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Juice Magazine’s ‘issue two: mind and body’ investigates the impacts and associations of mental health, wellbeing, the b

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Juice Magazine CIC issue two mind and body. 2

mind and body. Dear readers, Juice Magazine’s issue two: mind and body aims to reflect on the impacts and associations of mental health, wellbeing, the body, racialised or gendered trauma, the powerful potential of self-care and community healing. We are doing this through the lens of South Asian creativity. As theorised by Nirmal Puwar (2004), white supremacy and structural racism have existed within the body throughout history, pervasively traumatising and oppressing the minds and bodies of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour) as individuals and communities. Given the disproportionate and increased infliction of illness, loss, grief, and racism on South Asian diaspora populations as a result of COVID-19 through 2020 and 2021, this issue responds to clear demands for an in-depth dialogue, and action around the systematic and structural racism that implicates the minds, bodies, and lived experiences of our people. In particular, we want to centre the voices of those who are further marginalised by intersecting social identities and socio-economic status’ (Crenshaw, 1989) such as class, gender, sexuality, location and age with race and ethnicity. This issue seeks to highlight the powerful impact of community and collective care, both digital and physical, for marginalised groups within the South Asian diaspora. We’ve dissected and explored these topics through a variety of mediums including poetry, personal essays, interviews, illustrations, photography and other experimental ways. The creation and facilitation of space for marginalised South Asians aims to not only resist the structures of oppression which seek to exclude us, but to create space for us to exist, to find joy, and celebrate our art, culture, and community. We hope that this issue of Juice Magazine and our wider digital collective in some way facilitates this representation, collaboration, and celebration of us within and beyond the diaspora. In love and solidarity,

Evelyn Miller, Raeesah Patel & Adeeb Abdul Razak Co-founders of Juice Magazine CIC

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about. Juice Magazine CIC is a South Asian collective and magazine facilitated by and for creatives, writers, and artists from the South Asian diaspora. Through modules of art, culture and writing, we aim to reflect the multidimensional experiences of South Asians across Britain and the greater Western world. The South Asian diaspora’s nuances are not often reflected in the mainstream media and creative spaces, but rather perceived through misinformation or stereotypes. This makes the assimilation of the South Asian identity synonymous with whiteness, where ‘western’ cultural identities are commonly seen as a marker of ‘progress’ for multicultural Britain. Juice aims to disrupt such themes of misrepresentation in the South Asian community by giving a platform to various voices; celebrate expression, and champion the diaspora that celebrates its heterogeneity. Our key aims are to facilitate opportunities, representation and collaborative endeavors for South Asian creatives and writers. We intend to achieve this with both our magazine and digital platform.

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meet the team. Juice Magazine CIC is a volunteer-led creative endeavour facilitated by a team of young South Asian creatives and writers based across the UK and Canada. As well as working on Juice, the team are studying, freelancing, working full-time, and working on other social justice projects.

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Evelyn Miller (she/her) Creative Director, Co-Founder Bristol, UK

@evsmiller @evs_1

Evelyn Miller is a multidisciplinary creative currently based in Bristol. She is a sociology and quantitative research methods student at the University of Bristol. She also works as an administrative assistant at SPIN (Secrecy, Power and Ignorance Research Network) and is a freelance project manager for IntegrateUK, a charity that works towards equality and integration by supporting young people with their learning. Evelyn’s primary aim is to combine her sociological imagination with creative collaborations which facilitate space for representation, mentorship and learning for young and underrepresented creatives. Through her work with Integrate UK, Evelyn is an ‘EmpowHER’ ambassador (a project led by UK Youth in partnership with the British Red Cross and Young Women’s Trust) where she has worked with young people aged 10 to 15 to develop their confidence and lead social change. Evelyn has facilitated equitable opportunities for South Asian creatives in her role as creative director at Juice Magazine. At Juice, she oversees the curation and editing process of the magazine. She also manages Juice’s external events and partnerships and has successfully secured funding for various projects and managing Juice’s finances.

Raeesah Patel (she/her) Artistic Director, Co-Founder Blackburn, UK

@raelachowski

Raeesah Patel is a graphic designer and art director based in Blackburn. Her most recent role as communications and marketing assistant at Lancashire BME Network (an organisation ensuring marginalised communities gain access to multiple opportunities) provided the opportunity to work alongside young people (aged 13-22). She co-created the branding for the ‘Your Best Friend’ project, in partnership with 11 organisations, which aims to support and help identify young women, girls and non-binary people who are experiencing abuse in relationships. She graduated from Nottingham Trent University (July 2020) with a first in fashion communication and promotion. Through a series of internships, she expanded her knowledge and expertise in the art of creating zines and has since facilitated multiple zine-making workshops, including one for Integrate UK’s ‘EmpowHer’ group to inspire creativity for their final project exploring body positivity. Rae continues to use her knowledge to fuse expansive design with her passion for providing spaces and uplifting creatives. Juice is a visual diary of her growth as a designer, she continues to push herself further and create eye-catching graphics that will draw people in so that the platform can continue to grow. 7

Adeeb Abdul Razak (he/him) Editor-at-Large, Co-Founder London, UK

@adeebabdulrazak

Adeeb Abdul Razak is an international floating artist based in London. His practice aims to explore his heritage and the evolution of his identity/self-preservation through performance. You can see this in his most recent works including 2022 mixtape 'Ride Or Die Right Now' with Munotida Chinyanga, 2020 Rap single ‘East Side Airlines’ alongside Yemzo Katana and the immersive audio and visual theatre experience 'KRL-LDN' at Bloc, Hackney Wick in 2019. As a graduate of BA theatre arts, Adeeb has used the knowledge he gained through his time at the University to explore the spaces that are created in the fusion of various art forms. He has worked as an associate artist/director in London and various cities in Italy with ‘state of the [art]’ — an international arts organisation facilitating interactive experiences. Working with [state] has played a huge role in the development of Adeeb’s artistry. Adeeb believes that collaboration creates the best art and sees Juice as a prime example of how people can come together. Working in unison to create a platform and magazine enriched with its own identity whilst uplifting and supporting the community by spotlighting and championing their unique expression.

Anushray Singh (he/him) Editor + Juicebox Podcast Producer Toronto, Canada

@anushray_singh

Anushray Singh is an award-winning filmmaker, media professional, educator, and writer who divides his time between India and Canada. He has received his MFA in film & media arts from the University of Windsor (2020) and B.Tech in civil engineering from the Vellore Institute of Technology (2017). His teaching, art practice and writing on film, media and South Asian cultures have been realized through affiliations across academia, digital media platforms, publications and nonprofits across India, Canada, the UK, the US, Austria, and Hungary. At Juice, he works as an editor, podcast producer and occasionally as a facilitator for South Asian centric cultural events. He has successfully worked to facilitate Juice's opinion section and 'Issue One: Being Brown'. He also co-organized the South Asian Documentary Film Festival 2021, led by Juice in collaboration with Film Southasia, University of Windsor & York Centre for Asian Research. 8

Rumana Sayed (she/her) Graphic Designer Edinburgh, Scotland, England

@rummm_s

Rumana Sayed is a multi-progressive designer. She is currently a UX/UI student in Edinburgh; she also works as a freelancer and takes great love for graphic design. She is also the host and producer for Living Leith (2021). She takes great pride in learning and talking to other people around her local area. One of her most significant accomplishments was opening her solo exhibition as a resident artist in Out of the Blueprint (2017). The project ‘Don’t Be Denied’ was a bold body of work that calls for an empowering representation of women in society. She wants to inspire and educate others through her work. The exhibition allowed her to share a body of work with a larger audience. Rumana has worked with multiple charities in Edinburgh. One of the projects she was involved with was a collaborative zine-making project with Young Saheliya (2017). The project was to give a platform to a group of young BIPOC girls and women to tell their stories in their own words. Working at Juice has become a passion project for Rumana. She believes that Juice will provide a platform and space for South Asian creatives to learn and share their work with each other.

Riah Uddin (she/her) Graphic Designer - Social Media London, UK

@imafauxpas @aimezv0us

Riah Uddin is a fashion branding and marketing graduate. She has dabbled in the creative aspects of the widely whitedominated fashion industry. With a passion to spread awareness of the desi diaspora through her graphic design and creations, Riah aspires to bring a change to the industry.

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Raez Muhamed Narangoli (he/him) Social Media Co-ordinator London, UK

@raezm99

Raez Muhamed Narangoli sees Juice as an opportunity to relearn his culture from the ground up. Being able to showcase the talent in South Asian community giving him a sense of self-worth for him to make a lasting impact alongside them. Raez recently completed his BSc in Computer Science but was inspired to pursue a career in media production, for which Juice helps him keep in touch, creatively.

Meera K. Rasiya (she/her) Social Media Assistant Leeds, UK

@meera.kaurr

Meera K. Rasiya is an arts facilitator and musician based in Leeds, UK. Growing up with Indian classical musicians as parents, Meera has been surrounded by the arts from an early age. Meera has found joy in drawing people from all walks of life in to experience the rich reserves of South Asian talent with Leedsbased organisation, SAA-uk. She is passionate about sharing the beauty and diversity of South Asian arts with the wider community. Meera is particularly passionate about supporting South Asian creatives; and with Juice, she is helping to shape a safe and understanding space for artists to feel understood.

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Prachee Mashru (she/her) Partnerships + Events Assistant London, UK

@pracheemashru

Prachee Mashru is a multi faceted media grad from Mumbai currently residing in London. After pursuing theatre and spoken word from a very young age, she quickly realised her passion which is curating sub cultures and telling stories, regardless of the medium. She has since hosted multiple events across Mumbai, worked for major brands and record labels and been a part of facilitating the NBA India Campaign. Currently, working in PR, partnerships and production spaces - she hopes to continue talking about representation and empower unheard voices.

Disha Deshpande (she/her) Content Creator London, UK

@dishdesh

Disha Deshpande is a South-Asian Queer artist, writer and curator based in London. With a background in cultural studies and race-theory, her work focuses on decolonisation through writing and visual illustration. Her research into archives such as INEVA, Mayday Rooms, Black Cultural Archives, etc inform her writing, zines, visual art and activism. From translating content for a sex-education app created in her hometown Bangalore to producing her online art shop, her influences and interests are passionate and varied. Floristry, ceramics, printmaking, and graphic design are equally hobbies and inspirations for work. Disha's approach is one of curious interrogation through 'ethical collaboration' and aims to highlight multidisciplinary approaches to amplifying underrepresented voices. Respect, fluidity, transparency, and authentic inclusion are the tenets of her work.

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mind and body

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Henna Amin

START

Please note that some artist content touches upon sensitive topics in response to the theme of mind and body. These pieces have been marked with trigger warnings (TW).

Poetry Body Scan

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Take care, give yourself time when reading.

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Rumana Sayed

Much love, Juice Team

Visual Arts - Design Feelings During Lockdown

Safiya Bashir

Opinion Piece - TW Intergenerational Trauma: Navigating Depression from the Endurance of Oppression

Iftikhar Latif

Personal Essay Brown Body: Epiphanies of our Physical Limitations

Isha Vibhakar

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Review Squid Game: Till Debt Do us Part!

44 Achal Dodia

Personal Essay - TW The Foreign Body

42 Juice + State Of The [Art]

48 Juice Takeover 82 Build-A-Zine

74 Amaani Farah

Visual Arts - Illustration Brown Eyes

72 Anushray Singh

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Brown Pages

Personal Essay Atman

Emerging South Asian Brands

Interview The Sounds of Mind and Matter

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DayTimers

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Anita Chhiba (Diet Paratha) Interview South Asian women making it happen

NM

Poetry Fabric Bones

Anisa Butt

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Poetry - TW Inside My Mind

Simran Kaur

Poetry Visual Arts - Photography Lose Yourself

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Jade Vine

Poetry - TW My therapist asks me how I’m doing and I tell her all about the time I jumped into a lake and never got out it was like a movie and I was fucking beautiful

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Priyanka Sacheti

Personal Essay - TW Practicing at Becoming Myself Again: Of PostCovid Healing and the Body as a Map

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Rasmika Naidu

Peonica Fernando

Poetry Ma Ganga

Visual Arts - Illustration Healing: Submerge, Emerge, Release

Shanaia Kapoor

Opinion Piece Who We Talk About When We Talk About Sex

Disha Deshpande

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Opinion Piece The Minds Archives | 'Queer(y)ing' Bodies

Integrate Workshop

30 Overview 36 Ryan Lanji Interview Response 54 Mind + Body Response 76 Squid Game Response 100 Workshop Review by Neisha Hussain

Heleena Tattoos Interview Skin Deep

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Neha Maqsood

Poetry (1) 'carping at borderlines' (2) 'didn’t ask for any of this'

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Ryan Lanji

Interview Creating space for Queer South Asian culture, community and dreaming

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Hope Sudarshan Glastris

Visual Arts - Digital Illustration (1) Death Wreath (2) Offering (Irresolution 03) (3) Tides of the World (4) Visionscape (Sun + Moon) (5) Summit

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Amaleehah Aslam-Forrester Opinion Piece - TW Mind + Body: Gendered Trauma and Community Healing Within South Asian Communities

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Nick Virk

Personal Essay - TW Roop Tera Mastana

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Mathushaa Sagthidas

Personal Essay / Photography தமிழ்மகளிர் தின வாழ்த்துக்கள் meaning “Happy Tamil Women’s Day”

Sanjeet Takhar Personal Essay Tokenism Soup

Nikita Aashi Chadha

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Poetry Gharā

Mehroosa Jan

Visual Arts - Mixed Media Struggle for Existence

96 Fathima Sumaiya Fazal Opinion Piece Walking Out of a Museum with a Diamond

We want to contextualize the essence of language used here by our featured creatives. The South Asian diaspora is multidimensional and spread across nations and continents. The diaspora is rich in its cultures, norms and especially socio-linguistics. We speak hundreds of languages, in thousands of accents and dialects. Our colonial history has largely made English the language of education, correspondence and profession. In this issue, like most of the submissions we receive at Juice, you will find, varying use of Englishes: British, North American and Indian. We chose not to adhere to one standard of English. As you browse through all the contents, we want you to recognize something very interesting: Brown creatives speaking a similar tongue, written in different grammatical rules, framed in different active and passive forms. We are using a colonial tongue to embolden our decolonial ways. Much love, Anushray Singh, Editor - Juice 15

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one of us have simple stories. We are as complex as all of the things that have been done to us.”

- Alok Vaid-Menon Internationally acclaimed writer, performer, and public speaker 17

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Henna (she/her) is a British Panjabi-Gujarati writer, speaker, poet and creative who explores topics of antiracism, self-love, identity and wellness and how they all intersect through her creative work. She aims to explore her own journey of self love and healing, raise awareness about social issues and inspire others to do the same. Henna has been featured in Cosmopolitan India and Stylist Magazine and numerous podcasts speaking about her experiences with body image and self love. She works to represent and uplift the voices of South Asian women through her own work, and her role as social media coordinator at community organisation, South Asian Sisters Speak. She has also written articles for gal-dem, Asian Woman Festival and Not Your Wife, and also runs her own blog, Henna Speaks.

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body scan Meditation and mindfulness have been really transformational practices in my life, and have played a big role in my relationship with my own body and sense of identity, as well as in establishing a connection to my ancestors. So, this piece is an insight into some of the things I’ve been able to work through with the lens of a body scan (a type of meditation).

inhale / relax exhale / let go

inhale / air fills my belly exhale / surrender my weight to the floor inhale / let myself be supported for once exhale / let go of all the expectations

inhale / notice tension around my eyes decades of assimilation rest behind them respectability pushes against closed lids exhale / here i choose to release them both

inhale / move attention down to stiff shoulders tension + tightness that doesn’t all belong here passed down from women who shouldered too much exhale / remember i don’t have to carry it all of the time

inhale / feel the tiredness in my limbs legs heavy with journeys my feet haven’t walked not in this lifetime anyway exhale / blessed enough to rest for them too

inhale / come back to this moment thoughts hold my breath until i remember to exhale / when it all gets too much we remember to exhale /

find me @henna_speaks

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F Peonica Healing: Submerge, Emerge, Release.

First comes ‘Submerge’. You are hurt. And sometimes that is the hardest part- the realisation that maybe you are not as okay as you think. But you accept this and you understand as hard as it may be, you need to allow the pain to visit you fully in order to heal.

Next comes ‘Emerge’. You realise that you can’t heal in the same environment that made you sick, so you free yourself and allow yourself to go inwards. You realise again that you must feel everything inside you in order to fully heal. Whilst your emotions are flowing through you, you are surprised about how much you are learning about yourself.

find me @bypeoni | www.peoni.co.uk

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Fernando a “

Based in London, Peonica Fernando (she/her) is an illustrator who takes a holistic approach to creating work that is a celebration of themes including femininity, cultural identity, mental health, wellness and self care. As her work is greatly influenced by positive psychology, she uses detail, texture and earthy tones to create a warm, natural and welcoming atmosphere to her work as well as to evoke a sense of happiness and peace. Her aim is to empower others in their identities and to promote mindfulness and community through her illustrations.

‘Healing’, is a self-reflection of the stages that I tell myself to go to in order to heal. Healing is a process that isn’t always easy to navigate but it is also essential to rid the mind and body of negative energy. In this 3 part series, the process of healing has been simplified into three major stages: Submerge, Emerge and then Release.”

Finally comes ‘Release’. Here you let go of the pain, not allowing it to consume you. You let your feelings flow through you, they have had their time. You are willingly surrendering to life and to love and choosing to be happy, knowing the whole time that you are worthy of love and tenderness.

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Rasmika Naidu Rasmika “

Rasmika (she/her) is a young queer writer and poet trying to navigate life as a South African of Indian descent. She is currently pursuing a Masters in English literature with a focus on feminist, queer and postcolonial theory. In her free time she embroiders, paints and plays with her dog, Chase.

find me @rasmika7

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I am a daughter of the river I am this vast body of water Filled with multitudes and Overflowing with pain The blood of my ancestors Stain the water crimson Their voices fill my ears They are echoes in the night I am damaged like this river Polluted by careless men Toxic waste filling our veins Will our waters ever be clear? The banks are my comfort They hold me at night They whisper tender words Of memories far gone One day she will flow With that freedom again One day she will be The great meander she once was I dream of the sunlight Glittering over her body I dream of her cool water Covering my skin She will flow freely – In time we will heal

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Goddess Ganga is the Hindu goddess of purity and is often known as the personification of the river Ganges 23

find me @shanaia.kapoor

Shanaia Kapoor Who We Talk About When We Talk About Sex

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Shanaia Kapoor (she/her) is an English and creative writing undergraduate major with a minor in Media Studies. She is deeply interested in art, politics and particularly in the space where film and literature meet. She was born in Mumbai but has moved around a lot, developing a passion for conversations, people-watching, cultural anecdotes and the politics of spaces. Shanaia feels uncomfortable calling herself a writer but feels it may be the closest thing to establishing a name for her identity. She is creative but attributes that creativity to the people she has met and the experiences she has had. Having been published in various online publications, including The Hindu, Alma Magazine and Firstpost whilst maintaining a blog of her own titled ‘Meraki’, Shanaia hopes to have a future in the art space – be it film, journalism or creative writing.

Bollywood and female desire have historically struggled to coexist. Sex on screen, improbable in itself, has been restricted to echoing male fantasies, with women featured only through a man’s lens, regardless of the filmmaker’s gender. For years, female orgasms and sexuality have been reduced to either myths or punchlines, by men who were frightened at the prospect of being unable to understand them or dictate their terms. This manifestation of the male gaze, present in parts even today, seems to represent a common attitude towards the role of desire in cultural content and the fear of acknowledging its existence publicly. Desire is ‘dirty’, something reserved for the unhinged. Celebrated liberally in Indian mythology, with texts like the Kama Sutra and even some renditions of the Ramayana (typically in the South – any translation that was not from its credited author Saint Valmiki), sexuality went from being a hallmark of Indian divinity to being the gentry’s fatal flaw. It was no longer noble to feel desire. The realm became confined to men, marriage and monogamy, leaving women little to no agency. Films promoted the existence of a submissive female trope as a corollary to the masculine, muscular and broadchested ‘counter’ parts on screen. Either this or a ‘loose’ woman by virtue of whom the ‘poor’ man was left undone (only to recover in the very next scene or treat the rest of the women in his life like shit because of it). These men existed as heroes only in contrast to the women who loved them, not through a lover’s lens, but instead, as a student loving their guru – modestly and without the expectation of reciprocity. However, the past decade has seen sexual reclamation that has made a long-awaited entrance into the realm of film production and theory.

