Follow to be safe in the knowledge that you are not the only one, and that you can change it
Nisha Patel
Curated by Mitali Parekh, Heena Khandelwal and Kasturi Ghatge
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Brown Girl Trauma (BGT) is an Instagram handle and a website run by mental health professional Nisha Patel. Through it, she reaches out to identify, stop and heal toxic patterns and behaviours typical to South East Asian (SEA) families, mostly contrasted among the community transplanted to Western soil. SEA family units have familiar patterns of shame and repression often disguised as values and tradition to bind the members together. BGT looks at breaking this cycle of generational trauma and dysfunction, first by identifying and naming it and then charting a course out of it. Here are some familiar themes: You can’t talk to anyone outside the family, but no one inside it wants to talk about it; Growing up in a dysfunctional family, you are taught to keep your head down and not question anything. It was normal to “not know”. She also traces how oppression, violence, uprooting caused by major events in SEA history—the Partition or the Bangladesh war of Independence—lived by a set of parents could tumble into violence or anger suppression into their children, which manifests into approval-seeking, anxiety, attachment issues and co-dependency in the current generation. Follow to be safe in the knowledge that you are not the only one, and that you can change it.
@browngirltrauma/Instagram
Melodious Advantage
Ritvik Rajan
Vineet Saraiwala started Atypical Advantage to create equal opportunities for people with disabilities. The idea was simple: He wanted people to recognise the talent of artistes with disabilities and create livelihood opportunities for them. What appealed to us most was the latest feature on their website—Gift a Mini Concert. Priced at Rs 2,500, it allows you to pick singers, dancers, musicians, bands and comics, who will perform a 15-minute virtual gig. The initiative aims to bust the myth that visibility is the only key to success. The artistes span a myriad of genres and languages and are recommended after assessing your requirements and genre interests. Since the performance is virtual, it makes the gift accessible from any part of the world. Currently, the platform hosts over 500 performing artistes, including those with autism, visually impairment, muscular dystrophy and locomotor disability.
atypicaladvantage.in
Space talk, with a dash of humour
Neil Degrasse Tyson (right) Chuck Nice. Pics/Getty Images
Everything can be made interesting, with the right approach and a dash of wit. American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson knows this, and it may be the reason his YouTube channel, Star Talk, has 1.91 million followers. Tyson talks about meteor showers, the James Web Space Telescope, wormholes, nuclear winters, and asteroids. Bringing the dash of humour is stand-up comic Chuck Nice, who much like us, knows next to nothing about these celestial things. And it’s this dichotomy that works—Nice is baffled, and Tyson explains it all. The channel, podcast, and the book by Tyson on the same theme, are popular with anyone looking for a fun way to know more about what’s out there. From why the sky is blue—a thought we’ve all had at least once in our life—to the ethics of driverless cars (Elon, are you listening), Tyson simplifies everything, but keeps it educational. Check this out when you want to choose information over entertainment. It surely beats scrolling.
Star Talk/Youtube
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