“Ag bai hungama chhaye re” - Oh woman, let it get messy

Thinking about what must go into this editorial, which is the first one I’m writing for NO NIIN, gave me a degree of anxiety. Why have we chosen to start this magazine and what do we want to achieve with it? Since the answer has already been included in the magazine’s “About” section, let me try diverting the question to why I am here. I don’t entirely feel comfortable with the title of “co-editor,” although, it brings me solace when I think about who I’m co-editing with, NO NIIN’s co-editor, Vidha Saumya.

I thought about what it would mean to start this journey with Vidha. My own tendency is to be wary of “collaborations”, as in the past they have been challenging and at times painful, to say the least. I have lost count of the number of occasions where I didn’t feel cared for, heard or valued; the times where I found myself fighting others’ battles and ignoring my own; the moments where I wasn’t treated with the honesty and respect that I deserve. Whether I have addressed them or left them unaddressed, these are all burdens I carry along in my growing professional life.

In an age framed by the centrality of a capitalist economy that has bled all over the art world, we often find ourselves working for or with institutions that are clearly more inclined to tend to the art projects promised to them than the art workers implementing them. There are different sets of methods and procedures predicted to follow up on the progress of the project and to make sure that it is being fulfilled according to the plan, yet there are next to no mechanisms defined within the institutions to protect the art workers against misconduct, harassment, assault, bullying, and abuse that they may experience while working on the projects commissioned or funded by the institutions. Being mostly reliant on the financial support of these institutions compels us to adopt their priorities. This bankrupt structure is why so many of us end up putting our projects above our own mental and physical health, above the well-being of our friendships, our relationships, and our colleagues. Then, before you know it, one day you find yourself supporting Black Lives Matter on your Instagram account while in your artistic practice you reinforce the capitalist mentality that has made you believe it’s fine if you step over your friends and colleagues to get ahead in your careers, it’s fine if you overwork them, it’s fine if you don’t pay them for their work and just offer them visibility, it’s fine if you don’t credit them properly, it’s fine if you don’t bother to clarify their rights and job descriptions in a contract, it’s fine if you manipulate them to think all of this is OK, that this is all justified in the name of “the project”, the end product that must please our funders if we want to continue working and surviving.

I wish to find a way for myself to understand how artistic exchange can operate as an avenue for navigating immediate crises, precarious lifework, and unstable futures. I want to put into practice the knowledge that “care is about feeling with others, rather than feeling for others-about working with others, rather than for others.” I want NO NIIN to be a fresh ground where I can put to test all that I keep telling myself-that which I have learned from these fairly bitter experiences. This first editorial is dedicated to one thing, and that is a pledge I wish to make to myself in regards to my collaboration with Vidha, as I believe this collaboration to be the foundation on which we are building NO NIIN upon. I don’t know how long this project will last, but what I hope for is that at the end of it, I’ll be as fond of Vidha as I am now, if not more. So, I make this pledge to myself rather than to her, as it should be my job to follow through with my promises, not hers, and also because abiding by these promises is an act of self-care which I do owe to myself as “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

So here it goes:

• Sometimes, during tasks that need joint decisions, I catch myself putting out final statements without offering the thought process and the rationale behind them, thereby making it the other person’s job to figure it all out by herself. This makes the work exhausting for everyone, and I want to feel nothing but joy in NO NIIN. So I promise myself to try and do a better job of unravelling the reasons behind my ideas. Not to imply that all my ideas are so brilliantly complex and genius that one can’t understand them without me spelling them out. It’s just that, without offering reasons, you are leaving the other with a list of Do’s and Don’ts, and this is no way to treat a collaborator, whether you have defined yourselves as sharing equal grounds in terms of authority or in situations where one holds a higher position in the hierarchy of a collective or an institution. Luckily, our dynamic is not one of the sort.

• I promise to always share the best gossip and stories I come across with Vidha. Mostly because she always comes up with the funniest and most cutting comebacks and responses that keep me laughing the entire day.

• For the sake of our sanity, I think we should dedicate at least half an hour to Bollywood-themed discussions in the midst of our work meetings. Nothing takes the pressure off work like watching a video of Ranbir Kapoor dancing naked around the house with a towel or Rani Mukerji lusting over the six-pack guy in Aiyyaa.

• I promise myself to remain cautious to not project whatever hurt or mistrust that I still carry as an outcome of my previous collaborations on Vidha or any other person I’ll come to work with in NO NIIN.

• There is no art project in the world important enough to trump a person’s well-being. I promise myself to never expect Vidha or any other person I work with, to overextend themselves and their limits in relation to our work together, in the name of friendship or comradery.

• I promise to keep updating these promises as we move further into our work.

• Frustrations and misunderstandings are inescapable in any collaboration; there is no use pretending they will not come up here and there. I promise to myself that I will address things as they come up, and I will do so with the utmost kindness and clarity that I can afford, keeping the sharp-tongue, sarcasm, and bad-temper at bay as much as possible (maybe adding only a touch to spice things up). We have both found it good practice to always sleep on the issues that bother us for at least a day or two to calm the rage or resentment that cloud our vision and judgment.

• In the spirit of the previous note, I promise to remind us of this quote from our beloved Shahrukh Khan in _Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge_every time either of us makes a mistake:

Bade bade deshon mein aaisi choti choti baatein … hoti rehti hai.

Bade bade: big big

Deshon: countries

Mein: In

Aaisi: such

choti choti: small small

Baatein: things

Hoti: happening

Rehti hain: keep

**
In big big countries such small small things … keep happening.**