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It was no longer noble to feel desire. The realm became confined to men, marriage and monogamy, leaving women little to no agency."

Alankrita Srivastava clears a path for women to assert their discrepancies, desires and downfalls in a manner that upholds their integrity and makes the relatable a symptom of power and not weakness. The ageing female body, in most discourses prior to such films (feminist and otherwise), has been absent from cultural production. Older women have historically been made invisible within the realm of sex and desire. In her essay, Powers of Horror (1980), Julia Kristeva introduces the theory of abjection. She argues that a system threatened by nonconformity relies on repulsion to maintain stability and order. Beneficiaries of this threatened system feel compelled to separate themselves from the non-conforming subject in order to avert ‘contamination.’ This compulsion leads to a rejection of the looming body as ‘abject’, consequently maintaining social acceptability. The sexualisation of the ageing female body can be seen in some senses, as a practical retelling of Kristeva’s theory.

Mahesh Manjrekar’s Astitva (2000), an award-winning bilingual film, was a pioneer in this emerging brand of cinema featuring brave and complex female protagonists. With Indian actress Tabu as Aditi, a housewife sexually unsatisfied in her marriage, the film challenges existing patterns of content by exploring her character through the lens of female agency. Aditi establishes a purely physical Challenging this notion, is Shrivastava’s "The ageing female relationship with a man outside of her Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) where expected ‘devotion’ to her husband Usha Buaji played by Indian actress body, in most discourses and maternal responsibilities. Ratna Pathak, a 55-year-old widow prior to such films (feminist Groundbreaking in more ways is seen rediscovering her sexual than one, Manjrekar challenges identity, after being introduced and otherwise), has been not only the role of a wife and a to a fictional character Rosie (an mother but also the untapped absent from cultural production. unbridled converse) in the erotica and previously disconcerting niche Older women have historically ‘Lipstick Waale Sapne.’ She lives out of exploring the hidden desires of the desires she is deemed unfit to been made invisible within older women. In India, where sex call her own, at night when it is dark was still a taboo subject, Astitiva and her voice is muffled by the running the realm of sex and paved the way for the Indian audience’s tap while she expresses her lust to a desire." reception of unconventional feminist young man who has taken her fancy over stories. the phone. He later discovers that the Rosie he had been talking to, was really the 55-year-old A similar narrative presents itself in Alankrita woman who couldn’t swim and is repulsed by the idea. Shrivastava’s recent release, Dolly, Kitty Aur Voh Chamakate However, this has no effect on the tenderness of it all. This Sitare (2019) which presents a nuanced and complex take detail, in fact, confirms the idea that the story had nothing to on the desires of two unsuspecting women. They have been do with him anyway. thrust into the middle-class scramble of the redlight, rent and restitute. Set in Greater Noida, the film is busy but its central Unlike Draupadi and her five husbands (from the Indian epic idea follows Dolly, a working wife and mother of two. Much and mythology Mahabharata), Mirabai’s erotic poetry and like Astitiva’s Aditi, Dolly has an amorous affair with a younger Kerala’s strong-willed Sita, Indian cinema and specifically man, discovering that sex with her husband leaves her far from Bollywood’s women have been failed for years. With the advent satisfied. The two female protagonists are set apart by their of independent film and OTT platforms, female protagonists circumstances (marital and otherwise) but reveal common have begun to challenge the dominant notion of women’s bodies situatedness in the lust for something real. Dolly’s mother is being viewed as ‘docile,’ if understood through Foucault’s featured as an older woman having abandoned her family with ideas in Discipline and Punish (1975). Certain bodies tend to little to no trace of a guilty conscience, following the same carry the weight of expectation. They are culturally trained to thread that Manjrekar premiered. This is a film adorned with become dormant or malleable concerning external projections conversations between women about what they want, and how of fear from comfortable stakeholders benefited by the existing they want it, leaving no room for expected apologies. In this system. Breaking this anti-revolt construct of viewing women film, as well as in Netflix’s Sacred Games (2018), female desire as catalysts, directors like Majrekar, Shrivastava and Kashyap transcends hetero-normative boundaries; the gritty show set have, at least to a marginal extent, come to represent female in Mumbai’s criminal underbelly with the cultural backdrop of desire outside of the virgin-whore dichotomy and actually corruption and communalism allows Kukkoo, the prominent celebrate its complexity in ways that not only liberate but love interest of the show’s protagonist, the agency to express empower women to speak up and reclaim what is and always her own sexuality. has been, rightfully theirs.

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DISHA DESHPANDE Disha (she/her) is a South-Asian Queer artist, writer and curator based in London. With a background in cultural study and race-theory, her work focuses on decolonisation through writing and visual illustration. Her research into archives such as INEVA, Mayday Rooms, Black Cultural Archives, etc, inform her writing, zines, visual art and activism. Disha's approach is one of 'curious interrogation through ethical collaboration' and aims to highlight multidisciplinary approaches to amplifying underrepresented voices. Respect, fluidity, transparency, and authentic inclusion are the tenets of her work.

THE MIND’S ARCHIVES | THE ‘QUEER(Y)ING’ BODIES BODIES ‘QUEER(Y)ING’

What do questions of sexuality and gender identity have to do with revolutionary politics, with questions of class and political economy? How and where are the spaces for radical critique constituted when the stakes of dissent and radical struggle seem to be climbing ever higher? José Estaban Muñoz, known for their work in contemporary Queer nightlife study, says that Queer lifestyle and politics must remember the trouble of the Archive itself: “Queerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence. Historically evidence of Queerness has been used to penalise and discipline Queer desires, connections, and acts”. Queer archives are built on immaterial moments and objects made inconsequential by their context. Experiences are made mute in accounts as contextual realities of Queer text and ephemera are lost through mistranslation to the global framework of (Western) Queerness.

Shah, Svati P. “Sedition, Sexuality, Gender, And Gender Identity In South Asia”. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, no. 20, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5163.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. United Kingdom, NYU Press, 2009.

Indigenous Queer experiences are rarely seen as markers of historical sexual diversity and liberation, instead, they are perceived as indicative of the chaos of religious syncretism and eroticism. Both are brought about by lack of Western propriety, aka, a symbol of degeneration. While political modernity indulges in displays of embracing sexual diversity, these immaterial archives are contextually locked in the past. Observably, Indigenous people are imagined as remnants of the past. The theories of Indigenous and diaspora Queers help scholars widen the understanding around lifestyle and practises that are not associated with mainstream Queer identities. These practises can be uncoded and interpreted as Queer when read in the context of South Asian histories. The homosociality of South Asian domestic life, media codes, and cultural mythology lend themselves to Queer interpretations. Queer South Asians are able to precisely apprehend these Queer possibilities as equal alternatives to white and Western gay pedagogy. 26

Khubchandini, Kareem.Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities, Subjectivities. United Kingdom, Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

find me @dishdesh.draws | www.dishdesh.com

Noting this, how can we expect to find progress and liberation within Brown Queerness through western cosmopolitanism? Rather than focussing only on the global and local binary, I would say this rift is aggravated and exemplified in the division of the Indigenous rural/urban populations. The import of Western terms can look like a strategic adoption of transnational frameworks - a means of creating and self-identifying a community. However, Indigenous terms can be more dependent upon context, behaviour, mind/body, etc. Import of transnational frameworks is through the cosmopolitan/urban sections of the indigenous population thus fragmenting the ‘Queer identity’ further through global/local, urban/rural. Brown cosmopolitanism - a result of western cosmopolitan influence - disallows the conjuncture of heritage and sexual liberation. It equates indigeneity with repression, and liberation with globalisation, the same way global Queerness does. Western Cosmopolitanism is the distance that South-Asian Queerness attempts to overcome. It is the effects of colonisation that distance people from their histories. The stumble of modern brown Queerness is a negotiation of the cosmopolitan and the indigenous sensibility. We see shimmers of authentic expression, aukaat (a person’s status or standing in society), between tears in the pedagogy of Queer aesthetic and lifestyle that we are meant to aspire to; Western, White, Upper-class performance of global Queerness. The negotiation that the Queer diaspora navigates is ‘the struggle over and production of “home” as physical space, affective landscape, and shared embodiment.’ The assimilation of the migrant, the diaspora, under the flag of ‘multiculturalism’ is not an attempt at cohabitation, but an imposition of global Queerness. A culturally distant Queerness that is tied to liberalist ideologies used to mask the sexual racism experienced in Queer encounters. Namely, (un)desirability based on race and extending to physical stereotyping and ethnic lifestyle. Western Queerness can be seen as theoretically ‘stuck in identities that are politically and medically engineered’, rather than a performance of gender - which is fluid and subversive. In this light, local (as opposed to the global framework of) Queerness signifies the uncapturable and unpredictable trajectory of a gendered body and a sexual life.

Khubchandani, Kareem. “Queer South Asian Diasporas.” Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature. 25. Oxford University Press.

Lee, Po-Han. “Decolonising And Queering Praxis: The Unanswerable Questions For ‘Queer Asia’”. E-International Relations, 2017, https://www.e-ir. info/2017/08/17/decolonising-and-queering-praxis-theunanswerable-questions-for-queer-asia/ Zourabichvili, Francois. Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event: Together with The Vocabulary of Deleuze. United Kingdom, Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

Hunt, Sarah, and Cindy Holmes. “Everyday Decolonization: Living A Decolonizing Queer Politics”. Journal Of Lesbian Studies, vol 19, no. 2, 2015, pp. 154172. Informa UK Limited, https://doi.org/10.1080/1089 4160.2015.970975 Zourabichvili, Francois. Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event: Together with The Vocabulary of Deleuze. United Kingdom, Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

To ‘Queer’ something is to question the ‘normalities’ in our thoughts, practises, time and space. It is doing rather than being. It is ‘a deconstructive practice focused on challenging normative knowledge, identities, behaviours, and spaces thereby unsettling power relations and taken-for-granted assumptions’. We can learn from Dr. Nadje AlAli about the Kurdish feminists’ revolutionary manifesto, which genders all political issues and places the struggle against patriarchy at the heart of their self-determination social movement. Talking about Queerness as being ‘in a state of lived experience, and these states bring the event about’. That is, “the Possible does not pre-exist, it is created by the event…The event creates a new existence, it produces a new subjectivity (new relations with the body, with time, sexuality, the immediate surroundings, with culture…)”. The deliberate risk of exposure of the Queer body is an appearance of vulnerability, a catalyst for political mobilisation through history. The mobilisation happens through self-exposure, or self-representation, against the systemic and concerted efforts of racism and heteronormativity. In ‘Queering’ a space, the event is the physical manifestation of the Queer. We are the event, we are Queer. The protest and the counter-public are Queer Brown people. Queerness challenges every day and invigorates our desire to explore other possibilities about who the personal, political, and societal ‘WE’ are. 27

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Create with Juice Mind and Body Edition Workshop in collaboration with Integrate UK

During a day of immersive workshops, the young people of Integrate UK, a youth-led charity campaigning for gender & racial equality, collaborated with the Juice Magazine team to reflect on and review the art and writing of ‘issue two: mind and body.’ Find their thoughts and contributions throughout the magazine.

Create with Juice Workshop: ‘Mind and Body’ edition Groups of young people responded to prompts about editorial pieces. They took inspiration from key words and quotes related to the art and writing to create doodles, collages and drawings, which can be seen throughout the magazine. Day in the Life Workshop: ‘Editor-in-Chief’ edition Groups of young people worked to collectively take on the important role as ‘Editor-in-Chief’ of Juice Magazine. They had the chance to have a sneak peak at the visual and editorial submissions for the magazine and to brainstorm the strengths and weaknesses of each piece. The session finished with each group pitching why their favourite piece should be featured in our magazine.

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Thanks to Integrate UK for hosting and facilitating this workshop! A special mention to Amaal Ali, Integrate UK Project worker, who supported the young people in attending and participating in the workshop, and to Amaleehah Aslam-Forrester, UK Youth Engagement Officer, for supporting the workshop and hosting an Instagram Takeover documenting the day.

@_integrateuk

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Creating space for Queer South Asian culture, community, and dreaming: In conversation with

In 2016 Fashion Curator and Cultural Producer Ryan Lanji (he/him) created HUNGAMA (East London’s Queer Bollywood Hip/Hop night) and with it has captured the world's attention, championing Queer/Creative South Asians. He has built the night from the ground up and has taken his party to the Ministry of Sound, British Vogue, the V&A, Soho House, and the Tate Modern. In the last two years, his Bollywood infused Hip Hop Electro party has been featured in global press including VOGUE, i-D, Dazed, Noisey, Hunger, Time Out London, BBC, and the Guardian and he was recently featured in Another Man as one of the ten most politically pioneering LGBTQ Activists in both New York and London. After winning the globally celebrated Netflix series The Big Flower Fight, Ryan Lanji is moving on to season one of BBC THREE’s new reality show ‘The Big Proud Party Agency’ as well as setting up a new community, ‘NDY Global’, a collective that takes premium gym spaces and transforms them into gender-neutral facilities with verified coaches for Trans, Non-binary and queer people of colour. He now hosts four sold-out classes a month allowing the queer community to nourish themselves and build a stronger sense of togetherness and visibility.

Evelyn: Your work spans loads of different disciplines such as fashion, music, visual arts industries and club culture, can you speak a bit about how and why you decided to work in this interdisciplinary field? Ryan: I don't think I ever decided to be multidisciplinary when it came to the different industries and cultures that I work in. Ever since being a kid, I have taken a vast interest in everything. I think now we're only starting to embrace the word polymath but like I just, I get music, and I get fashion and I get film and I get events – and so I just got involved, and whenever I didn't know I learned, and I was blessed at it. I first moved to London to enter fashion art, out of interest and then through learning that, I learned PR and events, and just made things exist that weren't in existence already.

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E: You said a bit about making things exist that aren’t in existence already. Did you have any mentors, friends or peers that came on that journey with you? R: Looking back now, I think I was really on my own when I was trying to understand where I belong. When it came to my culture and my different identities, I would choose only one to wear. Every time I went outside it would be like either as a fashion curator or as an artist or as a brown or a queer person. It was one day where I was like, I'm just gonna do them all at the same time – that is when it started to really work and harmonize. I think that's when my event started getting even more steam and notoriety because people were like, we didn't expect this much happening at one space at the same time. Looking back, only now, once I did the events, and after a year's worth of Hungama, you start getting people that ask, “Wow, this is amazing, can we help?” Initially, it was just sheer gusto, belief, blind courage and faith that you possess hoping it would eventually catch on.

E: When creating community spaces like Hungama and thinking about mentorship and community, going forward for the younger generations of South Asians, how do you think we can foster more of that? R: I think just by collaborating. Three or four years ago when I got my first start, it was like unheard of, for a club night to collaborate with another club night or people to get along, especially in the South Asian community, it was a rat race to the top of the Business of Fashion list or some sort of Time Out London list or 100 Most Influential People list and I didn't give a sh*t about any of that. Of course, I wanted to be on them, but there were other people, during that time that were really obsessed with it, and it gave them the reason to exist, but for me, I just like Bollywood music, and I just want to dance.

E: Would you say that your practice and your work are more about your personal artistic aspirations or a broad South Asian and culturally representational one? R: I know how many times I lost faith in myself when I was searching for validation or support. I think, wanting to be creative while being South Asian is something you just don’t get enough encouragement for. I always wanted to go to film school and my parents said, “Sure but you'll never make any money or they are just hobbies and passion projects and sh*t” but no one was talking about the fact that it is possible that you can be successful. The only people I was looking at as two beacons of success were M. Night Shyamalan and M.I.A and those were the only two people I had. I was like I am gonna go and be visible in those industries – show people that they can do it. I think it's just super important that we have that. The representation will happen, you just need to put your head above the parapet. So, for me, it was about unapologetically bringing Bollywood into the culture because there was such a lack of it compared to where it was pre 9/11. I feel I'm doing it in a way I'd never seen before. We've all danced to the same remixes at Indian weddings, but why does it have to be so tribalistic and clandestine and other. There were South Asian club nights that were doing it in secret and I thought to myself, we're actually cool, we're so cool.

I spent 10 years in fashion and art with the coolest people who want to come and listen to these songs so let's just make it public-facing and celebrate it. With that comes a new way of seeing your own culture, a new way of experiencing it, it doesn't need to be about Henna or Marigolds, we’re much more abstract and contemporary than that. It doesn't need to be about your proximity to whiteness or colonization, it can just be, really lateral thinking, that’s just really clever and well rooted and with that notion of popularity and success, you get your blanket of South Asian representation.

E: Moving past just representation, what would you say the role of creatives within the wider social justice movement is and how can we drive that? R: I​​'ve been really blessed with social media to create popularity. But to create a career for ourselves, I think we need to live and breathe what we preach. So if you're going to fight for things, say if you're like a painter or graphic designer or a poet and you're going to talk about equal rights or voting or whatever it is that you’re fighting for, you need to actually do it. Everyone is able to manage to be at the fashion parties, or be at the premieres, or on the red carpets or in the interviews but are you actually being a good human? And being a role model is not the final destination but rather being a role model is about doing what is good for you and for your people.

E: What do you want your legacy to be? Once you're not here anymore, once you're not working on these projects, how do you expect your work and practice to leave behind a legacy for those communities? R: I would like to make a dent in the universe, and I'd like that to be a point of reference for anyone who knows that it just takes 10% more from them, they don't have to change the world. They don't have to reinvent the wheel. They just need to make 10% better choices, and I think with Hungama it's about being inclusive, being an ally, being a part of a community that doesn't just bring people together for clout, but for betterment. For appreciating your culture and re-examining, unpacking it and really putting it back together and picking the pieces that you love and celebrating them. Also, getting rid of the stuff that you don't need, and not having to carry the pain and trauma of, I guess, toxic masculinity and the poor choices of our previous generations, because of what they had to go through to survive, but we can appreciate that. Let it go. And then we can reintroduce our culture into our world again. Transformative justice, I don't want to talk about what happened over and over again. I want to make peace with it. And then I want to take the pieces I wish we had again and reinvent them, and then take the pieces that we still have and give them a longer shelf life.

E: And when you heard the theme for this issue, what's the first thoughts and feelings that evoked within you? Was it artistic curiosity, or is it something else? R: I immediately thought of prana, which is life force. I immediately thought of Ayurveda and just the beautiful history that is ayurvedic medical practices. I thought about our culture. Mind and body is something that is really rooted in yoga and spirituality, connected to Buddhism and Hinduism. It just felt like quite a safe way to talk about a lot of difficult things.

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find me @ryanlanji | @hungama_ldn | @ndyglobal

ngs i n e app eir h e eat and th r c to wer s o i p ce ir own i e t h s c t t pra into n i i e v r eati o step eavo r d c n t e My le rial o peop t a cur a s It’

llow a t tha ce. ti prac t.” righ

E: When we were brainstorming the theme of ‘mind and body’, the team identified key terms as being “identity, spirituality, mental health, duality, culture, fluidity, identity, marginalized, care, grief, community etc.”, how much does your practise resonate with these? R: Duality is important because being a Canadian British person of South Asian heritage has always presented two sides to me, like a coin. Another thing is mental health. Grief is important as well, I think we lose a lot. So through mind and body, you can understand what the endurance and duration were and what you need and what you need to replenish and what you need to constantly not forget. 34

E: How can we look at, as you said, two sides of the coin at the same time? R: I think we just need to stop thinking of things as binaries and then you're fine. Time is not real, gender is not real, coins are not real. Dimensions aren't real.

E: With The Big Flower Fight, just expanding on that a bit, what actually made you go on it?

