“Who came first, love or the lovers?”
Lyrics to Haey Re Hum Sadqay Tumharay
The Love and Sexuality issues this month have a few more articles than usual, and it probably reflects on how every one of us has something to say on the matter. How is it that we can identify so many kinds of love and so many vagaries of sexuality, and yet when the two are put together, they seem to evoke in the collective imagination only one kind of love and one version of sexuality, necessarily occurring between a couple that fits certain criteria?
Our writers attempt to crawl out of the tunnel of ‘legitimate’ love and sexuality, breathe in some fresh air, and describe what they can make of the outside. Shikha Aleya’s Issue In Focus is all about the conversations we don’t have about love and sexuality. The closet isn’t just for the ones with the rainbow flags; there are other closets too, she points out.
A guest writer reviews The Gaysi Zine’s freshly launched fourth volume, and finds it to be a delightful piece of art and activism, though admittedly lacking on crucial political fronts.
Not surprisingly, we have several I Column pieces this time. Surbhi Dewan admires the confidence of the married woman, bolstered by the privilege of qualifying for and sticking to the status quo, a privilege she finds baffling and alienating when it comes to herself. A guest writer muses on the long route she has had to take to being comfortable with her sexuality and desires, no thanks to the confusing messages on morality and acceptable behaviour she, like all of us, received while growing up. Kavya Karthik had an equally extended journey coming to terms with not her asexuality per se, but the implications her Queerness has on her love life. Greeshma Gireesh gives us a (fictionalised) account of her salacious romps and almost/actual romances, ending her I Column piece with a humbling insight into her generation.
Jaya Sharma lays out her cards and proceeds to inspect them carefully in her Voices article on what kink and psychoanalysis have done for her love and sex life. Yomalis Rosario confronts the lover through her language of poetry, making use of indented form, each line pitted against the other in a game of questions.
The Video Page features How Can It Be, a short film by Mira Nair on the anguish we subject ourselves to when faced with the lover’s inexplicable power.
We’ll be back mid-February with more on love and sexuality.
Until then, happy reading!
The TARSHI Team
