CHENNAI : It has been a year of euphoria and acceptance for the LGBTQ community, with the Supreme Court decriminalising Section 377 in September. It is, therefore, befitting that Chennai-based NGO, Sahodaran, has released the 10th edition of its annual calendar, as this landmark year for the community draws to a close.
The calendar ‘Symphony 2019’ depicts the relationship between man and animal in their natural habitat. It emphasises the need for harmony and peaceful co-existence between the two.“I was asked why I wanted to shoot the models with buffaloes,” Sahodaran’s founder, Sunil Menon, said. “I knew that for the 10th edition of the calendar, it had to be something special and striking. Everyone shoots with cats and dogs which is why I wanted to feature animals like elephants, goats, ducks, buffaloes, sheep and roosters.
I wanted the calendar to celebrate our ‘Indianness’ and more specifically ‘South Indianness.’” He said he consciously made sure that the ‘quintessential, stereotypical fair’ models were not featured. Further, he said that the challenge this year was handling the divas that were the stars of the shoot — the animals.
“It was a challenge working with animals but it was such a terrific experience,” he said. “We had a male tusker, Unnikrishnan, who was the hero of our shoot. He is quite a celebrity because he is filming for a multi-crore project and when we called to ask when we could shoot with him, we were told that he is resting or busy. We were given one hour to take three shots! Even between our shoot, he wanted to play in the water and then felt hungry, so we let him do what he wanted and worked around that. We got some magical shots in the process.”
Sunil said nothing could have made the 10th edition of the calendar more special than knowing that the community had been given legal acceptance. However, he expressed his reservations about ‘jumping the gun.’“This year has been an emotional high point,” he said. “As a 52-year-old, I never thought I would see a day when this would happen. The court has let us breathe and be ourselves. But now that we have this freedom, I don’t want people to take it for granted or abuse it. We are talking about a change in mindset and that does not happen overnight. We have to tread slowly and carefully.”
This calendar too was a way to slowly change people’s perception of the ‘Men who have sex with men’ (MSM) community in a non-preachy manner.“Through this calendar, we managed to get a foot in the door into the social psyche of people,” he explained. “It became a beautiful platform to reach out to the common man and express ourselves aesthetically and without being aggressive. Those who were inclined to know more, reached out and it opened up a dialogue amongst people which was important.”
Credits
The calendar was conceptualised by Sunil and photographer, Kabilan AP who shot for the calendar with Vinoth DK. The jewellery was designed by Gina Joseph of Zola India and Raji Anand Designs while Varun K and Sunil Karthik were the stylists for the shoot.