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<h1 class="centre">This collection of profiles covers four women in distinct fields, who have been the architects of women’s liberation. This could mean being firmly situated in collective action, political justice, and legal wins, or in the quieter spaces of self and sex. We talk loosely about ‘women’s movements’ and ‘the patriarchy’ as if they are as vast and unpinnable as air. But these women have found particularities from which they are fighting to breathe afresh. The work is vertiginous, and the path is fraught. Of course it is. This collection asks what it means to sustain a career fighting against gravity for freedom. It asks how cultural, political, economic, and sexual injustices can be met with somatic bravery, intellectual hard work, and joy as much as resilience. Looking to fight the good fight? This is what (some) resistance looks like.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Trisha Shetty is visiting Mumbai (currently based in Paris), recovering from a cough bestowed upon her by the city’s smog, and wondering how people are not on the streets agitating against the unlivable air. “That’s the activist in me,” she says, laughing lightly.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Trisha’s resistance to violence and injustice has taken many forms over her decade-long journey as an activist, educator, lawyer, and policy practitioner. Now in her 30s, she has placed joy and happiness right next to righteous anger to configure what sustains the pursuit of a fairer and freer world. In 2015, Trisha founded SheSays, a youth-led, community-centric movement that works across thematic areas of child abuse, sexual violence, and equality.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Child Sex Abuse and SheSays</h1>

<h1 class="left">Trisha’s team at SheSays conducts workshops across India, sensitising students, teachers, and community members about consent, gender norms, and the legal protections available to survivors of sexual violence. These sessions, as Trisha describes, are designed to foster a culture of non-judgemental support and accountability. When she describes her work, Trisha is careful and warm; she knows every time she enters a space with children and initiates a conversation about sexual abuse, she “know[s] just based on the statistics, lived experience, and having done this for over 10 years now, many people in the room have had some sort of contact to the incident that I'm talking about, and I'm reigniting their old trauma.” That carries the unshakeable responsibility, then, to be able to offer relief to the children who would be triggered, whose trauma may have been undefined, silenced, or repressed.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">The Internet of Things, or The Politics of the Game</h1>

<h1 class="centre">There is a ‘safe’ way to talk about gender, one with anodyne calls for justice and equality, that doesn’t prick the wider systems (political, economic, religious, legal) in which gender violence is embedded. Trisha picked a side early on: “The truth is, you cannot address equality without first talking about the pervasive inequality. To talk about pervasive inequality, you have to be very honest about the drivers of it. You have to talk about the fact that it's funded, it's highly organised, it's not accidental, and the people at the receiving end of the worst inequality are religious minorities and queer people.” Publicly discussing these political valencies of the ruling party or Indian cultural malady online meant enduring the ceaseless barrage of online trolling and threats – from both misogynistic men’s rights activists and “cannibalistic” factions of the cancel-culture bent.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Through conversations with other Indian activists, she has slowly overhauled what being online means to her. Now, she extensively documents threats she receives for legal action taken when necessary and is forthcoming about the benefits of digital capital as a form of protection. When she was detained for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act, it undoubtedly helped that she had a voice and a platform to call on for resistance. “The worst thing they can do is press send,” she says.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">The World of Changemaking</h1>

<h1 class="left">Moving from localised activism to large institutions for talks and governance advisory requires an agility of the self; Trisha walks into any room knowing that her presence there is validated by tactile, tangible work, and that she is perfectly alright not being invited back if they are not happy with what she says. She has held leadership positions with global organisations such as the Paris Peace Forum and UNLEASH. “There’s no trade-off,” she says, when I ask her if there are ambiguous spaces where personal principles have to be sacrificed or hedged for change at scale. “I don’t work with institutions whose values don’t align with mine. Or who would ask me to change what I believe in.” Yet, she remains grounded in the communities she serves. “Everything I have today is because of the community work I’ve done,” she asserts. “I am clear about who I am answerable to.”</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Whatever It Takes?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Being in the space of advocacy and justice is exhausting. The status quo is calibrated to break your spirit, and you cannot always hold impact in your hands. Trisha tells me about the time she met Nirbhaya’s parents: “Her [Nirbhaya’s] parents had come down to Bombay, they were very tired. We had been protesting all day. The media was calling them. They'd done multiple media interviews and it's Asha [Nirbhaya’s mother], who usually does media, not Badrinath [Nirbhaya’s father], but he was getting the call.” He handed the phone to Asha, who said she was tired, and that she just wanted a break. “And Badrinath said [to Asha], ‘no, finish this’. And I looked at him, I was like, ‘Listen, she has the right to rest.’ And he responds saying, ‘No. If the public and people could listen to me and take inspiration from my words, I would speak, but people resonate with what she says. And he said, in today's economy, someone giving you a mic to talk about the subject that you are deeply passionate about— do you know how rare that is?’ And then Asha echoed his sentiment, ‘he's right, actually, I’ll do it. I have to do this because had people done this earlier, maybe my child would be alive. But I will be damned if I am not showing up for every other survivor who I can show up for and not fight for them to make sure that this doesn't happen to other people.” With perfect conviction, Badrinath affirmed that Asha would do the interview, and then at night, he would give her a massage to help her relax. Resistance, therefore, requires a support system in order to be sustained. Trisha’s voice softened, adding, “It could be as simple as, 'you speak, I'll provide the massage'.”</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Principles of Pleasure</h1>

<h1 class="left">Being intentional about joy is the only certain way we can continue showing up for the self and community. She tells me she now says ‘self’ before ‘community,’ because she did the reverse for years. She could show up for her community, but not herself: “I was very successful, but I was not a good sister, not a good friend, not a good partner.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Trisha advocates for a relationship with one’s body that is rooted in pleasure and agency rather than shame. “We're conditioned early on to not be in our body, to not feel good in our body, to not connect to our body, to just not feel. And trust me, I went to the extremes of that option of numbing myself out. And then I just chose a different path.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Now, with a modified idea of what it means to carry weight and enjoy weightlessness, Trisha knows how to take care of the activist in her.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Credits:</h1>

<h1 class="left">Editor-in-Chief: Kshitij Kankaria</h1>

<h1 class="left">Words by: Sanjana Sheth</h1>

<h1 class="left">Digital Editor: Shriya Zamindar</h1>

<h1 class="left">Managing Editor: Anurag Sharma</h1>

<h1 class="left">Art Director: Tia Chinai</h1>

<h1 class="left">Graphic Designer: Rishika Sikder</h1>

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<h1 class="left">G Ode Team:</h1>

<h1 class="left">Creative Direction: Nimi Raja</h1>

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