Introduction

Vella Panti- An Online House Party for Persons with Disabilities

Vella Panti- An Online House Party for Persons with Disabilities

Vella Panti is an initiative by Rising Flame to come together as a community in the wake of self-isolation induced by a global health crisis. For the disabled community, isolation and physical distancing is even tougher as our interactions hold us in care and warmth. Community solidarity in such times becomes even more important for us. Keeping this mind, we started Vella Panti, which is an online house party for persons with disabilities and friends! We intend to come together every Saturday in April 2020 on Zoom for some very exciting and fun-filled activities such book readings, film screenings, open mics, etc.

 

We had our first session on the first Saturday: April 4th at 3.30 pm IST.
For this session, we had planned a reading of the essays I'm Blind, So is Love by Nidhi Goyal and The Smartphone Freed Me: Dating as a Transwoman by Nadika Nadja from the book Eleven Ways to Love.

white background with thick red border. border has light pink and white scribbles and dots. Rising Flame logo at the top. Under the logo, the word- presents, next line- Vella Panti!, Next line - An online house party for persons with disabilities and friends. Next line- join us this Saturday for a reading of the book Eleven Ways to Love. Next line- when- April 4 2020, 3:30 pm IST. Next line- RSVP at team@risingflame.org

Invitation for the Vella Panti house party

 

We had over 60 participants who enthusiastically partook in the discussion and offered great inputs and insights. The entire session was live transcribed, the reading was close captioned and we also had a sign language interpreter present during our call.

a screenshot of the sign language interpreter signing during the session

A screenshot of the sign language interpreter, Shabina, signing during our session

 

Watch the entire session here

 

 

On the second Saturday: April 11th, we had a live screening of several short films on consent.

white background with thick blue border. border has green and white scribbles and dots. Rising Flame logo at the top. Under the logo, the word- presents, next line- Vella Panti!, Next line - An online house party for persons with disabilities and friends. Next line- join us this Saturday for a screening on consent and some powerful discussions. Next line- when- April 11 2020, 3:30 pm IST. Next line- RSVP at team@risingflame.org

Invitation for the second session of Vella Panti house party

 

The first short film we screened was called Consent - A VICE. This is a film by HBO on sexual consent and how we hold those accountable who violate it. After the first screening we screened four out of a series of eleven videos on consent by Partners for Law and Development.

The screening was followed by some powerful discussions with two lovely activists Subha Wijesiriwardena- a queer-feminist activist, researcher, and writer/ blogger from Colombo, Sri Lanka, working on gender, sexuality and digital rights- and Shubha Kayastha- a queer feminist from Nepal and co-founder and executive director at Body & Data. We were very glad to see that we over 75 people participated in the session from four different countries.

Watch the entire session here

 

The third session in our series took place on the 18th of April. We had a podcast listening session around body image and body positivity. The two podcasts we listened to were Fat. So? by Suno India and The Conversation: Banishing body shame by BBC. Fat. So? podcasters Pallavi Nath and Ameya Nagarajan also joined us as speakers during the session. To bring in intersectional perspectives and to highlight the experiences of disabled women when it came to body image, we had our senior program's consultant Srinidhi Raghavan and our I Can Lead fellow Kavya Mukhija also join in as speakers. The diversity amongst speakers made for an extremely powerful discussion on self-love, body image, beauty standards, disability and pain.

white background with thick purple border. border has yellow and white scribbles and dots. Rising Flame logo at the top. Under the logo, the word- presents, next line- Vella Panti!, Next line - An online house party for persons with disabilities and friends. Next line- join us this Saturday for a podcast listening session on Body Image and Body Shaming followed by powerful discussions. Next line- when: April 18 2020, 3:30 pm IST. Next line- RSVP: team@risingflame.org; next line- the call will be in english and indian sign language

 

 

 

Following the success and a request from the disabled community, a 2.0 version of Vella Panti, a house party for people with disabilities and their friends was started in September 2020. We held three packed events on a range of topics. In the first event we covered masculinity, conditioning since childhood with an exploration of the perspectives of how masculinity intersects with queerness and disability. The conversation was enriched by sharing of personal narratives and anecdotes. In the second conversation on online dating with a disability, we spoke about multiple dimensions of online dating as disabled women, including the dilemma around disclosing one’s disability, the constant asexualisation of disabled people, inaccessible modes of interaction and ideas of romance. In our final event, we spoke with autistic women on their experiences of life on the spectrum, the difficulties of masking and navigating a neurotypical world.

