The Lonely Hearts Club: A polyphonic reflection on the making of an erotica performance in India Anuja Ghosalkar (Bangalore), Nidhi Mariam Jacob (Bangalore), Tushar Madhav (Amsterdam), Oishorjyo (Goa), Rency Philip (Bangalore), Balakrishnan Raghavan (Santa Cruz), Bhavana Rajendran (Bangalore) This essay is a multi-authored text by the creator and the six performer-writers of The Lonely Hearts Club — an erotica performance made in India during the pandemic. The Lonely Hearts Club initially unfolded on Instagram, and subsequently on Zoom as a digital show 1 . The text below documents the collaborative spirit with which the show was realised. Rather than a singular authorial voice, here multiple perspectives with varied registers share their experience, process, and trepidation of making an online erotica show. This erotica does not cater to the hetero-normative gaze, but lies in-between and on the periphery — queer stories, feminist narratives and intimate chronicles in regional Indian languages. The essay is framed as a series of reflections, along with excerpts from the original performance texts, to offer a flavour of the language, artistic choices, and impulses. This recounting offers an insight into a documentary theatre making process in India. Introduction by Mrs. Lonely Hearts/ Anuja Ghosalkar The Lonely Hearts Club premiered on 25 March 2020 on Instagram, the first night of the lockdown in India because of the Coronavirus. Everyone was imprisoned in an instant within domestic walls, far away from friends, family, and lovers, distanced from a familiar existence. To overcome the physical separation many turned to digital connections - video calls, Zoom meetings, WhatsApp messages, sexting 2 . This helped alleviate, temporarily, the isolation and absence of touch - that vital life-giving force that was taken away without warning. Human contact was scarce. Shops, offices, schools, cinemas, and theatres were closed. There were no means of gathering as a community. As a documentary theatre maker interested in interdisciplinary forms, I decided to use Instagram as a site of performance. The social media platform where each of us is constantly curating our best selves, our feeds designed as realms to play out fantasies - Could this site offer a moment of connection, however ephemeral? The Lonely Hearts Club was born out of this impetus - an Instagram handle (lonelyhearts@5678) that invited erotica from the audience through my online persona, Mrs. Lonely Hearts. Every night at 11 p. m., a new entry was posted. It was an invitation to people to submit audio entries rather than videos or images - to subtly challenge the inherent design of this visually addictive platform of immediate ‘ likes ’ , to one that forced you to pause, listen, and look at a black screen. The second impulse was to subvert the algorithm discreetly. By using hashtags like cinnamon buns, morning glory, pleasure, queer erotica, wash your hands, sex guide, orgasm, and dark alleys, to herd audiences to a page where they encountered subversive, queer, feminist, provocative erotica in varied Indian languages and from people all over the world - a biology textbook, diary entries, amorous Forum Modernes Theater, 34/ 2, 291 - 305. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ FMTh-2023-0027 revelations, confessions by a woman who takes off her hijab as an erotic and revolutionary gesture were on the page. The Instagram page was active for 50 nights relentlessly. Each night at 11 p. m. listeners tuned in to hear an animated cricket chirping and witnessed audio texts by Audre Lorde, Arundhati Roy, Mallika Amar Sheikh, and several famous as well obscure writers - this was not erotica catering to the heteronormative gaze, but one that lay in-between and on the periphery - queer stories, Ambedkarite 3 songs, feminist narratives, Urdu poetry - texts that in their essence, questioned the status quo and embraced the irreverent, with playful registers to make strident political comments. This Instagram page unwittingly became a digital archive of the first 50 nights of the lockdown in India. It gathered a community of people sharing intimate desires, kinks, and fantasies with faceless, unfamiliar audiences across the world. A deep kinship was forged that made lockdown nights perhaps less lonely. A year later, a second wave of the Coronavirus hit India. We were witnessing a scarcity of oxygen cylinders, deaths of hundreds of people, and burning pyres each day - a time that cannot easily recede in memory. Through this bleakness, in order to seek refuge and find an imagination for survival, I invited nine contributors from The Lonely Hearts Club Instagram page to a writing workshop that might perhaps lead to a performance. This workshop was facilitated by the writer Zui Kumar-Reddy. The tumult of an ongoing global pandemic meant we were uncertain whether theatres would open, and therefore the form of the show was ambivalent. Before the pandemic, the gates of institutional theatre were impenetrable for independent theatre makers like me, but with the digital, the site became one of radical re-imagination for theatre making and distribution methods - it enabled us to unabashedly play, reach closer to audiences, and circumvent monopolistic practices of ticketing portals and theatre managers who often become self-appointed purveyors of art and morality. We embraced the digital, not with triumphalism but with gentle caution. Nine strangers gathered on Zoom to explore ways of telling their stories, and I decided to make a performance using the interface and inherent aesthetics of Zoom. Like the Instagram handle before, the