E: Juice is focused on South Asian-origin creatives around the world, how do you think your artistic/creative practice combines the ‘mind and body’ theme at hand, and your identity? R: Well I think, with the global movement that is Hungama, I know the club night does happen in London, and we have had the opportunity to DJ in India and share our sound and music with our people. But I think what it has done on a global level is, inspire people to live more liberally, and artistically and creatively. So, my creative practice is to create happenings that allow people to step into their power – better understand their own creativity. It’s a curatorial endeavour in its own right. I think it involves both mind and body. You have to mentally be agile, not woke, but able to listen, learn, relearn and unlearn quickly because the space is for South Asian people as well as it is for people who are not of colour. Even if it is prioritizing queer people and not alienating straight people, in that space, you do need to use your mind and body quite regularly to understand when your mind and body fall short.

E: What made you move from working within club culture and establishing community to, through this, a different space prioritizing health and fitness? R: Well, I was really lucky last year to have participated in The Big Flower Fight on Netflix. It was a competition about floristry and I have no experience with flowers whatsoever. And I went on, they asked me “Why do you want to do this?” and I said, “I’ve never seen a South Asian queer man, do something he has no idea about and do well.” And I was really proud to have won that, and I realized that very quickly people noticed my South Asian-ness, and my queerness and my creativeness, and they were quickly trying to get me to participate in other projects, collaborations and all these things, and I was like, “Oh my god I'm now public-facing.” And I realized that Hungama was a space for queer South Asians and the world is now watching. So I asked myself “What do I want to give to the world?” I realized that so many people in my position who become TV personalities or reality show stars, usually sell sh*t. They're selling music or merchandise and it’s stuff that the world does not need more of – we just need great stuff. Then I thought, “What can I give to the world that the world needs?” and I need to be a beacon of health and nourishment to the queer community because we do not have access to it. And if people want to meet me or learn about me or find me, they can find me at these classes and these classes will create a space for the queer community that doesn't have it.

R: I got a phone call from a producer who said they found out about my work before Hong Kong. I was a fashion art curator, I curated my last show five years ago. Five years ago today, was my show with the BNA, which is amazing. I knew how much moving and curation are required for them, but I just did it. So, when I moved here and I just kept doing shows until they got bigger and bigger and bigger. The V&A show was my biggest show to date and I think they looked up all of that and they were like, “Oh my god Ryan would be great because he puts on these immersive exhibitions that are like jawdropping on a shoestring budget.” and then they asked me, “Do you think you'd be up for working with flowers on an extremely creative level?” And I was like “why not? I'll just try it like the worst thing to happen would be to get eliminated in the first or second round.” So, my partner on the show and I decided that we would just try to make it past episode two. They took us into an audition room, and we had an hour to create a sculpture with flowers and they loved it. That's what we don't get in a large community, we don't get anyone who has blind belief and faith in you. What kills me is when we talk to people who are straight or South Asian who have jobs that fulfill their parents' goals and dreams but not theirs. I feel pain when I see someone who has an incredible voice or is an amazing dancer or has an amazing mind and does not put it to use because they were not told that was a possible path of success for them. And so, the only way that's going to change is through visibility and by bringing a lot of them together through something like Hungama. Four years ago, I couldn't name one South Asian person in a creative industry that I thought was creating a global wave. Now I don't have enough fingers and I'm so proud of all of them who have come to the party and believed in themselves enough to make huge waves. The more that we see South Asian straight people championing queer South Asians and creating safe spaces for people in our cultures, communities and religions, the more pride I feel. If any of that traces to Hungama, then I will again be deeply proud.

E: What does it mean to you when I just say ‘dreaming’? R: With dreams, I do a lot of my thinking. I have a very visual mind and I solve a lot of problems in my head. Like, I have conversations with myself in my dreams. Before my exhibitions and events, I even dream that I'm there and I can usually spot a problem, before that even happens, it is Astral-projecting. I've done it for my future as well as I've done it for the unknown. I have this exercise I ask people to do, which is to visualize yourself, where you want to be and actually what's around you; So, if you dream of being a movie star or a model or an actress, visualize where you are, what stage are you on and who's looking at you but then also thinking about who your management is, who's your agent? Who does the catering? Who's taking your picture?’ and start finding out who those people are, follow and get in closer proximity to them. It's like connecting the dots, which I think works because that's when you can start changing your future by using your present. The other thing about dreaming is that South Asian culture can be traced to Bollywood, which is again a major part of Hungama. Now, India has a huge illiteracy and poverty rate and the only way that you can escape that reality is by having dreams. That's why Bollywood is so beautiful to our entire country because one can pay 25 rupees to sit in a chair and dream about what it's like to live in America, and their lives are fueled by their dreams. So, it's so silly for us to come in here and forget about them. 35

Responses to the interview piece

Creating space for Queer South Asian culture, community, and dreaming:In conversation with

Ryan Lanji

During a day of immersive workshops, the young people of Integrate UK, a youth-led charity campaigning for gender & racial equality, collaborated with the Juice Magazine team to reflect on and review the art and writing of ‘issue two: mind and body.’ See pages 30-31 for an overview and review of the workshop.

36

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Neha Maqsood “

Neha Maqsood (she/her) is a Pakistani writer whose coverage on race-relations, global feminism, and South Asian culture has been published in Teen Vogue, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Business Insider, DAWN, Buzzfeed India, and other places. Her poetry, too, has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, including the Kenyon Review, Ambit Magazine, Ninth Letter, and the Aleph Review. Her debut poetry book, ‘Vulnerability’ was awarded the 2019-2020 Hellebore Poetry Scholarship Award and was published by Hellebore Press in 2021.

Carping at Borderlines across the West, across the East, we inverted our tongues in dissimilar ways. beholden: Pakistanis bidding to be Americans. caught in a Costco, discovered in cookie-cutter homes, with cookie-cutter accents! & cookie-cutter cultures! to know Pakistan was to know it as it was – comically tainted, comically dirty. hunger was absolute. for decades, I perjured past Pakistan, preparing to dwell in a country which prepared to bomb mine. but there was distraction, gaiety at nail salons, dichotomizing Sally Rooney’s books. It was always about the propitious, white people wasn’t it?

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But I didn’t belong then and I don’t now – shuttling between comforts, carping at borderlines. Perhaps, in a macabre way, I savored my grief. Perhaps, god did take some joy in letting things happen to us. Perhaps, we alone let our minds seek the discords of our pasts. But I still remember – the piquant scent, the parasitic, sickly-sweat of their tattered shalwar kameez. I still remember – melon rinds, chickpea salad, and curried yoghurt on a Jumma afternoon. I still remember – my father railing on Pakistan, but only wanting to hear Pakistani news in the Western mornings. Now, what kind of tenderness is this?

Both my poems are general excavations of the brown, Muslim woman's experiences, and as they broadly connect to the universal human experience. The themes range from shakingly navigating one’s brownness in a world seeking homogeny to the compounding traumas of colonization, displacement, xenophobia, capitalism, and stigma. I attempt to provide an honest portrayal of the diasporic narrative in a way which connects to how disconnected brown women, especially, feel from their minds, bodies, and memories.



didn’t ask for any of this



I can’t stand your institution, this department, your representation. These 9-5’s, these insipidly



drab subway rides. Your in-laws, these lecture halls, this mane of hair. The gender of everything.



The moon relies on those who stand. But we’ve washed every dish, written every word, seen the



buttery-gilt of the curtain, light lurching through. Somewhere, nearby a soul thaws amid a white



sprawl. It was so straightforward, dropping into that cavernous greying sorrow again? Stencilled,



for this mould – the crannies and the clefts.

find me @itsnehamaqsood | nehamaqsood.com

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Hope Hope Sudarshan Sudarshan Glastris Glastris Hope Sudarshan Glastris (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. She received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with a concentration in drawing, painting, and mixed media, and her postbac in Graphic Design from the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Hope was born in Chicago, IL to a Punjabi mother and a Greek-American father, and spent most of her life living in the Washington, D.C. area. She employs both digital and physical artmaking practices, working towards connecting and integrating her creative work, life's work, and spiritual work. Hope lives in Brooklyn, New York, currently growing her art practice, working as a freelance graphic designer, and studying yoga.

This selection of work is representative of the range of ways in which I consistently explore the mind-body continuum throughout my artmaking. Through use of colour, texture, collage-like technique, symbolism, psychedelia and streamof-consciousness exploratory process, I seek to embody self-contemplation as a parallel process to addressing what we experience externally. Calling on ways of working, stories, and motifs from my diverse cultural background and my practice of svadhyaya (self-study). I explore the dynamics of truth and the relationships between intersecting identities, and the various states of consciousness in which we may learn to know ourselves. Employing digital means to examine the embodied self scaffolds these objects and landscapes of the mind, where multiple truths can exist, and where what seem to be opposing concepts and forms (East/ West, digital/analog, academic/folk wisdom, decorative/ conceptual, esoteric/pop etc) can co-exist in equal validity. This mirrors the experience of being mixed-race, as well as the complex conditions of human experience.

(1) "Death Wreath" digital drawing; 16x20"; 2020 (2) "Offering (Irresolution 03)" digital drawing; 16x20"; 2021 (3) "Tides of the World" digital drawing; 16x20"; 2020 (4) "Visionscape (Sun + Moon) digital drawing; 16x20"; 2021 (5) "Summit" digital drawing; 16x20"; 2020 40

find me @hope.glastris.creative

The tools I employ operate in direct relationship with the practice of meditation, yoga, plant medicine, and various other modalities are recalled in my visual language. Many of the motifs and symbols are directly attached to existing means of cultivating mind-body awareness and personal liberation (such as Thangka painting, folk art, mythology, and mandalas). I toggle between creating representations of the inner landscape and representations of ritual and meditation. The landscapes that express the psychospiritual self occupy space in an expansive way, often using doorways, frames, and windows as symbols of entering and exiting self-awareness. The objects which correlate to ritual and meditation appear as various embodiments of objectness, which ground us in the dual nature of being both in ourselves and in the external (mandalas/wreaths, adornments, offerings, decorative objects, etc). I generally refer to the latter as “talismans”. They function as objects of meditation, and as visual tools with which we might call certain energies into ourselves and our environments.

"

My intention in my work is to encourage self-exploration as a pathway

to collectively creating an external

reality that moves us towards shared wellbeing.”

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Achal Dodia “

Achal (he/him) is a recent graduate in architecture, questioning the authenticity of the field and its exclusivity in the built environment through a feminist and queer lens. He has been a fellow and an intern at The Third Eye, a feminist think tank powered by Nirantar Trust, New Delhi where he was on-board pitching ideas of queer-affirmative spaces, open and safe spaces and a Queer City. He aspires to do multi-disciplinary work with issues and intersection of gender, sexuality and queer politics in accessibility to spaces and mental health. When he is not procrastinating, he is drawing mandalas, gardening or trying to bake a bread. If he is lost, search all the cafes of the city he was last seen in.

TW: Abuse ‘I cannot come tonight, I am busy.’ he said. The night outs were not the same anymore. The body did not belong to him now. It was imprisoned by his memories and thoughts. Anxiety controlled his movements and whereabouts. He wanted to be desired in an unusual way or not. The body was cut into pieces when he was exploited. Mentally and physically, he no longer could move, stagnated, he stayed on his bed. Will he ever wake up from this nightmare? Reality mocks him every time he desires to free himself from it.

The inaccessibility to the body by itself became a mess of trust and liability. How can he expect someone to see his face when he is scared of his own body? The camera was no longer a friend. The container that felt safe and positive, opens up only to its neighbours. Any uncharted territory is now a threat, an investigation. New spaces become places of adrenaline but with a hint of fear and stress that never goes away. The terrifying thoughts are always on a snooze. He never felt so confident again. The stone of words that were thrown at him, the personal space that was invaded, he is never able to rest. A body, without being touched, became vulnerable, became alert, 24*7. He became scared to be desired, questioned if he can be a subject and can one really deserve to be treated the way he was. Stepping into space, he thought he would learn, explore and love.

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He put his body into that space with all the unsaid consent, hoping it will be treated well, it will be respected and it will be protected. Did he not know that his body could be crushed, lied to and used unapologetically? Sadly, he did not know. The body, when taken for granted, lost its ability for a long time. ‘He used to be brilliant’, ’Oh him? He used to have opinions.’, ‘Eh! Never mind him, he has lost his charm.’ Nobody asked him why and how. The space that promised his body to be safe, the space that promised him shelter, the space that invited him to be vulnerable, made him miserable. Was the space at fault or his choices? He questioned the first thing and that followed the spree of unanswered questions that made him freeze forever. No amount of warmth could put him at ease. All he knew now was running away. It was easy for him to run, he couldn’t get tired of it because he didn’t know how to rest.

He stopped getting hurt by things, as he thought, he deserved it. The very things that he used to despise, became his desire. But did he? Did he desire it? His desires became a burden on him. Desire felt like a luxury, a transaction that he could not afford. The body was left with no strength to act upon the attraction. The body went till the door, but never entered the space again, thinking, it will be breached and it will again get crushed. The body that he once used to adorn with flowers and scent, cotton and linen, now lies on the bed, unclothed, untouched and undesired. He lies on his own warmth, he desires himself waiting to be desired.

The parts of his body that try to attract each other, to come closer, to become one, loses itself and pushes afar, sprinting millions of galaxies away, with one thought, in one line, in one character, in one moment. The body loses again and then, it tries to crawl back to itself, through the bodies that love him, through the bodies that take care of him, through the bodies that attend with him the funerals of moments, courage, desires and love that he has lost. The grief of his loss never makes him feel whole, it takes away everything and it is like a shrinking ball, but the kind that finds its way back to blow at its fullest. He hoards those memories, memories that crushes him, makes him think of an alternate possibility and makes him restless, helpless and clueless.

His body has become unknown to him. It seeks validation from lovers, from strangers, from his demons. He does not know his body, always scared of losing it, never as a whole but as a part. He is terrified to be watched, to be looked up or to be approached. He writes to himself some harmful words, the body becomes vulnerable but never in front of him, has the body lost faith in him as it goes only to its lover now. When left unattended, his body wanders, looking for a safe space in a strange establishment, because he cannot, for him it’s the foreign body.

find me @achaldodia

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Intergenerational Trauma: Navigating Depression from the Endurance of Oppression

“

Safiya (she/her) is a freelance writer based in Amsterdam with bylines in Gal-Dem, Shado Mag, Azeema, Crack and Bristol24/7. She particularly focuses on South Asian identity, music and their intersection. As well as writing, she works on @RepresentAsian_podcast - the podcast exploring South Asian representation in the UK music industry.

TW: Mental Health As we approach the 75th anniversary of the partition between India and Pakistan, it’s impossible not to reflect on the journeys that millions of families embarked on since the British ended their colonial rule. Millions of South Asian families survived the mass migration, the sexual violence, the arson attacks and the massacres. It was one of the bloodiest periods in history (Dalrymple, 2015) - and three generations later, many South Asian families continue to be burdened by the trauma, which manifests through depression, aggression and psychological turmoil.

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Following years of colonial rule, the British government hastily dismantled the imperial state and left the Indian subcontinent in upheaval where it soon divided into two parts: a Hindu majority India and a Muslim majority Pakistan. The British left, leaving behind widespread riots and bloodshed marked on both sides of the border. Within a few months, there was one of the largest mass migrations of all time. Despite coexisting for hundreds of years, Muslims had no choice but to frantically pack their belongings and make the journey to the newly formed Pakistan, whilst Hindus and Sikhs trekked many miles in the opposite direction into India. Amid the migration, mass violence broke out. Over one million people were murdered (Brocklehurst, 2017) with abductions, sexual violence, and forced conversions breaking out along the way.

As much as we wish the trauma would neatly tie its bow and come to a close, it hangs over our bodies and minds like a dark cloud, reproducing itself through cycles of abuse, violence, depression, anxiety for years to come." The effects of partition were deeply scarring and traumatising. Millions of people lost their homes, property, and ways of life. Next year will mark 75 years since the event that affected my grandparents. Yet three generations later, we are still dealing with the consequences of this period in our daily lives. Despite the years and miles that have passed, South Asian families across the UK and the world are collectively navigating their grief of this colonial legacy and outcome.

As much as we wish the trauma would neatly tie its bow and come to a close, it hangs over our bodies and minds like a dark cloud, reproducing itself through cycles of abuse, violence, depression, anxiety for years to come. Intergenerational trauma is a relatively new concept that was first documented among survivors of the Holocaust (Thomson, 2018). The shock, stress and upheaval to survivors' lives impacted their ability to cope and engage - and the trauma was passed down to their children. It is an unspoken fact that many children of immigrants continue to be the scapegoats of PTSD and trauma. Although we may not have experienced the impact of partition firsthand, many of our habits have been shaped by our parents' and grandparents' experiences following the events of 1947. Whilst there is now increasing research (Gómez, Gobin & Barnes, 2021) on the impacts of people living through severe collective trauma, mental health is still very much stigmatised in the South Asian community. We are denying colonial trauma and refusing to explore our collective histories. Because of this, it is highly unlikely that those who lived through partition sought professional help over their traumatic experiences. Instead, it has manifested in toxic ways and reverberate across generations, affecting parenting skills and leading to behavioural issues, isolation and attachment issues in children (Danieli, 1980). For my grandfather, the trauma of being a child during partition is visibly clear. Unexpressed anger and rage will seep into a person’s mind, body and relationships. For my mother and her siblings, having a father with these aggressive tendencies clearly impacted their mental health and ability to feel safe, confident and secure as both children and adults. And it continues with my generation, where I am consistently navigating my difficulty with emotional intimacy and subversion to vulnerability. There is a snowball effect of cumulative damage, where many of us have watched how our grandparents' trauma has directly affected our parents, subsequently taking a toll on our generation. There is a need for the South Asian communities to collectively heal. We must end these cycles and address the pain. Years of colonised oppression and trauma cannot and must not continue to affect us 75 years on. To start, we must acknowledge and address the pain. Traditionally, South Asian families carry with their shame within them and mental health is considered a taboo so to end these cycles, we must make visible what is invisible and collectively identify this trauma. By having difficult conversations with loved ones, understanding our histories, normalising therapy, we can chip away at the years of emotional difficulty.

Our minds and bodies are the product of our ancestry, which embodies rich culture along with rich suffering. To package our collective trauma and stop its progression into future generations will always be easier said than done. The term “speechless terror” (Meadows, 2020) is used to describe the neurological condition where our bodies can shut down our speech when confronted with or dealing with trauma, leaving us literally unable to articulate our grief. A journey of healing is required and can begin by fully understanding our histories and our ancestors' oppression. Individually or collectively, we must acknowledge our trauma and acknowledge its relationship with mind and body. By normalising conversations with our family members and communities, we can begin to spark change. Through learning more about where we have come from, we can better understand ourselves today. It’s an uncomfortable journey but we have the capability of addressing the pain and understanding how ending these cycles will facilitate growth.

find me:

@safiya.haneen

Brocklehurst, B. S. (2017, August 12). Partition of India: “They would have slaughtered us.” BBC News. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https://www.bbc. com/news/uk-scotland-40874496 Dalrymple, W. (2015, June). The Great Divide. The New Yorker. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/ the-great-divide-books-dalrymple Danieli, Y. (1980). Families of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: Some long- and some shortterm effects. In Milgram, N. (Ed.), Psychological Stress and Adjustment in Time of War and Peace. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing Corps. Gómez, L; Gobin, R & Barnes, M (2021). Discrimination, Violence, & Healing within Marginalized Communities, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22:2, 135-140, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2021.1869059 Meadows, T. (2020, July 6). In Terror’s Grip: Healing the Ravages of Trauma. The Meadows of Wickenburg, Arizona. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https:// www.themeadows.com/blog/in-terror-s-grip-healingthe-ravages-of-trauma/ Thomson, H. (2018, February 14). Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children’s genes. The Guardian. Retrieved January 26, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/ study-of-holocaust-survivors-finds-trauma-passed-onto-childrens-genes

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Feelings during lockdown by Rumana Sayed (she/her) Juice Graphic/Web Designer find me: 46

@rumanadesign

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presented by state of the [art] Our recent event at Omnibus Theatre featured interactive exhibitions with artist spotlights and live music from a selection of incredible South Asian artists. Thank you to our partners, State of the [Art] and Omnibus Theatre, and all the artists whose thoughtful contributions made this event possible. find out more about juice's events, workshops, and features at https://www.juicedroplet.com/eventsandfeatures

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Skin Deep:

In conversation with

s o s o o t o t t a t T a T a n a e n e e Heelle H find me @heleenatattoos

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Heleena (she/her) is a South Asian tattoo artist based in Leicester, UK. She focuses her work on traditional South Asian folk art and creates culturally significant pieces for the South Asian diaspora. Heleena spoke with Prachee Mashru, Juice's partnership and collaborations assistant, after their tattooing session, about what it means to be a brown woman in the tattooing industry.

