To read Saeeda Bano’s supremely candid, flamboyant, and emotionally charged narrative of her extraordinary life is to launch oneself on a roller coaster ride of high emotional drama that has its own moments of tragedy and comedy. Intense, funny, heart-breaking and inspirational all at the same time, Saeeda Bano’s story is the story of a woman who dared to break taboos.
Isn’t it so difficult to write? Have you ever seen an introduction or a preface written for a feast, or for a treasure trove for that matter? How do you introduce such things… without revealing the secrets?… without robbing the thrill of reading the original pieces?… without repeating the oft-repeated?
We live in a country where too many of children’s realities include not having money to buy what they need, walking long distances to collect firewood, going out to fish for their evening meal, or not having a dry corner to sleep or sit in the house when it rains. These life experiences often include incidents of being displaced by those in power, or being discriminated against by the institutions that are meant to protect, like schools, police, judiciary, health services, local governments
The idea that the child is asexual has been accepted as natural and atemporal for the entire history of modern childhood. Social and moral norms deem that not only families and child-focused institutions, but rather society at large reacts strongly to children’s participation or interest in sex. The current discourses on sexual abuse overarchingly influence family and educational practices
There is a strange conflict in me as a queer trans writer and a queer trans reader of children’s books when I think of books I’d like to see written, published and read. As a reader, I want to see an explosion and not just a disruption. If I am allowed to dream of books, then there is no need for me to dream small. As with many of us marginalized due to the various structures of society like caste, class, language, gender, religion, region, ethnicity, ability, neuro-normativity, sexuality, to name a few, we have very little space to dream and to articulate our desires and dreams.
In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister and launched a far-sighted tech policy which subsidized and allowed the liberal import of personal computers. A PC at world prices was prohibitively expensive and still out of reach for most middle-class urbanized Indians. The subsidy and easy terms for a loan allowed many to own a chunky PC and institutions also gradually started converting.