Pleasure
Home-coming
The morning was heavy, laden with the weight of expectation, with the unsettling realisation that something was about to shift.
By Niv, Vanshika Gupta, Anjani Chadha
November 19, 2024
Having a Tea with You
On calls your voice greets me, balm to the parched everything.
By Carol D'Souza
October 15, 2025
From Judy Blume To The Sexy Internet: What Counts As Erotica?
This question of appropriateness is, for me, at the heart of all questions around sexuality. Each of us carries within us our own private benchmarks for which expressions of sexuality we find appropriate, and which ones, in turn, have crossed an invisible line. The ones we believe belong across the border, in the land of the inappropriate, of the too much.
By Richa Kaul Padte
Friendships, or, That in which we decouple coupledom from the economies of marriage
I was not simply stuck within the binaries of “same-sex” or “opposite sex,” assuming that any reference to “same-sex” is in itself already revolutionary. But the call to recognise friendship, is a call to recognise so many forms of community that are made invisible by the emphasis within a liberal or conservative framework on “marriage” as the only path to family making.
By Shweta Krishnan
Friendships, or, That in which we decouple coupledom from the economies of marriage
I was not simply stuck within the binaries of “same-sex” or “opposite sex,” assuming that any reference to “same-sex” is in itself already revolutionary. But the call to recognise friendship, is a call to recognise so many forms of community that are made invisible by the emphasis within a liberal or conservative framework on “marriage” as the only path to family making.
By Shweta Krishnan
For I Am A Woman
For I was a woman / Taught to chain herself gracefully / In an invisible cage.
By Khushi Pahuja
February 3, 2020
Following Aladdin’s Genie
The lip colour then enters into a rather queer state of existence as it refuses to stand by the label it is expected to conform to. It moves and escapes categorisation. In its queerness, it renders itself as a paradox. At the heart of paradoxes is the understanding that something is what it is also not. Similarly, the colour of this lipstick is nude, but it is also not. It is possible that it is because of this slippery nature of the paradox that my sexuality as my identity too remains slippery, in motion and fluid.
By Muskan Nagpal
June 15, 2021
Finding The Pleasure Point In Internet Policy Spaces
Someone called me a policy animal a few years back and I grudgingly agreed that indeed I’m one of those people who does get excited by the idea of influencing policy negotiations and policymaking
By Curated Content
February 17, 2020
Find Yourself – A Triptych
As we grow and experience intimate relationships, pleasure becomes taboo or is only okay as a performance for another person, rather than our right as human beings.
By Suryaa Rajan
November 19, 2024
Faith, Pleasure and The Da Vinci Code
In my adulthood, I have experienced God outside of how I was taught to experience Him. I have discovered that I am a sexual being with infinite ways of experiencing pleasure. Almost all of these ways are outside of the tame abstinence-penetrative sex to get pregnant-abstinence cycle prescribed by the Catholic Church
By Sheena D'Lima
November 1, 2019
Editorial– Friendship and Sexuality
Friendship – a place where we can be ourselves as we truly are, with no artifice. A place of peace,…
By TARSHI
November 17, 2025
Editorial– CSE and Affirming Ecosystems
CSE’s ‘natural habitat’ is often considered to be the classroom, but as our contributors show us, CSE also lives, breathes and thrives in habitats as disparate as neighbourhood parks, jobs-training centres, playgrounds and sports fields, law schools, family discussions, and digital spaces.
By TARSHI
December 16, 2025
Editorial: Singlehood and Sexuality
In this issue of In Plainspeak our contributors reflect on and reveal the myriad facets of being single – is it a choice? A condition? A state of being? Lonely? Joyful? Not one or the other, but a glorious mix?
By TARSHI
February 15, 2021
Editorial: Sexuality and Pleasure
Fragile and fleeting like soap bubbles, pleasure shines with many colours. But its iridescence is frightening for many. Perhaps because its colours change in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways, and though fragile and fleeting, it is a world in itself
By TARSHI
February 17, 2020