show would be a commentary on technology, on a platform that was initiated for corporate meetings, the digital windows that were now ubiquitous and unsuspectingly let us to look into people ’ s households, across continents. The site of the theatre was not a stage, but our homes. Strangers were privy to our pets, kitchens, living rooms - the private space was on exhibition. The opening scene of Alfred Hitchcock ’ s Rear Window proved prophetic. The notion of peeping informed the dramaturgy and framework of The Lonely Hearts Club: The Zoom Show. We deliberately invited audiences to peer in. This ‘ looking ’ was mediated via the peephole of our times, the camera of the audiences ’ devices. In the opening scene of The Lonely Hearts Club: The Zoom Show 4 , the audience witnesses a live stream from a closed-circuit camera of a young girl emerging out of a shower, in her towel, with a glistening body with smooth skin and wet curly hair. She seems unaware of being watched. Her name is Jaya. At that instant, the audience is caught by the host of the show Ren-C, who in a shimmering gold jacket and fishnet stockings, says, “ Jaya doesn ’ t know we are watching her. ” Over the next 75 minutes, our host takes us into bedrooms, bathrooms, and WhatsApp chats, hacking into people ’ s Instagram pages, telephone calls, web camera footage and the uncensored recesses of their minds. She invites the audience to be voyeurs and simultaneously allures them to turn on their own cameras, to enable her to look into 292 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran their private world. Through the show, we are reminded that while consent is critical, and all the performers have willingly let us into their personal lairs, there is one person, one room — Jaya ’ s — that is open through the show, but we do not have her permission. The audience can exercise their agency at any time during the show to exit the ‘ main ’ narrative and trespass into Jaya ’ s room where they risk transgressing the intimate space of this person. The texts for the show were written by the performers and are sophisticated documents of their erotic selves. The process of making the show was fundamentally collaborative. The nine performers, the associate director, the sound and light designer, and I made a show that is lustrous and interactive, with levity and several pop-culture references, and invites the viewer to reflect on their role and agency in participating in erotica. The show ’ s vitality lies in its questioning of the binary of ‘ moral-immoral ’ , ‘ good-bad ’ , ‘ pure-impure ’ , ‘ victim-perpetrator ’ , ‘ kinky-vanilla ’ , and so on. The nonbinary here, in addition to sexual identities, is an exploration of a worldview. What does it mean to do away with a binary way of looking? Of embodying ambivalences and multitudinous personas, positions? The following text captures the polyphonic voices of the performers where complexities, murkiness, untidiness, and easy categorization or answers are not only impossible, but also undesirable. To root The Lonely Hearts Club in a larger socio-political context, it is critical to highlight that section 377 5 of the Indian Penal Code was only struck down in 2018. Section 377 criminalized sexual activity, “ against the law of nature ” . 6 Until this law was repealed, homosexuality was a criminal offence in India. The category of “ queer theatre ” in India is as yet an undefined one. In a country where the law was only struck down five years ago, a singular definition of Fig. 1: Jaya ’ s Room. This is the opening scene of the show, where a young person, Jaya is seen emerging out of the shower in her towel and is unaware of being watched by the audience. This closed-circuit camera footage has no sound and the host of the show, Ren-C appears and watches Jaya with the audience for a moment. 293 The Lonely Hearts Club “ Queer Indian Theatre ” is an emergent one at best: The theatrical assemblage is further complicated by the postcolonial nation-state in the move to institutionalize performance categories such as that of the “ classical, ” “ traditional ” and the “ folk ” performing arts. This is contingent upon contemporary times (the shift to the digital with the pandemic included), wherein we see that the theatre draws niche urban audiences, with major cities fostering their own (regional) circuits. 7 These categories of folk, classical, regional, the diversity of languages and long-standing theatrical traditions in India make an outlining of Queer Indian Theatre as a genre difficult. However, there is a long history of cross-dressing in Indian theatre because until the late 19 th century women were not allowed on stage. Most women characters were played by female impersonators. 8 Lady Anandi 9 , the first show that I wrote, performed, and produced, is about one such female impersonator - Madhavrao Tipnis. He is also my great grandfather. Lady Anandi is the story of two actors separated by 100 years. One, my great grandfather who played women characters convincingly, and the other, me, struggling to be a woman on stage. As a female impersonator, he was constantly being told by his directors that he was not feminine enough. I, who became a full-time theatre actor at the age of 34, received similar remarks from directors because of my throaty voice and gait. Wanting to tell my own story, I conceived Lady Anandi, and it travelled across India, Germany, and Sweden. Ghosalkar tenderly caresses the projected image on screen, her body transforms into a palimpsest, a surface, this ephemeral gesture long lasting on the spectator ’ s retina, a provocation on the performative of gender norms. . . the potentials of engaging with varied genres honing a critical temper, their concerns with womanhood opening up to a surplus of gender expression that destabilizes the binary actualizations of the (modern) impersonator performatic. 