Voices
Migration, Gender and Identity in the New Political Economy
Migration is synonymous with change. Migration of an individual from one place to another involves fundamental changes in attributes that…
By Mansi Wadhwa
November 1, 2014
Meet me behind the bushes
With access to private spaces taken away on account of the pandemic, suddenly couples from liberal and affluent backgrounds found themselves in the same position as couples from less privileged backgrounds – desperately looking for pockets of privacy.
By Gitanjali
April 18, 2024
Meditations on love (an opinion piece based on the movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
I am fascinated by the question of how lovers reveal themselves to themselves and one another over time. In my…
By Rhea Kuthoore
Media and the Power of Responsible Representation
It is the winter of 2013, and my father and I are sitting at an awkward distance from each other…
By Rohini Banerjee
June 15, 2021
Media and the Power of Responsible Representation
It is the winter of 2013, and my father and I are sitting at an awkward distance from each other on the living room couch, our eyes trained on the television set as a popular prime time news debate discusses a subject we have never before talked to each other about – homosexuality. It is only a few days since Section 377 has been reinstated by the Supreme Court, and the television and print media bombards us with discussion after discussion on ‘alternate’ sexualities and LGBTQ rights.
By Rohini Banerjee
July 2, 2018
Meanings, Naughty and Potent!
Lots of things, people, and moments have possibilities for stirring the erotic within us. The bible, the dictionary or the stories on nifty.org may become pre-texts to something new within ourselves and others.
By Andy Stephen Silveira
July 15, 2019
Meanings and Meaninglessness
Gender has perplexed me throughout life. I never quite understood femininity or masculinity much – I mostly lived in what other people thought I was. One thing I did know always is that I never, ever, want to be seen as a man. But can I still hold masculinity?
By Sudipta Das
May 19, 2025
Meanings and Meaninglessness
Gender has perplexed me throughout life. I never quite understood femininity or masculinity much – I mostly lived in what other people thought I was. One thing I did know always is that I never, ever, want to be seen as a man. But can I still hold masculinity?
By Sudipta Das
January 16, 2026
Marriage as Risk
So, what are the risks in a marriage? Well, the first and the most obvious one is that you don’t know if the partner you’ve chosen or has been chosen for you will make you happy. In the Indian context, even if they do make you happy, the family might not be too thrilled about the match.
By Sadaf Vidha
October 5, 2020
Male Gaze? What About Some Disco Balls?
I recently attended a talk titled ‘Streeshakti’ at the Jaipur Literature Festival. One of the speakers Lata Sharma, a Rajasthani…
March 1, 2015
Making Space for Queerness in the Lives of Children
Queerness is a free-flowing identity that embraces anyone, including young children, who step off the assigned binary path.
By Riya Parikh
June 18, 2024
Making Sex-Ed for Parents Accessible: Let’s Start With Our Bookstores
Looking for birthday gifts for nieces and nephews in a favourite, well-curated bookshop in Delhi, we were dismayed that we couldn’t find any books that told the kinds of stories that we would like for kids today to read and hear.
By Kristin Francoeur and Surabhi Srivastava
Love, Marriage, and the Neoliberal World Order
On June 27, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States of America held, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires a state…
By Debanuj DasGupta
August 1, 2015
Love, Lust and PDA
Six years later (and out of such an abusive relationship), as I sit in a Gender Studies classroom discussing public and private spheres, being introduced to the feminist ideology of the personal being political, I reflect back and see my experiences as emerging from a complex discursive pattern. The peculiar way in which heterosexual romantic relationships are envisaged and the potentiality of them being disruptive of traditional arrangements of companionship requires them to be manifested outside of the four walls of home and family. Yet, one faces a situation of a pathetic lack of safe spaces within the public sphere and the traditional discourse of love being private and contained within the private sphere…
By Anannya Chatterjee
April 1, 2019