P: How and why did you start tattooing? When did you first consider yourself as a ‘tattoo artist’? H: I decided I wanted to get into tattooing at 18 and I considered myself to be a tattoo artist at 20, that’s when I actually started tattooing people full time. I was terrible at it and to be completely honest I hated tattooing when I first started – because I found it so difficult. P: What does it mean to be a South Asian woman in the tattooing industry? How has this influenced your practice? H: It means that you’re practically alone in an industry that is full of white men. I feel a lot of pressure to represent and know about every kind of South Asian experience and culture as well as being “the cultural appropriation police.” I’ve used my practice to reconnect with my culture and learn about the motherland and its art forms. P: What challenges have you faced as a tattoo artist and how have you been inspired to adapt your practice along the way? H: Most of the challenges I’ve faced come from not prioritising myself and my mental health. I’ve had a few issues with clients that have been extremely difficult and demanding, I’ve just had to learn the hard way that people don’t care about the person behind the art, they just want to own the designs. I’ve now set multiple boundaries and have a zero-tolerance policy for rudeness or disrespect. 50

P: Is your practice about personal artistic aspirations or a broader South Asian culture representational one? H: It’s more personal, I got into tattooing because I wanted to tattoo and I thought I’d be good at it. My use of South Asian references came after I accepted my heritage and it’s part of my journey about learning about where I come from. I aspire to be a confident artist and use multiple mediums to practise my work, be it: tattooing, clothing, painting and much more. P: A large part of Juice through its work is building up a community for South Asian origin artists everywhere. How do your work and practice contribute to such a community? H: I think a lot of people within our community appreciate my work because I showcase South Asian tattoos on South Asian people. The tattooing industry is dominated by white people, artists and collectors, so it’s important to show people of colour that tattoos look amazing on our skin tones as well. I think POCs have been left out of alternative scenes and it’s important that we see representation in those spaces and I feel I offer that with my work and what I do. P: What can we expect to see from you soon? H: I haven’t made any big plans but I’m constantly working on my craft and trying to improve my skillset, so maybe just growth and more art.

P: At a glance on your Instagram, your art includes beautiful illustrations and merchandise as well as photos of tattooed clients, would you consider yourself a multidisciplinary artist? H: I guess so! I think it’s important to know how to draw when you’re a tattoo artist, I’m constantly reviewing my work and my techniques to see how I can improve, experiment and grow. The main way I do this is by creating work outside of tattoo designs since, that’s what I do on a daily basis. P: As a first impression, what feelings and thoughts do the words “Mind and Body” evoke within you? What artistic curiosity do you feel? H: Mind and body make me think about being in tune with yourself. We often go through stressful times and have 100 things buzzing away in the back of our minds. Our body is trying its best to catch up and deal with the number of things going off in our head. Mind and body together feel almost harmonious like they’re working together. P: Juice is focused on South Asian-origin creatives around the world, how do you think your artistic/creative practice combines the ‘mind and body’ theme at hand, and also your South Asian heritage? For a lot of people (including myself) tattoos are a way to express the person we are but on the outside. I definitely believe tattooing is a way to connect the mind with the body, it’s a practice that allows us to showcase our thoughts and personality onto our bodies. As someone that has tattoos Inspired by South Asian culture, it’s me reconnecting with my heritage and the imagery I saw during my upbringing. I know that I provide that same connection for my clients with my work. 51

Amaleehah Aslam Forrester find me

@goldmoods

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Mind And Body: Gendered Trauma And Community Healing Within South Asian Communities. Amaleehah (she/her) is a psychology graduate with first class honours. Passionate about advocating for the needs of young people, she is experienced in facilitating educational interventions about gender-based violence and abuse and leading youth-led project work with the Bristol charity Integrate UK. On social media, Amaleehah explores her identity as a mixed race South-Asian woman and enjoys sharing her journey, thoughts and experiences around female empowerment and identity.

TW: Abuse

‘Honour-based abuse’ is a gendered trauma that has affected women in collective patrilineal communities throughout time and across cultures. In many societies, a woman's behaviour, appearance and life choices are strongly associated with the 'honour' of herself, her family and her community. This burden often negatively impacts women’s well-being, mental and physical health. There is a need for patriarchal cultures to collectively address the concept of ‘honour’, how it has been upheld throughout generations and the impact on young women presently. Based on my lived experience as a South Asian woman and my research findings, I will focus on the impact of 'honour' within British South Asian communities, and ascertain the need for community healing.

"

In many societies, a woman's behaviour, appearance and life choices are strongly associated with the 'honour' of herself, her family and her community." Within South Asian communities, the term ‘honour’ differs between languages and cultures and so it is difficult to establish a unanimous definition. The Urdu expression for ‘honour’ is ‘Izaat’ understood to mean ‘respect’ and usually concerns the reputation of an individual and their family. Similarly, the Arabic term for ‘honour’ is ’Awrah’ meaning ‘nakedness’ and carries an association with ‘shame’ in revealing female body parts (Idriss, 2020). Usually associated with female modesty, the term promotes that ‘honour’ is upheld through covering a woman's body. Due to this, the notion of 'honour' is gendered and results in inequalities between men and women. Generally, men possess the core elements of 'honour', whilst women possess the potential for shame. Therefore, ’honour’ is seen as something residing in the bodies and behaviour of women and is viewed as something to protect (Gill, 2021).

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Consequently, some families and usually male relatives, control and regulate the behaviour of women who pose danger to (male) honour. In this regard, honour-based abuse is a response to perceived shameful behaviour committed by a woman, rebelling or not aligning with her family’s traditions or expectations. Attacks on a family’s image result in honour-based abuse, in an attempt to protect their reputation from the judgement of the wider community. In extreme cases, women are not only abused but also murdered. With approximately one forced suicide per month, Britain has the largest number of honour killings in Europe (Khan, 2021). Honour is prevalent in every society but the way it manifests differs between cultures. Around the world, women are shamed for their sexual desire, pressured into marriage at an early age or are forced to undergo non-medical procedures like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Ultimately, women everywhere are burdened to uphold honour by the virtue of their ‘female’ sex. While in Muslim communities, girls may be told to cover their hair or in some cases, their entire body, in Western society girls may also be told to roll down their skirts. Observably, the coercion to uphold honour through the female body is prevalent worldwide; ‘Patriarchy shames women for being sexual and capitalism sexualises women’ (Farida, 2021). While one conforms and the other rebels, the truth of the matter is that both women who choose to cover or uncover, do so as a way to survive in a patriarchal world. The immense pressure to uphold honour has detrimental outcomes for women and girls, impacting their wellbeing, identity and moral locus of the world. Women learn to develop a moral lens of viewing themselves through the male gaze and embed a victim-blaming narrative into their moral compass. This can lead them to believe they are to blame or are responsible for unwanted attention, sexual harassment or unwarranted sexual advances. In addition, honour cultures are characterised by strict gender roles, where men are expected to fulfil an assertory role and females are encouraged to render an honourable reputation. The morals learnt from this dynamic play out through gender inequality and a lack of opportunities for British South Asian women. The physical and mental effects include depression, self-harm, anxiety and attempted suicide. There is a need for South Asian women to holistically heal through sharing their experiences and feel less alone when trapped in the cycle of honour. Deeply ingrained cultural pressures throughout generations often act as a barrier to seeking help. A lack of education and knowledge on these issues creates a fear that they will not be understood by the wider society. Dishonour by reporting abuse is another barrier as disclosing familial matters is seen as dishonourable. In some cases, girls are extremely dependent on their families, having been controlled, continuously monitored and even isolated from the world. Therefore, the fear of being rejected or disowned by their family, if the abuse becomes known to the community, is a barrier to reporting. In other cases, the strong emotional bonds between family members tend to make it difficult for victims to process their experience of abuse (Gill, 2021).

There is a need to support current victims, both with practical matters and with building new social networks when an individual has been outcast from their family. While the majority of honour-based abuse victims are women, it is important to mention that men can be victims of honour-based abuse too. Many South Asian men will be familiar with feeling pressured to respect and heed to the wishes of a senior, usually an older male relative. Male and female victims of honour-based abuse both experience control over their choice of dating, marriage and sexual partners. Male victims may even experience physical violence upon refusal to commit an act of honour-based abuse against a female or by identifying as homosexual. The toxic masculinity within communities is real and needs to be addressed. In recent years, honour-based abuse is no longer seen as a foreign issue in the UK and there have been developments in policy and practices surrounding honour-based abuse laws. However, more needs to be done to safeguard women from abuse before it becomes violent. The charity Integrate UK in Bristol delivers educational workshops in UK schools on topics relating to gender and racial inequality, including honour-based abuse, forced marriage, FGM and sexual harassment. Such impactful work has sparked important conversations and encouraged meaningful change amongst students. However, more education and interventions are needed for elders in honour communities. This should include the impact of generational honour traditions, discussions around religion and how honour culture can be unlearnt. As a collective of young South Asian individuals in the UK, we have the potential and resources to create change and promote self-healing. We can develop unlearning practices to ensure that women and men are not burdened with 'honour' and the pressures that prevail with this concept. The price of letting young women down, damaging their minds and bodies, limiting their opportunities and stopping their rightful growth, is too much. There is a need for communities to address the endemic problem of honour, raise awareness and start difficult conversations. Through necessary interventions and unlearning processes, there is a powerful potential for women and girls to achieve self-healing, equal rights and safety, without female value being associated with honour or shame. As a collective, our community has a responsibility to heal our women from this trauma. They deserve to be free.

Farida, D (2021). The shit that made me a feminist. Gill, A. K. (2021). Murder in the family: Why culture is an insufficient explanation for ‘honour’-based violence. In The Routledge International Handbook of Domestic Violence and Abuse (pp. 403-414). Routledge. Idriss, M. M. (2020). “The mosques are the biggest problem we’ve got right now”: Key agent and survivor accounts of engaging mosques with domestic and honor-based violence in the United Kingdom. Journal of interpersonal violence, 35(13-14), 2464-2491. Khan, Y., Khan, R., Adisa, O., Kumari, M., & Allen, K. (2021). ‘Honour’abuse, violence, and forced marriage in the UK. Police cases (incidents and charges) and specialised training: 2018 and 2019.

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Responses to

‘Mind and body: Gendered trauma and community healing within South Asian communities’ by Amaleehah Aslam-Forrester During a day of immersive workshops, the young people of Integrate UK, a youth-led charity campaigning for gender & racial equality, collaborated with the Juice Magazine team to reflect on and review the art and writing of ‘issue two: mind and body.’ See pages 30-31 for an overview and review of the workshop.

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தமிழ்மகளிர் தின Mathushaa வாழ் த்துக்கள் Sagthidas மகளிர் தின துக்கள் ர் தின “ ள் meaning

“Happy Tamil Women’s Day”

find me

@mathuxphotos

Mathushaa's (she/her) photography showcases her passion for fine art, contemporary fashion and styling. She further developed these skills studying fashion promotion at Ravensbourne University London and fine art photography at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL. Mathushaa’s work often examines her identity Tamil Eelam ethnicity and British nationality; which is a pivotal part of her work. This complex cultural identity is often reflected through traditions, history and strongly by fashion photography. Studying fashion promotion has enabled her to develop a style rich in modern and stylish references; whereas studying fine art photography during her degree gave her creative freedom to really dive into various historical and cultural references reflecting her Tamil heritage. Her shoots often incorporate handcrafted elements through styling, prop making and theatrical settings, something she has loved doing since studying fine art at school. Mathushaa's work has been featured online on Graduate Fashion Week, Fashion Scout, FAD Charity, Anisha Parmar London, MESA Magazine, Asian Woman Festival and more.

meaning “Strength & Resilience”, refers to my mum’s strength and resilience through her journey. From surviving a war to struggles of immigrating to beginning a new life and family. These precious objects are my sentimental reflection of her legacy that my sister and I will carry on. Within the centre are my mum’s Sri Lankan ID, one of the very few things she was able to bring here and my glimpse into her youth. In the top right corner is a photo from her UK college ID, where she worked on her English speaking and writing skills. In the bottom left corner is the first passport photo she had taken since starting a new family in the UK; next to a piece of jewellery her brother (who helped and supported her when coming to the UK) gifted to me. 56

ன

meaning “Reclaim” refers to reclaiming so many aspects of my Tamil roots that I grew up distancing myself from - such as my name to various Hindu influences like Navaratri. The festival of Navaratri is a nine-day celebration for female goddesses: Durga who represents strength, Saraswati who represents learning and Lakshmi who represents power. Goddesses, I refer to through the colours of their saris. Red for Durga, white for Saraswati, and green for Lakshmi to emulate these divinities in my Tamil roots and personality.

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meaning “Coming of Age” refers to a Tamil Hindu tradition that celebrates a young girl getting her period for the first time. The historical belief is that this means the girl is ready to get married and bear children but in my family, it is rather just about celebrating becoming a woman. This idea stems from another project with Tamil Culture discussing my puberty ceremony and how many Tamil women are against it due to its history, but I wanted to showcase its beauty, its cultural and traditional importance. For me, it is a big part of my journey as a Tamil woman.

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My project meaning “Happy Tamil Women’s Day” is a visual celebration of me embracing my Tamil roots and showcasing the story of my roots through my mum’s lived experience too. However, it is also a new beginning of building my legacy.

Something that I realised when I was interviewed by Anisha Parmar for her gold stories project, where I spoke about the sentimental and significant gold pieces that my family and I have – she made me realise with every experiment and project revolving around my Tamil heritage I have been able to create my legacy through tangible objects and visuals. It is also showing that instead of my family’s lived experience as just being memories and their stories, each concept ் meaning “Strength & Resilience”, மீட்டெடுங்கள் meaning “Reclaim” and வயது வரும் meaning “Coming of Age” - goes beyond just showing the beauty and aesthetic of Tamil culture. Through this project, the importance of authentic representation has become more and more amplified, especially seeing many outside of the South Asian community treat our traditional wear as casual costumes and ‘not coming from an authentic genuine place’ (i-D, 2019, 0:28). Constantly seeing such cultural appropriation is another aspect that has frustrated but also motivated me to show the rich cultural history of these pieces and objects that most see as ‘aesthetically pleasing.’ Creating this work has very much been about showcasing and visually reminiscing on every aspect of ‘Tamilness’ my parents have surrounded me with – from their struggles of immigration to understanding important traditions within my lived experience (puberty ceremony). Whilst creating this work I started to create a record of my growth and process since my first ever university project reflects on Tamil culture, ஒரு தீவிலிருந்து ஒரு நகரம் meaning ‘A city away from an Island', which was about showcasing my Tamil and London roots through fashion. This decision of putting my work out there has given people of the South Asian community, especially Tamil women, ‘affirmation and inspiration’ (Heuchan and Shukla, 2018, p.33), especially seeing/having my work about my Tamil heritage showcased on billboards across the UK. It showcases the South Asian community and reinforces this message, that you don’t need to create work that westernised communities can relate to. Being ‘successful in your integration into a white society’ (Blight, 2017) is something that you see within my own work as always reflecting on mine and especially my mum’s lived experience as Tamils. My mother is someone, no matter where the environment she is, who maintains and always remembers the values, life and memories influenced by her Tamil identity. Through my work, I am showcasing the beauty of our community from an authentic perspective and ensuring that all South Asians of every skin tone are represented, especially in a world where colourism and fairness are quite prevalent (Pandey, 2020). Throughout time and especially since the Black Lives Matter movement began, it has become more and more important to me to ensure that through my work all South Asians/Tamils of various skin tones feel connected and included.

Since my first ever university project ஒரு தீவிலிருந்து ஒரு நகரம் meaning 'A city away from an Island' in my second year, I haven't just learnt so much about my heritage but I feel reconnected to it again because of my creative process. Furthermore, taking the time to really understand my mum's lived experience of Jaffna, especially her childhood, through collaborating with her on shoots in lockdown, has given me more of an understanding of our different lived experiences and positions in society. Growing up in London, despite the racist situations I have faced and the urge to fit into society as a child, it has still been a lot easier especially in terms of educational growth - something that is really important to my parents as it is something that they were not privileged to due to the Sri Lankan civil war. The pandemic has meant that we have been forced to stay at home, which led to conversations with my mum about topics such as the Coming of Age/puberty ceremonies, something that I know I would've brushed past as I've already gone through; however having these in-depth conversations instead of just learning or reminiscing on various aspects of Tamil culture has led to some sentimental visual reflections but also growth on both mine and my mum's part, as we've become more comfortable to have conversations about topics that are considered "controversial". Nevertheless, the pandemic did mean that my idea had evolved to the current situation - my original idea was to celebrate all Tamil people of various lived experiences but not just through the models but the stylist and make-up artists too. I want to do this to showcase the creativity within the Tamil community but I also feel that this project wouldn't truly represent the Tamil community if ‘there's no representation behind the scenes’ (its.arooj, 2021). Most importantly, I wanted to do it for my final project because I knew that there would be a chance to showcase the work in an exhibition, something that would've been an amazing moment for me but also the Tamil community, as we very rarely see Tamil role models represented in galleries. Therefore moving forward, going beyond my studentship and graduation to continue my creative practice, this is a project that I plan to start working on during the summer amongst other collaborations that I have planned revolving around my South Asian heritage. During these three years, especially the last two, there have been so many unexpected changes but it has been a learning curve. It has made my artistic approach towards creativity more adaptable through an understanding of where my passion lies and what I want my projects to reflect.

www.mathushaasagthidasphotography.co.uk

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Nick Virk.

“

Nick Virk (they/them) is a filmmaker, writer and digital producer.

find me @harnick_virk | www.nickvirk.com

Roop Tera Mastana TW: Suicide / Self-Harm / Sexual (child) Abuse / Eating Disorders

They say self-love is a radical act. My Instagram feed is flooded with bite-sized messages about body positivity and loving your melanin. Their existence changes the dominating narrative around conventional beauty standards. And yet, I cannot find a forum to hear or voice dialogue as to why we may dislike our bodies. I suffocate in the pressure to accept my body because self-deprecation is a social taboo. Forced positivity silences. I say, “I feel ugly” and my friend tells me, “I am beautiful.” The room becomes tense and this negative energy that I’ve unleashed needs to be combatted as soon as possible with a compliment. The friend thinks their only options are to either agree (and that would be rude) or to refute. They don’t want to feel uncomfortable, but neither option is helpful. If I felt unhappy, they wouldn’t tell me I was joyful. We know that to be gaslighting, so why do they deny how I feel when I talk about my appearance? In a world that seeks only aspirational stories, I want to cry out and say my struggle is valid. Surely, there cannot be a more radical act than speaking true. I hate my body. Even now while writing, I regularly pause to wipe away the greasy fingerprints that I find on my laptop screen. While I can find value in my mind, I have only ever seen my body as a vessel, one that is substandard in fulfilling its duty; champagne served in a plastic cup. It has never felt like a true reflection of who I was or wanted to be. Part of this stems from gender dysphoria, but then dysphoria is an emotion and I realise my mind is not always my ally. I wanted to blame my depression on my body’s serotonin deficiency. The cause, however, is much more complex. 60

Through years of therapy, I’ve challenged my learned distinction between mind and body. Their relationship has become blurred. To ease my anxiety, I must breathe deeply. To alleviate my depression, I must move and exert myself. I assume then to selflove, I must bring my body into the fold and I do not know how, or even more crucially, know if I want to. I have before come to accept a part of my body - my colour. I remember kids in the playground spreading rumours that I bathed in shit every morning and that’s why I was brown. My family’s internalised racism meant that they would encourage fairness. I had darker patches around my neck, elbows and knees. They used to tell me I wasn’t washing properly - that I needed to scrub. I ended up scrubbing so hard I began to bleed. I learnt a different narrative, but my acceptance of my heritage was as much psychological as it was physical. While my skin may be brown, so was my mind. The rest feels much harder. There is a sanctuary within me, a sense of security that my mind is my own, while my body feels like it belongs to the world, beholden to their judgement and scrutiny. There is such conflict between the two. While my mind has begun healing from trauma, my body is a canvas riddled with the scars of my past. I look at my face and see acne scarring that speaks not only of the blemishes that caused them but of a past that has shaped me, quite literally. At the worst moments of my depression, I find solace in imagining a suicide where my lifeless body is not disfigured or harmed, but simply at rest - ready to be looked upon in its true ugly state; while I no longer have to feel shame for its existence. This shaping and scarring of my body happened over many years, long before I knew it was possible to heal.