10 During the making and showing of Lady Anandi, I realized that mainstream theatre in India had scant space for feminist narratives that challenged the canon. The grossly hegemonic relationship between director (mostly male), playwright (also mostly male), and female actor felt oppressive, even violent to my performing body. Starting from Lady Anandi, my theatre practice is a decidedly feminist one, of which queer narratives are an integral part. Further, I locate my feminist practice in modes and methods of making where processual underpinnings are equally as vital as the finished work. It is these circumstances that led me to The Lonely Hearts Club and imagining Instagram and Zoom as a stage where my audiences are closer to me, unmediated by theatre curators or severe gatekeepers. The online space offered a safety and sanctuary to the performers whose intimate and political narratives and lives were deemed criminal by Indian law until only a few years ago. My documentary theatre practice is characterized by multiplicities of narratives that bring together a series of collaborative writers rather than a singular authorial text. There is a collective register that has many individual notes and rhythms but sings as a whole. The writings below are illustrative of that notion and capture the process of making The Lonely Hearts Club: The Zoom Show from the point of view of six of the nine performer-writers and their erotica performance texts. They share their experience and trepidation about performing desire, erotica, queerness, and taking risks during the making of the show, along with excerpts of their performance scripts. 294 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran We start with Rency Philip ’ s reflections and an Instagram entry for The Lonely Hearts Club on 1 April 2020, which is also the culminating text for the Zoom show. She appears as Ren-C, the vibrant and shimmering host of The Lonely Hearts Club: The Zoom Show. Rency Philip on the process of making The Lonely Hearts Club The further we entered into the peak of the pandemic, the safer I felt within the confines of my house. Of course, the solitude soon turned to loneliness and then isolation to desolation. When we started working on the show, The Lonely Hearts Club, we were on uncertain ground as to what and where we would be when we opened the show. Therefore, when Anuja decided that we would rehearse and perform on Zoom, I was sceptical and wondered if the show would be poorly devised. Performing desire while isolating from other humans felt plastic. Rehearsing in front of my laptop with people I hadn ’ t touched or smelt was a disorienting experience. Performance-making is usually replete with the sweat of my co-actors ’ bodies, akin to lovemaking but without the emotional hills and valleys. The making of The Lonely Hearts Club was in many ways exhilarating and new for me, in that I hadn ’ t ever explored digitality in my performances nor ever brought audiences into my own house. While we navigated adeptly around the technological hurdles with the savvy cast and crew, the latter was what I feared the most. To share my most intimate experiences with an unknown cast, people whom I had never met. To share parts of myself that I haven ’ t shared with another human, to a whole lot of Zoom windows. Then playing a character, which was a caricature of myself, on a stage that was my living room, with interruptions from my Fig. 2: Ren-C, the host of the show, appears at various intervals during the narrative, teasing the audience and at other times provoking them. Through the many appearances in the show, she uses different filters to draw attention to the fact that we are in an artificial environment. Here she is seen in a triple effect filter, that makes her larger than life in an instant, begging the question, which of these three is the ‘ real ’ her. 295 The Lonely Hearts Club own life unfolding during the show - my cats meowing because they needed their evening brushing or the doorbell ringing because the watchman wanted me to move my car from where it is parked. Herein lies the question that I struggled with, as a performer: how much of this is really a performance? Performing erotica meant I had to pick up my fears as well as desires and expose them to my fellow cast members. As we gradually familiarised ourselves with everyone ’ s quirks and fetishes, I felt an unusual closeness and intimacy with each of them. Even before I knew their last names or their preferred alcohol, I knew what turns them on! My own practice of performance-making is developing pieces from my life experiences and weaving them into a larger plot, with an ensemble cast. My story-telling skills are where I can spin tales from personal narratives that seem far more fictional than they are. However, during The Lonely Hearts Club, in spite of being outrageously dressed in revealing clothes, I felt the most naked and vulnerable when I got to the concluding piece of monologue. It was a piece I had written, almost a year before starting rehearsals for the show, for The Lonely Hearts Club Instagram handle. I wrote it in the darkest hour of a despairing pandemic night, when I was heartbroken and felt undesirable, to remind myself of the times I was held so tenderly by people with whom I shared unseen and ugly parts of myself. To have that piece written in abject fear about moments