About Tuesdays with the Bard at Urban Solace

Urban Solace – Your Cafe for the Soul – is India’s first truly cultural café. Incorporated in 2009, Urban Solace has pioneered experiences in poetry, comedy, music, art, literature, and more.

Tuesdays with the Bard at Urban Solace was featured in the Limca Book of Records 2016 as “The Longest Running Poetry Event in India.”

Over the last 14+ years, Tuesdays with the Bard has brought audiences tears of joy, nods of recognition, fleeting smiles, warm applause, wistful memories... and countless unforgettable poems. A Celebration of Queer Voices in Poetry

This special edition of Tuesdays with the Bard at Urban Solace honours the vibrant, courageous, and authentic expressions of queer poets. Join us as we celebrate identity, resistance, love, and liberation through the power of verse—featuring Denzil, Maitrayee, Rahma, and Lavanya, and hosted by the ever-brilliant Raju. In true Urban Solace spirit, we hold space for poetry that moves the heart, shifts perspectives, and reminds us that every voice deserves to be heard. A Special Edition of Tuesdays with the Bard at Urban Solace

Celebrating Queer Voices in Poetry

At Urban Solace, poetry has always been about truth, vulnerability, and the courageous act of self-expression. In this special edition of Tuesdays with the Bard, we open the stage to queer poets—voices that challenge, celebrate, question, and transform.

This evening is a celebration of identity, love, resistance, and the rich tapestry of queer experiences. Join us for a powerful gathering where words become windows into worlds often silenced, and poetry becomes a tool of pride, protest, and healing.

Step into a safe and affirming space where every poem is a declaration of existence, and every voice matters.

Profiles

Raju Behara (she/they)

Raju is a trans, disabled poet and mental health practitioner whose work reclaims space through themes of queerness, disability, and anti-caste resistance. Their poetry—often shaped through blackout and found forms—excavates silenced histories, particularly those of queer-trans communities in India.

Raju spearheaded Redefining Queerscapes, a powerful poetry initiative that reimagined legal texts and lived realities into protest verse, now archived in Queer Judgments (Oxford Counterpress).

Her debut collection, Withering Tempests (BookLeaf, 2021), reflects on pandemic isolation and trans resilience. Her words also appear in Healing (BookLeaf), Yaari (Yoda Press), Gaysi, QueerNama, and more.

Raju is currently working on translating regional queer poetics—such as Telugu Janapadalu and Aravani oral traditions—into English, thereby building bridges between the ancestral and the contemporary.

Rahma

By day, Rahma navigates the complex world of pharmaceutical regulations. By heart, he is an artist in motion—penning poems, sketching characters, composing songs, and seeking the sacred in everyday life.

Born in Banaras and now living in Bangalore, Rahma is an unapologetic multitasker who thrives on intensity. Coffee, mountains, and a gym session done right are his holy trinity. With a master’s in Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance and a mind wired for rhythm and reflection, Rahma lives at the vibrant intersection of science and soul.

Denzil

Denzil is a 24-year-old musician and poet who turned to verse when talking to walls no longer sufficed. Their writing hums with memory, flickers of disorientation, and the eerie hush of a ceiling fan in an empty room.

Based in Bangalore, Denzil is currently working on their debut collection—carefully avoiding writing yet another poem about the unknowable. Their work has appeared in a handful of quiet corners—perhaps unfamiliar, but full of resonance. And that, they say, is more than enough.

Maitrayee Chavan

Maitrayee is an architect, designer, and devotee of outdoor sketchbooks. Her poetry reflects a love for nature, curiosity, and the power of observation, drawing imagery from the world around her with a quiet, contemplative grace.

She believes that the tug of curiosity is life’s most reliable compass—and follows it wherever it may lead, one line at a time.

Lavanya Arora (they/he)

Lavanya is a writer and independent researcher who weaves together biology, culture, and food through narrative essays, poems, and stories. Once a seeker of secrets in plant and bacterial DNA, Lavanya now looks for meaning in language, memory, and everyday moments.

Their work has found a home in Third Space: An Anthology of South Asian Poetry, Gulmohur Quarterly, Usawa Literary Review, Kitaab, and was featured at the Galway and Belfast Pride Festivals, among others.