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While my mind has begun healing from trauma, my body is a canvas riddled with the scars of my past."

I was sexually abused twice, at the age of three or four and again by a close friend for a prolonged period of time in my teenage years. I distinctly remember as a toddler being disgusted at her genitalia and then when I was a teen, hating my body every time he touched it. In the latter occurrences, he would beat me after. Love time and hate time, he said, had to come in equal balance. I picked up that confusion and today I still find it hard to separate love from pain. As a teenager, I developed a binge eating disorder. I would skip lunch at school, instead eating only chocolate, then come home eat more chocolate and then have dessert after an unenjoyable dinner. Food - particularly sugar - became a way to fill the void. It got progressively worse and I put my body under considerable strain, eating until I felt pain and then numbness. I developed IBS, a symptom of my anxiety and depression and I felt like my body was betraying me. My stomach bulged and desexualised me. Porn only ever showed me muscle and abs and when I came out, cis gay spaces felt exclusionary. Brown, fat and femme - not a good combination for Soho’s nightlife scene. I am obsessed with how beautiful other people are. I look at them and feel deep envy for their bodies. I find myself comparing their body to my own as a way to find fault with mine. It is, I know now, a way of selfharming. Sex doesn’t feel like a cure either. Beauty doesn’t feel like something other people can grant, but it is something they can take away. In the same way, aliens are depicted as strange and unattractive in films, I feel similarly that my body is inhuman unable to be comprehended by the world around me and then forced into an outfit that doesn’t quite fit. I find myself being read as a cis male, despite the fact my mind is gender fluid. I dress how I like - at times more femme than others - but I feel that when stripped naked by society’s eyes - I will only be perceived as a man. Again, my body betrays me. I see other nonbinary people and think they are incredibly beautiful, but I don’t see that in myself. I scroll through fashion websites and see plus sized models and think they’re beautiful. I don’t afford myself the same compliment. Representation of any minority only goes so far when you have spent the larger part of your life fighting a different narrative. It’s hard to accept the war is over and if it is, I still feel like I’ve lost.

This defeat stems from feeling like I didn’t do enough to either conform to the beauty standard or decide to say fuck the beauty standard and accept myself. Are those my only two options? I think this while knowing the same beauty standard changed over the decades. I watch old Bollywood movies and think how the curved bodies of their stars differ from the trim figures we idealise today. The rationale says that I could see myself as beautiful if I wanted to. There’s a standard I seem to be holding myself to and the positive representation does little to counter that. That standard is set by my mind. When I see bodies that resemble my own, I know that’s meant to empower me - but what I really want to know and understand is how their minds and bodies became one and found acceptance as a whole. How can my mind accept my body when they feel like they are working against each other? I can be proud of my skin colour, because my mind and body are united in that understanding. I cannot do the same elsewhere, because my mind is plagued by the shame that I carry around with me. I wouldn’t be able to exist without my body and yet I feel it is my greatest flaw. There are rare moments when I look in the mirror and feel I look passable and that my body isn’t so bad. And then I hit a wave of shame for deluding myself. I feel so far away from having a mind that is not waging a war against my body. I’ve learnt that the greatest combat to shame is sharing, so it doesn’t foster and grow in the narratives I want to tell myself. I can recognise that much of what I have written is not based in fact, but in a distorted subjectivity that I have convinced myself is true. Even writing it, I can read back what I’ve written and see how unhealthy much of it sounds, even if it rings true. So when I say I feel ugly, I would love to talk about why. I would love to speak about why I don’t like my body and understand why you might like or dislike yours.

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Tokenism S up

find me @sanjtakhar

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Sanjeet Takhar (they/them/he/him/she/her - all) is a curator, producer, and an educator based in Toronto. Having worked in Toronto’s DIY electronic music scene for nearly a decade, their work centres around creating spaces; approaching music through themes of inclusivity, uplifting communities, and creating connections. Focusing on the balance between artist and audience, Sanjeet believes in the power of embodied compassion, where music transcends space and time and acts as a truly political tool; a living, breathing act of revolution and story telling. When they aren’t curating and creating music, they lead community yoga and teach courses on Anti-Oppression and Yoga.

For most of my life, I existed outside of my body. My family never saw me as anything to make note of. I was a checkbox of things a token child should be, but not ever a full being itself. “Children are to be seen and not heard,” my father would repeat. But what am I without words, feelings, expressions? I sought attention elsewhere, secretly, quietly, hoping that if I carved out my world, I could be visible. I manifested a life centred around fun, but it required me to constantly peer over my shoulder. It was hot and sexy, but it couldn’t risk including people that looked like me, whose judgement I feared. I wrapped myself in a blanket of white-people's-cultural-ignorance to evade the life that waited for me at home. The other world where the daily dose of guilt, shame and invisibility left me broken. For years I kept my worlds separate at all costs. In 2018, after almost a decade of working on myself, building stability, and falling madly in love, I mustered up the courage and attempted to merge my two worlds. I wished to celebrate my beautiful partner, to open up about my creative job, to merge my real life with my family life so I could stop looking over my shoulder. Swapping spoons of guilt for shared understanding. In 2018 I was disowned by my family for the things that made me heard and the checkboxes I did not fill. It hurt more than anything I could ever imagine. It damaged parts of me I never knew existed. I clung to my friends looking to duplicate my family. I pleaded with my partner to answer my problems. I hysterically cried at the thought that without a family, perhaps I truly did not exist. Not existing yet still feeling pain is a dichotomy I could never explain in words. In it lies the deep-seated, existential pain of knowing you’re disposable.

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For months the pain was so debilitating, the Xanax nearby so tempting, that all I could do besides wishing my death was to demolish myself. To excavate every bit of my insides and clear myself of everything that hurt me. I dove into my organs, my veins, and the padded spaces of my mind to pull out any embedded roots. Anything that reminded me of my family. Anything that tortured me. Pulling out all of my family's assertions of “we’re all you have, you’re nothing without us.” The process of excavating myself left me unformed, unearthed. No new roots could sprout because I tilled the soil constantly to avoid more pain. No new life could form because I was nothing. How is one able to hold two truths at once? How could I be nothing but also experience pain? How can the immaterial exist in the material? My grandmother is the closest thing I have to God in a person. She’s brutal and loving. She’s degrading and nurturing. She constantly reminded me “you’re born with nothing and you die with nothing” when people passed or when we spoke of money. The immaterial death and the material life are represented in the same phrase. My grandmother was my introduction to God. A God I then searched for in books, music, and psychedelics. How can God be nothing and everything all at once? I clung to an idea of God to find ways to be okay with aloneness. I pleaded with God to ease my state of nothingness. I cried to God to help me be like them, to be whole. The one that was to be heard and not seen. The one that had the answers without the need for the form. The illusion of form is everything in our world today. In therapy, I fail to describe myself without listing off an external characteristic. I lead my conversations with “being a gay brown person.” My stomach turns when I’m asked my pronouns, yet I still croak out “all.” Identity politics is said to be serving a greater good, but why does it feel so bad? Over and over I am called to be seen. To not only take up space but to demand it. Over and over I read quotes from black writers about facing change and taking it head-on. The words make me believe taking up space on a platform or table makes me immune to being invisible. I crave that acknowledgement. “Here I am and you have to listen.” Acknowledgment is a double-edged sword. As I navigated the various career worlds around me, I started to feel that acknowledgement can also be skin-deep. That my father's sentiments are still alive and well. My body was and still is a checkbox of someone else’s accomplishments. The space I take up may not actually be for my benefit but for larger bodies. Bodies that exist without form yet still govern mine. Other bodies care not for my pulpy-internal-self that screams to be heard, a self with words, feelings, expressions. These bodies are here to consume just the outside surface, the shell, the bits that can be seen. So here I am, a person who has dissociated from their form. I don't recognize my gender. I often feel estranged from the hand wrapped lovingly in my partner's grip. My breasts feel not my own. The touch of my face as I wash it, even more so. My meat pulls away from its shell with every transgression inflicted on it. I pull away when yoga studio owners tell me to shut my mouth. I pull away when they label my price. I pull away when EDI work compensates with “experience.” I pull away when white zoom rooms ask for an Indian opinion on their colonized work. I pull away when people ask me to share my trauma as a spectacle. The historical blood I bleed for them is profit. It's almost laughable for me to think that after all these years of carving myself out, I’m still consumable. Turns out my shell makes the perfect tokenism soup. The shell of me has the highest return on investment. As I move forward and find my footing, all I can do is find ways to hold multiple truths. I will continue to strive to be more like God because it's the only way I can survive. I will strive to be a person to be less seen and more heard and will surround myself with people that see the value in that. Where my actions, seva, work, dreams, pulpy-internal-self can be what I tell my therapist. Maybe then my dissociation will dissolve. Maybe then I can finally sprout strong roots and grow from the inside. Maybe then I’ll be a soul beyond a body. And maybe one day I can be whole. Sanjeet, seen and heard.

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South Asian women making it happen:

velyn E h t i w n versatio

In con

Diet Paratha (no, not Diet Prada, but yes, the inspiration does derive from here), is the burgeoning platform that has quickly become the global home to the best creative talent across the South Asian diaspora. The platform shines a light on South Asian talent without pandering to a white gaze, all while providing a space for the community to connect, (un) learn and grow. It is run by London-based, New Zealandborn, advertising creative, Anita Chhiba (she/her). In its one-year resurgence, Diet Paratha has been featured in British Vogue, 10 magazine, Highsnobiety, Dazed, Nowness, Creative Review, Hypebeast and more. Partnerships include Burberry, Byredo, Adidas Originals, with many others in the works. Juice’s Creative Director, Evelyn, sat down with Diet Paratha’s founder, Anita Chhiba, (despite Anita living through a fourteen-day quarantine in a hotel in New Zealand and the thirteen-hour time difference!) to talk about the space and platforms she’s carved out for South Asian creatives.

E: What made you decide to go from your personal platform @achhib to the Diet Paratha one? What was your vision behind it? A: So the personal platform was always separate. It’s kind of like Juice in that regard, I just felt I needed a space that I could relate to. Because I started the page in 2017 and it was around the time of the ‘Reclaim the Bindi’ movement, and it was like loads of stuff popping up. Very early on, South Asian creatives kind of started using Instagram to their absolute advantage. I don’t know if you remember, but @simran (Randhawa) was just starting to pop off, and I felt really connected because it didn’t feel like I had that in New Zealand. And so, to be able to see that, even from afar, was something that I needed. I didn’t know what it was going to be at the time. Obviously, over so many years Diet Paratha's evolved, but yeah, it was just a space that I needed. 66

E: You said your Instagram community offered you something that New Zealand wasn’t offering to you. Was that one of the motivations for you to make the move from New Zealand? A: It was completely separate, to be honest. But I did understand that there was such a scene here. I mean population alone, the UK is massive. There are 5 million people in the country of New Zealand, and in London alone there are 10 million people. Just seeing what people from the diaspora have achieved was definitely motivating, but it wasn’t a sole motivator to move over here.

E: You said that you wanted Diet Paratha to be a space you could relate to, that other people could relate to. How do you feel like you’ve gone about making that vision and idea a reality? And is there any advice you might give to someone else that wants to do a similar thing? A: I think it nailed it to be completely honest – the feedback from the community is growing so powerful, and it’s honestly so humbling.

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E: How did you go about making it a reality? A: I discovered a gap in the market and I was like, okay people are covering a lot of art and doing a lot of ‘ethnically inspired’ shoots, but no one’s really covering these incredible high-end shoots with really admirable brands. No one was really operating in that high-end space and presenting that back to the people. So, I found a niche in something that someone wasn’t doing, and I just went for it and it ended up being a fool-proof idea. And I think my advice to other people that are getting out there- you gotta find a niche. You have gotta come up with your own ideas because right now, this resurgence is arguably the best year of South Asian representation. I feel like a lot of people want to replicate stuff that’s already been done. It’s really about looking for what hasn’t been done and focussing your energy on that, so even your consumer or audience can see the value exchanged. E: This is kind of a conceptual question, but I feel like what you’ve just said really speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of your work – do you consider yourself an artist, an interdisciplinary, a facilitator through Diet Paratha? A: Definitely a multi-disciplinarian. E: Okay, so could you maybe speak to how you think creativity and social action do go hand in hand like how you’ve done that with the spaces you’ve created? A: Absolutely. I’ve worked really hard to get events, projects, and sponsorships and open up a space for South Asian people, as well as making sure they’re paid and treated fairly and equitably. For example, from a 4-hour party with Byredo in November, 25 South Asian creatives were paid through that. And two of those people were from the Future Flowers course at Sage Flowers in Peckham. So, they are getting paid for their time, but also getting experience with highend clients. It’s really translating back to the community – the money is being put back into the community. E: Yeah. That sounds amazing. So proud to have had a Juice team member there, representing too! E: Moving on a bit from your wins, would you have any advice for anyone else that is still struggling with feeling ‘seen’ or receiving negative feedback that might make them question their role in the South Asian or creative community? A: I think the advice is just to keep the right kind of people around you. Concentrate on those around you that pick you up, bring you joy and appreciate you, because it’s so easy to get lost. 100 positive comments can be overthrown by two negative ones, you know, but you’ve just got to focus on the people that appreciate what you’re doing, as opposed to the people that want to criticise. E: That’s something we wanted to explore in this issue actually. Not only to write about mental health and racialised or gendered trauma, but also the powerful potential of community and family and friendship in healing for one another. What would be your first artistic thoughts about this? What comes to mind? A: I guess it’s general well-being. When I think of my mind and body, I really want to take care of myself. It’s just keeping up healthy habits and keeping yourself well and sane. 68

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No one was really operating in that high-end space and presenting that back to the people. So, I found a niche in something that someone wasn't doing, and I just went for it…” E: When we were brainstorming, we came up with layers of words and different prompts and we were thinking about terms like identity, spirituality, mental health, well-being, culture, duality, fluidity, and community. Do you feel like your practice and your platform particularly resonate with any of those?

E: You’ve definitely left a legacy for the South Asian collectives that have come after you. And I think that impact can’t be underestimated. So many South Asian creatives are doing things that they never would have done without platforms like yours and others.

A: A hundred percent. I think every single one of them to be completely honest. I don’t know how you feel about Diet Paratha, but for a lot of people, it’s so much more than just an Instagram page. It’s like an uprising. It’s a place to feel constantly inspired. It’s a place to achieve greatness. It’s a place to feel like you can do something that hasn’t been done before. And it’s a place to draw inspiration and confidence. Like with the side-profile pieces. Those, in particular, people will message and say ‘I’ve been talked out of getting a nose job,’ or the comments that you get daily just reinforce that.

A: Oh that’s so sweet! And just being able to have events in real life and really connecting with people, because a lot of South Asian creatives feel a little bit ostracized from their own communities because, you know, the way the immigrant culture is, we’re encouraged to be accountants, and lawyers, and doctors. I like having in-person events to reinforce the power of the online community as well. Like from one event in November, two shoots have already happened. And I can see people hanging out with people that they met at the party. As I said, I love it! I’m going to do more inclusive events, but I am mindful about things when I am having these events. There was a little bit of feedback from people feeling like they weren’t included. That’s really hard when we’ve been excluded for so long that when we do start to see a glimmer of hope, there’s unfortunately not going to be an open invitation to the entire community. Physically, it creates a bit of divide that is really hard to combat. It’s both a need and a want to do more inclusive events.

E: I thought that one of your recent side-profile pieces, especially, was so powerful. We don’t necessarily look at or appreciate explicitly brown bodies. We don’t celebrate brownness for what it is. Moving forward, a large part of Juice’s work is building up a community for South Asian artists everywhere – it is part of the legacy we want to leave behind. How do you see your work leaving behind a legacy? A: I think it’s already starting to leave a bit of a legacy behind. I know that the platform was a really early adopter of recognizing the absolute best of South Asian creativity – and I want people to not only look back on it but continue to look at it as a source of brilliance.

find me @acchib | @diet_paratha

E: You’ve touched on it a little bit but I’d just like to finish by asking you what we can expect to see from you soon? A: I think people expect to see the best of the best when it comes to Diet Paratha. I’ve been so fortunate to have such a wonderful track record of luxury clients, and it will just be more of that. More events that include the whole community, more free stuff, more resources for people to pull from, more paid work, more opportunities that lead to really great jobs, and Diet Paratha 2.0. Just seeing how we push it. Expect to see more greatness! 69

Anushray Singh

Juice Editor + Podcast Producer (he/him)

Atman...a personal essay...

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My verses may sound hollow, as I’ve come from the land of summers that lies in the Indian subcontinent, I’ve found beauty in fall, spring and winter. My journey is of an immigrant, a human, an artist and of mind and body. The two words have remarkably simple meanings, in terms of our daily conversations. In terms of our daily understanding. In terms of our daily lived experiences. Mind and body are the most universal of topics and themes. They transcend sex, gender, race, caste, creed, all the metrics of our human society. I am writing this very personal essay. I am writing this as a human being, who has a mind and a body. In social terms or speaking, I am a 26-year-old brown man. I was born and raised in India. In my travels around the country, and now to an altogether different part of the world, Canada, I have indeed made some headways about my being. My being like your own being is extraordinarily complex and nuanced. It is beautiful. As an immigrant, I felt a hesitation to occupy spaces outside my motherland. Very understandable, very human experience, isn’t it? Fear of the unknown! Out of the concocted little spaces of your comfort.

“My body, the personification of an Indian brown man carries some resonance.” Over the last three years, being a film student, I occupied an incredibly unique space, especially for an Indian immigrant. This space is not something very oddly unfamiliar in Canada, but I would say the rest of the world. My body, the personification of an Indian brown man carries some resonance. This is true even in India and Canada. No one is absolved from generalizing. An Indian filmmaker with an offbeat taste in media and culture completely cut me off from frankly larger Indian and South Asian communities in Canada. In India, my choices have been radical, through my departures from an expected life of being an engineer. It has been obvious, that I was always encouraged to follow the footsteps of many well-to-do and employed Indian engineers of the world. In India and Canada, I was expected to perform the role of the “model minority.” Wherever I walked into my University, I was assumed to be an engineer or an IT guy. Sometimes, I was not lucky enough and met with the gaze of being assumed as just an immigrant worker (oddly looked down upon.) The conscious and subconscious expectations of others (Indians and non-Indians) through conversations many a time put me at unease. I was not the immigrant the Indian and South Asian diaspora was looking for. I was not an immigrant, traditionally a Western country sees or expects.

In reading this, no way, take pity on me or dismiss me.

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My failure to perform the traditional first-generation tropes amused quite many. Occupying non-immigrant and immigrant spaces, due to my flexibility made me realize.... made me philosophize.... made me embrace.... a rare but an authentic identity. My mind and my body are a manifestation of the social order that exists. I am an Indian man, I am Hindu, I am heterosexual, I am privileged, I am a person of colour, I am this and that, I form the majority in India and minority in Canada........and tags can be hanged and rehanged. In all my failure to pinpoint my position in my motherland and various host lands, I recognize my failure. To be authentic is the beautiful embrace of life. My mind like all the minds of this world is filled with insecurities, fears, notions, inferiority, superiority, biases, generalizations, judgements, all unreal, all fabricated. My body bears witness to my ancestry, to my physical health, to my well-being or lack of it, to my ways which I carry it, but it cannot be compared to brazen demands and standards.

