Quick and Dirty Update about Pride

Life has been kicking my ASS this last week or more, and I'm finally,  almost, free and back, and missing you girls like crazy.

This is a brief summary of what this year's Queer Pride Bangalore will (mostly) look like:

• November 19th, Saturday - a fund raising garage sale at ALF
• November 20th, Sunday - a cricket match? I wasn't at all interested, so I forgot, insensitively, that others might be. Will find out and update you guys.
• November 22nd, Tuesday - Transgender Day of Remembrance - probably a candlelight vigil at MG statue
• November 24th, Thursday - Hopefully something at the Swabhava office. Maybe Vinay will run a movie? I'm not sure anyone has actually spoken to him about it, so this might not happen at all, and might just be a little bit like a park bench stories thing, except without the park.
• November 25th, Friday - a panel discussion, but we're not sure what on just yet.
• November 26th, Saturday - a Mela, with stalls and performances, hopefully to be held at Ravindra Kalakshetra. And after, we party!*
• November 27th, Saturday - Pride March. As far as I know we haven't got permission for routes for the march yet, though we do have options.

The next planning meeting is on the 19th, next Wednesday, at ALF.  Probably at 6: 30. Everything is still a bit up in the air. I'm  setting up a WHaQ meeting on Sunday, so those of you who want more detailsshould contact me.

And lastly, venally and importantly: donations, we need them! Look at this adorable pig:

How can you resist that?


*Actually, I daresay there will be parties all over the place, but this one will happen after the Mela, so there!

WHaQ! meeting: 17th July 2011

I begin this post with my usual demand for cookies: opening the garage door in high heels was a labour I'd normally delegate to Hercules. And then people came - we had a small meeting yesterday, no more than five women. But it was fun, and we went to Koshys after.

Quick bullet point list of what we talked about:

• Us, and what we've been up to the past few weeks. A. is leaving Bangalore in a fortnight, which sucks. We need to party extra hard on the next few Thursdays, pack in as much fun as possible for her to remember!
• We had a visitor from Mumbai: hi, visitor! It took her forever to find us, so at the next meeting and on the WHaQ! mailing list we're going to have to talk about making it easier for people to find us if they want to meet us.
• July 2nd! Two years since the high court judgement. We weren't at the balloon-flying, or the movies, or the Sanghamitra July 2011 launch. BUT. Here is a link where you can download the Sanghamitra July 2011 edition. It's 50 pages, about 2.6 MB. It is pretty great, so read it!
• Chai with Lakshmi: Urban Conversations - She seems neat.
• Parties! We have not done any parties lately, what with one thing or the other, and the Pink Nation/Party Square events are mostly filled with guys. (Also, our visitor from Mumbai was very confused by how everything seemed to wind down by midnight.)
• Queer Pride Keralam, Kolkata Rainbow Pride Festival and Chennai Rainbow Pride - pride events for the summer. Bangalore Pride is likely to be sometime in October/November, when it won't rain on us. (Delhi Pride too, but they can take care of themselves.)

That was pretty much it. See you guys Thursday!

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WHaQ! meeting, April 10th 2011

As the poor sod who has the keys to the Swabhava office, I got to MS Plaza at around 3:40 to open the place. M.S. Plaza has one of those rolling-up garage doors, and its lock is a little bitch. I jiggled the key around until something stuck - it took me five whole minutes, it was a pain, I deserve a cookie. Three of us walked in around 4 - nice timing, ladies! -and more showed up by 4:30.

Altogether told, 13 people attended today's meeting, included two guests, Visitors! From foreign shores! Making movies!

• Two of us came armed with potential new members' email addresses - it's always great to be the person who is able to say, Yes, you should join WHaQ! and do the introducing both ways.
• I begged for people to write for/contribute to/heap praise on this blog. The last because I am a sensitive flower. Also, tomorrow or the day after I will blog about BQFF 2011, and what that was like.
• We've set the date, time, place and cover charge for the Lavender Nights Farmhouse style! party. (That's not its actual name, but this is more fun.) It's an all-night party, and those sturdy souls who feel up to it can play cricket the next day. We discussed music, food and blankets, and one of us is bringing a tent which apparently zips up.
• There's a Queerlicious party happening on the 24th!
• Details for both these parties to be linked from this blog as well as the usual sources.
• Labels and stereotypes - the Indian lesbian, the American, Emirates, Thai lesbians. I'm still thinking about the "Moderate Lesbian" (last mentioned here) and intend to blog about her sometime this week. Possibly alongside her Moderate Bi/Pan-sexual and transgender sisters. The tomboy, the girly girl - how we get treated, what people assume of us (bitches and pushovers, respectively?). The lines between "butch" and "I don't care about appearances and so shall wander around not prettifying myself".
• Movies. Lots of movies. Lesbian movies! Our founders have them, and are willing to share - next week they'll bring some, and we'll bring laptops, and give ourselves over to a little mindless entertainment. (On which note, those of us who watched The Kids Are Alright think it's got far too much straight sex, and very little, and very bad, dyke action. Way to not represent!)
• S is trying to raise funds to help set up a small business for a transgender man who has had a lot of bad luck recently. Raising funds is a slow, tiresome business, but she has made some headway - Our Lovely Ruler has updates, which she will send out on the mailing list.
• Some of us dissed Vinay's book shelves, since they do not hold enough women-targeted books. We can fix that, hopefully? Kind donations? Someone gave/sold OLR some women-targeted books back during BQFF, so there's potential there, at least. OLR and Vinay have plans!
• There was some discussion on the Christian church, and religion in general. Particularly we were discussing C.J. Mahaney who weirds us out when we wear our Women Hats, and Fred Phelps, whom I am not linking to, who weirds us out when we wear our Queer Hats. (Also, they both weird us out when we war out Thinking Hats, but that is all the time, so not very informative.)
• Our visitors-from-far-shores told us about the movie they intend to make, about certain sections of Indian society (not going to give away too much here since I'm not sure they'd want us to), and some of us had suggestions for people they should contact.

Then we all needed coffee. LOTS of coffee. So we locked up - that stupid garage door lock, I want to kick it, it obviously hates the world! - and went to Koshy's. Mmmmm.