A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
In a country like India where both mental health and non-binary identities are topics that are neglected despite being essential parts of an individual’s identity, it can be quite challenging to navigate through issues regarding the same. Accessibility to affordable and quality mental health services is a serious difficulty that the queer Indian population faces.
The short-lived thinness had left me before I knew it. I became fat, and thereby undesirable, once again. A chasm appeared in my relationship with my body. Its ways of responding had become strange. My form became unfamiliar to me, and to those around me.
You see, you are being pushed and pulled in all directions because people around you, whether family, friends or the larger society, expect you to behave in a particular fashion and stick to existing norms. However, your inner voice is telling you to challenge these norms and follow your own path.
Singleness represents eschewing all that patriarchy imposes on us in the name of emotional and financial protection. Women who decide not to marry defy age-old ‘wisdom’ mixed with terrible psychological and biologically-backed explanations.
The pandemic has put us through interesting times, to say the least – of reflecting, learning, realigning, thinking about what really matters, a time to pause and care for ourselves with kindness. At TARSHI, we’re just delighted to have been able to do the same – while also sharing something of what we’ve learnt with you.
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.
“I was not a wanted child. Of course I am a girl, and that explains it. It’s like no one really cares if I exist. My brothers are useless, but they are everything to them(her parents). It’s not like he (her lover) needs me either; I still take food for him everyday.”
Who is this person? What does this person want? Is it random cruising? Is money the goal, is it adventure? Why does it make me think of selling strawberries by the dusty roadside? I don’t have a single answer. Sex work is a lurking unknown in the world of sexuality.
The simple truth is that my body and I are having an affair. We each obsess about the other, ask questions and desire each other so much, that it often borders on the shameless. My body is more in love with me, I suspect, than the other way around.
Time and sexuality, neither is one-dimensional, neither is neat and both have a way of being always in a state of movement, whether we like it or not, flow with it or not.