Voices
A Manifesto for Single Women
Singleness represents eschewing all that patriarchy imposes on us in the name of emotional and financial protection. Women who decide not to marry defy age-old ‘wisdom’ mixed with terrible psychological and biologically-backed explanations.
By Sonia Soans
February 1, 2021
A Letter To My 16-Year-Old Self
You see, you are being pushed and pulled in all directions because people around you, whether family, friends or the larger society, expect you to behave in a particular fashion and stick to existing norms. However, your inner voice is telling you to challenge these norms and follow your own path.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
January 3, 2023
A Letter To My 16-Year-Old Self
You see, you are being pushed and pulled in all directions because people around you, whether family, friends or the larger society, expect you to behave in a particular fashion and stick to existing norms. However, your inner voice is telling you to challenge these norms and follow your own path.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
February 3, 2020
A Knife that Cuts Skin and Soul
Beauty – a word that often haunts me, and ironically also a key idea in the process of my own…
By Pavel Sagolsem
October 15, 2018
A Journey of Unfolding
My identity unfolded slowly during my postgraduate media studies course, where I was exposed to peers from different socio-economic backgrounds.
By Apoorva Ravi
June 18, 2024
A Handful of Pills for this Body
The short-lived thinness had left me before I knew it. I became fat, and thereby undesirable, once again. A chasm appeared in my relationship with my body. Its ways of responding had become strange. My form became unfamiliar to me, and to those around me.
By Trijita
June 16, 2023
A GARDEN OF ONE’S OWN
Therapy gives us tools and time, but the actual work of dismantling the forest is ours as we are the only persons with access to that forest. So queer affirmative therapy validates our beliefs and helps us identify the poison, cut it down, dissect it, unroot it.
By Poorva Parashar
January 4, 2021
A Garden of One’s Own
Therapy is a space to heal and grow. It helped me to accept my identity as an anxious, cisgender, South Asian, bisexual woman. Moreover, I have come up with the perfect response next time someone asks me, “But why do you think you are bisexual?”
By Poorva Parashar
August 3, 2020
A Disruptive Sexuality
People’s movements and sexuality. There is dissonance in this. Hugging trees, protesting dams, Swadeshi and boycott, anti-apartheid, anti-psychiatry, anti-war, child rights, flags, banners and marches. What does hugging a tree have to do with sexuality? Women’s rights, gay pride, these movements are people’s movements quite regularly seen in the frame and context of sexuality. But the others?
By Shikha Aleya
December 5, 2016
A class on porn, anyone?
It’s technology that has allowed me, amidst the lockdown, to connect with so many people and I dare say, sext and share photos. It’s technology that has allowed me and many others access to things like porn, fetish websites, and to buy sex toys and so much more without leaving our beds!
By Abdullah Erikat
August 3, 2020
A Chicken Tikka Roll For Real Men
Bakasura Chicken Tikka Roll. 100% Wholesome. Made for Real Men. In the home delivery menu card of a local restaurant,…
By Shikha Aleya
October 1, 2015
A Café of Our Own?: The Politics of Queer Spatiality in Urban India
This essay is a brief rumination about queer café’s in urban India. Written as part reflection, part recollection, this essay…
By Swati Vijaya and Debanuj Dasgupta
December 18, 2017
A Cafe Of Our Own?: The Politics Of Queer Spatiality In Urban India
Queer cafés are not exempt from the fast changing landscape of Indian metropolitan areas and offer both inclusion as well as exclusion from the promise of a queer utopia.
By Swati Vijaya and Debanuj Dasgupta
(In)Convenient Choices and Queer Affective Lives: The Story of My Mother and Me
My mother and I have both made certain choices, sometimes inconvenient for me, sometimes difficult for her, but those choices have revealed to me the strength of our relationship and alternative possibilities that she and I can imagine together.
By Sohini Chatterjee
“The more you confine me, the more I will spill over”
The collection Wild Girls, Wicked Words is an anthology of poetry translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmstrom. The collection contains…
By Vasugi Kailasam
January 1, 2015