In a tight corner: A new comic explores desire, sex, intimacy and surveillance in Indian cities

A panel depicts the redevelopment of Mumbai’s Kamathipura. Pics Courtesy/Sonaksha and Richa Kaul Padte, The Nib, 2022

Being born in a small town, this writer was of the idea that spaces for sexual and gender expressions are scarce only in city fringes and rural settings. That was until we started living in a megalopolis in eastern India, where although the need for such spaces was acknowledged, the paucity breathed. Over the years and in other cities - with strangers and neighbours eager to look out for us - the paucity endured.

Panels from Sex in the Indian City

Sex in the Indian City, a sparkling comic calling attention to the shortage of venues that kindle sexual freedoms, reads like a letter to our adolescent self. Informed by observation, experience, history and legal information, it highlights how despite the hurdles, marginalised bodies will always rise against power structures. It gives hope.

Illustrator Sonaksha met writer Richa Kaul Padte on the Internet, and their friendship was instinctive. On conceiving the idea for the comic, the creative duo approached an American comics publishing arm for their cities issue. "Once the pitch was accepted, we were on a tight deadline. Everything had to be wrapped up in a month," notes Kaul Padte. They put the narrative together through a course of audio and video calls as the writer lives in Goa and the artist in Bengaluru.

Sonaksha shares that they didn't expect the response to blow up. "It feels great that readers are bonding with the comic. One professor wanted to incorporate the piece in their syllabus for graphic medicine and illness. Another teacher from Pakistan also wanted to fall back upon the text," they said.

Richa Kaul Padte and Sonaksha

For an account of desire that marries the visual and the spoken - with the intention of touching on the unspoken - what factors were the creators aware of? Kaul Padte responds, "It started with pointing out how we seek venues of intimacy in rickshaws, trains, metros, parks and cinema halls. But when I started researching the subject, the experiences seemed like the tip of the iceberg. The larger picture was constituted by the rigid power structures of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and caste and class divisions. And then, I also wanted to talk about resistance." The author feels being clear about the trajectory that begins from a sense of the individual, proceeds onto context and follows progression through defiance was crucial. We can't agree more with the comic's last words: "Each kiss...each hard-won intimacy... a tapestry of hope."

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