when I was most desired comes almost towards the end of the show, always left me shuddering and shivering much like a gentle, loving orgasm. Excerpts from Ren-C ’ s performance Now I am going to list my favorite places to have sex in, in no particular order Of course, a hotel room On the bed, the chair, everywhere But if they have a full-size mirror Then it ’ s an orgy! In the playground Yes, the children ’ s playground Don ’ t worry, the children have left And their parents too. But if there was an audience You can always smile or wave or politely ask them to turn away. If they are still unsettled by seeing people do it Maybe they are like me Hate watching a sport; would rather just play it. By the beach On the sand Which you will find in your butt cracks two days later On the wet sand by the sea On a jacket from keeping you dirty The jacket can ’ t keep you from getting dirty. Through this pinhole Right now You watching us, them, consensually, or maybe not. Tushar Madhav says of on his first encounter with performing When the Instagram handle of The Lonely Hearts Club flashed on my mobile screen during the first lockdown of 2020, I was caught by an obscure creative nerve - performance. The initial invitation to contribute audio stories of erotica, of longing, and desire, especially from queer participants, at a time when isolation in its physicality was looming heavy over us, prompted an urgent poetic need for self-expression. Expressions that longed for basic human touch, for affections, and affective notes of desire. How do I narrate a personal encounter with an audience spread across the world via social media, making vulnerable my desires, longings, and lived experiences that tread on 296 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran the margins of rights and wrongs, appropriate and inappropriate? Caught inside a locked-down apartment, my first iteration for The Lonely Hearts Club rendered a moist sexual encounter that sought music within silence and warmth in a lover ’ s gaze, weaving original writing with excerpts from the verses of the legendary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Probing further into the polyphonic narratives, voices, and mise-en-scène that Zoom ’ s split-screen interface and the collaboration of other artists offered, I found myself rooted in the process of playing and rediscovering different selves during the rehearsals. The eventual discovery of a 13year-old boy who longed to be desired as a woman, while also multi-playing a 35-yearold gay man reflecting on his adolescence inverted the paradigms of narrative-making in certain ways. Instead of starting out with a character description to draft their story, here I was digging into my own lived histories and pubescent secrets to render performance text. An excerpt from Tushar ’ s text titled Simran We are back in the 1990 s. City, Lucknow. I am a little over 13 years old, gentle in behaviour, but pretty wild in imagination. In the eyes of society, I am still a well-behaved boy. A well-behaved boy! क्यू ंकि गले की नस अभी तक फूटी नहीं थी तो आवाज मे ं कोई कर्कश नहीं हुई। 11 (My voice hadn ’ t cracked yet and lacked a bass) And one day, when I received a telephone call and the person on the other side asked me - “बेटी ! . . . पापा घर पर है ं क्या ? ” (Hey, girl, is your father at home? ) And I thought, hmm, that ’ s interesting! Sounds like a mesh for my afternoons! And so it began. My luscious affair with the telephone. My teal-green love-machine! हर रोज जब मम्मी अपने कमरे मे ं सो जाती थी , मै ं टेलीफोन घुमाता था . कभी किसी को hi तो कभी hello किसी को सलाम , किसी को अदाब (Everyday in the afternoons when my mother napped, I dialled the telephone. ‘ Hi ’ to one, ‘ hello ’ to another. Greetings to some, warm greetings to a few.) And one day, a man picked up, his voice, a deep gruffy bass कर्कश से भरी ! “ Hello! ” Rediscovering and rendering this 13-yearold self who playfully dove into his adoles- Fig. 3: Tushar Madhav, seen here across two Zoom screens. One persona of Tushar as an adult and the other as an adolescent person called Simran prank calling people. Throughout the show Tushar/ Simran are seen through two cameras, bringing attention to the fact that there are two vantage points, the past and the present, from which to tell and receive this story. 297 The Lonely Hearts Club cent desires by prank-calling random men in a small town in 1990 s North India, on the one hand stoked lived histories that sought expressions and vents, and on the other evoked undiscovered fears and reservations about the act itself. I was not 13 years old any longer, and while the times had evolved, transforming much social consciousness around the ideas of non-binary sexualities, I found myself feeling uncomfortable playing a 13-year-old boy whose innocence and naiveté was tough to rediscover and relocate. Given my practice as a documentary filmmaker, now that I was not behind the camera but instead facing it with imposing interactive audiences, my vulnerabilities began to reveal a different perspective to my art-making process. During our rehearsals, we often improvised prank calls across Zoom screens with each other to lend to the performance text. However, these improvisations sometimes lurked on the boundaries of feeling somewhat ‘ creepy ’ , which evoked further questions. I investigated this concern with fellow artists in the group through candid conversations about the memories of the incident from my adolescence that formed the basis of my act in this show. Beyond revealing my intimate inner and outer journeys while coming to terms with my sexuality in my youth, memory as a