Shikha Aleya
I Column : Fiction and Sexuality
What is fiction? Is it born of reality? Or does it birth reality, reflecting it back at me until I see the things I do not see? Until I find the person that is me? Until I dance my horse dance under moon, under stars, in a room full of people who like horse dancing just as much as they like the swirly skirt and the pot-bellied person doing the Bhangra.
By Shikha Aleya
September 1, 2017
चुनौती पहुँच की – इच्छाएँ, कल्पनाएँ और विकलांगता के साथ रह रहे लोग
प्रत्येक फैंटसी या कल्पना एक बेहद ही निजी अनुभव होती है, भले ही यह मन में ही रखी जाए या दूसरों को बतायी…
By Shikha Aleya
An Interview with Disability and Sexuality Rights Activist Kiran
He is the founder of a number of support organisations that focus on sexuality and disability issues at the grassroots. Over multiple conversations conducted in Hindi and English, Kiran and Shikha Aleya discussed issues of sexuality, access and disability based on some of Kiran’s life experiences.
By Shikha Aleya
Issue in Focus: Beyond Ramps and Restrictions
Accessibility begins with access, enabled or denied, to concepts and ideas. At the core, beyond the architecture of the real and virtual worlds, it is about the architecture of the ways in which this access is broadened, to not only accommodate, but to nurture, the myriad expressions of human minds and bodies.
By Shikha Aleya
August 3, 2017
INTERVIEW: PAWAN DHALL ON HIS OWN JOURNEY OF BUILDING COMMUNITIES – PART 2
Shikha Aleya: What are some of the biggest barriers you have faced in your efforts to create dialogue and visibilise…
By Shikha Aleya
Interview: Pawan Dhall on his own journey of building communities – Part 1
In this issue of In Plainspeak, we interview Pawan Dhall, Founding Trustee of Varta Trust, queer activist, writer and social researcher. He is also the editor of the Varta webzine, promoting and sustaining dialogue on gender and sexuality, across diverse groups of people. As Pawan says, “We are all strung together on a spectrum of gender and sexuality, and we don’t have to be fixed at a single point on the spectrum throughout our lives.”
By Shikha Aleya
Interview: Dr. Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project
Anja speaks with Shikha Aleya about the spread of digital surveillance into almost every aspect of our lives, its implications and what we need to do about it.
By Shikha Aleya
Does Sex Equal Grape? How Sexuality Relates to Money
As soon as you add sexuality to a piece about money, the first instinct generally is to reduce it all to sex, leaving the “-uality” like a little invisible tail feather that flutters away into the unknown.
By Shikha Aleya
Owning Our Boundaries
The concept of boundaries has become mixed up with the concept of being bound in a this-far-and-no-further way. They have become enclosures, aquariums, cages built for those who inhabit them, but not necessarily built by them.
By Shikha Aleya
April 3, 2017
Beyond Acceptance and Rejection
Tolerance and space for another who is not like oneself is important. Without such tolerance and space we risk becoming perpetrators of injustice, forcing everybody into a mold that is not their shape.
By Shikha Aleya
March 5, 2017
A Self-care Approach to Life – and Sexuality
Not everybody, everywhere, learns self-care, though most people learn how to wash their faces, brush their teeth, wear clean underwear, and lock the door to keep themselves safe.
By Shikha Aleya
February 3, 2017
An Invisible Diversity of Gaze
There are a number of different ways to approach this theme, Films and Sexuality. One way is through the eyes of the popcorn-eating, samosa-chomping, money-paying audience member who chooses to see or not see a film, who likes or dislikes it, who makes the film a box-office hit, or pans it.
By Shikha Aleya
January 5, 2017
A Disruptive Sexuality
People’s movements and sexuality. There is dissonance in this. Hugging trees, protesting dams, Swadeshi and boycott, anti-apartheid, anti-psychiatry, anti-war, child rights, flags, banners and marches. What does hugging a tree have to do with sexuality? Women’s rights, gay pride, these movements are people’s movements quite regularly seen in the frame and context of sexuality. But the others?
By Shikha Aleya
December 5, 2016
The Challenge of Accessibility: Desire, Fantasy and People with Disabilities
The general attitude towards sexual fantasy, and the reflection of such fantasies in popular imagery, erotica and erotic porn is constructed on assumptions of ableism. There are other fantasies though, that reflect or are born of the sexuality of their creators and consumers, persons who do not fit into the accepted age, body or sexual identity.
By Shikha Aleya
The Many Shades of Parenting and Sexuality
As a society, in our platforms of exchange of goods, products and services, how are we approaching parenting, children or sexuality? Stores are clearly catering to the constructed parent and child. There’s lots of toys, clothes, diapers, bedsheets and cute dangling, fluffy things to cluck at in stores catering to parent and child as a combination thali (platter). The day I see personal and sexual hygiene products in a store catering to mom and a teenaged me, I will kick up my heels and bray.
By Shikha Aleya
October 3, 2016