“All and all, here and there, above, and beyond, anyways, and anyhow, I am, like you, a unique individual.” We are not special. But we are not un-special. The last three years have been for me the best of times, in the worst of times. I occupy a space in this world that is in-between, my mind and body are a product of my Indian Hindi and English-speaking upbringing. My performance is of a global Indian citizen, as the new cadres of artists. We do not have the Apu from the Simpsons accent, not the native American or Brit accents, but calming neutral Indian ones. We, and yes, let me generalize here Indian, Pakistani, SriLankan, Nepali, Bangladeshi, share our minds and bodies, as a performative category of the “minority” as well as the “majority,” in South Asian and Western discourses. Mind and body, as categories of discussion and performance through South Asian artists cleverly disarm stereotypes perpetuated deeply in South Asia and frankly the rest of the world. Mind and body have long been performative, and we must recognize how society has engendered such. Beyond the rigid demands of being “this and that,” is an authentic third space, a space for enunciation for the multidimensional being that you are. In all my meditation, in all my self-acceptance, I perform what is uniquely me, an acceptance of my upbringing, and my learning through new encounters. White, black, and brown, are categories, but within you lies, what Indian philosophy and spirituality always preached, the inner voice, the intuition, the God (if you want to say that), from which stems healing and love. Beyond all this, is I am..... what I like to believe, what I have grown to recognize, an atman (soul) that lives on through this Mind and Body.

find me @anushray_singh

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Amaani Farah Farah Amaani " Amaani (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, creating pieces that often have undertones of comedy and discomfort, harbouring an awkward outcome that challenges the audience's gaze when interacting with the work. Through methods of performance, installation, illustration and film, her art exhaustively explores each angle at which it can be seen and therefore understood, or perhaps more interestingly misunderstood. As an artist she is reserved when it comes to divulging the meaning of her works to audiences, birthing a sense of frustration and confusion that adds to the ambiguity of the work. Graduating from Central Saint Martins with a first class honours degree in fine arts furthered the development of processes which Amaani utilises. Her institutional education allowed for an exploration into the depths of one's physical, mental and emotional limits, transforming her artworks and reshaping them into aspects of the uncanny.

Brown Eyes is a series of illustrations conveying the sense of pain and frustration that is silenced in the eyes of South Asian women. Despite having a sense of autonomy and breaking away from oppressive cycles, some traumas and guilt are inherited, including that of the pressure and shame carried by women within the community. The series is a closer look into the internal baggage that is carried within the eyes, from mother to daughter, whilst trying desperately to hold on to a culture that you feel far removed from because of how you were raised within it.

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find me @hatfred

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Isha Vibhakar “

Isha Vibhakar (she/her) is a third year theatre and film student at University of Bristol with a keen interest in content curation and research. In the last year, she was a regular contributor at her university newspaper Epigram and featured thrice in print. This academic year, she has been promoted to the position of Deputy Editor of the Film and TV section of Epigram where she has gained journalism skills like editing and interviewing famous personalities for features. She also did a summer research internship in the project 'The A-Z of Secrecy and Ignorance' where she collaborated with experts from the Secrecy, Power and Ignorance research network (SPIN) and producers at We the Curious, Bristol’s science museum to understand how people (especially children) perceive secrecy and ignorance. She is currently working on another research internship project 'Decolonising Memory: Digital Bodies in Movement' which looks at Bristol’s memory of transatlantic enslavement through historical and creative methodologies, and collaboratively design new performance-based memorial interventions centering African culture.

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Squid Game: Till debt do us part! Netflix’s latest global hit drama Squid Game potentially owes most of its success to the tendency of evoking a FOMO in people who can’t relate to the trending memes and references being made of the show on social media. Its reputation as an instant cult classic may just as well be a result of that. Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, survival-thriller Squid Game is premised on debt-strapped social outcasts who are lured into signing up with a secret organization to play a series of traditional Korean children’s games for a prize money of 45.6 billion South Korean won. The rules are simple: if you win, you progress to the next round and if you lose, you die. What’s ironic about this supposed ‘simplicity’ is the fact that adults are made to play kids’ games under the pretext of meritocracy when in reality, it’s all just about dumb luck. With a narrative built around Darwin’s theory on ‘the survival of the fittest’, Squid Game strips away the innocence of childhood games. This is achieved by internalizing manipulation and deceit as integral qualities in contestants to avoid death and progress further in the games, without them realizing what’s at stake. Since human lives are expendable and moral codes are compromised to win, the show also insinuates the theme of inherited trauma which leaves an indelible scar on the winner’s psyche who has to live with the fact of having blood on their hands despite having ‘won’ (*pun intended*) “fair and square”. This is well-depicted through the character of Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jungjae) who is faced with the moral and ethical dilemma of his survival at two particular instances: first, when he tricks Oh Ilnam (played by Yeong-su Oh) in the marble game and second, upon resuming his life after emerging as the winner of the Squid Game, raising the question - winning, but at what cost? Thus thematically, the show is set within the framework of a capitalistic society. Be it the brutal exploitation of the vulnerable proletariat contestants by the masked bourgeoisie Western VIPs for their entertainment, or the South Korean employers out in the real world. The power dynamics at play here provide a useful social commentary of modern South Korea. In the context of the game-world, the Western VIPs conceal their own identities by wearing decorative animal masks due to their privilege and socio-economic position in society while the contestants have their entire lives laid out with bets placed on them. This kind of white supremacist gaze is divisive and racist as it draws a line between the two ends of the spectrum and oppresses the less powerful by reducing them to mere collaterals.

Review Squid Game also manages to portray Korea’s discrimination towards immigrants from developing nations and their propensity to travel to developed countries to achieve the prosperity dream. Through the Pakistani character Abdul Ali, played by Anupam Tripathi. Not only he is exploited for his labour by his South Korean employer, but also betrayed and patronised for his naivety by Cho Sang-Woo, played by Park Hae-soo who replaces the former’s marbles with pebbles resulting in his death, despite Ali always being subservient to him, but more so, an overall deserving contestant. There is also an instance in the show where Ali is silenced by Han Mi Nyeo (played by Kim-Joo Ryung), for voicing his opinion and imitating her - she outrightly accuses him of perhaps being an illegal immigrant showing the marginalization of postcolonial others due to their skeptical class and racial positioning. Straying from the plot, the casting decision of Ali can be disputed for its misrepresentation on screen as it is played by Indian actor Anupam Tripathi when it’s a Pakistani character. Squid Game along with other major cultural exports like Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite (2019) and Psy’s Gangnam Style has become a soft power strategy for South Korea offering insights into their culture through moments or songs that stay with people worldwide. Be it the giant doll’s recitation of “the Hibiscus flower has bloomed” from Squid Game or Jessica’s famous “Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago” from Parasite, equivalent to the Korean “Dokdo is Our Land” that students sing to memorise information - South Korea has actually made an impressive contribution globally. K-dramas like Squid Game definitely seem like the future of Korean cinema so keep an eye out!

find me @ishavibhakar_97

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Responses to

‘Squid Game: Till debt do us part’ by Isha Vibhakar During a day of immersive workshops, the young people of Integrate UK, a youthled charity campaigning for gender & racial equality, collaborated with the Juice Magazine team to reflect on and review the art and writing of ‘issue two: mind and body.’ See pages 30-31 for an overview and review of the workshop.

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Iftikhar Latif Brown body: Epiphanies of our physical limitations

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Iftikhar Latif (he/him) is a writer and spoken-word artist of British-Bangladeshi descent. He released a collection of short stories and poems, titled ‘LOSERS’, in August 2019. His work often refers to the British Asian experience, immigrant family relationships and deconstructions of masculinity. He is also co-founder and host for ‘Off The Chest’.

I remember being angry at my shoes. Even though I slipped them on in seconds, it felt like they took a million years to get on. I hopped into the back of the Uber. The driver probably wondered why I was talking so frantically to my mum over the phone. I felt obliged to tell him. My dad had been out with my two sisters. They went to the local chemist to take a few passport photos in their self-service booth. He and my youngest sister were hit by a motorcyclist while walking across a zebra crossing. An ambulance was called to the scene, taking him and the motorcyclist to Royal London Hospital. Due to COVID, no one was allowed to escort him in the ambulance.

find me @yungifto

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Speaking to the Uber driver, I couldn’t help notice how similar he was to my dad. They were both Bangladeshi men. Both Uber drivers. Who knows, maybe they knew each other. Maybe my dad would have insisted I call this man sasa. I could tell that the driver shared my concern about my dad. He told me to recite a dua. I didn’t respond. He then told me he’d try getting there as quickly as he could, despite the traffic and heavy rain. When we arrived, I coyly said thank you and sprinted over to meet my mum.

In fact, he couldn’t drive at all. ***

At the house, I was given the full details of what had happened. My youngest sister was fine apart from some bruising on her hand. My dad was hit far worse. We weren’t sure what happened to him exactly. That suspense was crushing. I rang the hospital urgently to see him. The person on the phone told me only one person could visit due to COVID restrictions, so I went. My uncle gave me a swift lift. He tried to probe me for what had happened. But I kept vague so no one, including myself, would jump to conclusions.

I can tell how restless he feels, not being able to get out of the house. Not being able to provide an income for his family. Not even being able to tend to his beloved garden.

The hospital kept me waiting for two hours. In that time, I briefly saw a boy in a Getir helmet with a cast over his leg in a wheelchair. It wasn’t until he was wheeled out of my sight that it hit me. That was the motorcyclist who crashed into my dad and sister. To this day, I don’t know whether this missed opportunity to give the motorcyclist a piece of my mind should be keeping me angry.

Where these people are valued by how functional they are, it is worrying when they aren’t able to command their bodies due to physical disability. Random accidents can leave people like my father feeling suddenly useless. Add to that the xenophobic perception that immigrants take more out of the system than they put in (despite the opposite being true) and it all amounts to an unhelpful mix of guilt and self-doubt.

But I just kept waiting. And waiting. Still no word from the nurse. I was growing impatient. I kept receiving calls from relatives asking me whether I had seen my dad yet and I kept saying no, not yet. I felt powerless. I was supposed to be the eldest son. I was supposed to have this situation under control, but I don’t think anyone’s ever felt in control sitting in a hospital’s waiting room for a loved one. When I was finally led towards a bed, I felt I had been misdirected. In the bed, covered in a teal blanket, was a man who seemed too tiny to be my dad. How could this small figure lying under the blanket be my big, strong father? As I approached and saw his face, I realised that this small man writhing in pain with his eyes shut was my dad. I approached him repeating ‘Abbu’ and he woke up. I could feel the lump forming in my throat. I had never seen him so weak. I stroked his wrinkled forehead and asked him what had happened, like the times he would do the same to me when I was ill. It felt wrong. He was supposed to look after me, not the other way around.

Asian men are often defined by their function as providers, both physically and financially. For the immigrant working classes, these two traits are explicitly linked. In Britain, how many Asian workers do you come across that require manual labour for their jobs: your Uber drivers, shopkeepers, and labourers?

My dad always taught me to work hard and I think to a degree that made me internalise that our worth is linked to how hard we graft. It sounds silly, but internalising this also meant I felt like my dad was indestructible. He is constantly pulling a shift or thinking ahead about his next move so to see him come to a stand-still serves as a tough realitycheck. Why is it such a shock to see my dad broken, when he has a body that can be broken just like mine? I feel guilty for buying into the notion that for Asian men, our salvation will come through grounding our bodies down to the nubs. And when we can’t do this we are as useful as squeezed limes. But my dad is more than just his body. He exists outside of his function as a worker or provider. He is a father. He is a community member. He is an enthusiastic gardener, proud of his many khodu. But seeing him unable to even raise his arm over his head anymore, makes me feel like he was robbed of a huge part of his identity. It’s not like he could do what I do and just sit in front of a computer to get work done. Not even needing to leave the house anymore for the office. For my dad, his car was the office. Overnight, he lost that.

He had told me that he couldn’t recall exactly how he ended up in the hospital. But he could remember being given morphine before his dislocated arm was tugged back into his socket. He had thrown up from the pain. Lying there in a gown, he stayed meditatively still so as to not aggravate his broken shoulder blade and arm, which was now in a sling.

People get injured all the time. That’s easy to accept as reality. But accepting that working-class, immigrant livelihoods are still ultimately defined within the boundaries of our physical limits makes that reality feel strange. Especially when it’s your pops. The one who’s carried the weight of the family on his shoulders.

It all could have been a lot worse. But the road to recovery, as I write this, is still being walked along slowly. My dad couldn’t go back to work as an Uber driver.

Get well soon Abbu. Your garden needs you. 79

Writing is visceral, I feel it all in my body and I write with my body. It feels sacred and urgent all at once, as though in it is something just for me and something for the world too.

- Farzana Khan Writer, Director, Cultural Producer and Award-Winning Educator

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@stateartcollect @omnibustheatre

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Build-A-Zine with Juice presented by state of the [art] This workshop was led by zine master and Juice co-founder/Art Director Raeesah Patel. What is a Zine you may ask? Think scrapbooking but on a whole new level; cutting, sticking and getting stuck in. This session explored the topic of health and well-being, inspired by Nikita Chadha's poem 'The Good Immigrant'. find out more about juice's events, workshops, and features at https://www.juicedroplet. com/eventsandfeatures

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The Sounds of Mind and Matter: In conversation with

s r e m i t y da "

Named after the iconic 80s and 90s scene of young British-Asians’ rebellion against their conservative parents and mainstream clubbing culture’s racism, Daytimers has been packing dancefloors since their inception during lockdown 1.0. Paralleling the start of the original daytimers, the collective grew naturally out of a need for expression - through clubbing and Carnatic beats. While the originals in the 80s were looking for a familiar beat and a family-friendly curfew, Daytimers are paying homage to their British-Asian ancestors and changing perceptions of the South Asian identity – both within and outside of the culture. The Daytimers team of Amad (they/them), Kiran (he/him), Rohan (he/him) and Priya (she/her) sat down with Juice Editor-at-Large, Adeeb Abdul Razak, to talk about their exponential growth, creativity in the pandemic, and the collective’s well-being.

Adeeb: Daytimers has grown exponentially since its inception at the start of 2020. How would you describe your growth during that time and did you see yourselves getting to where you are now, so quickly? “It's crazy because just the other day, I randomly did a Google search, and now so much comes up for Daytimers which we are blessed to have. We are at the forefront, where a lot of people can see the work that we're doing, championing South Asian artists, and also other causes as well – which are just as important to us.” Amad says when asked about the collective’s rapid growth and rave reception. To hear the passion that Provhat, the founder, had about building this community, like making this accessible, and all-inclusive makes me realize that growing up in the United States – I didn't have that sense of community. It’s something I kind of always longed for, so it was nice to be able to build it. I started working with the compilation, and then we did the Farmer stream, the 24 hours stream where we raised money for Khalsa Aid. It's been organic.”

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Kiran goes on to add: “I think the great thing about that lockdown was people had a lot of time, and that's how I came across Juice as well. I was so excited by what Juice was and what you were trying to achieve and then I came across Chalo, and there was No ID as well, which was an event started by Naina and Ahadadream. I remember listening to Manara’s show on BBC Asian network and it had this track, which was so nuts to me, and she was explaining that there was this collective called ‘Daytimers’, and I said ‘I need to find out what these Daytimers are.’ It was interesting how Daytimers rapidly grew and started to change after the March 2020 lockdown. I feel this can be linked to the moment of being allowed to self-reflect during the lockdown; reflecting about the meaning of being South Asian, and also digging deep into knowing different artists that are out there… and also feeling, let's celebrate all these people.” For Daytimers starting a collective and producing new content came with the challenges of finding producers to champion at the beginning of their journey and feature in their first compilation DT001. “At the start we were worried that we didn't know enough South Asian producers... and then we had 28 people and we're like okay we actually have to stop putting people on because this compilation is going to be too massive. That excitement around… showcasing all these producers, putting on that live stream (farmers stream), and all of a sudden having 24 hours of just pure, South Asian excellence. I think that moment hit people hard, and they were excited to see all of this happening on their screens. And then that gave groundwork for working with Boiler Room, Mixmag and all the other events.” Rohan: “During the lockdown, there was a shared consciousness in looking into matters of race and matters of identity that came out of the murder of George Floyd, I feel like I was looking inwards at what my identity is. Looking at platforms like Daytimers and Juice and seeing the other South Asians in similar age groups who were feeling the same way was reassuring. We needed that catalyst, that moment in history for all of us to have that level of introspection and political will to do something. My first response to people is to think of us less as a music collective and more as a protest group. We don't do things for the sake of it, we do it because there'll be some sort of cultural and political significance. That's what people are vibing with more than the music, more than, more than just South Asian representation, it's like, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are if we didn't appreciate the history.” Speaking about the lack of female representation on the scene, Priya explained the monumental shift in perspective that took place when the lockdown activism started and Daytimers came out: “I was doing a lot of radio at the beginning of lockdown and was looking for other South Asian females or just South Asians in music in general. I knew that they were out there but I was struggling to find them. I ended up guesting on the specialist show on Foundation FM with Sita Shah and Rani dnb, and I thought ‘This is sick!’, there are other South Asian females that don't just play Indian music, they play what they want to play. Through that, I jumped on a call with Daytimers and then the Farmers Protest live stream happened. That was monumental for me. You had me and my mum, who never watches live streams, watching the whole 24 hours.

She was crying on the phone with me through Yung Singh’s set, he had the protest streaming behind him as well, there were just so many things that were being done for the first time in history, it was a real connection point for me, my mum, different people, different generations. We were all watching the same thing, connecting over the same thing. After the live stream, seeing how fast the donations came in was when something clicked for me and I realised, ‘This is going to be big,’ We had messages coming in from people in India saying they had hired a cricket ground and streamed the whole event. I thought: Okay, this is bigger than the UK...so many people have been looking for the same thing.” Adeeb: “Seeing it from an outside perspective, as well, is so crazy. How you've honoured the history of it all. At the same time as what is going on in the world and this huge political upheaval, you're pushing into a space that wasn't meant for brown people, the working class, that wasn't meant for us. You guys doing that 24-hour event for people whose spaces have been invaded and whose lives have been taken away in a manner – it's truly a once in a generation kind of thing and you should all be proud of yourselves.” The pandemic was a time of creative strategising. While cultural and entertainment jobs were the first to be made redundant with funding cuts and lack of custom, innovative problem-solving coupled with unencumbered work-forces sought out new ways to create and reach out across social distancing measures. With such a huge focus on music, and especially live performance, events collectives like Daytimers adapted and learnt to flourish in these 'unprecedented times.'

