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My Body Has Become An Open Wound

Chemo saved her from cancer, but took away the ability to enjoy sex and intimacy. In an interview with Agents of Ishq, Amulya*, cancer survivor, unpacks her emotions of life post treatment

Q: What was your relationship with your body before being diagnosed with cancer? 

A: Right from my teenage years, I’ve been more tomboyish than girly. I look petite and dainty, but mentally I’m more one of the guys. Makeup, skirts. . . all of that was never something that I was interested in. But I was happy with my body in the sense that I wasn’t overweight, I wasn’t unhealthy, I was fit, I was running around, I looked okay. I never needed to use any products.

Q: The treatment lasted a couple of years. How did that change your body in terms of your energy levels, the things that you could do? How did it affect other things about your body that you like? 

A: Cancer is hereditary in my family. At the age of 37—I am 45 years old now—I tested positive for the BRCa gene. While it was a shock, I also knew that lots of people have it and that I would be fine. So, it wasn’t earth shattering. My kids were three and six years old at the time, so I also didn’t have the luxury of being devastated. 

With the treatment, the first thing that happened immediately was the surgery. They took the left breast out completely. Within about six to eight months of the mastectomy, we realised that the only sure way of dealing with this was to completely neutralise every single risk of getting cancer. Because of the genetic propensity, I was in the 85% bracket where it could go into my right breast, my uterus, ovaries. It could spread anywhere, and it would just mean that I would have to keep going for surgery and getting chemo, every few years. 
I got my right breast, my uterus, ovaries, and everything else removed too. The doctor kept saying that while having them did pose a health risk, these were healthy body parts. I told him, “sure, they may be healthy now, but not healthy three months down the line. I don’t want to finish 36 sessions of chemo and then realise that now I have to do this all over again.”

It wasn’t even so much a discussion, but more about me marching into the doctor’s office and saying, “I have thought about this long and hard. I have read up what I can and I need you to do this. If you’re not going to do this, I’m just going to go to the next available surgeon and get it done.”

So, for the first year, it was more about doing the chemo, doing the radiation. It was about eating healthy, getting my strength back, keeping your mind occupied. Life kept me busy and the pain was being managed. I was on really high steroids. I was a patient. 

Intimacy and sex with my husband obviously took a backseat. There were a couple of times when we attempted it, but I was not comfortable in the sense that it was painful. I was also just not ready. He was fine with it too. We put it on the back burner and went on with life.

Q: Did you discuss the surgeries and the effects of the therapy on your body and intimacy with your partner? 

A: To be honest, it wasn’t done simply because it wasn’t something that I may have read about it in passing when I was taking off your fallopian tubes and your ovary that affects your hormones. I knew that my hormones would be affected whatever I do. The doctors told me that it would put me in a forced menopause where I would never have my periods at all and that kind of has a cascading effect on hormones again. 

I did realise that hormones will be affected. I didn't realise to what extent and how much. I'm only finding that out now. 

For me, the surgeries meant that I would atleast be alive, as opposed to being tied to a hospital bed and having to keep doing rounds and rounds of chemo and watching each body part being taken off every few years. 

And so, at that time we (my husband and I) weren’t in the headspace to talk about intimacy or sex. It wasn’t a priority. 

Q What do you mean when you say you’re only now understanding how much your hormones would be affected? 

A: The radiation, for example, blew up my thyroid gland. Now I have thyroid on top of everything else. 

The thyroid gland has complicated the whole hormonal imbalance. Now, the sex drive is at a bare minimum. There is no desire left anymore, there is no energy left anymore. There are body image issues. 

At the time of the surgery, I didn’t have medical insurance. So, I thought “it’s all cosmetic, who cares, I’ll live without my boobs”. Now, every time I look at myself, I wish I had gone ahead and got my reconstruction surgery done because I don't like it now. Now, I actively really don't like my body. I don't want it anymore. 

I wear a prosthetic. It's annoying, heavy and it’s giving me a bad posture. I can never wear loose tops any more. 

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I used a toner because my skin has lost all elasticity. It’s just become so dull. I'm very careful about the kind of clothes I buy now because nothing that has a V-shaped neck can happen. 

The worst part is when I need to go do a facial, I can no longer go for a massage. Because they put their hands near my chest. There is no flesh there to massage and it hurts. I don't like anyone touching me there. I still can’t feel my armpits. There is no sensation anymore. So, the body has just become an open wound, a war zone. 