documentation of lived history also shone light on the contexts of historical violence that is found within homosexual practices in India and beyond. The prudence of our critical reflection on the matter led us to move forward with the act, which shared and revealed further vulnerabilities of my encounter. DaddyBoi on the Promise of Promiscuity During the making of The Lonely Hearts Club, through the writing workshop and cocreating the play, we bore witness to each other ’ s presence, deepest fears, kinkiest desires, and long-held fantasies. From exercises of etching on our glorious bodies with words and symbols to writing a manifesto sharing our sexual dreams 12 , it was as vulnerable as it was liberating. In the stories we narrated to each other, we shared our fetishes, our desires, and how our lives were intertwined in a complex play of caste, religion, privilege, race, sexuality, and gender. We were all bound by the desire to share erotica with and through each other, centred on trust. The promise of promiscuity in these ephemeral Zoom windows shone through in all our group interactions. The safety of having no cis, heterosexual male played a role in the art-making. Queer affirmative spaces such as these are important for queer individuals to be, to write, to thrive, and to perform. 13 Given that the online performance was not on our radar during the writing workshop, our writing was unaffected by the piece ’ s possible performative futures. We wrote and expressed not with the intention of it being read/ seen by a public but to write and express for our own chosen people. This freed one from the pressures of creating for it to be seen as opposed to creating for ourselves/ itself. In the workshop and performances, we constantly negotiated the boundaries of morality, modesty, civility, and kink. Our discussions in the creative process were not all smooth, and in times of distress, we took a break centred kindness, sat with the discomforts of working together online, and held space for each other. What triumphed in all this is the collective solidarity with which each of us arrived, made space, and left a mark. The online-social space of the workshop was ripe for erotic expression and sharing discomfort, due to the autonomy afforded in the modes of participation and the multiple ways one could be present with and for each other, be it audio, video, text, emoji, or gif. It was vulnerable to share one ’ s own private/ 298 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran familial, domestic spaces with other participants of the workshop, sharing our homes, bodies, bathrooms, toilets, and kitchens, and eventually the public. It is a gesture of queering 14 the domestic space and bringing erotica from the domestic to another domestic space through the public. These spaces have historically been inhabited by dominant groups across multiple axes and this performance modality is a representational ‘ other ’ . In a way, we all, through the process of co-creating, co-authoring, cobeing, and co-performing, became queer companions 15 . It was the only time in DaddyBoi ’ s life when they let themselves be eseen, to be e-desired, to be e-devoured, and to be e-fucked. DaddyBoi ’ s performance text Bondage and Begum Boi: Please do send pictures, it makes giving compliments easy. Subs are more than welcome. Little did I know then that it was not the sub 16 we eat but the obeying sub, having themselves eaten out. The pandemic opened up this new way of online cross-city cruising on Grindr. I was on it last September, to see known profiles that I left behind in cities I didn ’ t act on my ‘ carnal ’ instincts. It always made me hard. I would zoom into my older addresses, say in Chennai to see who was around. I had a good poet-like bio but no face - just my lips and my chest (of course without clothes) just like this! It also reads NP - NR - NI (no pic - no response - no interest). I clicked on a hot, intriguing profile, 732 kilometres away, in Chennai. And boom in the next hour, I get a barrage of messages from him on Grindr. He was a premium user and could message anyone. Earlier, I have only been the Daddy, spanking my bois and domming them. It was new and scary to lose control and take orders. With him, I was happy taking orders and being Daddy ’ s little sub boi! We moved from Grindr to Instagram to WhatsApp in that order. (Camera angle changes and looks into the actor ’ s face.) Boi types first: (sends pic) Boi: Ayee! Up? Daddy is seen typing Daddy: Yeah! Someone ’ s in a bottom-y mood Your needs Boi: Oh Yes Daddy! ! Breed me Daddy: In the city or where? Boi: Not yet, but the weekend in Chennai! Daddy: What were you doing? Boi: Thinking of you Daddy listening to Akhtari 17 Begum Daddy: Ha! You know you love being owned! Boi: (Sends Gif ) Daddy: I need to spank that wild ass/ tushy first Boi: This ass is all yours to bite, spank, and rim! Daddy: Daddy must see it to do it! ! ! Boi: Yes Sir! (Sends pic) Daddy: So Yummmm! Can ’ t wait to get behind you Boi: Ahh (Twerking Gif) Daddy: I want you boi, all mine. Boi: Will you come all over me? Daddy: Oh yeah, I ’ ll bathe you in my cum Boi: (cum cream Gif) Daddy: Daddy will tie you up and leash you to breed your tush Boi: (Gif Leather) I want you to come all over me while listening to Begum and Bano 18 Daddy: In your voice. Your voice in my ears, me fucking you Boi: Ah! I love it Daddy! Daddy: Get on all fours and send it to Daddy Boi: Choke me Daddy 299 The Lonely Hearts Club Daddy: Pin you down and spread you and fuck like there ’ s no tomorrow Boi: (Spank gif) I ’ d lie on your lap for you to spank me Daddy Daddy: Gosh. I love training