Adeeb: How did the pandemic affect you and was there anything you learnt during that time? Priya: “Just before the pandemic, I was getting myself ready to play live shows and I kept telling myself, 'Next year is the year. That's the year I do it,' and then we went into lockdown. I ended up recording one mix, putting it online, pushing it out to everybody, and it eventually ended up with Manara. She gave me my first radio show on BBC Asian Network, which is insane because I grew up listening to that station. I met so many south asian djs, producers, through Daytimers in lockdown and ended up playing the South Asian Mixmag takeover show. That was my first live show in a crowd, and it was very overwhelming but I'm so glad that I was surrounded by the friendly South Asian faces I'd been chatting to online through the pandemic. I've had to learn a lot through lockdown through watching streams and trying to get the full experience. I ended up finding my sound, because I had the time to listen to other radio stations and shows. I ended up completely switching genres because I was like, ‘Whoa, this person does this, this person does that,' Kiran is one of the people that I listened to. I love his ‘foot-not-work mix’ which inspired my sound as well. So that's kind of how lockdown affected me. It was my debut in the music scene.” ... 85

Rohan @rohan.rakit

... Rohan: “We wanted to make the most out of the virtual world basically and see where we could go, and obviously, everyone was spending a lot more time online. So we had a lot more time to reach out to people, and they would probably respond because they're doing what we're doing, being at home. There were too many people, collectives and creators in my circle previously who were, and rightly so, feeling very down about the state of the world and where everything was going. The creative industries were being locked off but not being proactive enough, in my opinion. And so, because we were sort of born into that virtual world we didn't have the luxury of being able to throw a club night for 60 people at first. How do you get a live stream audience to come and sit for 24 hours, like Priya’s mum? It just doesn't happen. So we learned how to build an audience and find a community, without having the luxury of face-to-face interactions. Musically, it was an incredible time for radio in general. I think community radio listens and regular following bases shot up immensely. I read a book called ‘Lockdown FM’ and it's about Worldwide FM, and their monthly listeners increased incredibly, as people at home were striving for different forms of art. And that was such an incredible market to consume culture and so it's nice that people thought that we were nice and cool enough to consume.” Kiran: “I'm trying to link back to the mind and body, and I think, again, what the pandemic afforded was a space to consume. Because it felt like pre-pandemic – I was always busy but the pandemic gave me time to consume with purpose. I was listening to music, and deeping it and listening through whole albums and to a lot of radio, and then spending time researching whoever the person was – what their background was and the rest of their discography. But I think also what the pandemic taught Daytimers as a collective was the importance of accessibility. With the initial digital issues of Juice, and with Daytimers again because we couldn't go into a club space, the compilation and the 24-hour live stream were the answers we came up with. But even when we did our first event in person, which was Covid relief fund money for India – that was live-streamed as well. Because we were in a pandemic we understood very early on that to reach an audience, we had to make sure that you know people could access it without being in a real-life space, and then that allowed us to take ourselves away from potentially becoming a very London-centric mindset. And then, you know, it hit people all over the UK, in the US, and people who were actually in South Asia. So when we were doing these events and putting these things out naturally, we were automatically hitting these people because we were forced to be that accessible to everyone.”

Kiran @yourboykiran

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Amad @amad.png

"As much as we love to work and love to help the community, i think self care is super important as well.""

Amad: “So for me, coming from a background in advertising – the pandemic was a bit of a shock because I'm so used to working non-stop, it was a time where I had nothing to do, I was able to focus my time and energy on working with Daytimers and working on the stream, on the compilation. It seemed like it was crazy because we would have so many meetings, and I would always just be able to join because the time difference just didn't make a difference. I was able to join and collectively, we were able to create this space where now everyone could be a part of it. When we did the farmers' stream we worked with No Nazar in Los Angeles, and as our stream was ending, they took over. It was a beautiful thing where we were able to work with everyone, and it didn't feel so insular and it felt like a more global approach. But at the same time, I feel like the pandemic personally – it taught me a bit more about how it's fine not to do things as well. This past year we've been able to do so much and I feel like we do need that quiet period of reflection to soak it in and appreciate everything we've done. As much as we love to work and love to help the community, I think self-care is super important, as well." Adeeb: “Yeah, It's a process, and especially a creative process that takes so much out of you. Going into the pandemic and having so much time all of a sudden to take in work. Then you're out of lockdown, going at a thousand and putting out content that people have missed for a year and a half, it's very easy to feel that burnout. You do need to take time for yourself to reflect on all the great things that you've done in the past year.” Amad: “Can I just add one thing real quick. I feel like Daytimers also realised that it's important to provide tool kits and educate the people where we can. So for a lot of our events, we make sure to post about it and let people know that there are ways you can help as well as about the organizations that we're working with, and I feel, because we're not able to do that in person, it's good that we were able to share this with people and they were able to share it with their wider network as well.” ...

Priya @deejaypri

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... Adeeb:

Adeeb: How do you feel that self-identification plays in your own life? Do you feel like that's something that you look into a lot, or is it something that you feel very distant from, in the sense that you don't feel like you give mind and body enough time?

Rohan: “I think especially looking back at my sense of self and mental health when growing up, I found being South Asian to be very destructive in my sense of self. Because I didn't understand what that meant, or how to celebrate that. I feel like I've always appreciated my mind and body, but my mind has never accepted my body until now. There's always been a tug of war. I'm glad that I've now got to the point where they can both celebrate each other. As opposed to my mind actively seeking to shut out my heritage.”

Adeeb: It is that relationship between the mind and the body, and how you perceived yourself for such a long time, and your creativity allowing you to move forward in a way.

"I

Rohan: “I think mind and body are the centres of everything we do. Daytimers was born out of a need to unpack legacies of the Empire’s racism and things we experienced as young South Asian people in the diaspora, trying to navigate that. Unpacking that trauma of having different bodies and different skin colours, in a world that does not accept you, made us want to create a space for ourselves in the first place. I think its integrity, and I think going back to the mind, allowing us to create a space for us to celebrate ourselves is integral to being able to understand ourselves. Pre-Daytimers, I was pretty much estranged from my Indian roots entirely. To be honest, I think that came from a place of bad representation in the media. That was almost entirely the structure for our sense of self or image.”

feel like i've always appreciated my mind and body, but my mind has never accepted my body until now."

Definitely, I think we've now understood how to work digitally to make things as accessible as possible. It's something that people have neglected for so long. And on that note, I think we'll move on to the next question, with our issue focusing on mind and body, as artists or creatives within your fields, how do you feel your work relates to this topic?

Rohan: “Yeah, it's just true – that is a mad connection that I never realized.” Kiran: “We love it when interviews can also be therapy.” Priya: Some of the other Daytimers members, like Gracie T in particular, helped me accept my identity, we've never been portrayed as the cool people or the attractive people in things. We've always been the butt of people's jokes, I very much tried to shove my brown side down a bit, I left it at the door. I was moulding myself into something I wasn't. Through Daytimers I realized, actually, there are South Asians with dyed hair and piercings and stuff like that, it allowed me to really nurture my identity, and that in turn, made sure that my mind was at the place that I wanted to be at. I finally felt seen and was more comfortable within my body. 88

This also carries through at our shows. The fact that we're wearing our own clothes, and mixing it up too, I once went to a Daytimer's show in an Adidas sports bra paired with a lehenga skirt, it was so cool! , – I never in a million years thought I would do that or thought that was possible. It's cool to be brown – that's something that I've learned through the lockdown and through listening to my mind and my body.”

Adeeb: Especially as brown people, it's very hard to navigate the space of mind and body, so I think it's great that we are now able to be in spaces and able to create spaces for ourselves. And to feel comfortable in who we are because that's when the most beautiful things can occur - because of how unique we are and how that inspires the people around us. As a collective, do you feel that the wellbeing of mind and body is something that you're able to express within yourselves, as well as outwards to the community you're engaging with?

Amad: “In nightlife spaces, you deal with a lot of alcoholism, and that can affect both mind and body, and I think we took a stance where we decided that you don't have to drink at our events. We don't want to pressure anyone and we respect your decision. For South Asians, there's a big stigma around mental health – we don't talk about it. Our parents will give us a glass of doodh and say 'okay just drink this you'll be fine.' I mean it's hilarious but you know it's the truth.

Kiran: “In terms of well-being, given that we are in the West and we essentially live in a hyper-capitalist, competitive environment, that whether by nature or nurture, puts us into a very individualistic mindset. And I think the beautiful thing about a collective and Daytimers is, there isn't a competition. It's an understanding that we either lose together or we succeed together. And we don't feel things in isolation. There's collective grief, there's collective excitement, there's collective happiness, there's collective anger at the shit that's happening as well. I think that the ability for people to express themselves individually, but also being and feeling part of a collective and something wider than themselves is very natural, a very healthy thing to do. We end up feeling a lot of these things together – we end up talking about it together and sharing a lot. I think music is one of those things that affects the mind and body massively. No matter what the emotion is that you're feeling, there is always some kind of music to match that tone. Then with the body, if you go into a club space or just at home, something that makes you want to dance or, I don't know what emotion gun-fingers are but whatever emotion that is like, it makes you want to bust out some gun-fingers. Daytimers do that well and I hope we also continue to do it in the future and inspire other people too as well. We've gone a lot beyond just the music side now. Having an outlet, a creative one is such a healthy thing for people to do, whether or not they are even good at it. I think it's just a healthy thing for people to do. It also helps people connect quite strongly both with their minds and with their bodies because you're forced to kind of look quite introspectively as well.”

"

We're also realizing that Daytimers is slowly becoming inherently queer, and I feel good seeing that and making people feel like there is a safe space where they're welcome, they can have a discussion, and we can learn from them as well and grow as a community.”

it's cool to be brown and that's something i've learned through lockdown and through listening to my mind and body. "

I struggle with it too and as I'm a bit older, now I'm realizing that there are a lot of resources that are out there that can help us. I do think people look to us as setting the blueprint of how you can help the community. Hopefully, in the future, we'll be able to throw workshops, where we prioritize helping people with their mental health in these kinds of spaces, or just starting conversations.

... 89

"Thinking of how we can work with different cultural institutions, and still stay authentic to who we are, and not sacrifice our mind and bodies in that process." ...

Adeeb: I think especially as collectives, you ultimately create a space for people to express themselves, and you are allowing people to feel seen and to feel whatever emotions, as South Asians. As Amad said, we're breaking that taboo, and I think what Daytimers is doing is that through music. Moving us on to our last question: going forward, what are your aspirations for 2022 personally, and as a collective?

Kiran: “Okay, so it's an interesting one because I started going through these memory boxes from when I was younger – and I was looking at one from uni, and going through this bucket list I had made and one of the items was to ‘DJ a set, no matter how big or small.’ It was just so weird looking back and then being like, I've done DJ gigs now. It's so weird. So for me in 2022, what I want to do is DJ more gigs and I would love to just produce more and get better at that and work with more people. Also, I just want to learn a lot more. Whether that is on the creative side and learning about the ins and outs of music production or, just absorbing more about the cultural side. There's a whole resource list that we have, and I want to understand more about the culture and the very particular intersectionalities that occur. With the Works Of Intent1 article, there is the aspect of how being someone who came through East Africa is potentially very different from someone who came directly from India, and that interplay I think is important. In terms of the collective, kind of leaning on what Amad said, I'd love to do more in terms of education and working with people who are up and coming. Also spreading our wings beyond London and reaching further out into the UK and across the world. Throughout 2022 and beyond, we need to set the groundwork. Ultimately, if future generations aren’t more successful than us, then we have failed in our mission. Making sure that we are doing events to inspire future generations and give them the tools to go on and be way more successful than we are – to create that legacy.” Amad: “Now that I live here in London, I just want to immerse myself in the city, and learn more about the history and the culture of the people and the spaces, because I feel like that will help me set a trajectory of what I could do personally and how I could help the community, as well as Daytimers. Daytimers in 2022, I think I see us setting a cultural footprint, where we're able to not just be, and I hate this term but I think a lot of people see us as tastemakers. I want to be that collective that people are looking to, that is not only having these sick events but also this strong community and cultural ties. Thinking of how we can work with different cultural institutions, and still stay authentic to who we are, and not sacrifice our mind and bodies in that process.”

Rohan: “Personally, I'd like to keep pushing my sound further. And within Daytimers – education and educational resources. That is a particular area of interest of mine. Just the very fact that we had to scour the internet for every book… or every article ever written about South Asian underground history – it isn't good enough. We've got stuff in the works for a new radio show, which will be with not just creatives but people working in mental health institutions for South Asian people. I'm excited to start that – the groundwork is in place for that already. Also, trying to branch out into other art forms. The first Daytimers spoken word and poetry night is already planned for March 2022, and with an incredible lineup of South Asian talent so we're excited for that. And also looking into the theatre world, which I'm a part of, and how we can bring our work to audiences which we would never reach with music and tell a story that hasn't previously been told.” Priya: “As a collective we are making sure that there are enough resources available online, we have reading materials and an archive of photographs from every show, so that the future generations will be able to access everything and continue to do incredible things. I'm always learning new things through reading pieces and reading Works Of Intent’s piece was so eye-opening. Somebody who came from a completely different place than my family had a completely different experience, so just having things more available and easier to find is important. And also platforming things that aren't necessarily just music, it's nice to hear about spoken word poetry. I would also like to see some mentoring art workshops for those who want to explore other avenues of expression. Personally, I would like to get my DJ workshops running more regularly and like Kiran said, play more shows to go from being a bedroom producer to an actual producer. I always see how happy Kiran, Darama and Chandé get when their songs get played in clubs and I would love to experience that. So it's motivated me to say don't just copy and paste this bar like 80 times, actually do something and produce properly, so that's something that I'm going to be working on personally. I would like to see Daytimers grow and grow and grow and it's gonna be exciting to see the groundwork being laid for future generations. I'm just so glad that I get to be part of it and witness it and be here. I feel like I'm at the right moment."

1Roshan Chauhan (November 15, 2021), “A Time for Change: Works Of Intent.” - https://worksofintent.com/change/ 90

find me:

@daytimers_uk

i feel like i'm at the right moment.

https://wearedrm.wordpress.com/ 25% of their profits go towards helping people with mental health needs and breaking the stigma of how necessary it is. Run by amazing people who want to also showcase local and creative talent based in Rugby. https://waveplate.systems/ www.soulprogramme.com Waveplate. Systems, a label started by Saadaan, uses its profits to help aid SOUL, a non-profit schizophrenia outreach organisation set up in Larkana, Sindh in Pakistan, a part of the world which has little to no access to mental health resources; the team of doctors and nurses are currently treating and educating individuals and their families who are affected by the condition. https://www.taraki.co.uk/ Taraki is an organisation that provides people in the Punjabi community with tools to talk about mental health and reshape approaches. Founded by Shuranjeet Singh in 2017, it was a way for him to cope with the challenges of mental health. He realised that the Punjabi community may not have access to address these topics and wanted to provide the resources to his community as well as those outside it.

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Aashi Chadha Nikita (she/her) is a writer, poet and social commentator who advocates for an intersectional lens and approach to be utilised - she is committed to spotlighting the ‘other’, those who are chronically unheard and underrepresented within society. Her poetry focuses on the experiences of the South Asian diaspora, mental health and identity. She is also a writer, patient voice advocate, lead facilitator and speaker for Cysters (a non-profit that specialises in supporting marginalised people with reproductive and mental health problems @cystersgroup)

Gharā Home is a concept that is always contentious for diaspora creatives. We are raised in different countries and contexts, where assimilation can feel expected or necessary for survival. Gharā translates to ‘home’ in Punjabi, and discusses the journey to leaving that type of survival behind, and walking in the true power and context of our cultures, our ancestry and our history.

I’m haunted. a ghost trapped between the pages of someone else’s story was I born here? birthed between margins expectations that I don’t remember drawing held down by wonky misplaced lines “know your place” from the outside I am calm and still I paint my empty smile bigger and brighter sadness lives in my dimples it falls from my eyes (hidden in plain sight) 92

my insides

“I am enough”

are not calm or still

I’ve waited patiently for this

half-living surviving between two worlds two stories two halves - that do not make a whole I look in the mirror and all I can see is you staring back at me

for the emancipation my emancipation “I am enough” to cast you out to purge you from this body this mind “I am enough”

but just beyond the looking-glass

my own personal Yajña you must be fed to the fire

younger and browner versions of me lie beneath the surface

“I am enough”

they whisper to me calling my name my real name

“I am enough”

sacrifice or be sacrificed it’s a dog eat dog world out there

an encore of silence “I am enough”

the syllables roll off the tongue the sound ringing in my ears I can feel my mama and my dadi standing with me they sing songs of Āzādī Śāntī Manazūra a warm light erupts between my eyebrows

my words ricochet between these margins this box you trapped me in collapses to the ground trembling in defeat …free at last as I shed this skin this mask of assimilation and find my way back home.

(is it white?) (is it purple?) their wisdom becomes mine …I am their daughter after all

find me @didacticdiaspora | @nikkaayyy_c

I recite my mantra “I am enough” as my body convulses violently (finally speaking a language that you understand) “I am enough” choking on the words of my own liberation 93

Mehroosa Jan.

Mehroosa (she/her) is a graphic designer specialising in art direction and editorial design. Her work comments on social, political and cultural issues, challenging existing design principles and mainstream media norms. She shares a passion for creating work that focuses on anti-patriarchy and giving a voice to women's representation along with attempting to decolonise graphic design practice. A lot of Mehroosa's work is conceptual, telling a story and looking at how concepts can be visually translated in different forms of design varying from branding to editorials and photography.

Struggle for Existence

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Destruction of Forms: By overpainting and masking areas, the work sets out to explore 'struggle for existence'. Does the identity remain after destruction of what's on the surface or does it morph us into newer, better selves? Does the constant struggle to be be in our most true forms create barriers for us or is it a way to conceal one's fears and ultimately make us feel at home? The layers of struggle including mental health issues, financial issues, personal identity issues, all come together to create our individual selves. And so by being in this battle, are we ultimately striving to be better or is it destroying our being? These are the ideas and themes that my work explores.

find me @rosesspaace

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Fathima Sumaiya Fazal “

Sumaiya (she/her) has loved writing and daydreaming at least since primary school and can often be found zoning out (which she calls ‘writing in her head’). This can include writing short stories, essays, poetry, and maybe one day even screenwriting. The lack of South Asian writers and academics doesn’t really limit her, anymore, and she goes out of her way to write in spite of this.

