The 22nd edition of हाकारा | hākārā is an attempt to understand the concept of touch through both creative and critical lenses. The writers and artists in this edition have tried to explore different ways of approaching touch, including the social and cultural perspectives of the world of touch.
Touch, an inseparable part of human life—along with the emotions, knowledge, and awareness tied to it—has persisted since the dawn of creation. Everyone’s understanding of touch may vary, but their shared experiences lie in how perceptions and interpretations of the world around shape their understanding through the sense of touch. While humans comprehend their surroundings and interact with one another and elements of nature through other sensory experiences like taste, smell, sight, and sound — touch holds a unique space. From the act of embracing a child to the delicate care with which a book lover places a cherished book back on a shelf, touch finds expression in countless ways. It inspires artists and writers to create abstract forms out of the intangible, translating the unspoken into words and images. Through the creative and analytical processes, touch breathes life into the ambiguous, allowing the different expressions to emerge from the nebulous.
Against this background, this हाकारा | hākārā edition reflects on how touch shapes human connections, creativity, and cultural practices, underscoring its profound yet often overlooked role in shaping our lived experiences. There is a description of touch, an awareness of touch, a sensation of touch, and touch is also a stimulus. This multidimensional nature of touch is articulated through the curation of हाकारा | hākārā’s 22nd edition
In her essay, Embracing the Tactile Space: Shaping an Interactive and Immersive Museum, Rituparna Roy starts by sharing the human craving for the blending of reality and spirituality, as she sees it in “caressing the stone head of Shiva’s vahana ‘Nandi’ in a Hindu temple to get his blessings,…or lighting a candle in a church, the human senses crave for the blend of ‘reality’ and ‘spirituality’ through the assurance of touch.” That is to say, the spectrum of tactile sensation spans from everyday life to the transcendental, from subtlety to discomfort, and is intricately woven with a multitude of thoughts and emotions—ranging from love and care to violence and hatred.
The issue juxtaposes the transformative power of touch across contexts. For instance,touch empowered Helen Keller—who overcame blindness and deafness to inspire millions worldwide. In Prajakta Padgaonkar’s Marathi translation of Helen Keller’s essay, The Power of Touch, we get to read about Keller’s acute awareness of ‘tactual vibrations’. Keller writes, “There are tactual vibrations which do not belong to skintouch. They penetrate the skin, the nerves, the bones, like pain, heat, and cold. The beat of a drum smites me through from the chest to the shoulder-blades. The din of the train, the bridge, and grinding machinery retains its “old-man-of-the-sea” grip upon me long after its cause has been left behind. If vibration and motion combine in my touch for any length of time, the earth seems to run away while I stand still. When I step off the train, the platform whirls round, and I find it difficult to walk steadily.”
The kind of touch that appeals to the gifted Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla—known for his evocative use of language—emerges from a different set of circumstances than those faced by Keller. Yet, the reader may still sense a resonance between the two writers’ understandings of touch. This sense of resonance is felt in Anagha Mandavkar’s note on Vinod Kumar Shukla’s poetry, accompanying her translations of three of his poems for हाकारा | hākārā. She writes: “The poem ‘Ankh Band Kar Lene Se’, from Vinod Kumar Shukla’s collection Sab Kuchh Hona Bacha Rahega, compels us to rethink our conventional understanding of sensory perception. It reveals how sight is not the sole domain of the eyes as a physical organ, and how, for someone considered blind, touch becomes a medium of vision.”
In this way, we observe that a sensitive person, attuned to the sense of touch, continues to ‘say’ something through the ‘listening’ of sound, sight, words, gestures, movements, or even sign language. Yet, beyond all of this, there exists an independent world of touch that remains unspoken, inexpressible. And each individual, in their own way, seeks paths to reach that world.
As a starting point,words are at the center of articulation of touch in हाकारा | hākārā; the writers, artists, and translators featured have explored the images of the world of touch in their own unique ways, viewing touch as a stimulus. Thus, the edition engages with multiple facets of the touch: the physical sensations of touch; the relationships between the human mind, body, and creativity; touch, desire, and entitlement; ideological touch, devotional reverence and the un-touched, and the iconoclasm that emerges from the experience of being deemed untouchable in a society.
Touch is a cultural phenomenon. The act of “laying a hand” on something is shaped by specific social and cultural contexts. Reflecting on touch in museums, Rituparna Roy observes that when a visitor, drawn to a displayed object, attempts to touch it, others may perceive this as a transgression—or even a crime. When we enter a museum with such assumptions, the historically significant objects on display evoke aesthetic appreciation. Simultaneously, the historical and social narratives embedded within them exert their own pull, drawing us closer.
In this way, according to Rituparna Roy, a museum visitor is meant to experience ‘the blend of reality with unbelievable beauty and skills’ However, the enforced un-touchability of museum objects often alienates people from museums. In response, some museums are beginning to seek alternatives to this untouchability. On one hand, they are exploring the various dimensions of tactile experience; on the other, they are moving beyond touch alone to focus on multi-sensory programs and displays that offer richer, more immersive experiences for visitors. In doing so, museums are attempting to build a more dialogic relationship with tactile and other sensory experiences, making the act of visiting a museum more engaging and inviting.
