Queer
Brushstrokes: Finding Home
For a lot of queer people, ‘home’ can hold complicated meanings. The space of one’s home can be fraught with bigotry and alienation, and be far from safe or comforting. And so, there is a quest to find alternate ‘homes’, to find a space where we feel truly accepted, safe and protected.
By Curated Content
April 1, 2020
Brushstrokes: Closets
Robot Hugs, in their insightful comic, take on closets as inherently oppressive structures built to uphold what is acceptable and…
By Curated Content
July 1, 2020
Breaking new ground: Maja Ma’s portrayal of queerness in a traditional Indian family
This reconciliation between Pallavi’s public (seemingly) heterosexual and closeted lesbian identities points to a distinctly Indian way of avoiding polarities through a new social arrangement where both identities are allowed the space to flourish.
By Juhi Sidharth and Chaitanya Ravi
Brajabuli as a vehicle of queer desires: love songs in Rituparno Ghosh’s films
In my opinion, Ghosh was in search of a language of cinema which could be adequately expressive of queerness; he was slowly moving towards inventing that language, which would not be alienating to his conformist audiences, yet, would be intelligibly pleasurable to his (informed) queer viewers.
By Kaustav Bakshi
Beyond Romance: A-Spec Identities in Heartstopper
The assumption that everyone experiences love and attraction in a similar manner is deeply alienating and harmful for the a-spec community.
By Aashi Singh
February 15, 2024
Being of Queer Age
The conversion of the noun (adult) into the verb form (adulting) implies that ‘adulting’ is more performance than inevitability. Which is to say, there is no intrinsic understanding of ‘adulting’; it is something that can be learnt over time.
By Roshan Roy
March 15, 2021
Being A Queer Woman Helped Me Accept My Body
Being a woman who loves other women, I realised that women look at me with the same tender gaze I look at them with. And that, more than anything, has made me feel at peace with my body. I hope to one day love it
By Curated Content
April 15, 2020
Becoming a Womxn: An Autobiography on Pleasure
Pleasure, in the context of the private, defines the parlance of sexual satisfaction. As a womxn, the private is also the public: how I present and play with my gender, is a way of seeking validation of who I am.
By Neel
February 17, 2020
At Chattar Manzil
We are two boys in our early twenties
who can read touch like that, who have broken into
a 200-year-old mansion, without permission,
to see from above where people like them go
after 377 has been read down only for those
who can stay behind closed doors — in the custody
of cheap hotels, or houses that welcome nights
with the sound of latches closing.
By Aditya Vikram
February 16, 2023
July 16, 2025
Acting Like Myself
In this month’s issue of Play and Sexuality, Wesley D’Souza recounts the time his school put up a production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, his preparations for its audition, and how the process was intertwined with an exploration and acceptance of his sexuality.
By Wesley D'Souza
December 15, 2021
Acting Like Myself
Wesley D’Souza recounts the time his school put up a production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, his preparations for its audition, and how the process was intertwined with an exploration and acceptance of his sexuality.
By Wesley D'Souza
January 3, 2023
A Queer Art of Longing
Like failure, longing is not interested in happy endings – whether of straight or non-heterosexual relations.
By Ketan Jain
June 18, 2024