Trying to look beyond rainbow campaigns

The post-DEI landscape has opened up intriguing new possibilities of intersection and inclusion for transgender people

- SANDIP ROY

The building, like many buildings in Kolkata, had seen better days.

An old three-storey house, with slatted windows and trellis patterns on its balcony, faded by sun and rain.

These days houses like these are routinely torn down to become nondescript apartment buildings. The luckier ones find a second incarnation as trendy cafes that serve top-notch nostalgia alongside nondescript Americanos.

But this one is different.

Its walls have become a canvas.

Figures, larger than life-size, of ambiguous gender, gaze out on to the street from its walls. On the day I went there last week, the delicate jamdani one wore glowed neon yellow against the peach pink of the wall in the late afternoon sun. Another stood in a casually wrapped grey printed sari, fist raised in the air as if captured in mid-chant. An old marching slogan ran along the borders of the grey sari—Aamar shorir, aamaar mon, door hotho rajshashon (My body, my mind, stay out of it, state). On the other end of the wall, a figure in sunshine-yellow bandhej looked out from between two louvered windows, the building’s drain pipes running across the face. In between under an open window, was a figure with red flowers in their hair, a golden tikli in their parting, zari running along the creamy tussar sari, dressed as if ready for some celebration.

The figures depicted transgender lives, portraits of real-life queer people, says artist Archee Roy, who worked on the mural. But the clothes they wore told different stories—of textile and craft.