Ultra Violet is a place for Indian feminists. It’s a place for sharing stories and views and questions. It’s a place for exploration, opinion and information. It’s a place where we can come together to understand what other feminists around the country–or around the world–are saying. If you want to write for UV, please read this. More about UV here.

We’re Talking About…

August 26, 2010

The weight of silence

By Divya Rajan

Your scarf spoke nine tongues.
I failed to know the purpose, seek the language
of splinters, shards, lazy salsas.
I thought the skies bowed to you even
as they turned mauve. Awe
filled my lungs, I breathed.
Shards slow danced, I felt your smile.
It smelt of something else.
Your ducking shadows traded with liquid limelight.
*******
“You were born to silence”, sang [...]

July 07, 2010

Wanting It

WERE I 17 AND A POT OF MUSH, “those three words” would mean something entirely different. But as an almost-32- year-old (ooh, how I love announcing an upcoming birthday ) who has seen a bit of life and the world, the three words that get a rise out of me are these: What [...]

January 01, 2010

Two poems by Susan Kiguli

By Susan Kiguli

Mothers Sing a Lullaby
(after the 1994 Rwandan genocide)
Mothers sing a lullaby
As the dark descends on trees
Shutting out shadows.
The sensuous voices swish and swirl
Around shrubs and overgrown grass
Hiding mountains of decapitated dead
And the glint of machetes
That slashed shrieking throats.
In these camps without happiness
Mothers maintain the melody of life
Capturing wistful wind
To sing strength into [...]

December 01, 2009

Of fatigue and forgetting

YESTERDAY, I WAS LOOKING at this report released by the World Economic Forum last month, and I started drafting a post with some excerpts. Just to make it easier for people who don’t want to read the whole thing. It was1 am, I was tired and suddenly I felt overcome with this sense of futility, [...]

November 19, 2009

Thoughts on Eve Ensler’s “I am an Emotional Creature”

THE AUDIENCE WAS FLUSH WITH estrogen, but had a heartening dose of the Y chromosome. I wondered if the cocktail reception that preceded the event was a marketing ploy or a genuine attempt to fortify our spirits for what was to come. I found out soon enough.
The world premiere of Eve Ensler’s ‘I Am An [...]

November 08, 2009

Storm in a T-Cup & The Language of Experience

PENELOPE TRUNK CAUSED A tremendous controversy when she Tweeted about her miscarriage (and the fact that she was glad she didn’t have to wait for an abortion, which is difficult to get in her part of the USA). I found the controversy ridiculous on many levels – after all, many people share personal information online [...]

October 26, 2009

Becoming Woman

ALL I KNEW WAS that this non-profit group called MARAA was organising some sort of performance on gender and sexuality. A friend told me about it and even offered to pick me up. Work lay unfinished on my table, but what the hell, I decided, I could always catch up later. And that’s how we [...]

October 16, 2009

Two poems by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

To Get Myself Some Water
~Translated from Ellen Lai’s ‘Grassland’, written in Chinese

Our love toils about one period.
On the bloody and lusty grassland
You transform me into your self-pitied crippled rabbit.
When you finally discard everything you have
That is inside your permanently bulging equipment,
You turn your back
And ride towards the flat horizon
On a white horse
Whose tail is momentarily [...]

October 05, 2009

It’s A Bad Ad World

LATELY, WHILE CHANNEL SURFING, I came across two advertisements, prominently aired in prime time slots that went something like this:
Ad 1: A little girl whines about how her hair isn’t as long as her mother’s was in her childhood. The mother apologetically mentions that she has to work while Nani (her own mother) was “at [...]

September 14, 2009

Two Poems by Aditi Machado

Iris and the sun
Iris thought of the sun as a stain
on the sky; it spread so keenly
when it set, perhaps the lake
was blotting paper.
Why she paid to sit in a boat,
no one knows. The oars scratched
at the surface — relentless nibs –,
disturbed the hulking dusk-yellow
ever so minutely, and nothing
was written that night.
*
Ragini to ex-lover
I am [...]