Indu Antony reflects on reclaiming public spaces for women with her leisure centre project Namma Katte

Indu Antony is a transdisciplinary artist based out of Bengaluru and Kerala. Her art practice is fascinating because it is so varied in its exploration of subjects, media, materials, and relationships. She has examined how public spaces respond to gendered bodies, set up a community art centre, worked on a drag king photo series, initiated a self-publishing project for women, and is now involved with running a women’s leisure centre called Namma Katte. Over a Zoom call, she tells me, “I can’t see myself as being one of those brooding artists sitting alone in the studio. I like working with people. Public art seems even more important after all the isolation that I and so many others have felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.”   The words “Namma Katte” in Kannada can be roughly translated as “Our Space”. The name was chosen to reflect the openness, warmth and camaraderie the centre was meant to generate. It attracts toddlers as well as women in their eighties, and everyone in between. There are no restrictions based on religion, caste, language, occupation, or level of education. Indu’s work with Namma Katte is part of Mindscapes Bengaluru, a mental health programme run by the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust in London. She conceives of leisure as central to emotional well-being and mental health for the women who come to Namme Katte, which is located in Lingarajapuram, Bengaluru.   “It is a leisure space for women to sit, chill, talk, sing, gossip, scratch and scream, and do whatever they want,” says Indu. “There are a lot of leisure spaces for men, like sutta shops and chai stalls. Women’s leisure is always confined. It is never in a public place. Namma Katte is different in that sense. When you pull up the shutters, it opens out on the road. We have a swing where they can come and enjoy themselves. It is a space away from home.” Women who come to Namma Katte stitch their stories on pieces on cloth with needle and thread. These are about intimate experiences from their own lives. There is no compulsion to perform or produce. They choose what and how much they want to share with each other. Some, but not all, of these are about experiences of violence from husbands and in-laws.

The words are stitched in various languages because Lingarajapuram is a diverse neighbourhood. “We have Kannada, Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam, Urdu, and even English because there is a strong presence of the Anglo-Indian community here,” says Indu. She recalls a time when one of these husbands got very angry, came to Namma Katte, and burnt the story that had been stitched. Indu had to stand her ground but also deal with him tactfully.   Would you believe that Indu got trained as a medical doctor before she became an artist? As a child, she used to love participating in art competitions but was never encouraged to take it up as a profession. Her parents wanted her to become either a doctor or an engineer. She was raised in Dubai but came to India to study medicine. Though she completed her medical education, her heart was not in it. She did not want to practise, so she plunged herself into art. Indu says, “As a Malayali Christian growing up in a migrant family, watching my father struggle with multiple shift duties, I felt like an outsider in Dubai. But I didn’t feel a sense of belonging in Kerala either. What people were talking about, the television shows and food that they were into, everything was so different from Dubai.” Art gave her a language to express how she felt, and she began gravitating towards people that she could relate to. Before Namma Katte, Indu has been part of other community projects, so she brings her experiences and learnings from those to Mindscapes Bengaluru. The funding from this project will enable her to keep Namma Katte going for two years, but she hopes that it will have a much longer life because it is serving a purpose and bringing joy to people there.   Apart from stitching, the women will soon learn to work with clay and participate in theatre workshops. Some of these skills will also help them earn an additional income. The women are also invited to bring objects that hold a special place in their lives. These will be part of an exhibition that will take place at MAP’s physical space at Kasturba Road in Bangalore, in addition to Namma Katte, and Kanike – a community centre that she runs in Cooke Town.  

“Usually, museums tend to have objects from a colonial background, or objects that are seen as collectibles. This leaves out what ordinary women consider valuable,” says Indu.   What are some of the objects that they have gathered so far? One of the women brought an X-ray of her son from the time that he swallowed a magnet. Another brought a tumbler that her father gave her as a gift; it has acquired significance after the man passed away.     Indu recalls, “Another lady’s brother died in a car accident. He would always carry a hair clip of his lover in his pocket. When he died, the hair clip was with him. That’s one of the objects we got.” She also tells me about a woman who brought a toy that her son liked playing with when he was undergoing chemotherapy. He was three when doctors realised he had cancer. Listening to Indu speak about her work is a great pleasure because it challenges the way in which conversations about mental health are usually conducted. She was shocked when people who first heard about Namma Katte asked her how she was “diagnosing” those women. She tells me that she is not interested in assigning labels to or giving out medicines.   Indu says, “I am trained as a doctor, yes, but I do not see myself as someone who is fixing them. One of the women told me, ‘When we come and stitch, our minds are free.’ It’s enough for me to know that they can share, laugh, and feel light. That’s taking care of mental health.” Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, commentator and book reviewer Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.