Voices
Poem: ‘The thing about crushes’
The thing about crushes, is that eventually they stop being that. I’m not saying love dies or anything, I’m just saying, that Love never was and sometimes it takes a few months of tumbling across perfumed bedsheets
By Breton Lalama
February 1, 2021
Poem: ‘A debauchee’s ode to self-love’
All I have known of loving men is emotional labour, And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil, Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself, Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex
By Malini Gopalakrishnan
February 1, 2021
Pleasure and Danger: The role of mobile phones in the intimate lives of adolescent girls in a Mumbai slum
“My brother does not want me to buy a mobile phone. He says that there are already three phones in…
By Juhi Sidharth
Please Touch: Tactile Art as a Medium of Exploration
Most of us, during childhood, internalised the lesson that sex or pleasure is ‘dirty’ and ‘bad’. Artists around the world are increasingly using ‘tactile art’ to challenge the shame and embarrassment that people feel when they look at their bodies.
By Isha Vajpeyi
August 14, 2020
Playlist: Separation and Longing in Bollywood Movies
Watch some popular Bollywood music videos about separated lovers across the decades.
By Ramya Anand
September 15, 2016
Playing With Love
I’m a sucker for love. And I don’t want to be a party pooper either. There is lots I have…
By Jaya Sharma
February 1, 2016
Playing ball
The gendered assumption that girls are generally disinterested in sports, could be easily refuted by the fact that the principal’s office shelf was adorned with multiple trophies awarded to the girls’ hockey team for winning championships.”
By Bijayalaxmi Biswal and Karen Coelho
April 21, 2023
Picking Pockets: Why Functional Clothing Matters for Feminism
The link between women’s clothing and patriarchy is important to acknowledge and understand if we are to address some pertinent questions around women’s agency and ability to exercise control over their choices, bodies and sexuality – questions that feminists around the world, including in South Asia, continue to struggle with.
By Kristin Francoeur and Surabhi Srivastava
Peek-A-Boo: Navigating Conversations on Sexuality with Young People as an Educator in India
Despite the lack of a formal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum in place in India, there has been a growing interest in providing CSE programmes in schools.
By Ayesha Khaliq and Nandhini Jaishankar
PDA: Slippery Slope from Law to Moral Policing
Sexuality is taboo in our context, and expressions of it publicly or even in the home setting outside the bedroom, especially by those who are not in ‘legitimate’ relationships ‘alarm the modesty’ and are generally considered anti-culture or simply categorised as Western concepts.
By Yoshita Srivastava
September 1, 2020
Partition Stories: The Time My Grandmother Carried Ghalib Across the Border
When rumours of the Partition spread, many families began leaving their homes and moving out. How the Hindus and Sikhs behaved there (in what was to be India), Muslims did the same things here (in what was to be Pakistan). They would say, ‘Let’s go loot!’
By Surbhi Dewan
Owning Our Boundaries
The concept of boundaries has become mixed up with the concept of being bound in a this-far-and-no-further way. They have become enclosures, aquariums, cages built for those who inhabit them, but not necessarily built by them.
By Shikha Aleya
April 3, 2017
Out For Fun, In For Trouble
Social media and dating platforms provide new opportunities for connection, but they also elevate the potential risk of harm associated with any online engagement. The anonymity of the interaction can serve both as a source of freedom and potential exploitation.
By Namrata Dond and Vanshika Negi
April 17, 2025
Othering the Unlikeable Woman in Hindi Cinema
When I saw Alia Bhatt’s gloriously flawed Kaira in the film ‘Dear Zindagi’ (2016), I felt so gratified I could have jumped up and cheered. To paraphrase, she resolutely sheds the burden that Hindi film heroines have been hefting on their always-delicate shoulders since the first hero whistled wolfishly across the street – the need to be relentlessly likeable.
By Damini Kulkarni
January 5, 2017