Walking Out of a Museum with a Diamond A diamond sits at the back of the museum shaped like the human brain. Some say it changes colours. Not in a dramatic way, but in a way where you don’t notice how the clearness of the diamond turns grey until it feels like you’re stuck in a tunnel. Rumours swirl about the diamond, and as they do, the museum pushes it further and further into a maze of security measures and corridors, until it is tucked away in the curator’s office in a glass box covered in silk. Both stolen, both sitting in the thieves’ room. The rumours say that everyone who looks at the diamond would die that day by their own hand. It’s not so much a rumour, but a fact. Countless curators, celebrities, artists, thieves, and whoever else the museum reluctantly allows to view the diamond take their lives by the end of the day. The museum says that they hope each time things will end differently, but the profits from the morbid curiosity surrounding the diamond suggest otherwise. Those who can afford to know about it, and to view it, find themselves being moths drawn to a flame. Even those who enter for research purposes, to examine things like the history of the diamond, or its structure, are found dead by nightfall. Nobody survives. Except those the museum let in happily, barely masking their glee with non-disclosure agreements and asking them to sign their lives away ‘here, and here, thank you.’ Those who come not as moths but frantically looking for their missing pieces, scattered across oceans and islands and plantations. They are drawn by pain and longing that they can’t put words to, no matter how hard they try. A pain that they couldn’t locate, but that they could also feel everywhere, some days worse than others. They were like the diamond in many ways, ripped from their homes and passed around different places, all unwanted but the most wanted at the same time until they forgot where home was. 96

find me @soomaiyuh

Until they weren’t sure whether they even truly had one. For them, the diamond is a mirror. When their eyes rest upon its edges, hold onto the colours as they bleed into the grey, green, blue, purple the diamond seems to speak to them. Take me home. They ask where. Anywhere. Take me with you. Anywhere but here. Realistically, it is probably their own thoughts, but in the moment, the diamond pulls them in until it was unclear where they ended, and the diamond began. Until they become one tangled mess of interlocking carbon atoms, pain, and warmth. The warmth of the sun back home, of spices, a family that was not separated, and the pain of watching everything being torn apart, of being powerless to stop it. The pain of knowing and not knowing and knowing too much, wanting to go home but no longer knowing where home is. None of them take the diamond home. Most couldn’t afford to, even if they wanted to. Their presence in that room is tokenistic, the museum’s way to dodge criticism and taxes. Others were afraid. Not of the diamond, but of the pain and the anger that follows the pain. The museum watches them intently, calling them at the end of the day, almost in glee, to check if they died. Every single one of them survives, and every single one of them produces their best work soon after. The diamond remains until lawsuits begin flying through lawyers’ offices, the media lighting itself on fire to publish anything and everything about the stolen diamond in the curator’s room. How it came to be at the back of a museum from thousands of miles away, a couple of hundred years ago. Not a single photograph is published or posted, and the debates and discourses turn into questions about whether the diamond even exists or is it all just one big lie until the fire burns so brightly that smoke can be seen for miles. Smoke rises over hills and waves and dunes until the diamond’s home – its real home – can see. They follow the smoke, raise enough money to buy their entry into the curator’s room and cross the hills and waves and dunes until the curator practically throws them into her room, locking the door swiftly behind them. She hopes they don’t make it. Level out the playing field a little. Since the fire began, the museum has been busier than ever. New wings are opening to fit more stolen artefacts, a documentary is being filmed. To the curator’s surprise and dismay, the family member knocks at the other side of the door. The glass box covered in stolen silk in their arms, cradled like a child briefly separated from their parents. Their fingers dance along the edges of the silk, daring the curator to speak, to dig it out from their hands like her grandfather and his grandfather. When the family member returns, they find the glass box empty under the silk and their body whole again, no longer broken and scattered. They feel whole again as they smash the box under the shade of a palm tree. It has been a century since the last death. The family tells this story at every birth, wedding, funeral, and festival. 97

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A review of Juice x Integrate UK Workshop Neisha Hussain, 15

"

As a South Asian young person myself, I was exceptionally excited to join Juice’s workshop at Integrate UK. I had heard about Juice via social media previously and was interested in finding out more about what they do. Evelyn was a wonderful host who explained all the activities and presentations clearly so all of us young people had an enjoyable time. Within the workshop, I learned about how Juice operates, their own inspirations as well as their ethos. Throughout the workshop, it was extremely evident that they strive for inclusion and put an abundance of thought into each step they take. They specifically want to make sure that they are showcasing the work of minority groups, I believe this is a great attitude to have as there aren't many magazines or online zines that give these groups of people representation. During the workshop with Juice, we even had a chance to learn about the team in terms of their accomplishments and aspirations. As well as this we had the opportunity to put ourselves into the shoes of a graphic designer and editor in chief. The ways in which we did this were: by trying to get a feel of the messages within a certain article; choosing articles we liked, then doing presentations about why we think they would be great additions to the magazine. One of my favourite parts was choosing an article I liked and doing a presentation about why it would be great in the magazine. My group had to think carefully about all the great attributes in the articles we were given, this really made us think outside of the box. Our groups had to consider the length, readability of an article linked to the topic of the magazine issue and so many more components. It was clear how much thought goes into each and every aspect of the magazine. Additionally, I got to learn about the creation of Juice and the running of their magazine. Evelyn did a wonderful presentation about how Juice grew from a social media page to a network of online/physical magazines, podcasts and more. I was extremely fascinated by the journey, it was inspiring to see how a single idea was able to evolve into a company that does so many projects. Finding out more about Juice and its work has been amazing, to say the least. I believe knowing that there is a magazine dedicated to publishing the work of South Asian creators can also make young South Asian people, like myself, feel seen and appreciated. It would be great to see more events like this one in the future as we all very much enjoyed it. All in all, I can’t wait to see what Juice Droplet will do next.

"

@_integrateuk

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"

One of my favourite parts was choosing an article I liked and doing a presentation about why it would be great in the magazine."

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****** ****** ****** Priyanka Sacheti

Practising at becoming myself again: of post Covid healing and the body as a map. find me:

@anatlasofallthatisee |

@priyankasacheti

Priyanka Sacheti (she/her) is a writer and poet based in Bangalore, India. She grew up in the Sultanate of Oman and previously lived in the United Kingdom and United States. She's published extensively on art, culture, gender, and the environment in print and digital publications. Her literary work has appeared in many literary journals such as Barren, Parentheses Art, Dust Poetry Magazine, Popshot, The Lunchticket, and Jaggery Lit as well as various anthologies. She's currently working on a poetry and short story collection.

******

TW: Illness + Covid-19

I am Priyanka Sacheti, a writer based in Bangalore, India. In April this year, I contracted Covid and had to be hospitalised for six days. My subsequent recovery coincided with the catastrophic second wave which befell India at that time, afflicting thousands and resulting in unprecedented oxygen and hospital bed shortages and resultant deaths. Grappling with the profound effects the virus had wrought upon my mental and physical health, along with the larger implications of the grief, trauma, and despair unfurling around me, I found myself turning to writing and art to chart both my recovery as well as "bearing witness" to all that was happening. I found myself thinking of my body as a map vis a vis trauma and recovery and also painted healing maps as a reminder of how far I had come. This essay is a chronicle of my recovery, or what I describe as practising becoming myself again, sharing the journey of the healing of my mind and body.

* * * * * ****** As a child, I spent hours studying atlases. Given that I was an Indian girl growing up in Oman, I was perhaps trying to get a sense of my place in the scheme of things. I did this through the language of geographical coordinates. At that time, India was home,and Oman was just a place I lived in. I did not know then that maps were inherently fluid entities, borders constantly shifting, and countries liable to vanish and reappear. In my map of memories, Oman eventually displaced India as home, the latter now just a place that I happen to live in. It took me years to learn that both my world and the larger one beyond are constantly changing maps; their truths shifting like tectonic plates beneath our feet.

"As I entered my thirties, I began experiencing health crises making me be more aware of my body than ever before. I started to think of my body too as an evolving map."

Over the years, I eventually lost interest in the idea of atlases and maps. As I entered my thirties, I began experiencing health crises making me be more aware of my body than ever before. I started to think of my body too as an evolving map. A map containing within its borders all that I had endured and survived.

**

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* *

**

"I was my cheerleader, an entire team in fact, celebrating every action which I successfully reperformed and that commemorated a return to my pre-Covid self."

In April 2021, I contracted Covid. A cytokine storm brewed inside my lungs as my immune system went into overdrive, valiantly battling the virus. The CT scan of my lungs indicated moderate Covid pneumonia, resulting in a six-day hospitalisation. Excruciating bouts of coughing racked my body. I began suffering from extreme breathlessness. My smell and taste abandoned me, almost as if they never existed in the first place. Once the oxygen and drugs were pumped into my body, the virus began to retreat. I gradually reclaimed my smell and taste. More crucially, I needed to learn how to breathe again, which took the longest to stabilise and affected me the most. Once you stop breathing normally, you think: how have I been breathing all this time? You recognise the act of breathing as a miracle in itself. Now as I stop to consider my even and measured breathing, it truly is a miracle following all that I have been through.

**

Muscle memory is a real thing. Repeated movements that are difficult for the muscles will result in the construction of new neural pathways, carving out new roads in the brain. In the time it took the virus to enter, possess, and then vacate my body, I found my muscles having to relearn everything again. I had to practice re-becoming myself, the first point of focus being my physical body. After leaving the hospital and being lost inside a dense post-Covid fog and fatigue, I marked every milestone in my phone’s notes app: today, I walked for ten minutes. Today, I painted. Today, I cooked. I was my cheerleader, an entire team in fact, celebrating every action which I successfully re-performed and that commemorated a return to my preCovid self. I reassured myself with each achievement that I was going further and further away from the virus. But this is also a truth: it has taken me a long while to re-become myself post-Covid. No matter how much I tried to hurry my body into healing, it ultimately only healed as and when it could; and even then, the virus still haunts me, like a homeless ghost. The steroids which ultimately stilled the cytokine storm have burrowed themselves into my skin. Post-Covid brain fog still clouds my mind, causing me to intermittently blank out. My hair fell out in clumps a few months ago, a common post-Covid side effect. Perhaps, like a tree during autumn, I am in a state of renewal, but for what ultimate end? I do not have the answers: perhaps I never will. There is a novel titled The Body Remembers Everything by Shauna Baldwin; that title haunted me for years although it is only now I feel I have truly grasped its meaning. I may say that I am feeling myself again post-Covid but the reality often feels like I am still practising at being myself. I can never be the same again after all that has happened to me, and who would know that better than my body? The memory T-cells in my body still carry memories of the battles they fought to defeat the virus: they will always remember everything.

**

I have been painting regularly for the last few years. One of the first artworks I made during recovery was a healing map. I began to paint on paper whatever emerged forth from my Covid-fogged consciousness. During those days of halting, foal-like steps towards recovery, one thought repeatedly echoed in my mind: I must bear witness to whatever has happened and is happening. Outside, India was going through an apocalyptic Second Wave: ambulance sirens heartrendingly rent the air at all hours, my Twitter timeline was soaked with anguished pleas for oxygen and hospital beds, and the virus ran like a scythe through families, grief, terror, and fury everywhere. I encountered the term, survivor’s guilt and then stubbornly closed my mind to it, a wardrobe I could not open just then. I channelled the messy library of emotions I was experiencing towards making healing maps, marking the distance I had travelled and still needed to travel in my healing journey along with everything that had happened in between. The collective effect of the steroids, the virus remnants in my body, and the larger external circumstances all converged together to form one bare bone truth in my head: I needed to acknowledge and remember what I had gone and was going through. This too was a way of re-becoming the person that I was, reintegrating this new experience into the matrix called me.

**

"If my body is a map, my words are now the coordinates shaping it...The words I wrote then will be battle-sites, memories of the wars my body fought to defeat an invader and how it indelibly changed afterward." The one thing I did not stop doing during and after Covid was writing. During the Covid storm, my writing was both my lifeboat and jacket, it was what kept me from drowning. It was the anchor which reminded me that once the storm blew over, I would be in a safe, protected bay. What I did not realise then was that my writing had already become the bay. It was the act of writing which helped me take those first steps to recovery, remembering and acknowledging, and which preserved for posterity all that I was experiencing. In this journey of re-becoming myself, my writing was the beacon that illuminated the darkness, which made the unbearable bearable. If my body is a map, my words are now the coordinates shaping it. In years to come, while browsing through the atlas that is my life, I will pause upon the specific map that my body was on during these past months. The words I wrote then will be battle-sites, memories of the wars my body fought to defeat an invader and how it indelibly changed afterward. My body will fight more future battles too. But I will know what I need to do for I will now remember everything. 103

J it was like a movie and I was fucking beautiful 104

JADE VINE “

Tanya JADE VINE Singh (they/them) is a 21-something transgender non-binary writer, SW, essayist and editor from Chandigarh, India. They are the author of Heaven is Only a Part of Our Body Where All the Sickness Resides (Ghost City Press, 2018). Their work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Minola Review, Polyphony H.S, and elsewhere, and has been recognized by the Times of India and Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Student Contest, among other places. They are the founder & editor-in-chief of The Cerurove. They are deeply inspired by the transformative justice movements and the politics of indepensibility. TW: Suicide

The poem is about my struggles with mental health, particularly about dealing with suicide ideation! What happens when the depressive episode is over? What are you left with? I try to answer these questions in the poem!

My therapist asks me how I’m doing and I tell her all about the time I jumped into a lake and never got out it was like a movie and I was fucking beautiful How could you possibly leave something that’s already been left? My mother packed the leftovers for lunch. The audience applauds the terrific man in the mirror. I do not understand addictions but I know what it means to blow cigarettes. Last time I checked you were still in your bed wearing your father’s cologne. Just hours ago, I was married to a man and smoking every day behind the porch. Didn’t you know? I had a death-wish or maybe two. I wanted to hold eye-contact and be choked in the gardens as my witness. I wanted to carry caution delicately to the wind. Men will love it everywhere. Someday I will not cry into my pillow for hours. I wanted to survive the night. But then what? I hadn’t planned for the afterparty. I woke up alive and didn’t know what to do with myself. I brought myself two knives and a plate. Cut all the passion fruit in the house. I slept into my bed thinking about what I wanted to have for my next birthday. The mattress was old and then nothing at all. When I woke up, I made some room for summer in my lungs. I wasn’t drunk. It took me hours to clean my skirt and then the entire cupboard. I was left with life between my teeth. With spring in a bowl. Guileless and very romantic. Even the flashbacks make me giddy with intent.

find me: @anarchistpoet @tanyajvsingh

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Simran Kaur “

Simran Kaur (she/her) is a surrealist still life, creative portrait, fashion photographer and artist currently based in London. She is Punjabi and she was born and raised in Italy. Simran's main objective is to make the viewer's dreams come true by creating intriguing setups, but she also creates mental health and environmental awareness with her experimental photography. At the same time, she also creates dreamlike abstract visuals to make the viewer explore another reality. Simran Kaur gets inspired by people's dreams and visions, but her childhood memories also inspire her to create various projects. To keep her childhood memories alive she started doodling digital and traditional illustrations, which helps her to understand how she feels about those foggy memories of her childhood.

01

Lose Yourself " Lose Yourself " is a photography project shot by Simran Kaur which aims to showcase how it feels like to be lost in your illusions. Simran Kaur explored how sometimes people create their own illusions because they can't accept reality yet. In this process, those people lose themselves in order to live in their happy illusion.

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02

03

find me 04

@simran_k_01

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Anisa Butt Inside My Mind

TW: Mental health

“

Anisa Butt (she/her) is a British-Asian actress, podcast host (Unplugwithani), poet and author. She was born and raised in London, UK. Anisa has been fortunate to work as an actress in both the UK and India. She became recognised in India, when she played the lead female role (Shyla) in a Disney India Show titled "Ishaan" (like a High School Musical for kids) which had massive success and still has a huge fan base, even though it is no longer streaming. She has been acting since she was 12, and writing poetry. Her debut poetry book "Hope" is out and available on Amazon.

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I’m not so easy to define But what’s harder yet Is what’s in my mind. The constant clacker, the devising The strategizing, Some thoughts are sour, some surprising. But I’m realising, that I gotta say it out loud, Put it into words, Because then it just doesn't sound so absurd. Cause in my head it’s just for me But when I say it loud Others can be free, Knowing that we all get good thoughts and bad, Some make us happy And some make us sad. Some thoughts bring us shame, Some give us hope, I wash my mind daily in lavender soap, It feels so good to release these demons inside. They try to block my potential Till I suffered and cried. And now we've opened pandoras box, And now they're all laid bare, But all the world's suffering we can share, And become more aware, Do we feed our minds with water and care? Cause if we don’t prepare It’ll choose despair, Over gratitude, Trust me this ain’t attitude, I am preaching the truth, Cause these days the youth Need a message of hope, When we share it is dope. I can't afford to be spiritually blind. So tell me, today What’s on your mind?

find me @anisaaniiam | @unplugwithani

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NM FABRIC BONES

“

NM (she/her) is a poet and spoken word artist from London. Since taking up the pen in 2017, she has since published a collection of poetry titled ‘collection one: growing pains’, has performed at spoken word events, and is a 2021 alumnus of BBC Words First. Her poetry encompasses her lived experiences through identity, family, politics and culture, with the aim of inspiring her audience to claim their own space. NM is also the founder of CRUSH Poetry, an online educational and networking platform for small poets to connect and share their work, whilst developing their writing and performance skills.

I balance my body. Steady. Wrapped in the English flag While my tongue wrapped, In the mother bells of concrete chutney. The climate is unforgivingly numb. A Siberian winter. With greasy chip bags and cheap beer bottles, Littered around my thighs. My head is a Sylheti summer, Packed with spice packets and pumping, Vats of cha’a (Not chai tea). Erupting turmeric in place of serotonin, On these frosty English nights. But the body still wrapped in the English flag, In case the commons ask me where I’m from. I never met my grandparents properly, But Francis from the old folk’s home Remains imprinted in my memory. She was blind but saw me for who I was trying to be. She called me her friend, Whilst the others clawed their chalk white fingers in awe, Through my charcoal hair, Reminding me, my body belongs to England. Knowingly, my mind is a vacuum of calm. Settling down, in seeing skin the colour of me. Safe in sound, in Bangla, At the mela, Henna Sinking into veins.

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find me @nmstagramming

Culture is safety. Less visibility in community. But culture is not always comfort. Despite my body being wrapped in warm naan, My ears are stuffed with why I dislike the idea of being married young or becoming my husband’s mother Arguing with my father Who refuses to apologise For making my sister cry, because

parents don’t do that.

Body wrapped in a Bangla flag, Mind safe in the English idea. Embracing the privileges that came, Growing up here. Maybe I am two unlawfully good bodies, That violently merged into one. Too (in)visible. Body wrapped in my comfort blanket. Squeezing my crackling ribcage to sleep each night, Hoping that one morning I will wake up, to find them: United and whole.

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Brown Pages. This spread spotlights a small number of emerging South Asian brands that Juice’s partnerships assistant, Prachee Mashru, has been checking out and enjoying.

01.

@suruliving

Suru Living

Śurū is a lifestyle brand born out of East London, with roots in Punjab, India. Śurū [shu-ru] is named after the Punjabi word for 'begin', conceived to inspire new memories and experiences through luxury, artisanal fragrance. The debut collection takes shape in the form of hand-poured fragranced candles, made using an eco-friendly, premium, and 100% natural coconut wax blend - infused with scent notes inspired by our own personal journeys and recollections. Genre: Health & Lifestyle

02.

Location: London (Online Store)

www.suruliving.com

@delhiwear

Delhiwear

Delhiwear, the brand by its namesake wants to serve the city and the local philosophy of it. However, it has always offered more than that, in terms of value and functionality. We started as a small initiative to promote the gap between influenced culture & the unique/native story which India was ready to offer. We took a direction where we were truly able to contribute to the whole community, where at the beginning it was all about representing another concept instead of taking your take on it. This approach of simplicity or hacking every situation with just a simple trick of styling represented the city which we are the namesake of. Genre: Fashion

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Location: Delhi

www.delhiwear.com

03.

FAE Beauty Genre: Makeup Location: Mumbai www.faebeauty.in

@faebeautyofficial

At FAE (Free and Equal) Beauty, we create real, authentic, and unfiltered beauty products for everyone - what you see is always what you get, there's no fluff, no photoshop, and realistic, inclusive representation throughout our brand's campaigns, communication, and product offerings. Our goal is to make beauty products more inclusive and more accessible to all. We aim to help women and men all across our country to feel seen. We collaborate with people whose work we truly enjoy, and who we think have a great voice in the industry to spread the message of authentic representation for everyone in the beauty industry. Our goal is to identify and solve gaps and needs that we think exist in the market, for everybody. All our products are locally made in India, with unique formulations that are developed in-house. We do not use any white-label formulations or ones that already exist in the market, creating a truly unique, authentic, and inclusive experience for our community.

04.

Askari Genre: Fashion Location: London www.askariclothing.com

@askariclothing

Inspired by the owner's South Asian, African heritage, Askari is a contemporary streetwear brand based in London, UK. The brand aims to create high quality clothing to empower its wearers. Askari means warrior in Swahili and the logo in the background is the tribal symbol for strength. Through extensive research and a great passion for having more of a connection to her heritage each collection is themed around modernised African fashion for all to wear. The brand released its first SS21 collection in April 2021, featuring highly detailed illustrations of powerful animals found in Africa and Asia, followed by its recent release of its first Fall collection in November 2021 based on African landscapes. Both collections feature hoodies, sweatshirts, t- shirts and joggers with unique prints and embroidery. Askari wants to make a positive impact through fashion: all items are sustainably and ethically made. As well as this, 50p of each purchase is donated to a charity called Plan International to educate children around the world. The brand also promotes diversity and is a platform for change through its #findyourinnerwarrior campaign which tells the stories of inspiring people to help break down social issues and start important conversations.

If you would like to see more curated lists and recommendations for South Asian owned brands, visit our new gifts guide curated by Disha Deshpande on Instagram @juicedroplet

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- our manifesto

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Building Juice would not have been possible without the support and care of our audience, mentors, patreons, friends and family who all have been with us on this journey. Thank you for your love.

Special thanks to our Patreons Anita Chhiba Fabia Bertolino Farhan Ahmed Mehnaz Mahmoob Raunaq Bose Emily Kemp

Please consider supporting our mission to support and pay South Asian creatives via our Patreon

Printed by Park Communications, UK Back Issues Issue One: Being Brown. Issue Zero

find us @juicedroplet

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The creation and facilitation of space for marginalised South Asians aims to not only resist the structures of oppression which seek to exclude us, but to create space for us to exist, to find joy, and celebrate our art, culture, and community.

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Juice (Print) ISSN 2754-5288 Juice (Online) ISSN 2754-5296