A touch on the screen, a tap on the keyboard, and we can communicate instantly with someone in another time-zone thousands of miles away. Digital technologies bring us the possibilities of connection, freedom, intimacies, pleasure, validation and visibility. For some people, digital spaces are the only place they can be, or explore being, who they truly are. Alongside this, digital spaces also hold the threat of surveillance, exposure, and abuse. The other side of the coin, as it were. Still, they afford us intimacies – emotional, erotic, platonic, sexual – that we may or may not be able to experience offline.
In thinking about digital intimacies and the future of humans, Suchitra Dalvie explores questions of connection, feelings, biology, gender, reproduction, and ethics. The conclusion could be dystopic, but it’s not. Breathe easy.
Of course, it’s not all sunshine and roses. Aratrika Datta sketches in broad strokes the illusion of connection and choice that the digital world offers. This is so especially for women and gender and sexual minorities. The fear of moral policing, abuse and violence push vulnerability and honesty, the main ingredients of intimacy, to the edges. Daara Patel examines some possible factors underlying the climate of fear and risk that surrounds women’s digital intimacies and suggests ways of re-imagining and re-framing, online conversation and discourse. Debjani Chakraborty takes us into rural digital life, where individual choice doesn’t stand a chance when devices and passwords are expected to be shared. In the intimacy of collective living, it is not strangers but one’s immediate peers who act as agents of surveillance to ensure that one does not ‘know too much’.
But yet, but yet. We humans are sometimes able to squeeze kindness out of a stone. And love out of nowhere. Chitrangi Kakoti, living in a land far from home, finds not a cure for loneliness, but new shapes and forms of intimacy– a continuing no-pressure acceptance and a love that holds – in the steady glow of her screen. For Taarina Therese Chandiramani, technology allows for layers of meaning and feeling to gently rise up and lets a longing she didn’t even know she felt make itself known. Apoorva Ravi finds that an online ‘bestie’ is the perfect companion on an adventure she has long yearned for but never had the courage to embark on.
Digital intimacies inspire poems too. From the misty hills of Sikkim, Lungmying Lepcha writes a poem about Kancha and Kanchi and leaves us wondering what will happen next. Shruti Sharma’s poem is about what an online utopia offers and why it is better than ‘reality’.
And then there is always art. Shipra Gautam offers an unexpected response to intrusive questions online.
In Hindi, we bring you two original articles. Salman Mujawar tells us through real cases how Meri Trustline reframes digital abuse as an emotional and social issue, not just a legal one, because healing from online abuse begins not with reporting but with being heard. Imran Khan writes about how digital harms are unevenly distributed across caste, class, and geography but queer and trans communities continue to resist by building safer networks and demanding structural accountability.
Intimacies are precious. Sometimes we realise that only when they are gone. Enjoy yours – wherever you find them.
Stay connected. Stay safe.
Cover image by Kristian Chalakov for Fine Acts_Landscape
