Welcome to GARMI.
“because the planet is getting hotter but so are we”
GARMI is a pleasure politics newsletter for all of us who know the world can be a better place. Through personal essay, political education, and cultural critique, here at GARMI, we explore the inner life of someone (me!) trying to live joyfully and organize toward collective liberation on a planet that needs us to want that future badly enough to build it.
GARMI asks: How we are each the frontlines of the change we wish to see for people and planet? How can we arouse our collective lust for a world of luxury and liberation for all?
Subscribe if you’re craving civic sauciness!
GARMI means “HEAT” in Hindi.
Heat makes me think of a languid summer’s day when the blacktop’s mirage shimmers in the sun, a melting popsicle cool against your tongue as it drips sticky down your leg. I think of entwining myself with someone by the warmth of a campfire on a spring night under the stars. Of roasting tadka in sizzling coconut oil to unlock the flavor and medicinal compounds of spices. Of humans discovering how to use fire in the first place. Of offerings made and vows taken around sacred fires. I was born in heat: July 9th, a hot summer’s day in Hyderabad.
I think of our planet warming. I think of hot-headedness and flammable emotions. Of heatwaves and wildfires and inflammatory politics.
I think of fiery passion, motivation, resolve. Of sweat. Of sultry, sexy, hot, provocative. I think of the digestive fire in our bellies, responsible for helping us process food and transform it into nutrients.
It follows that GARMI is my playground for processing transformation, sharing with you in real time what’s bringing me light, getting me hot and bothered, fueling my flame, keeping my pilot light strong, helping me digest, sparking my joy, making me feel like hot shit, burning down old paradigms to crack open new seeds of nourishment.
What is pleasure politics?
Most directly associated with adrienne maree brown’s framework, drawing on Audre Lorde’s foundational essay “Uses of the Erotic,” it’s the argument that joy, desire, and pleasure are not distractions from liberation work but central to it — and that who gets access to pleasure is a political question. Here at GARMI, we dig into pleasure politics for people + planet.
I’m delighted to have you along for this ride.
Reply to me, let me know what resonates, where your perspective converges or diverges with mine. Deepen my learning and let me deepen yours — ‘cause the planet is getting hotter but so are we.
About me.
I’m an author, narrative strategist, political educator, and former documentary filmmaker. My work is all about “thrutopian” stories that make climate action the hottest place to be. I’ve been featured in the Hollywood Climate Summit, Tedx Climate AcrosstheAmericas, and the Webby Honorees, and I’ve worked with organizations such as The Objective, Center for Cultural Power, Visit California, and The Washington Post. My latest short story “Cabbage Koora: A Prognostic Autobiography” was a winner of Grist’s Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction Contest, in partnership with the NRDC, and is published in the cli-fi anthology Metamorphosis.
Learn more about GARMI at garmi.studio.
GARMI’s hottest influences: Audre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, Arundhati Roy, Octavia Butler, Kate Raworth, Kerala Ayurveda Academy, my mom, and so many more.