The other thing is the mind fog. No one ever tells you about that. But the chemo really gives you brain fog. The thyroid is not helping either. There are vast spaces in your mind that are now completely blank. As a journalist, words used to be my forte. And now I just struggle with simple things. Just remembering. The good thing is that now I have pens everywhere and I have chits of paper all over the house like okay- remember this, remember this, remember this, do this, do this. 

So, mentally it's kind of slowed me down. Physically it's definitely slowed me down in terms of emotionally connecting and having a healthy relationship with my husband. 

And I feel sorry for the guy because it's been years since he's had a good round of sex and I'm sorry that I just don't know what to do. Because, one, it’s super painful. Secondly, I just can't be bothered. I don't feel good. I don't want to have anything to do with anything. And it's just difficult. It's a struggle. The couple of times we managed to have sex it was hugely painful afterwards. And I just don't think I want to do this again. He says it’s okay, that we don’t need to, but it's not fair to him. So, the guilt is also there. Everything that I have gone through, he's been on the sidelines. He may not have carried the scars, but he is feeling the same shit. He's carrying the burden as well. 

There is painful vaginal dryness because mentally, you're not really stimulated, because your hormones just don't exist anymore. The few pleasure points that used to be there have also been screwed up. 

Q: What are the moments of tenderness or love, that can come in a relationship at times like this, then? 

A: I can’t take squeezes anymore. Even if my husband has to put his leg over mine it’s fine for three seconds. After that I tell him it’s too heavy. 

Earlier we used to have really good fun in bed like playing, kicking, and laughing, it used to be fun. And now he attempts even one little thing out of all those crazy things that we used to do. It’s just hurting, hurting all over because the bones have lost the capacity to take the weight. 

So, for moments of tenderness, yes there are a lot of hugs. For the longest time, it’s been this one thing that he started doing ever since I got my stitches removed and recovery has been happening. The last four, or five years, it’s been a massage. He’s the only person who can give you a back massage without any flinching, so legs, back, he will sit. 

But I can’t bear him coming to the front of me. I also refuse to let my husband see the surgery scars. I refuse to let him get close. 

It’s completely off-limits. The chest, the stomach, the front part of my body. I just can’t bear touching. It’s something that I’m uncomfortable with. So, that is where tenderness comes in right now. For us, it has become just that massage. Like head to toe, the back, the head, the legs. And I’ll sit there and massage him as well of course. It’s nowhere close to a massage but that’s about it. 

Q: What were the things that your partner did or things in general that made you feel supported or made you feel loved in those situations where everything was falling apart and scary?

A: The one thing that really helped was no matter how tired he was or I was, he would just sit and press my legs every day. It started with that because at that time I couldn’t even sit straight after surgeries and all, even my back or, I couldn’t sleep on one side. 

Things like making sure my water bottle is filled so I don’t have to get up in the night. He’s taken over the kitchen sort of space, he’ll do the cooking now. For a while, it was just him switching to coffee. 

In that sense, I think I have kind of won the lottery in terms of support and a caring and loving partner. But there are days when I just want to fling a pillow at him—especially now, as time has gone by and slowly, slowly things have kind of become normal. 

Every once in a while, he’ll ask why can’t we have sex. 

I’ve thrown some literature at him; I’ve told him how I feel and he says all that doesn’t matter to him. “It doesn’t matter if you have your breasts or not”. But it’s not the cosmetic part of it. He doesn’t understand hormones. 

So, we’re okay as we are in every other aspect of life but in terms of a sexual relationship, it’s just not there. That’s what cancer took away.

Q: You mentioned reading some literature, etc. all in. Are there other books, or other people that you’ve spoken to who sort of helped you perhaps understand this experience a little bit more? 

A: I've had a lot of conversations with people and read a lot of stuff on cancer in general. But now five years down the line, why isn't anyone discussing how this leaves you? 

The fact is that the chemo drugs are crazy and they take years to get out of your system. Why is it that nobody tells you that simple radiation well it's not simple really but radiation can literally throw up in your thyroid? I've never had thyroid in my life and now suddenly it's hypothyroidism. 

I know a lot of people who've been through similar breast cancer experiences who have had hysterectomies and they're all in a slightly older age group or in a slightly different place in life. There were women who said that they wanted the breast reconstruction done there and then. This is something that I found, especially abroad. 

I remember, the doctor didn't even ask me once if I would like to go in for breast reconstruction. It wasn't even an option on the table and at that point again it wasn't something that occurred to me really, but I remember that when I went again for something else to another doctor and he asked, “But why would you not consider a reconstruction surgery at the same time? That's a decision you should make in advance.” 

