Sandeep Bakshi

The Golden Temple

Sister and I in front of the Golden Temple

Another view of the Golden Temple

One more view of the temple

I have been dreaming of the Golden Temple for the last two decades. One of my fave places. Here today & tomos with biofam. Long queues; huge crowds.
Booked the 3.30 am shuttle to see the Guru Granth Sahib (holy book of the Sikhs) being brought to the temple. Will have to go to bed early.

This
"That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins.
If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after."

Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

Beauties

Lovely - my faves

Rust-hued bougainvillea bush

White and red bougainvillea bushes

Street with bougainvilleas

Bougainvillea and bench

Anyhoo, to all warmongers:

Less war, more bougainvilleas…
Do my usual rounds & make friends along the way, talking of flowers we love.

PS: Parents no longer wish to entertain folks I call friends & bring over for coffee since I don’t even know their names.
Sole common point: flowers in the ‘hood.

The geopolitical west fights to shreds anyone toppling statues of racists and enslavers, but celebrates murder (and toppling of a regime considered ‘evil’). If all evil regimes need dismantling, when do we begin with the current US dispensation?

(Nah,nah, let’s appease it).

Same for queer Moroccan liberals 👇🏽

Euphoric queer Indian liberals please lend me your ears.
Black women organisers & academics have taught us:
Black & Brown faces in high places won't save us, to paraphrase Ruha Benjamin.
Problematic queer savarna women in upper House of Parliament won't save us.

Justice supersedes representation.

Civilian areas of Tehran were hit again overnight by violent U.S.-Israeli explosions.

Literally so many of the problems in the Middle East stem from over a century of European and US intervention, including the setting the stage for the current Iranian regime, and so many are tied to their decision to seize land to create Israel and the apartheid system it subsequently created.

Freedom - that cherished abstract concept of the geopolitical west to bomb schools. Who will stop them from freeing folks from life?!
Disgusting!!

bell hooks said, “No insurgent intellectual, no dissenting critical voice in this society escapes the pressure to conform...irrespective of our locations, we are all vulnerable. We can all be had, co-opted, bought. There is no special grace that rescues any of us. There is only a constant struggle.”

Oh no, please sign. My PhD was within the same school and so many talented people in this group. We're losing too much in this crisis and need governments to step up.

Decolonisation is inherently anticapitalist in its anticolonial avatar, per Nkumrah. Decolonisation advocated for the common denominator of peasant & farmer humanity, as proposed by Fanon, Wynter, Ngugi & Cusicanqui.
No consumer products (Coke, Pepsi) but public expenditure transparency is the ask!✊🏽

Thank you dear Manas for sharing your thoughts.
An insightful 🧵 👇🏽 on how sexuality and human being are intertwined categories without necessarily being coterminous nor co-impacting.
The primacy of sexuality in specific discourses can, at times, obfuscate the human.
Please unroll.

Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate them.

Table mat with baanji and sugarcane juice on it.

Me posing with baanji

Baanji (green mango boiled and laboured with water, spices, red onion and mint leaves - mum’s signature) and fresh sugarcane juice for lunch.
How’s your lunch going?

Oh goodness, this film by Satyajit Ray where an upper class/caste Punjabi woman plays an Adivasi (indigenous person) in arrant brown-face (her face was polished to make her look darker) should never have been restored. Not worth it. Hope New Yorkers aren’t falling for this rubbish.

The BBC is an outrageously fossilised relic. May it disappear forever.
They placed disability in the eye of storm simply out of spite for Black people, because they themselves long to 'deploy' the *word with intent to injure. There was a 10-min lag. Not editing out was by evil design. Sick!

Thread -- superbe. Ama Ata Aidoo *Our Sister Killjoy* est une des écrivains les plus importantes de l'Afrique anglophone. Je suis très content pour la traduction.
Dans les librairies le 17 avril.

Turnstiles for face scan before entrance

Sitting down for the questions

Merchandise and scarf

The full group of organisers with the slides in the background

Thank you to Dr Dhiren Borisa for the invite & Dr Niharika Banerjee for moderating. I was able to visit the sprawling campus (face scan for entrance). Got tired of 45-min blabbing so the organisers nicely asked me to be seated for the q & a. Received a lovely scarf and merchandise!

Me standing at the lectern for the talk

Me a closer look with the slide in background on Queer violence and Coloniality of Sexuality

Me with another slide on Against Equality

At the museum with three colleagues

What a great turnout to listen to violence on queer and violence of queer at Jindal Uni, India. Intellectually stimulating conversation on who gets to stand in solidarity and who frames resistance. Grateful to everyone who attended the talk and engaged me in thoughtful discussion.
🙏 for the presents

Thank you. I'd love to be like 'em too.

Hanging with my parents, standing on either side.

Hanging out with ‘where I’m really from’.
From them.

Pres Macron concluded visit to India w/ offer of generous visa schemes to Indian students. One key measure is 5-year post-study work visa. Lovely.
I’m against a tiered system b/ween our students.The 5-yr post-study work route should be made available to ALL int’l students.
We sink & swim together.

Spices & textiles ok, but why didn't the colonisers come looking for fruit? Or, did they?
Peak season rn in Delhi. Just finished my succulent guava dinner. Today I had:
apple, pomegranate, orange, chikoo/sapota, banana & kiwi (local). Tropical lands can feed the world, per ecofeminist Vandana Shiva.

This is why we say that words have meaning. Here the meaning is stark apparent in the phrase ‘queen’s son’, which works as a forceful performative doing what it implies: immunity.
When will Andrew the queen’s son be held accountable, us mortals wonder in exasperation.

I agree. I also find it really annoying how loud they got when he said Iran.

White people don’t understand that the call is coming from inside the house because they think that their societies are neutral and not the cause of genocide elsewhere. They love to blame Jewish people and Muslims.

And also the quote “Free Iran” movement is a false flag

I like the warning he issues: there’s a new one every week. It says a lot about our preoccupations in the north.