 

Our first session of Vellapanti 2.0 with Abhishek Anicca and Manak Matiyani discussing Disability and Masculinity was truly one to remember. We started off by showing 2 videos from Miss Malini's YouTube channel, which tried to give certain insights on what Indian men thought of masculinity, love, relationships, and sex, by breaking down interviews that the show anchors conducted with several men.

This was then followed by a very exciting discussion on what masculinity means - and the assumed entitlement to power that comes along with it. Both our panelists did a fantastic job of bringing in some very important points on how the concept intersects with disability and queerness, and made space for conversations on topics that are often left behind - including vulnerability, isolation, desire - and much more. They even went on to discuss the relationship of queer and disabled men with their bodies, the impact of cultural misogyny on all of us, and the several tropes that accompany the ideas of what makes a man.

We thank both Abhishek and Manak for making this session an enriching one through their deep engagement with the subject, and also for sharing personal stories and experiences. A huge thank you to our participants as well, who made this session of ours a success - with 55 participants on zoom and 148 views on the Facebook live.

Blue background. Rising Flame logo on top Followed by the word presents (in white ink) and then Vella Panti in purple glowy ink. Below this, the text - "An online house party for people with disabilities and friends". Under it, a white rectangular box on which the following words are written - "Join us for a conversation as we deconstruct masculinity and disability with Abhishek Anicca and Manak Matiyani!" Below this box, are the two photographs of the speakers. On the left, a black and white photo of a man wearing glasses and smiling. Below this, the words - "Abhishek Anicca. Disability Rights Activist, working at Ambedkar University". On the right, picture of a man in a blue and purple shirt, smiling. Below it, the words - "Manak Matiyani. Executive director at YP Foundation" in white ink. Below this, another white box with the following details: Time - 6.00 pm to 7.30 pm. Date - 18th September, 2020. Language - English, ISL and live captioning. Platform - Zoom (RSVP through form)

The second session covered numerous dimensions of online dating as disabled women, including the dilemma around disclosing one’s disability, the constant asexualisation of disabled people, inaccessible modes of interaction and ideas of romance and so on. Our speakers for the event were Parvathy Gopakumar, final year law students at National Law School of India University, Sai Madireddy Human Rights professional and Sweta Mantri, a stand-up comedian and writer. 

We had a very interactive Q&A with various personal stories being shared and different perspectives discussed.

pink background. rising flame logo on top. Vella Panti written in red glowy text. Below it is the following text divided by a line - "an online house party for people with disabilities and friends." in the middle is a white rectangular box with the text - "join us for a fun conversation as we discuss on "online dating for people with disabilities." in black and red ink. following which is written stay tuned for more updates. on the bottom left & right corner are two doodle figures of people embracing each other, and in the middle is a small phone with a heart emoji on it. at the bottom middle of the poster is another small rectangular white box where the date, time, language, platform is written.

Our third and final session 'Life on the Spectrum' had speakers, Priyangee Guha, lawyer and comedian, and Rakshita Shekhar, Autism self-advocate, in conversation with programs consultant, Srinidhi Raghavan. The conversation centred around learning how to navigate life as a person on the autism spectrum, stigmatisation of autism and masking and its  consequential burn out.

The graphic has a white background with the Rising Flame logo on top. Next to this is Vella Panti written in blue text. A pastel red line separates these words from the text: "An online house party for people with disabilities and friends." In a red box is the text in black: Join us as we discuss: Life on the spectrum. Below it are pictures of Priyangee Guha and Rakshita Shekhar separated by the photo of Srinidhi and text "in conversation with Srinidhi Raghavan, co-lead program". Below their photos is the text in red: Priyangee Guha, lawyer and activist and Rakshita Shekhar, autistic self advocate and inclusion consultant. At the bottom is a red rectangle with the text: Date: 16th October 2020. Time: 6 pm to 730 pm. Language: English, ISL, live captioning. Platform: Zoom (RSVP through form)

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