self love

Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing
An illustration of four people on a beige background. Each person has multicoloured bouquet of flowers instead of hair, and flowers wrapped around different parts of their bodies. Each person is performing different acts of self-love - the one on the far left is applying is shaving flowers from their forearm, the one next to them is hugging themselves with their eyes closed, the next one is looking into a round hand mirror and the one on the far right has one leg on a chair and is shaving flowers from their leg. A branch of thorns and flowers threads through the background.
Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing

My body presented to me the first paradox in my feminism that I would encounter. How could I claim to be a feminist if I was not proud of the body I was born in? My advocacy as a sixth grader seemed to fail when it came to my own self.

By Feminism in India
March 15, 2022
Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing
Kun Faya Kun: Embodying Non-Conformity
A photograph of a person’s palms held out in prayer. The light is streaked with shades of pink and blue.
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
Kun Faya Kun: Embodying Non-Conformity
Interview: Kripa Joshi
On a peach coloured background, a woman of colour jumping. She is wearing purple ballet shoes and a purple one-piece swimsuit with white-grey patterns scattered on it. Her eyes are wide open and her hands are stretched open on both sides. Her hair is brown and open. She is throwing multi-coloured confetti. Beneath her is a blue circle. In a semicircle to her right is the typography, in purple: Throw kindness around like confetti!
Interview: Kripa Joshi

There have been several recent examples of actors, movies and events being called out because of their lack of representation, like for the Oscars. With social media it is easier to create and distribute diverse art and also to voice the need for diversity. So it needs engagements and awareness in society. Change will happen once enough people demand that change.
By Shikha Aleya
June 15, 2021
Interview: Kripa Joshi
Interview – Raj Mariwala
A photograph of MHI director Raj Mariwala; she is playing with a grey-brown dog, squatting in grass.
Interview – Raj Mariwala

Self-care is influenced by the environment we inhabit, the way we relate to others, the way we negotiate with other living beings or structures. Self-care is also interlinked with other types of care – whether that is in community resources, psychosocial support, engagement with medical and health care institutions, and of course in collective agency and solidarity.
By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2023
Interview – Raj Mariwala
Interview – Raj Mariwala
A photograph of MHI director Raj Mariwala; she is playing with a grey-brown dog, squatting in grass.
Interview – Raj Mariwala

Self-care is influenced by the environment we inhabit, the way we relate to others, the way we negotiate with other living beings or structures. Self-care is also interlinked with other types of care – whether that is in community resources, psychosocial support, engagement with medical and health care institutions, and of course in collective agency and solidarity.
By Shikha Aleya
July 5, 2021
Interview – Raj Mariwala
Interview – This is what you bring to the table!
A photograph of a number of multicoloured rainbows against the background of a blue sky.
Interview – This is what you bring to the table!

In this write up, we’d like to share a sense of what emerges from a compilation of these responses. This is based on the thoughts and feelings that come through for those of us here at In Plainspeak who have had the joy of reading the original responses as they came in to us. (Some of the quotations that follow have been slightly edited for flow and to help connect themes.) We know that most things in the realm of art, information and ideas lend themselves to a wide range of inferences and insights depending on the individuals making the inferences.
By Shikha Aleya
March 1, 2022
Interview – This is what you bring to the table!
Editorial: Singlehood and Sexuality
A small bird fluttering around a branch with orange berries, picking at one
Editorial: Singlehood and Sexuality

In this issue of In Plainspeak our contributors reflect on and reveal the myriad facets of being single – is it a choice? A condition? A state of being? Lonely? Joyful? Not one or the other, but a glorious mix?
By TARSHI
February 15, 2021
Editorial: Singlehood and Sexuality
Editorial: Sexuality and Self-care
A photograph of a rocky landscape with a tabby cat sitting atop a grey rock, lined with green-brown grass, licking itself.
Editorial: Sexuality and Self-care

Continuing with our theme of self-care being about sustaining ourselves, our work, our movements, keeping the fires lit, and relating with love to ourselves, in our mid-month issue we bring you more articles looking at self-care from different perspectives – individual, queer, activist, collective, organisational, not necessarily separated, or in this order, of course.
By TARSHI
July 19, 2021
Editorial: Sexuality and Self-care
Editorial – Sexuality and SISA Spaces
Close-up of a sunflower field and the sun rising over hills in the background.
Editorial – Sexuality and SISA Spaces

We envision SISA spaces as non-judgmental, inclusive, rights-based and affirming spaces wherein people’s sexuality, their identities, wellbeing, choices, desires and pleasure are respected.
By TARSHI
January 3, 2022
Editorial – Sexuality and SISA Spaces
Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about
A photograph of a person's arm and hand. The background of a couch with a blue duvet is blurred, and the focus is on the person's hands, with brown nail-paint, and a blue pen in their hands. They are writing in a spiral bound notebook. Beside them is a black cup.
Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about

My journal has many entries that are speculative and fantastic. Writing about the mundane leads me to question the way the world operates and from there I frog-leap into a world of ideas where I imagine a radically different way of being. In my journal, I imagine a politics of care, community, and compassion. I become grand, valuable, and unstoppable, even in a world where I am sometimes made to feel small.
By Sheena D'Lima
July 5, 2021
Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about
Caring and care-giving
A photograph of a book-shelf, brown-black, with differently coloured books.
Caring and care-giving

Just as capitalism has learned how to co-opt feminism into its model, it has done the same to ‘wellness’, so much so it has become an industry of its own. Mental wellbeing, no matter how necessary and important it is, remains a luxury with more than half of our country either unaware of available mental health resources or not in a position to even afford therapy.
By Deepa Ranganathan
July 5, 2021
Caring and care-giving
Camouflage
An illustration of a blue flower. The tips of its petals are dark blue and lighten as they meet at the yellow-brown centre. A long spindly green stem supports the flower and has three dark and light green round leaves and a dark green bud.. Behind it, on a grey-blue background is a cityscape dotted with buildings and palm trees with muted colour and grey overtones.
Camouflage

I cannot let anyone see the stretch marks, the cellulite, the saggy breasts. I cannot reveal my hideous body. I feel anxiety well up inside me even as I visualise this eventuality. I read about ten ways for a fat person to have meaningful sex. I learn that throwing a cloth over the bedside lamp will help hide my flaws.
By Sharada Vinod
August 2, 2021
Camouflage
Brushstrokes: Women At Leisure: Photo Essay On Pastime As A Feminist Issue
A set of two photographs, on the left a coloured photograph of a woman hanging from a tree with orange flowers, on the right a black and white photograph of a woman looking at her left eye in a hand-held mirror and applying make-up.
Brushstrokes: Women At Leisure: Photo Essay On Pastime As A Feminist Issue

Inspired to collect photographs of women spending time by themselves and for themselves after a conversation with her mother’s friend, Surabhi Yadav began the project, Women at Leisure.
By Feminism in India
July 5, 2021
Brushstrokes: Women At Leisure: Photo Essay On Pastime As A Feminist Issue
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics
Picture of Miss Moti in a bathing suit, lying in a pool
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics

“Moti” is often used as a slur, a denigrating epithet translating as “Fatty”, that is used to shame and to degrade; but when the “t” sound is pronounced differently, it becomes “moti”, a pearl – shining, precious, priceless.
By Curated Content
January 2, 2019
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics
Picture of Miss Moti in a bathing suit, lying in a pool
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics

“Moti” is often used as a slur, a denigrating epithet translating as “Fatty”, that is used to shame and to degrade; but when the “t” sound is pronounced differently, it becomes “moti”, a pearl – shining, precious, priceless.
By Curated Content
October 15, 2018
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics
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