When Screens Become Soulmates: Queer Love Across Distances
In the age of screens replacing hands and pixelated kisses, intimacy has become an act of digital co-creation. As a queer individual navigating a long-distance relationship, my smartphone is not just a tool, it is the third presence in my apparent two-person monogamous love story. It holds our messages, voice notes, blurry […]
Something Rotten? A think-piece
In 2007, when Maya Indira Ganesh and I started working on sexual rights and the internet in India, it was a sparse field. We had both worked for a decade already on gender and sexuality as feminist activists and researchers, but the question of how technology was affecting women and girls in India was something […]
Routine Tech, Intimate Memories: Unwrapping Queer Temporalities through Digital Archives
Illustrated by Niv In a country like India, where surveillance and self-censorship are so pervasive, the virtual realm—specifically chat—becomes an unintended space for building connections. Queer desires are rarely spoken aloud; they are almost always written down. For queer individuals, intimacy unfolds mostly in the digital realm. Queer desires often bloom in the hidden corners […]
Singing Of Shringaar: Negotiating Female Desire In 20th Century Hindi Cinema
In Casablanca (1942), Ilsa makes an impassioned plea to Rick, “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.” Leading ladies in Hindi films, unfortunately, are rarely afforded the same frankness and have historically been confined to more subtle means of expressing their longings. The celebration of feminine desire on-screen is rare; rarer […]
Three of Us: A Slice Of Grief
Devotion, Freedom and Desiring Bodies
Dear Mira, My earliest memories of you are fictionalized glimpses of you swaying along the temple on the sea shore of Dwarka. I taste the salt in my mouth and your melodies, mere to giridhar gopal, dusro na koi (Mine is only Giridhar Gopal, no one else is mine) (Jairam) start ringing in my ears. […]
Just Another Story
Sinning in a shiny new satellite city called Adinobagh was inevitable. No other city begged for it in the same way. A city that is not really going to make it, that is trying too hard, that is anonymous, artificial. A city that might rise to the occasion if you were desperate enough. For an […]
A Tiger Learns to Leap
Shamsher Singh was on his way to consummate his marriage. To set the record straight, he wasn’t married to Bhanu yet. But their parents had met and decided that they were a perfect match for one another. And then Shamsher’s family pandit had adjudicated that it should happen within the next two months. Or else […]
Tu Kisi Rail Si
Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai. Mai kisi pul sa thar-tharata hu.’ Tu Kisi Rail Si‘guzarti hai,Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai.Mai kisi pul sa thar-tharata hu.’1 Sonku has vivid dreams in August and blames the humidity. The visions from last night have deeply moved him. Swanand Kirkire draped in Sonku’s mother’s saree, crooning him […]
In Transit
Back when they were in school, Rhea invented a game called “Let’s Pretend We’re Strangers”. The premise was simple, one can gauge it from the name. Neither party knows the other. “It’s like playing house, but the opposite,” is how Ara would often summarize it. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Rhea, ditzy as […]
