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
Introduction: As this first-person account of Anita, a Devadasi in Maharashtra, Western India illustrates, issues of consent and violence/coercion cannot…
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.
My first ‘date’ was at a festival screening of an understated French-Canadian film that featured a tremendous amount of chatter and Chopin. I qualify ‘date’ because, while I was certainly on the brink of tumbling head over heels, the object of my affection, let’s call her ObjA, was blithely unaware of the romantic hopes that hinged upon our meeting.
In the middle of this pandemic, can one seek sexual support in the form of a hook up with one’s best friend, ‘just because’? Is it redefining boundaries, is it sympathy sex, is it simple indulgence, or is it something that one or both might later resent?
Have you ever heard the old adage, “You have to love yourself before anybody else can love you”? Well, I grew up interpreting this in the absolutely most terrible way possible.
I did my schooling and higher studies in Delhi. Thanks to a compulsorily uniform attire at school, the differences in socio-economic backgrounds of students were successfully erased. But as one enters college, one’s attire gets significant attention, especially for a person from a weak socio-economic background. This transition period from school to college is also the age of sexual anxieties, experiments and experiences.
Youngsters are bombarded every day with messages related to sexuality, sex and relationships from various sources. And we also know that not all the information they encounter prepares them well to make choices.