From scattered scraps to collective healing

Little Roots, a two-day online zine-making workshop held on August 16th and 17th, 2025. What started as a space to reflect on the daily impacts of the climate crisis grew into a tender, creative, and deeply emotional exploration of our relationships with the environment, our memories of changing climates, our bodies, our mental health, and one another.

In the midst of intensifying climate anxieties, we often forget to pause and ask: How is this crisis shaping my health, my joy, my sense of home? Through Little Roots, we centered these questions, leaning into personal stories, radical imagination, and artistic expression. Zine-making became our tool for storytelling, for processing, resisting, and healing.

We were honored to be joined by our incredible facilitators, Don Hasar, Kiran Dayal, and Muskan Lamba, whose thoughtful guidance shaped the tone of the workshop. From them, we learned how to hold space with care, to honor our grief without guilt, and to see art as a site of both memory and resistance. We encourage everyone to explore and support their powerful work!

What made this space truly magical were the participants, artists, activists, students, and community members, who brought their truths into the room. Through collages, handwritten notes, drawings, and poetry, they explored grief, queerness, ecologies, joy, the idea of 'home,' and what it means to rest as resistance.

Workshop Participant :

"दो दिन के वर्कशॉप में हमने सीखा कैसे जलवायु संकट हर एक को प्रभावित कर रहा है चाहे वो शारीरीक रूप से हो या मानसिक और कैसे हमें इन घटनाओं को बेफिक्री से लेने लगे है जैसे इसके आदि हो गए है, जो भावनात्मक रूप से अनुचित है

कैसे हम रोजमर्रा के क्रियाकलाप करते हुए इन संकटों से बेहतर रूप से जूझ सकते है और दूसरों का भी ख्याल रख सकते है, उनके प्रति संवेदनशील हो सकते है।

ZINE बनाने की प्रक्रिया एक थेरेपी की तरह थी कैसे अपने विचारों, अपने अनुभवों को पन्नों पर बिखेर देना इतना सुकून दे सकता है। किसी प्रतिभागी ने एक जड़ को टूटी जमीन पर उगते हुए दर्शाया था जो बताता है प्रकृतिक आपदाओं के बाद भी कैसे उम्मीद की किरण साथ रहनी चाहिए जो हमें परिस्थिति से उभार सके."

From those who shared artwork about growing roots in broken ground, to pages that reclaimed queer joy amidst climate collapse, each zine became a mirror of lived experience.

As we move forward, we carry with us the reminder that healing, like climate action, doesn't have to be solitary. It can look like torn paper becoming something whole again. It can sound like stories shared across screens. And it can feel like a room (or an online space) full of strangers, quietly creating something beautiful together. With deep gratitude to our facilitators and every participant who joined us, thank you for planting roots with us.

Love and Power to all,

---

The Gulabi Zameen Team

About the Facilitators

We are deeply grateful to our workshop facilitators, whose presence and care shaped Little Roots into a space of vulnerability, creativity, and connection. Their work continues to inspire us to reimagine how we gather, reflect, and heal, especially in the face of climate grief and collective uncertainty.

Don Hasar (she/they)

Don Hasar is a Queer-Trans* rights advocate and cultural resistance worker amplifying LGBTQIAP+ voices in rural Himalayan regions, where conversations on gender and sexuality are often absent or silenced. She co-founded the Himachal Queer Foundation and now leads BOUNDLESS: VOICES CULTURE PEOPLE, a platform at the intersection of policy, culture, and Queer-Trans* welfare in rural contexts. Her work is rooted in non-urban narratives, exploring what it means to live beyond the boxes of gender and aspects of sexuality that society assigns. They have also been working with spaces across the country to explore what intersectional and intergenerational work and processes look like in various contexts. Don focuses on building sustainable systems for youth through regionally rooted storytelling, arts, and local languages, while researching Pahari cultures to develop Queer-Trans* vocabularies. She has served on the UN Women Beijing+30 CSO Steering Committee and is the Co-convener and a member of the Asia and the Pacific LGBTQIAP+ Caucus.

Kiran Dayal (she/her)

Kiran Dayal's journey as an art practitioner has traversed through the concepts of intersectionality. Currently, Kiran's practice is rooted in documenting women's everyday narratives of menstruation, sex, leisure, and unpaid labour in parts of Assam and MP of her independent research and participatory art project - 'Ghar Ki Mukhiya Ki Baatein', traversing through politics of domestic work, creating an audio and visual archive of homemaker's lived realities; covering the nuanced aspects of women's solidarity and efforts towards inclusion and well-being. The visual vocabulary is born out of Kiran's own experiences at home where gender defined her role and existence. Through a multi-faceted vocabulary, Kiran is building a safe space for conversations around belonging to a gendered body.

Muskan Lamba (she/her)

Muskan Lamba is a researcher who works on youth emotional experiences of climate change in India and South Asia. She has a background in economics, coastal studies, and mental health with a lived experience lens. Muskan has worked with The Resilience Project, Good Grief Network, Climate Psychology Alliance, World Ocean Day, and WWF India, among others. She is passionate about organizing communities rooted in wellbeing, compassion, and care.

Please support their work, attend their future workshops, and share their offerings widely. Their generosity and intentionality were at the heart of Little Roots, and we're so lucky to have learned from them.