How come nobody told me? Why would they not counsel women when they are diagnosed and say these are your options? It’s as simple as that. Why is this not made part of the treatment process? Why are you leaving women to deal with this on their own? 

Q: It’s terrible to have to go through it so blind not knowing yeah what you're going to encounter next.

A: One of the side effects of the hormone replacement drug that I was supposed to take for five years, was that you could just die of heart failure. And the doctor said, “No, no, that’s a very extreme 0.01%.” I corrected him. It’s like 4%. And, considering the odds of me getting cancer at 36, I think I would have liked to know the odds, even if they were 4% and not 44%. So, I refused to take it. 

I just stopped that medication. The doctor said he couldn’t continue my treatment if I behaved like this. I told him that I took the chemo, I completed the radiation, I’d taken two years of hormone therapy by then. But it was making me sick, I cannot do this. 

There was no alternative therapy. So, I thought, considering I’ve gone into all of this so blind, I might as well just stop this and I’ll deal with the consequences as and when they come up.

Q: Post-treatment, were you able to find a new meaning or discover new ways to love yourself? 

A: This is where the struggle for now is that the treatment part is over. This is the next bit of the struggle that I'm realising I'm in the middle of—coming to terms with the body that I am now left with, the limitations of this body and how to make it work for me. And so, this is something that I am slowly making my way through. I don’t have answers. I don't know. 

So, there might be a good day when I might walk from my house to the station and then there might be a day when walking from my bed to the kitchen is a lot. 

In terms of body image, it is at its lowest. I don't think I have ever felt this bad. So again, because of the thyroid, because of the hormones, it is now overweight. So, the day that I walked into the hospital for my diagnosis and the nurse weighed me before my surgery, I was at a very cool 52. And, it was comfortable. I was happy.

I’d be picking up jeans off the rack. I would fit into a small. I now fit into a large or an XL. I have never even been through the medium stage. I just kind of bypassed it completely. 

I used to love swimming. I used to love being at the beach. I used to love being in the water. Now I’m just constantly worried if my fake boobs falling down. 

I don’t want to put on my prosthetics. I want my body back for God's sake. And I’m not even talking about the strength . . . at least make it look normal. I can't wear certain clothes. I can't go in the water until I'm prepared five levels down where I have a second bra at home, which has the inserts. I have waterproofs. I have a swimsuit that basically is up to my neck. And even then, I'm extremely conscious of them sagging. I am wondering if they are hanging down? Are they moving to my waist? I mean, where is my little so-called boob? It’s not fun anymore. It’s not happy. I can’t just pick up a whim and go travel anywhere. I have to really be careful.

That is where I'm stuck at because I don't like this thing I have become and cancer treatment, while it may have given me my life, it has taken a collateral that was just too much and it wasn't with my knowledge or my permission. But take the hand you get.

*Amulya is the pseudonym of a cancer survivor who shared her journey with Agents of Ishq in an interview with Div Rodricks

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I Thought I'd Be Too Cool For Vanity. But, It Was A Struggle.

Author Shormistha Mukherjee on struggling with self-image and reconnecting with intimacy during and post her breast cancer treatment

Q: When were you diagnosed with cancer?

SM: I am 50. I was diagnosed when I was 45 in March 2018. I had breast cancer. I had a mastectomy and reconstruction at the same time. And then, I had around 16 rounds of chemo, and 20 rounds of radiation. And I think I finished my treatment at the beginning of December. 

Q: What were the physical and emotional changes before and after the treatment? What was your relationship with your body before the diagnosis. What did the diagnosis change?

SM: I never expected to feel so strongly about the way I looked. I always thought I’ll be fine even if my hair falls off. Those were the least of my concerns, really. When it did happen, and when I buzzed my hair, I was fine. I thought I looked so GI Jane. 

But, between the chemo sessions, the hair would grow back and then I would go in for a round of chemo and then it would fall again and I kind of looked like a porcupine most of the time. You have patches. In the movies, they show people ekdum bald, but that’s not true. I think it was very eye opening for me that vanity is, I guess, part of all of us. I thought I was above vanity but I wasn’t. I think it was a very big realisation for me. 

Also, the way I looked started to change because of the steroids and the medicines. My face really puffed up. I got this hump in my neck, because of the steroids and big dark circles and stuff like that. And I just started looking like a very different person. 

