love
Looking For Someone To Talk To
I would say that growing up in a small village would make it difficult to find love or companionship, but I have since moved to a city and found that it was difficult to find love there, too. It did not stop me from trying, though.
By Wesley D'Souza
April 1, 2022
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
The plot of the movie narrates the tale of the love that grows between two people who are struggling to survive in a world of rootlessness and are continuing to make a cosy home for themselves. The love between Madhu, who works as a food delivery boy, and Puti, who survives by singing at traffic signals, blossoms while they cross paths everyday at the traffic signal and the look that they exchange appears to us as if each of them is trying to find a home in the other.
By Ria Basu
March 17, 2023
Kun Faya Kun: Embodying Non-Conformity
For a queer person, or for someone who remains single by choice, everyday existence requires strength and will. That is the embodiment of kun faya kun as a personal philosophy: to manifest the person you want to be through sheer will.
By Ghausia Rashid Salam
February 1, 2021
Issue in Focus: The Heart of Being
To chase down our own vulnerabilities around sexuality is a short run around the corner, five minutes ago, last night sleeping alone, with a lover, a partner who lost interest, the Insta post that leaves you feeling you’re not good enough for the hug, the kiss, the cuddle and are you perhaps the A of LGBTQIA+?
By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2023
Issue in Focus: The Heart of Being
To chase down our own vulnerabilities around sexuality is a short run around the corner, five minutes ago, last night sleeping alone, with a lover, a partner who lost interest, the Insta post that leaves you feeling you’re not good enough for the hug, the kiss, the cuddle and are you perhaps the A of LGBTQIA+?
By Shikha Aleya
April 19, 2021
Issue In Focus: The Conversations We Don’t Have
A long, long time ago, in a room far, far away, I remember playing at being a mythological hero I…
By Shikha Aleya
February 1, 2016
Issue In Focus: Is ‘Dhanda’ (Sex Business) Work? – II
Is business work? Can business that involves providing sexual services be understood as work? If work is any mental or physical activity performed for a result, then for the individual performing the activity sex work is work. If work is any activity performed as a means of survival, then sex work is work.
By Meena Saraswathi Seshu and Aarthi Pai
April 18, 2016
Issue In Focus: Baboochamuffins and Other Musings
Why are certain privileges only afforded to couples? Why can we not share them with others outside of a romantic or sexual paradigm? Why is intimacy seen as being the purview of lovers? In actual fact, we may often share a greater intimacy with our friends than we do with our lovers.
By Radhika Chandiramani
Issue in Focus: A Travelling Sexuality
There is a deep connect between travel and sexuality that is internalized at gut level. From birth perhaps. Across cultures. The two are almost metaphors for each other, twins, borrowing words from the lexicon of the other, entwining identity.
By Shikha Aleya
January 2, 2020
Interview: Shruti Arora
There may already be another organisation in the community to share resources with but for community-led initiatives, a shared perspective on Safe, Inclusive, Sexuality-Affirming (SISA) spaces is also important. Sometimes when the shared perspective is not there, that becomes a challenge.
By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2022
Interview: Sharanya Manivannan
If you are true to yourself, and attuned to your emotions and needs, you’ll invariably find that even a core belief (such as: not believing in the institution of marriage) is complicated by what the lived experience of that means (not only discriminatory experiences, but also intimate ones).
By Shikha Aleya
February 1, 2021
Interview: Radhika Chandiramani on What Self-Care and Sexuality Have to Do With Each Other
Sexuality and self-care are related at many levels, right from the level of knowing what you want and what you don’t, how you feel about yourself, how you are able to communicate your desires and how you are able to enjoy your experiences.
By Anjora Sarangi
Interview – A reflective self-questioning
It is true though that ageing has brought home realities about my body that I ignored when I was younger. It has made me mindful of what I value, and what I choose to let go of, without too much of thought or unnecessary angst.
By Shikha Aleya
March 1, 2021
Interview – Srinidhi Raghavan
Disabled people might not have many spaces where they can speak openly about their sexual experiences or even sexual curiosity. There is a heavy monitoring of disabled young people especially, and this can mean that exploration, which is often how many of us discover sexuality, can be limited. Moreover, since the experiences of disabled people are not seen in popular media such as films, we can (and probably do) imagine we will have the same or similar experiences as non-disabled people – which is often not possible.
By Shikha Aleya
August 2, 2021