Dear reader,
Hellos! I hope you are well. Last weekend I watched a very popular Malayalam film, Manjummel Boys which is a survival thriller and I enjoyed it throughly. I thought it was well made. It also led to a lot of discussions on the Sunday when we met for Art With Indu and with my Malayali friends online and I made this imagining how it would have turned out, if it was about a bunch of girls going for a trip . Malayali fanbois were so triggered and they descended on me. In the words of my friend, “Gaah, Malayali boys-intte kuru potti! (Malayali boys’ boil broke).” There were lots of people who related to the post but the trolling was relentless till late last night I figured I could limit comments and it has grown a little quiet, though it is still being shared. Surprisingly I didn’t have an anxiety attack.
There were several other conversations that I couldn’t add to the comic, like where are women allowed to cultivate long lasting friendships, they get married, have kids, need to tend to them or have to take care of parents, tend to others, have a million responsibilities and in the words of another friend they can’t just do this — “Mundu madaki poyal mathi (Can’t just fold their mundu and take off).”
I am waiting for it to die down, so I could announce my next people powered project which is to study masculinity but the sharing continues and I will wait.
Moving on, I want to share the lovely art folks made at the Sion fort (which is such a lovely spot).
Most of us ended up at the Kooler and co and had a fab meal. It was such a good weekend.
And in the week, I wrote about the film, and then the trolling started. I started by writing this bit of poetry.
To calm myself down, I started to recreate Alma Thomas’ The Eclipse. Alma W. Thomas was a pioneering artist and educator who taught us the importance of seeking beauty in the everyday. (I was seeking beauty while being trolled). Alma Thomas once stated, “Art could be anything. It could be behavior—as long as it’s beautiful.”
Thomas was born in Columbus (1891), Georgia, the oldest of four girls. In 1907, her family moved to Washington, D.C., seeking relief from the racial violence in the South. Though segregated, the nation’s capital still offered more opportunities for African Americans than most cities in those years.
As a girl, Thomas dreamed of being an architect and building bridges, but there were few women architects a century ago. Instead, she attended Howard University, becoming its first fine arts graduate in 1924. In 1924, Thomas began a 35-year career teaching art at a D.C. junior high school. She was devoted to her students and organized art clubs, lectures, and student exhibitions for them. Teaching allowed her to support herself while pursuing her own painting part time.
Thomas became an important role model for women, African Americans, and older artists. She was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and she exhibited her paintings at the White House three times. From: https://nmwa.org/art/artists/alma-woodsey-thomas/
This has been a very calming practice. You could use marble paper too, I used sketch pens.
Please look at Alma Thomas’ fabulous work here.
Coming back to the piece I wrote, I didn’t expect more than 200 people to go like it, some to agree but most to ignore it. Now that there has been relentless trolling, I have made it to meme pages, influential directors have come and liked it and most trolls have called me myr (pubic hair), female chauvinist and god knows what not, it has made me wonder :
I have said and done “far too many controversial things” or talked and worked around taboo topics and have faced zero repercussions although there has always been the fear, especially when I was drawing breasts for Identitty or putting together stories about penises for Cock-a-doodle and what I am seeing is what I want to study - The construction of Indian masculinity.
As an optimist and a freelancer, I can only hope that this will lead to more people connecting with my work and will also open doors to paid work. Also, since I didn’t have an anxiety attack, I can celebrate the good bits, like this happened:
I was to do an online Edition of zine making on A Walk in my Shoes but I am exhausted and may just do it next weekend.
Also don’t forget, here’s how you can pay towards my work.
Till then, take care.
See you.
<3
Indu
You got trolled for speaking the truth?! LOL I went through every slide you posted on IG about the film, comparing it to how it would be had it been about women. Every slide is so resonant. And why the hell are people upset? Are they saying women are safe to go out at night, or even take adventurous trips without fearing rape or even death? Hang out with our friends so brazenly in their underwears? Leave our families behind and go carefree on such trips like it's so normal? Wow! What world are they talking about because that's certainly not the world women live in.