Paper short abstract:

In this work, I put across some of my patchy thoughts on pandemic experiences of queer/kothi identities in West Bengal. I attempt to bring to light ways in which resilience enmeshes with contingencies of kothi subjectivities in/around Kolkata, as we approach futurities beyond COVID-19.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has increasingly altered ways in which kothi—gender variant individuals specific to South Asia, assigned male at birth, who have certain feminine subjectivity, and may or may not identify as (trans) women but lie in the trans (feminine) spectrum—lives are oriented towards a conviviality-mutual cohabitation of the virus and humans. But this is not the first time such a reorientation is registered in the chartings of kothi subjectivities. The AIDS epidemic of the 1990s had largely prompted a transformation of the sexuality discourse in South Asia.

In this work, I try to sketch ways in which community engagements have led to a certain possibility of kothi existence in Kolkata through the covid-19 pandemic-through various kinds of community activism, relationships and solidarities—in ever-altering configuration since the HIV / AIDS epidemic—like providing economic relief, shelter, mental health support, etc.

Shaj Mohan, in his writings on the pandemic, mentions the idea that we all tend to keep faith in the persistence of the world and civilization. Even though we cannot exactly reason this persistence, we still rely on this 'obscure experience' to think and act through our present. I emphasize on the idea of shared living built through such an obscure experience in kothi communities of Kolkata, West Bengal to provide a patchy entry-point into the possibilities of a beyond-COVID futurity for kothi individuals; such extra-pandemic existence can be mapped through the convival entanglements of a resilience along with multiple contingencies that haunt kothi lives.