“How did you call me? Where am I? And what year is it?”

A folio celebrating play and performance within the queer South Asian experience

A interview with Jasjyot Singh Hans

An interview with writer and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury

from Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s acclaimed bilingual play

Hear the chants.

This is what I learned
the hard way to call precious.

Mehfil, a folio from The Margins—and the second installment of the I Want Sky series—celebrates a spirit of play and performance within the queer South Asian experience, both within the subcontinent and across the diaspora.

we shudder red

“Serenade” and “बहार / Spring”

don’t block the mountains with windows
or walls, even

You collected fallen petals from a rose

And what are we left
with without language?

this was never going to be easy

i don’t quite believe in God but i believe in music

Seeking work in the spirit of play and performance from queer South Asian artists

With our existence contested, denied, stricken from history, it is no wonder it takes the evidence of other lives to confirm the solidity of our bodies under our fingers’ touch.

You desire a final frame / that suits and comforts, / a framing that supersedes / a death denied

We reveled in the way our unlikely friendships disturbed the world around us. In each other’s bodies, we found joy and brotherhood.

The sea’s sunlit hues, the model-like beach goers that crowd the snack bar, the fruit from the south that tastes of the earth—they are totally unremarkable to her.

to need sky / because you are sun / forgive forgive / the world is crueler / without you in it

my mother gives love / through the severity of / past and future tragedies

I kiss / you & the sands roam every valley to ride this / wind. I kiss you & suddenly we are home again

Years later, to my own surprise, I would recognize a strange person within myself. Had I known then how strange I was, what would I have done?

desperate / we deceived ourselves / this time it will be different / fooled by the coldest winter disguised / as spring

I drive two hours to grieve a person I have never met, and my grief is a country without borders.

My whole life I heard her sing. / I never heard her speak.

Should you die my beloved / I will become a dyke / cut my hair to the scalp / demand history to know wrong / is done if you are taken from me

I tried to be a good daughter / and tell the right story to the guests, who were / always listening from their window across the road.