like this. I felt I am not different from anyone in this country. I too wake up at my own time, brush my teeth, go for shower (this is slightly doubtful though), do my work, watch TV, play cricket, talk to my girlfriend, talk to my friends, have lunch, dinner, snacks, etc.
This put me to think through as to what would I document if I have to document lives of marginalized genders and sexualities being one of them. This led to serious discussions with many friends who also suggested that how most of the stories documented exposes the depressed facts, not the negotiations, not the humor that is used to come out of severe painful situations, not the assertions, not the triumphs, or even simple escaping from the situations in a clever manner. And so I put up my proposal to CCDS for the OPEN SPACE fellowship based on this thought. Thanks to all my friends who have helped me write this proposal in a manner that I wanted to express. I did get the fellowship and this is the first month's work, that I am posting in this blog. This is one of the 5 videos that I have worked on.
My sincere thanks to CCDS for having selected me to this fellowship and given me a chance to do my dream work which I will keep sharing with you all.
Please do give me your feed back.
Greetings From Sunil
This put me to think through as to what would I document if I have to document lives of marginalized genders and sexualities being one of them. This led to serious discussions with many friends who also suggested that how most of the stories documented exposes the depressed facts, not the negotiations, not the humor that is used to come out of severe painful situations, not the assertions, not the triumphs, or even simple escaping from the situations in a clever manner. And so I put up my proposal to CCDS for the OPEN SPACE fellowship based on this thought. Thanks to all my friends who have helped me write this proposal in a manner that I wanted to express. I did get the fellowship and this is the first month's work, that I am posting in this blog. This is one of the 5 videos that I have worked on.
My sincere thanks to CCDS for having selected me to this fellowship and given me a chance to do my dream work which I will keep sharing with you all.
Please do give me your feed back.
Greetings From Sunil