new subs! You are a dream subboi cum true! Boi: Cum I will, orgasm I will Daddy: Come to Daddy, baby Boi Boi: Video call? Bhavana (Bee) and Nidhi share their lived experience as a same-sex couple Our piece was called Chocolate, showing the playful side of our relationship. We brought in our cats, children, the mundane of our everyday lives, the bickering, and so on. What became apparent and important to us was that we show through our performance that every relationship, queer or not, experiences the same set of struggles, laughter and resolution. We also brought in humour and dancing to our favourite Madonna songs, in our performance which made it fun. We acknowledged the camera during our piece several times, thereby inviting the audience to not just watch the performance but to actively engage in everything we were talking about. Social media has played a big part in our lives for work and connecting with the world, especially during the pandemic, but there was always a tacit limit with the content we shared as a same-sex couple. With The Lonely Hearts Club, we pushed those boundaries, allowing viewers a peek into our private lives, our home, our bed, our vulnerabilities, our private conversations, our silliness, our deepest erotic desires - all without fear of judgement. What was fascinating about this project was that these were not fictional stories but narratives of erotica drawn from our own personal experiences. A call to accept and normalize desire. What worked in this case was the fact that we felt protected by each other and the strength and trust that we got through the work, as a collective. An excerpt from Chocolate Bee: I imagined licking sticky caramel down your neck and then I had no option but to. Nidhi: Not working for me, Bee. Bee: But don ’ t you remember your thighs, we ’ ve spoken about this. Nidhi: Yes, I could feel sweat on my thighs, against the teal blue leather car seat, it felt like chocolate dripping down my legs. But chocolate doesn ’ t do it for me these days. Maybe because I ’ m getting older and I can ’ t really eat that much of it. Bee: Then what does? Nidhi: Dosa Meen Curry, Appam Mutton Stew, Chutney podi 19 Bee: But we can ’ t have Chutney podi all over you, no? Nidhi: It ’ s so dangerous and it ’ s hot, really hot, Bee. First you heat the oil, onions, red chillies and then and it ’ s all spice baby. Bee: Right and some mustard seeds too? Nidhi: Oh yes! That sexy crackling sound, put put put Bee: (looks a little in pain) I just don ’ t feel that way about chillies. You used to like nutty chocolate! Why? Nidhi: Because I like that feeling of finding my way to the nut, through all those layers of chocolate. Bee: What about hot chocolate? Nidhi: Mm! I want some, the steam from the hot chocolate filled up the car, it was intoxicating, we were breathless. Bee: Yes, yes yes! Nidhi: (distances herself) Yeah of course. You always want to have some French chocolatey sex. Bee: What does that mean? 300 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran Nidhi: Whenever we try and talk dirty, Bee, you always go to some (mockingly) winery with heaving bosoms and pinkish pussies. And why does it always have to be so poetic, you always take so many weird pauses. Bee: What? (pause) Like when? Nidhi: (clears her throat and imitates Bee) Oh! We could smell the chocolate even before we bought it. A world of new flavours for each other, and we wanted to drink deep, sink nails and teeth, sink deep, muddy our feet, feel the hot melted chocolate, pull us under. Oishorjyo on playing Kadomborie In the act of making The Lonely Hearts Club, through a character called Kadomborie, my performative, digital alter-ego is a digital dominatrix, whose existence is dubiously alegal, Kadomborie 20 performs desire, but also perforates the ambits within which desire is ‘ allowed ’ to exist. They question and decimate normativity, while simultaneously provoking desire. When The Lonely Hearts Club came along, urging us to explore our boundaries of desire, queerness and social (media) sanction framed within the annotations of technology itself, Kadomborie inevitably showed up. A name with historical associations to Rabindranath Tagore ’ s 21 illicit lover, Kadomborie of The Lonely Hearts Club was devised as a non-binary, digital sex worker who seduces the audience into submission. The character seats themselves somewhere between the ‘ real ’ and ‘ imagined ’ . To develop Kadomborie ’ s character, while making the show I took up a side-gig as a phone sex worker. My phone sex therapist name: Kadomborie. This empiricism was particularly important given that my caste-advantaged social location is generationally conditioned Fig. 4: Nidhi and Bee are seen in their bedroom on their bed, sharing a moment of tenderness. The red wall we see behind was hand painted by Nidhi especially for the show. Their home was transformed into a site of performance with the sound of their children filtering in. 301 The Lonely Hearts Club to look down upon sex work. As a feminist performer who claims and demands sovereignty of the body, Kadomborie was an attempt to embody and call out the many hypocrisies that govern our narratives of porn, performativity, sex, and sex work, starting with my own. We were responding to the narrativization of desire within the frameworks of social and legal ecosystems in India, Kadomborie (both on and off screen) could only exist in the crevices of the internet. The internet in general and social media in particular, is perforated with the autonomy of identity creation. Especially for trans and queer communities, social media has been a tool that has allowed