HAMIDA KHATRI
creative therapy platform
Roopbaan, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Many thanks to Xulhaz Mannan, Director of Roopbaan, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in giving me the time and space to work with the LGBT community members of the organization.
Roopbaan is a not-profit volunteer based forum representing the rights for the LGBT community in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It started as a magazine with key slogan ‘Right to Love’ to give voice to the invisible and ignored sexual minorities and became a volunteer based forum over time. Since its inception it has arranged various community-based events like the Rainbow Rally (to celebrate friendship and diversity), Pink Slip (health awareness camp), Roopbaan Film Festival, and Roopbaan Transhion Show.
The most interesting characteristic of this forum is the name. There is a story attached to the word ‘Roopbaan’, which means a fabulous person, someone with good looks. There is a Bangladeshi folklore that talks about a 12-year-old girl being married to an older man. When she matured, he got much older, but the love lasted forever and they lived a content loving life. The part where age does not matter is important for every Roopbaan. The idea of a female character being in ties with an older person is essential to emphasize here, as Roopbaans believe in no age discrimination.
© 2015, Ali Asgar - Roopbaan, Dhaka, Bangladesh
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Day 1 | Roopbaan
Due to the fact that Roopbaan involves a small number of volunteers, hence there is a lot of room for distraction when it comes to working together under one roof. This is because of relational concerns and sexual magnetism felt towards each other. For the workshop, the focus was to keep the personal and professional aspect of life separate when performing in a professional setting.
I initiated with a warm-up exercise by letting the participants hold each other’s hand and squeezing it to pass the intensity of the clutch from one person to another. This was the Pulse Exercise in which the squeeze intensifies as every grip becomes stronger. In the end there became just one heart beat, grounding the group closer together – in one place, removing all the negative energies and creating a comfortable space for everyone to be in.
Later I started with the drawing exercise where I asked the participants to respond to the idea of focus through visual representation. They all made wonderful sketches of their focus in life. While conducting this session I noticed that each of them passed on some level of gaze to each other. This invisible visual communication was so fascinating for me that I observed them for a while and after the first drawing exercise I made them blindfold each other and asked to draw the same drawing again.
There was a massive difference in the works of the Roopbaans, which could be witnessed through the photographs here.
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Day 2 | Roopbaan
The second day consisted of a larger group of participants. Here the focus was on gaining some illustrative response from the participants who wrote poems depicting their idea of Roopbaan and their sexual desires, which keep being impeded by the society.
The session started by the Pulse Exercise, which lead to asking the participants to draw what they felt in the present moment. Many of the participants talked about their fear of speaking publically and being confident to expose the truth. This exercise melted a little bit of the iceberg they had formed around themselves, as shields, to not to reveal their true identities to the world.
Next I asked the participants to depict their visual realities based on the words: ‘Suffocation’, ‘Love’, and ‘Relation’ in their drawings. Roopbaan is publishing a poetry collection voicing out the emotional concerns of the hidden / invisible people of the LGBT community. The main aim of this session was to bring out the visual depictions of their un-shared realities.
The ending task was to create puppets out of the given supplies that represented their true selves. And my God! The participants made some very astonishing puppets showing their identities, which they largely hide from the world.
I was blessed to have seen those souls nakedly hanging on the string with no judgment but asking for acceptance to the world they live in.