Shikha Aleya
Interview – We Have Questions!
There are times when we bend the rules and draw on the walls. This is one of those times. We listened in on some of the chatter online on the subject of consent and we ended up with some questions.
By Shikha Aleya
March 17, 2025
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 – Suchitra Dalvie
Getting to know who I really am has been a game changer. Prejudice, anger, control and violence all emerge from fear.
By Shikha Aleya
May 16, 2024
Interview – Srila Roy
“Questions of difference should not be a cause for despair. There are examples from history and our own lives that show how we can connect across difference and stand in solidarity with one another…”
By Shikha Aleya
December 12, 2022
Interview – Prarthana Prasad
Entertainment should aim to inspire, comfort, reflect and express. Even if something violent earns big at the box office, it doesn’t justify its creation.
By Shikha Aleya
February 15, 2024
Interview – Prakash
“I feel that connection is the survival language of the LGBTQIA+ community. The sense of a common struggle makes way for developing quick yet lasting connections among the community…”
By Shikha Aleya
November 15, 2022
Interview – Parmesh Shahani
The larger question is, who gets to bring all of themselves to the workplace, and who is either not allowed, or feels scared, or is bullied for doing so?
By Shikha Aleya
September 18, 2024
Interview – Madhu Mehra – Part 2
I think that the level of power that law makers, opinion builders and stakeholders wield over the more vulnerable and younger people in society is enormous. Yet, these actors have chosen to focus only on building a policy regime of sexual violence, even to the extent of allowing juvenile offenders to be treated as adult accused – without any corresponding effort to build a sex positive culture within which they may exercise agency.
By Shikha Aleya
July 16, 2018
Interview – Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani
I feel that parents, teachers and CSE can make room for these disparate realities of adolescents by first acknowledging the limits of formal sexuality education, that the curriculum imparted formally fails in providing the kind of learning that happens through other sources.
By Shikha Aleya
December 18, 2024
Interview – Deena Mohamed
Deena Mohamed, Egyptian artist, illustrator and designer, speaks to us about her art and her perspective on politics, patriarchy, feminism, and gender and sexuality.
By Shikha Aleya
December 3, 2018
Interview – Ankur Paliwal
Queering to me is thinking, being, living and loving outside societal norms.
By Shikha Aleya
July 22, 2024
I COLUMN : FICTION AND SEXUALITY
Her eyes are open now, she looks at him. There is sadness there. “What my love? What happened?” he asks….
By Shikha Aleya
January 2, 2018
I Column : Fiction and Sexuality
What is fiction? Is it born of reality? Or does it birth reality, reflecting it back at me until I see the things I do not see? Until I find the person that is me? Until I dance my horse dance under moon, under stars, in a room full of people who like horse dancing just as much as they like the swirly skirt and the pot-bellied person doing the Bhangra.
By Shikha Aleya
September 1, 2017
Does Sex Equal Grape? How Sexuality Relates to Money
As soon as you add sexuality to a piece about money, the first instinct generally is to reduce it all to sex, leaving the “-uality” like a little invisible tail feather that flutters away into the unknown.
By Shikha Aleya
CSE and Online Hot Bath Scenes
No matter how many optional ways I’ve considered for starting this piece, I keep returning to ‘hot’ and ‘masala’. I’ve…
By Shikha Aleya
February 1, 2015