us the sovereignty to create and assert our identities. This, especially when placed within the framework of a social system that only recognises state-assigned binary identities, is both an act of transgression as well as liberation. During the process of making, the director, Anuja, repeatedly urged us to draw from our own lives. Given that my own pretheatre career was one of working on digital strategy solutions for several Indian media houses as well as for two state elections, the idea of mythmaking via technology came quite naturally to me. Kadomborie was thus a deeply personal act of undoing embodied shame and gender, while using the internet to both frame and escape the pervasive systems of control that govern these narratives. In the many articulations, explorations, divulgences and friendships that were forged in its making, The Lonely Hearts Club is where Kadomborie ’ s unabashedly political sexual-ness found resplendence. Flirting with several characters in the play, flitting in and out of ‘ reality ’ , switching between submission and domination, questioning shame and desire, those deeply personal, but also those conditioned by state, Kadomborie occupied many in-betweens. Situated in these variegated realms, I call Kadomborie a piece of fictional reality, a manifestation of my own queer becoming validated in the voyeuristic gaze. Kadomborie excerpt Kadomborie: What did they tell you? Some indie pleasure performer bullshit, no? Sex worker that ’ s who I am. I talk to people about sex, I write about it. I titillate you and I am getting paid to do it. (Fingers in mouth) The internet owes its existence to my ancestors. But somehow Instagram keeps banning me for saying sex work. So show me that you desire me? (Waits for audience to respond) Ah! always such a pleasure to meet initiators. Here you go, once again the multitude benefitting of the actions of some, this power play never gets old, eh? So, tell me, what ’ re you like in the bedroom? What gets you wet? What gets you horny? What gets you all oozing and writhing in desire? Come on lovelies, take advantage of the glitch, it ’ s one of the last times perhaps that your desires are not being surveilled by the state. Audience: I like missionary/ vanilla sex. Kadomborie: Okay, now imagine a missionary, with their hands under your butt cheek? Anyone, else? Anyone who likes a little powerplay, watching, being watched, filming yourself? Maybe you like to fuck for the forests? Don ’ t be so naïve, kink and powerplay exists everywhere. What do you think you ’ re doing when you ’ re kneeling before your preferred God? Or every time you ’ ve punished someone for a transgression? I am allowing you the space to acknowledge it. 302 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran Fig. 5: Kadomborie. Here Oishorjyo is seen as their digital alter ego Kadomborie. They are telling the audience about their experience as a sex worker, recounting a story with one of their clients. In conclusion The final visuals of The Lonely Hearts Club are of the performers gradually abandoning their phones, tablets, laptops, and computers; and we see music videos, images, news clips, dating sites, and social media pages that each of them have accessed, leaned, and depended on throughout their isolation. Our host Ren-C, in a circumspect tone delivers the following lines: Through the phone With expectations rock bottom You were bored You swiped left but then the buggy app The proverbial glitch Throws the same face again This time you look at that one you just rejected And thought, yeah, I ’ ll fuck that Swipe right. Boy, were you in for a surprise. You sexted like fire You ached for that body you see on the profile Unbearably attractive And now this anticipation To dig your teeth into that flesh So then through the internet Breathing heavily You hit video call. You healed yourself With pixelated sex. And then again. Fig. 6: Lonely Screens. This the closing image of the show, where devices that were used extensively through the lockdown are left behind. The image was to extend the idea of loneliness from humans to machines. The idea was to frame the question: “ Do machines feel lonely? And do they miss humans when they are gone? ” 303 The Lonely Hearts Club And again. And then after the lockdown lifted Each of you realised, that ’ s all you needed The company of a mysterious someone As you said goodbye and unmatched each other You watch the conversation wipe off the screen And vanish from your life altogether So easily, So fleeting, So elusive. The audience now witnesses lonely screens in spaces that humans co-habited only seconds ago. The final image is of flickering blue light, pixilated visuals, audio static and darkness, not the gentle type when the stage lights fade deliberately, but the kind that is bleak with uncertainty of future times. The Lonely Hearts Club urges each of us to be unashamed of our kinks, fantasies, perversions, shortcomings, hypocrisies, and moral dilemmas; but the heartfelt attempt is to lessen the shame we experience around loneliness. 22 Anmerkungen 1 Link to the show: https: / / youtu.be/ 2buYIyY SBjU and link to interviews with the performers/ writers and behind the scenes: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=I1GheAheqFw [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 2 Sexting means sending (a person) a sexually explicit or suggestive message or image electronically, typically using a mobile phone. 