love
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.
I believe that queer friendships and intimacies are sheer resistance, which not only swallow the despair and pain that might be perpetrated on gender-nonconforming people by their families, but also recognise all the lies about love that have been sold to us.
I am 27 now and marriage is the most brought-up topic of conversation by my parents and relatives. Now, choosing or wanting to stay single is inversely proportional to my reputation, respect, and worthiness.
The thing about crushes, is that eventually they stop being that. I’m not saying love dies or anything, I’m just saying, that Love never was and sometimes it takes a few months of tumbling across perfumed bedsheets
Paromita, an award-winning filmmaker, and founder of the multimedia platform Agents of Ishq, and Leeza, who tries to normalise conversations about sexuality through her online work, remind us that neither singlehood nor marriage is the only determining factor of our wellbeing.
Happy New Year! As 2021 begins and we are filled with a sense of hope and desire for better times, we resolve to find ways of sustaining ourselves while caring for others. And so, in this anthology issue we republish articles about wellbeing.
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.
Therapy gives us tools and time, but the actual work of dismantling the forest is ours as we are the only persons with access to that forest. So queer affirmative therapy validates our beliefs and helps us identify the poison, cut it down, dissect it, unroot it.
Puu, an episodic comic (consisting of 92 serialised episodes) created in 2016 by Nabigal-Nayagam Haider Ali – going by Nabi online – is woven together with vast, expansive threads of similar intense spiritual moments and reflections on devotion, faith, and love.
In a way, the expression of vulnerability can be a foundation of trust and mutual support in a relationship, often leading to a sharing of burdens and the building of a deepened connection and solidarity.
We found these heart-warming doodles that are dedicated to staying conscious of things that matter for our personal well-being and our relationships with others but that we tend to lose touch with from time to time.
At sixteen, the senior boy I loved, touched me down there and said, this is what boyfriends do, this is what love feels like – uncomfortable.
The lovers enact many recognizable hetero-normative romantic tropes – the wronged petulant woman pacified via kisses and caresses, the woman too tired for sex who then tries to placate the sulking male lover.
It wasn’t that she had never heard of homosexuality; but, in her imagination, gay men and women were an exotic species, not real people who could, perchance, be fellow passengers on a bus, fellow shoppers at a mall, or a fellow beginner in a meditation class.
The movie was criticised for its stereotypical portrayal of Debu as a gay man. But, the beauty is that it also highlights the reversal of gender roles. The smiles, and the laughter sounding throughout the house, create a cheery note in the movie.