LGBTQIA

Issue in Focus: The Heart of Being
An abstractly painted image with magenta and blue and splashes of red, yellow, and black colour. In the background, two brown-black silhouettes.

To chase down our own vulnerabilities around sexuality is a short run around the corner, five minutes ago, last night sleeping alone, with a lover, a partner who lost interest, the Insta post that leaves you feeling you’re not good enough for the hug, the kiss, the cuddle and are you perhaps the A of LGBTQIA+?

By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2023
Issue in Focus: The Heart of Being
Interview – Raj Mariwala
A photograph of MHI director Raj Mariwala; she is playing with a grey-brown dog, squatting in grass.

Self-care is influenced by the environment we inhabit, the way we relate to others, the way we negotiate with other living beings or structures. Self-care is also interlinked with other types of care – whether that is in community resources, psychosocial support, engagement with medical and health care institutions, and of course in collective agency and solidarity.

By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2023
Interview – Raj Mariwala
Unscripted
A black-and-white photo of a hand resting by an elbow, holding a cigarette. The nails are painted in a dark solid colour.

She turns towards me when I speak, and I can feel her eyes thinking over my words, sensitive to any hint of criticism. Her thighs slide against mine, and for a moment we are both distracted by the naked coolness of our bodies. For a moment, we look at each other.

By Sami S
January 3, 2023
Unscripted
Editorial – Queering Sexuality
hundreds of jellyfish of diverse colours - orange, blue, pink, white, green, and more.

Queering transcends the confines of symmetry and is a way of looking, of breaking established meaning, of making new meaning, and of being and becoming that offers us the promise of fluidity, flux and freedom. 

By TARSHI
December 12, 2022
Editorial – Queering Sexuality
Interview – Srila Roy
photograph of Prof Srila Roy leaning against a wall with her hands folded

“Questions of difference should not be a cause for despair. There are examples from history and our own lives that show how we can connect across difference and stand in solidarity with one another…”

By Shikha Aleya
December 12, 2022
Interview – Srila Roy
The Promise of Queer Failure as a Way of Life
A copy of the book The Queer Art of Failure being held up against a colourful backdrop that has the words 'Resistance and Resilience'. The book is being held up and the image shows the hand of the person holding it. The thumb is painted purple.

In a world where queerness is looked at as failure, The Queer Art of Failure allows for many possibilities to make sense of these failures.

By Rajeev Anand Kushwah
December 12, 2022
The Promise of Queer Failure as a Way of Life
Video: Sonali Udaybabu – Which Came First
the image is a screenshot from the video and has the shadow of Sonali Udaybabu holding a phone and recording themselves. on the left is the shadow of another person who appears to be a passerby. the text 'or my queerness?' appears as a subtitle.

Which Came First is a film about identity, desires, queerness–it captures the essence of self-discovery.

By Sonali Udaybabu
December 12, 2022
Video: Sonali Udaybabu – Which Came First
Video: Anahita – Queer
Screenshot from the video, with Anahita standing in front of a mic, wearing a green top and a colourful scarf around the neck. Behind Anahita is a guitar player seated on a stool. To the right of the guitar player is a lamp on a stand

Watch Queer, a hard-hitting spoken word poem by Anahita Sarabhai, co-founder of QueerAbad.

By Curated Content
December 12, 2022
Video: Anahita – Queer
Queer Spatiality Facilitates Queer Connections: The Pandemic Took It Away
photo of Rajeev in a pink tee-shirt and light brown pants and holding a sign saying 'Born this way'. They are standing in front of a pride rainbow pasted on a wall. There are colourful post-its on a black patch on the wall.

The space where we get an education and form our ideas about the world, and especially about people who are not like us (read: minorities) holds importance, especially for me as a queer Bahujan person.

By Rajeev Anand Kushwah
November 15, 2022
Queer Spatiality Facilitates Queer Connections: The Pandemic Took It Away
Issue in Focus
An abstract image of waves.

Expanding contexts give the word ‘movement’ different meanings and value. Physical, conceptual, technological, relationship, emotional, mental, power, knowledge, ability, access, may be amongst the contexts immediately identified.

By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Issue in Focus
Masculinity, queer representation, and the motifs of movement in ‘Dedh Ishqiya’
A shot from the film featuring the two female leads, one is preparing a paan with the other’s face resting on her shoulder. Both the women are smiling.

The film has all the makings and trimmings of a commercial thriller – a dynamic story, song and dance, an action-packed climax – and at the same time, it is a cinephile’s film.

By Srishti Gupta
May 3, 2022
Masculinity, queer representation, and the motifs of movement in ‘Dedh Ishqiya’
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
Poster of the movie Nagarkirtan. A woman with short hair is leaning her chin on the shoulders of a man who is playing a flute. The name of the movie is written in Bengali, followed by its translation in English that reads “The Eunuch and The Flute Player”. Below it is the text that reads, “A Film by Kaushik Ganguly”, following which is a list of awards won by the movie at the 2018 National Awards.

The plot of the movie narrates the tale of the love that grows between two people who are struggling to survive in a world of rootlessness and are continuing to make a cosy home for themselves. The love between Madhu, who works as a food delivery boy, and Puti, who survives by singing at traffic signals, blossoms while they cross paths everyday at the traffic signal and the look that they exchange appears to us as if each of them is trying to find a home in the other.

By Ria Basu
April 18, 2022
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
Interview – Sameera Khan
Photo of Sameera Khan. She has long black hair and is standing in a garden. She is wearing a black kurta, a deep emerald dupatta and a black necklace.

But what has been amazing to witness is how quickly young women in particular, took to the ideas of Why Loiter? and pushed them even further, creating new movements to expand women’s rights to the public, including the right to be out late at night, to stretch the curfew at women’s hostels, to demand extended access to women’s toilets, to public transport etc.

By Shikha Aleya
April 1, 2022
Interview – Sameera Khan
A ‘Room’ of One’s Own – Sexuality, Self-expression, and Safe Spaces on Clubhouse
Photo of a smartphone screen displaying the logos of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Clubhouse.

In theory, the concept of the app is a great one – it provides women, queer people, and people belonging to oppressed castes the tea-stall, cigarette-shop type of public spaces for conversation that are available to upper-caste cis het men. The relative anonymity acts like a safe cover, and the app affords a certain autonomy and agency to marginalised people to regulate the kind of conversation that goes on in rooms moderated by them.

By Srishti Gupta
April 1, 2022
A ‘Room’ of One’s Own – Sexuality, Self-expression, and Safe Spaces on Clubhouse
Public Sex and the Police in Urban Spaces
A photo of heterosexual couple sitting cross-legged on a rampart beside the sea. The man is wearing a blue shirt and there are shopping bags beside him. Beside him, only the mid-length hair of the woman can be seen. In the horizon is the city skyline of Mumbai with skyscrapers and other buildings at golden hour.

While sex workers face repeated harassment by the police, many young couples face threats in a one-off incident if the police finds them with their partner/lover. They may face police surveillance of expressions of intimacy and affection in public.

By Shruti Arora
April 1, 2022
Public Sex and the Police in Urban Spaces
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