3 A supporter and follower of the philosophy or the ideology of B. R. Ambedkarhttps: / / velivada.com/ 2017/ 07/ 14/ ambedkarite-ideol ogy/ [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 4 The Lonely Hearts Club: The Zoom Show premiered on 1 October 2021. It had 7 shows, the last one was on 15 March 2022, and was watched by over 500 people. The audiences reacted in the following manner in the Zoom chat, post show: (Audience) The lighting was really good! (Audience) OG Mrs. Lonely Hearts (Audience) Thank you <3 (Audience) what was the song in the end? (Audience) (She/ Her): wooooohooooooooo (Audience) It was amazing! ! thank you so much xx (Audience) Rashmi (She/ Her): amazing job peeps (Audience) (Audience) You guys were all really good, I was super tickled (Audience) (he/ they): this was a very unique experience (Audience) excellent work, thank you for putting yourselves our there like this (Audience) (she, her): Loved it, Mrs. Lonely Hearts! (Audience) (She/ Her): the music score is amaze (Audience) Superb! (Audience) This was a beautiful experience <3 (Audience) you all were amazing! thank you! (Audience) blown (Audience) “ Lovely Hearts ” (Audience) Loved the entire experience (Audience) (She/ Her): This show gave me so many permissions . . . such a tender way to talk about lonely hearts <3 5 Supreme Court Observer: https: / / www.scob server.in/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2021/ 10/ 377IP C_-_JudgementFull.pdf [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 6 https: / / www.thestatesman.com/ india/ sec tion-377-everything-want-know-150265939 4.html. 7 Supraja R, “ Destabilizing Impersonation, Cleaving Gender Non-conformity: Akshayambara and Lady Anandi ” , in: Critical Stages/ Scènes critiques. The IATC journal/ Revue de l ’ AICT June/ Juin 2021: https: / / ww w.critical-stages.org/ 23/ destabilizing-imper sonation-cleaving-gender-non-conformity-a kshayambara-and-lady-anandi/ #end6 [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 8 Kathryn Hansen, Stages of Life. Indian Theatre Autobiographies, London, New York, and Dublin 2011. 304 Ghosalkar/ Jacob/ Madhav/ Oishorjyo/ Philip/ Raghavan/ Rajendran 9 https: / / www.thehindu.com/ news/ cities/ mum bai/ entertainment/ when-a-woman-imperso nates-a-man-who-impersonated-women/ arti cle8483189.ece [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 10 Supraja R, “ Destabilizing Impersonation, Cleaving Gender Non-conformity ” . 11 The original text was spoken in Hindi. To give a sense of the flavor, the alphabet and script, a few lines are reproduced in Hindi. 12 An Erotica Manifesto written by Anuja Ghosalkar during the writing workshop. Each performer wrote their own manifestos as an exercise. 1. My body, my right to pleasure. 2. My kinks are mine. Not up for moral judgement. 3. My body, my kinks but not without all party consent. 4. Let it shock you, it will not kill you. 5. Human proximity and the erotic need not to go together. 6. Ideas can make me orgasm. 7. Sexual emancipation is political. 8. Embrace complexity, murkiness, chequered viewpoints, disagreements. 10. Look beyond the social media performativity of pleasure. 11. Let our worldview be non-binary. [9. Give Space, share space, for those who are yet becoming] 13 Performance Studies scholars Chambers and Son in their essay titled ‘ Performed Otherwise ’ note how performance creates safer spaces and plays a crucial role in emancipation and survival, especially for queer people of colour. I extend their argument to Indian queer performers, drawing on the shared solidarity for minoritized communities across nation states with a common history of colonialism and systemic opposition to non-normative behaviour across contexts of caste, class, gender and sexuality. Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, Elizabeth W. Son, “ Performed Otherwise: The Political and Social Possibilities of Asian/ American Performance ” , in: Theatre Survey 54: 1 (2013): p. 131 - 139. 14 I employ Queering as a form of questioning dominant power-knowledge formations that work to construct normative ideas of music, gender, performance, sexuality, and relationships. Dasgupta, Rohit K., DasGupta, Debanuj, “ Introduction: Queering Digital India ” , in: Rohit K. Dasgupta / Debanuj DasGupta (eds.), Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities, Subjectivities, Edinburgh 2018, p. 1 - 26. 15 I borrow the capacious phrase ‘ Queer Companions ’ for our queer gathering from scholar Omar Kasmani who uses it in the context of saints and speaks of it as those who “ escort an abundance of relational possibilities that persevere so long as conditions of intimacy persist across affect-rich trails of yearning, seeking, dreaming, finding, and losing. ” Omar Kasmani, Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan, Durham and London, 2022. 16 Short for ‘ submissive ’ , usually in reference to sexual play. 17 Begum Akhtar was an Indian singer and actress: https: / / www.culturalindia.net/ indianmusic/ indian-singers/ begum-akhtar.html [Accessed on 17. 08. 2023]. 18 Iqbal Bano was a Pakistani singer who resisted the fascist Islamic rule of Zia ul Haq, singing revolutionary songs that inspired millions: feminisminindia.com/ 2017/ 07/ 14/ iqbal-bano/ . 19 Food from South India, mainly from the state of Kerala. 20 The character was birthed during an earlier transmedia project commissioned on the occasion of 25 years of the Internet in India, inquiring into the history of the internet. 21 Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. 22 The desire is to continue The Lonely Hearts Club as a podcast and invite new entries for it. The original Instagram Handle exists as an archive of the 50 odd nights of the pandemic. Mrs. Lonely Hearts occasionally posts risqué stories or memes. 305 The Lonely Hearts Club