Stand With Ukraine
Is it 2022? Is it 1939? With everything that’s happening rn, who even knows.
Tango with Darshita
Let’s talk about Russia waging war in Ukraine. More specifically, how the wild wild west is responding to it. This is the first time I’m outside India during a gut wrenching political crisis like this and London seems to be responding in ways that shock, scare and soothe me. Yes it’s reassuring to see people show up at protests at Downing Street and Trafalgar Square.
I also love the symbolism with sunflowers, the Russian embassy is flooded with sunshine yellow blooms to prod with peace. Societies at my university are raising funds and collecting necessities for those crossing over the border. Social media is screaming for people on the margins: sex workers, trans individuals, refugees and the homeless.
My mother’s friend in Budapest opened her house to dozens of strangers who needed shelter when they managed to escape. Her restaurant feeds hundreds who are stranded. Despite her innate flair for the dramatic, she rarely ever mentions how this impacts her mental well-being. And to set things into context, this dear friend is as dramatic as a North Delhi aunty can ever get.
This information made our generation’s response to the war all the more triggering. Why are TikTokers using clips of the bombing as green screens? Why are people in the comments asking what they should wear for their first war? Why are so many of us pathologising our response to the war to the extent where it’s less about the people there and more about the second hand trauma it’s causing us as (super distant) bystanders?
Especially when the cute instagram graphic on checking in with your feelings about the war is sandwiched between your friend’s story from a wild Saturday night and a skincare brand’s campaign for women’s day. I don’t have any moral of the story, clean-cut-lines end to this newsletter. Just a lot of thoughts on where we’re heading with the way we process information. The way we overdramatise while being desensitised. The way we do our skincare routine while a whole country is being bombed. Should we not? Should we pause? Does that change anything? I really don’t know.
Tango with Avani
I am washing my face before bed while a country is on fire.
It feels dumb to wash my face and dumb not to. It has never been this way and it has always been this way.
Someone has always clinked a cocktail glass in one hemisphere as someone loses a home in another, while someone falls in love in the same apartment building where someone grieves. The fact that suffering, mundanity and beauty coincide in unbearable and remarkable.
Written by Maria Andrew, these lines encapsulate it all - guilt for not being able to really help help the people of Ukraine, anger at the fact that a full-fledged war is being waged in the 21st century and shame for continuing our everyday routine inspite it all.
I read somewhere that this is the first time a war will be documented on TikTok, which is kind of obvious but also not when you really think about it. The meme-ification of a war into consumable content that exists in different pockets of the Internet and the ones suffering the real-life impact of it on ground - refugees, babies and animals seeking shelter in the midst of constant bombing - everything co-exists in the same world and I can’t wrap my head around that.
The fact that we’re even discussing this in a newsletter makes me nauseous, because then isn’t this some sort of content too? So many moral questions and I’m not sure who, if anyone, has the answer to it.
OOPS we did it again! (Random recommendations to tango with, curated 4U
This piece on Dazed alludes to my thoughts better than I ever could, it also makes me want to defend us.
Follow @modya and @1granary for real-time updates on what’s going on in Ukraine and sign this open letter.
The Guardian breaks down how we can help from the UK.
Keep an eye on Linkedin, there’s several companies willing to offer full-time opportunities to Ukrainians fleeing their country.
The Independent explains why making cash donations is better than giving second hand clothes or food — which can often make the situation worse.