Just as objects in a museum are often forbidden to be touched, in some situations, the touch of a person afflicted with a particular illness is avoided; and in certain contexts, touching someone—or allowing oneself to be touched—is considered taboo. These actions and ideologies give rise to the cruel practice of deeming certain individuals or communities as ‘untouchable.’ Human society and culture are built upon the foundations of contact, closeness, companionship, and cooperation—all of which take shape through touch and language. Yet, within that very society and culture, the visible shades of the concept of untouchability—refusing contact or connection with certain people or groups—reveal the deep complexities embedded in our social and cultural norms around touch.
In this context, the English translation by Ashutosh Potdar of Jaywant Dalvi’s Marathi short story Sparsha (Touch) is thought-provoking. The story offers a poignant portrayal of the physical and mental pain endured by a woman suffering from leprosy, the humiliation she faces even after recovering from the disease, and the loneliness of her emotional struggles. Through this story, the psychological and emotional consequences of the absence of touch are sensitively depicted.
In this edition, the writings of three authors—Gayatri Lele, Swati Bacharam Kamble, and Ajinkya Ghawate—offer a personal narrative, a story, and a critical essay, respectively. They explore the social and cultural dimensions of touch shaped by notions of dominance, power, authority, exploitation, and purity-impurity within a society nourished by gender discrimination and caste and class-based hierarchies.
In her Marathi essay Sparshvishwachya Tatabandi, Gayatri Lele reflects on the awareness of touch shaped by the experiences women face in both private and public spaces. She writes:
“I don’t have a clear or definite idea of what exactly my world of touch is, or what shape it takes. When I think of touch, certain typical points come up—mostly associated with feelings like fear, shame, and hesitation. The various kinds of physical contact involved in male-female relationships are rarely discussed openly; in fact, there seems to be a general belief that such discussions shouldn’t happen. That’s not entirely wrong either, because those moments are different and deeply personal for each individual. But the world of touch isn’t limited to just that. Especially for women, unwelcome or intrusive touches are a frequent reality in both private and public life. Despite the existence of strict laws, such violations still occur, and as a result, a woman’s world of touch becomes filled with fear and suspicion. Sometimes, even an accidental or unintended touch from a man can send a chill down the spine. As a result, women often struggle to remain un-touched in public spaces.”
While, Lele’s essay brings to light the complex ways in which the sensory experience of touch is shaped by gendered realities, fear, and social conditioning in everyday life; Swati Bacharam Kamble in her poignant short story, The Dichotomy of Touch, portrays the treatment of Dalit farm labourers, who are subjected to untouchability by the so-called upper-caste and upper-class landowners. She writes:
“The landlady set a small plate on the ground, then quickly stepped back, as if even being near them was hard work.
Mangala and all the other women working in the field knew the drill well. They could not take the plate until their landlady had moved far enough, until there was no chance of their hands touching.
Only when the landlady had turned and walked away did Mangala pick up the plate. It had cold – leftover rice, thin watery dal and a small serving of chutney. She ate quickly, not for the taste, but to fill the void in her stomach.”
Ajinkya Ghawate’s article A Grammar of Touch: Caste and Un/Touch/ability explores the ways in which touch and untouchability are configured within the Indian caste system. Professor Aniket Jaaware’s book Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching offers a foundational framework for understanding caste in India. Building on Professor Aniket Jaaware’s work and the insights of other scholars, Ghawate develops his analytical argument further. As argued in his article, due to the exploitative structure inherent in the caste system, touch does not remain confined merely to the realm of sensation—it becomes an embedded element of a deeply rooted social order. He writes, “The caste system has long structured touch as a regulation, distinction, and exclusion site. In this context, touch is not merely a sensory act but a profoundly social one, carrying different meanings and ethics based on caste hierarchies. The Brahmin and Dalit bodies are not merely biological entities but socially constructed surfaces of meaning, marked by the ethics of touch, purity, and defilement.” Against this backdrop, Ghawate proposes in his article that if we truly wish to understand the nature of touch, it is essential to thoroughly examine the relationship between touch and social organization. He writes, “Understanding this requires an examination of the different modalities of touch and their societal organization. I first explore its sensory modalities — the organs, objects, and theories that shape how touch is understood and regulated — before moving to the different elements and forms of touch, in a genealogy of untouchability.”
In Ghawate’s argument, he also draws on the work of Professor Sundar Sarukkai, a distinguished philosopher and scholar. One particularly noteworthy inclusion in this edition of हाकारा | hākārā is Maya Nirmala’s translation of a lecture by Professor Sundar Sarukkai, which shifts the focus from traditional theories of translation—emphasizing difference and distance between languages—to contemporary theories that highlight the similarities between languages and their potential to ‘touch’ one another.
Overall, given the expansive and multifaceted nature of the concept of touch, it becomes difficult to arrive at definitive conclusions or singular interpretations. In this 22nd edition of हाकारा | hākārā, with the collaborative efforts of writers, artists, scholars, and translators, we have attempted to engage with as many dimensions of the lived experience of tactile perception as possible. We hope that this collective exploration of ‘touch’ will, in some meaningful way, touch your heart as well.
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Tile Image: Unknown artist, Visitation. Alabaster, 14th-century Spain. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.