The I Column
On Loverships, F**kships and Friendships
How am I bringing myself into the erotic moment I am sharing with a lover?
By Andy Stephen Silveira
October 15, 2025
On Looking for Love
I wanted to be one of those people who decide to never date again and actually follow through. Indeed, I decided that a lot. A resolution that was broken so many times that it became a running joke in my head.
By Wesley D'Souza
February 1, 2022
Of Identity and Belongings: The Gatekeeping within Queer Spaces
I went to a girls’ high school and for somebody who had spent the last ten years in a co-ed…
By Shubhangi
September 1, 2022
Of Green Tea, Weight Loss, and Living As #PCOS4Ever
“You know, most healthy girls get this disorder if they don’t lose weight easily,” chimed my high school best friend…
By Noopur Raval
October 1, 2015
Of filter coffee, marriage and mixed celebrations of sexuality
Marriage also feels complicated when one approaches it through the lens of feminism. Marriage throws in two people and often their families into a system designed to perpetuate patriarchy, subjugate women, and bind men and women (in heteronormative marriage) into strict roles in the marriage.
By Vani Viswanathan
Of filter coffee, marriage and mixed celebrations of sexuality
Marriage also feels complicated when one approaches it through the lens of feminism. Marriage throws in two people and often their families into a system designed to perpetuate patriarchy, subjugate women, and bind men and women (in heteronormative marriage) into strict roles in the marriage.
By Vani Viswanathan
January 13, 2025
Notes from the Field: What Single Women in Delhi Taught Me about Sexuality
The women taught me how to navigate the city, as I learnt about the different ways the body is marked in public (and in private too). I often tried to discern when ‘bold’ became ‘reckless’, and what the underlying politics of this rhetoric shift might be. How arguments were stacked up pre-emptively determining who was deserving of protection and whose transgressions left them out in the cold.
By Lucie Bernroider
Notes from Special Court No. 54
Special Court No. 54 is a hall filled with whizzing ceiling fans. When the magistrate enters or exits, people rise to bow. Lawyers in black coats and white pants or saree/suit, sit at a long desk in plastic chairs a level below the magistrate with a clutch of researchers like myself, and anti-trafficking missionaries who “rescue fallen women”.
By Manjima Bhattacharjya
April 18, 2016
No One Talked To Me About Sex
We need to disturb the institutionalised infrastructure and skew power dynamics even when it comes to something as complex as pleasure. Being aware of our language and the practices of our sexuality and denuding them of socially imbibed constructions will open up a safe space for discussing the diversity of our sexual behaviour.
By Abdullah Erikat
February 3, 2020
No Means No
It began in the third year of my PhD. I had just returned from India and a fellow classmate sent me an e-mail. The e-mail was about his feelings for me, asking me to consider a relationship with him.
By Divya Swaminathan
July 1, 2016
Neither Madonna nor MILF
For me, pregnancy was a strange state of being so present and so aware of my body, while at the same time being separate from it. This experience really did a number on me during those nine months and during the postpartum period.
By Tena Pick
June 1, 2023
Navigating the Liminal: Life and Identity in the Migrant’s ‘Third Space’
The nurse looked me up and down and asked about my last period. I responded that it had been recent and regular and that I wasn’t there about a reproductive issue but rather a potential stomach bug. “Mmm hmmm,” she responded, with more than a hint of dubiousness in her voice, and said, “Take this cup, pee into it and bring it back to me. We’ll run a pregnancy test.” I stared back at her. “I’m not pregnant!” She responded, “Well, we’ll see about that. Is that your mum outside? Young girls like you are always coming in like this.”
By Sheba Remy Kharbanda
September 1, 2016
My First Memories of Dabbling into online BDSM still Empower me after more than a Decade
If not for these memories, my exploration of sexuality would perhaps have stopped a few years ago, when I was single for a long time and didn’t know if I could find someone like me.
By Asmi
My First Memories of Dabbling into online BDSM still Empower me after more than a Decade
If not for these memories, my exploration of sexuality would perhaps have stopped a few years ago, when I was single for a long time and didn’t know if I could find someone like me.
By Asmi
My Fashion and Gender Journey: How I discovered they are both fluid
How could I be trans if I didn’t tick off all the correct checkboxes demanded by politics, law, society and even the transgender community itself?
By Kirti
October 19, 2023