relationships
The Hollowness of (Performed) Masculinity
Men perform an identity that they don’t fully understand. The pressure to appear strong while feeling the full range of emotions that they cannot express creates a hollow inside, creates a quiet dissonance, a loneliness that is rarely spoken of but deeply felt.
By Shaifila Ladhani
April 17, 2025
The Heart of Dating: The Debrief
The Debrief is a girlhood ritual as old as dating itself.
By Tanvi Khemani
November 17, 2025
The Gendered Muscle in Gym Spaces
I can recall my experiences in the washrooms of different gyms that I have been a member of. A men’s washroom is an interesting place in terms of how sexuality manifests itself in its various aspects. It was not unusual to see men of various kinds with strange energies in these washrooms.
By Shiva Chauhan
April 1, 2022
February 1, 2014
The Falsity of ‘Happily-Ever-Afters’: Examining Coupledom in ‘Lust Stories’
The anthology’s pull rests in its sincere and frank portrayal of male and female desires cutting across the divides of age, sexuality, and socioeconomic position. In terms of romance, the idealistic, till-death-do-us-part fantasy peddled by our movies and mainstream literature has been replaced by a realistic portrayal of modern relationships.
By Srishti Gupta
The Editorial: Relationships and Sexuality
Is there a relationship at all that cannot be defined by love? And, if we were to begin talking of relationships other than romantic love, how would we speak of sexuality? Upon this deliberation, we realised that our Love and Sexuality issue seemed to revolve around romantic love and sex. The departure this issue on Relationships and Sexuality makes is to try and incorporate forms of relationships that might not be about romantic love but have their own kind of romance, and facets of sexuality that might not be about sex per se but will place its interest in alternate relationships to it.
By TARSHI
May 16, 2016
April 15, 2026
The Banyan Tree
It’s clear Ms. Nisha is not here to shame them or lecture them. She’s here to give them words when they have none.
By Taarina Therese Chandiramani
December 18, 2024
The Anatomy of a Queer Body
I smell the judgement
and the disappointment
of my parents as I enter the hall;
it stinks of their silence on my sexuality.
By Gokul Prabhu
June 16, 2023
Ten Years of Changing the Script
Masculinity is like a script given to boys early in their lives. There is a constant pressure to fit into the box of toughness, and be silent and dominating. But what if we all rewrite this script?
By Urasmita Ghosh
April 17, 2025
Take Desire For Instance
Could it be that other changes in our lives make it even more difficult to conceive the desire of the ‘other’, specifically of those with whom we don’t share as many conversations, with whom we’ll soon, I expect, lose entirely the ability to speak?
By Cat D
March 17, 2025
Swipe me left, I’m Dalit
Dalit women are primarily viewed as victims and survivors of various kinds of violence. Reification of the Dalit identity has led to the boxing of our existence whose dimensions are solely defined by the savarna (dominant caste) gaze. Our self-assertions of identity are commodified to create a warped limiting of our lives, creating an image that is voiceless in the minds of our potential suitors. We are not seen as being capable of desire, love or happiness; we don’t exist as individuals outside of violence.
By Curated Content
June 15, 2021
Sweet Sixteen
At sixteen, the senior boy I loved, touched me down there and said, this is what boyfriends do, this is what love feels like – uncomfortable.
By Tapaswinee
December 1, 2020
February 17, 2026