Desire
Reel Review: Desire and Conciliation in Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram
Satyam Shivam Sundaram (Truth, God, Beauty) is the story of Rupa (Zeenat Aman), an archetypical abhagan (wretched girl), whose misery begins at her birth when her mother dies. She is immediately declared an accursed child and is shunned by others. Later, a freak accident results in scalding oil splashing across one side of her face, leaving her permanently scarred. Nevertheless, she goes about her daily life – alone, yet content.
By Syed Saad Ahmad
Reclaiming Being Single Against Emma Watson’s Self Partnered
Emma Watson spoke to British Vogue about the incredible amounts of stress and anxiety that follows, “…if you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30, and you’re not in some incredibly secure, stable place in your career, or you’re still figuring things out…”
By Feminism in India
February 15, 2021
Quick Bytes with Taash
The relationship with my body is so fragmented that there’s not a primary “real” me, and that’s also how I locate queerness within disability.
By Taash
November 19, 2024
Quick Bytes with Sara Haque
… practicing a life rooted in love and a shared sense of oneness with the living world.
By Sara Haque
July 16, 2025
QUEERNESS AND PRIVACY[1]: BABY I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEVER HOLD BACK FROM ME
For so long, private has meant a place that I was forced to create, claim and carve out to hide away from the public violence. And if I’ve been allowed to further wallow in it then I don’t want to – thank you very much.
By Curated Content
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.
By Neel
June 15, 2021
Polyamory: A Desire for a New Self
If not him, there is his brother – Mir, are there any restrictions in love? Mir Taqi Mir, 18th century…
By Aishwarya Singh
May 1, 2020
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
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
On Trans-Masculine Lesbianism: The Values in the Unintelligible
Unlike many trans-masculine people who identified as lesbians/tomboys/butch pre-transitioning, I refused to abandon my ‘lesbian’ identity post-transitioning. A negotiation that took time to flourish.
By Aranya Vadera
On the Sustainability of (Non) Romance
Contemporary and predominant imaginations of intimacy focus primarily on a sex-centric (romance-centric?) model which assumes that sexual desire exists and holds the same value for every person and every relationship regardless of their subjective positions. Sexual intent and desire are often the cruces of how relational aspects such as intimacy are socially constructed.
By Fariha Sameen
February 15, 2022
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