“Listen up, everyone,” says Sambuddha Banerjee to the group of 50-odd people filling the living room and big kitchen. “We will have our performances, film screenings, etc, in this space. The food’s laid out in the kitchen. Do look at the menu and place your orders. People can smoke in the balcony or in the corner room. Let’s mix with everyone, and not end up in the usual cliques of people known to us. The party wraps up at 9, okay? My grandfather who lives downstairs is more than 100. The party has to wind up before his bedtime. Do keep everything tidy, and don’t break anything. Have fun everyone and welcome to Adamant Eve café!”

A cheer goes through the crowd as people begin moving around. Boxes of doughnuts, brownies and jars of chocolates sit next to a menu that advertises mango-gondhoraj fizz, rum-grilled chicken, lemon yoghurt cake, and other treats. The ‘Promiscuous Mojito’ brings a smile to your lips. Fairylights inside a blue Bombay Sapphire bottle reflect the colour on to the walls. Several antiques are scattered around the room, including an old typewriter and a projector. A small table has an array of beautiful bow-ties and jewellery — ‘Designed by Diasha’. A guy and girl in Darth Vader t-shirts inscribed with the legend “Who’s Your Daddy” stand below a portrait of Frieda Kahlo. The walls are peppered with posters. “Don’t gender buns!” says a hand-drawn one with sketches of bread buns, a man with his hair in a bun, and a close-up of a human posterior. “My hair is not my gender,” declares another.

This is Adamant Eve Café, an initiative of Kolkata’s Queer Art Collective (QAC), a Facebook group launched six months ago by Upasana Agarwal, Sambuddha Banerjee, Nandini Moitra, and Raina Roy. “There was a lack of community spaces for the LGBTQ community in Kolkata,” says Agarwal. “When Nandini and I met Sambuddha and Raina, we found that we were looking for spaces to socialise and share our political, queer selves.” There have been efforts to create similar spaces in the past, such as the Sunday Audda held at coffee shops. “But it didn’t feel personal enough, sharing a coffee with a bunch of other strangers and whispering our stories to each other was strange.”

QAC had approached a few cafés for a space that was more than just a hole in the wall and where queer people could meet without fear. A space where transpeople could express themselves creatively through performance, facilitating learning and entrepreneurship. “But the cafés would say, ‘Ok, we’ll see the performances first and then decide’,” says Banerjee. “The subtext being ‘we will censor it first’.”

The idea for Adamant Eve came up at a potluck organised at Banerjee’s mother’s home, where people shared their stories, sang, and had a good time hanging out. Agarwal suggested they start their own café in a personal space, as a monthly event where people could pay for the food, enjoy the performances and have a nice, uncensored time. Banerjee came up with the name from a radio station that had interviewed him in Canada. And Kolkata’s first monthly travelling queer feminist café was born. It is held in a new location in the last week of every month — the first was in May.

“I am 24, I have never been in a relationship. How do I know what love is,” asks a young guy in a green kurta and jeans, with kohled eyes and lips reddened by lipstick. A poetry reading is on, part of the evening’s line-up of performances. Next up is Andy Chakraborty, a young student of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), who strums on the guitar. “My voice may be a bit hoarse today. I’ve been yelling a lot during protests against many injustices at SRFTI,” he smiles.

Across the room, a group is looking at the photos of QAC’s Valentine’s Day celebrations put up on a wall. Another group is deep in discussion in the area near the food display. Kolika Mitra is a JNU student doing a PhD on same-sex desire among female-bodied individuals in small towns of West Bengal. The talk moves to transgender rights in West Bengal. “The scene is better in Tamil Nadu,” says Prof A Mani. “In Bengal, the steps taken by the government is cosmetic — only for show.” The conversation turns to Manobi Bandopadhyay, India’s first trans college principal, at the Krishnanagar Women’s College in Bengal. “Manobi is a prop, used by the government to show that they are doing good things,” says Mani. “Plus, she is facing many problems in the college, regarding attitudes and perceptions. The government really needs to address this by creating awareness about trans people and their rights.” The group points out that the West Bengal Transgender Development Board is made of trans women. “The board has no trans men.” After Neesha Ghosh’s full-throated rendition of Bobby McGee fills the performance area, the QAC group talks about resistance through art, and how they believe in sustaining each other through art, painting, writing, dancing, cooking, performance, or just with some good old-fashioned ranting. Though pitched as queer, the café is inclusive of anyone who walks in the door. “We really needed a place where we could hang out with people like us, not necessarily people with the same sexual orientation,” says one attendee. “A place that is safe, fun and relaxed, where our straight friends could come along. Adamant Eve has hit the right notes.”

Anuradha Senguptais a Kolkata-based freelance journalist and founder-editor of Jalebi Ink,a media collective for children and youth

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