I didn’t even know who I am anymore. For 45 years you see yourself every day and you have a way you look in your own head. Now suddenly what you look like in your head, and what you see in the mirror is so different. It was an awful struggle. And I’ve always thought that that would not be the struggle. I’m just way too cool for this. But no, it is a very big struggle.

Q: Did you feel disconnected or like you lost a part of yourself in a way?

SM: In 2018, I had just about started getting my act together about working out. When I felt sick, I had thick long hair. I was very fit. When I went to the doctor, before my surgery, they needed to take tissue to do the reconstruction. They said there was no fat in my body. I was that fit. I was lean and it looked really good. I think it became very hard to suddenly realise that it’s gone one day. 

I didn’t know who I was in terms of all the things that were happening to me. I’ve always been friends with my body. I asked myself how to reestablish this friendship with my body. With cancer, with medication, every day is different. Some days you’re feeling nauseous, some days your stomach is not good. Every day is different. 

Chemo medicine gives you constipation. It’s killing all your gut cells and everything. It’s very difficult for the body to process that medicine, which is why they keep checking on your kidneys and stuff like that. The medicine is obviously toxic for all your organs, so constipation is a very big part of it. I would go to the loo and would strain. Then I got an anal fissure. I didn’t know what it was but it was so difficult I would have tears in my eyes and I found it so difficult to tell my family because it’s just robbed me of all my dignity. It’s robbed me of everything. 

Q: What were your concerns and fears when it came to intimacy? 

SM: I had a mastectomy and so they had to remove my breast and they had to reconstruct the breast and they had to take away my nipple. The funny thing is that even after my treatment got over, I was talking to somebody. . .  and they told me how being handicapped is not always visually handicapped the way we see it. You know, not having a nipple is also being handicapped. I do feel like sometimes that I am a freak. I’m very strange in that when my hair fell, I could have worn a wig but I never did. I thought it’s too hot I’ll be sweating. I just went through all this trauma. Now that I think about it, I should have just worn a wig instead of being so traumatised by it. 

Similarly, when they did my surgery, I had stitches everywhere. When they reconstruct your breast, they use tissue from your back and it’s just like a lump. It could have been a lump of clay, plastic, or anything. It doesn’t feel like anything. It was just like this thing that’s stuck there. It’s very weird and you have like one OG breast, and one this guy. And it’s strange and then you don’t have a nipple. 

Even now sometimes, I like not to wear clothes and sit in the house. I’m fine with it. I’m married, so I’m okay with my husband seeing it, but I don’t think I’m okay with anyone else seeing it. 

Q: You mentioned that you were comfortable with your partner seeing your body, but were also afraid of how your partner would perceive you. 

SM: I don’t think it’ll go away. You’re always thinking, “Hey, what does it feel like to him? Does it feel different to have this person now who has one breast that doesn’t have any sensation? That you have to be very careful around, that doesn’t have a nipple?” 

What does it feel in his head? I’ve never asked him because I know he’ll say, “are you mad?” and stuff like that. 

Q: Are there things he does that make you feel supported and loved and a little bit better in all of those heavy emotions?

SM: He was my primary caregiver when I was sick. When they let me out of the hospital, I had a band-aid on my breast. What they do is they take out all the tissue from inside your breast, like, like think of it like a coconut scraper, they just scrape everything out. And then they stuff it with this tissue. When they scrape everything out, they really scrape everything out. It’s just your skin there. It’s like the flap of your breast is still there and then they can stuff it back and stitch it up. So, the skin is just very thin, it’s been scraped so much. And so, when they send you back home, because you have bandages and you have to take out the bandage every morning and then you have to put this ointment and then you have to put the bandage back. 

It was traumatizing for me. I would always be scared that if it bleeds, I would have to go back to hospital. I could not do that myself. I would be so scared of it. He would do it. He would take the bandages out. He would put the ointment. I couldn’t have a bath. I used to have a sponge bath for almost a week because you can’t wet that side and your back. He was the only person who could give me that bath. He was he was basically my rock through it all.

Q: Did you notice changes in how you experience or perceive your gender? Did you sense of femininity get affected? 

SM: Anytime you tell anyone, I have breast cancer, they look at your boobs. Okay, they can’t help themselves. 

A friend of mine said “Oh my God, anyway, your boobs are so small. Nobody will even notice that it has gone”. 

That is not what you’re supposed to be telling me. I told them that it did not feel funny when they said this, right? And I hope that they introspect and realise it. I learned that not everybody has the capacity and the capability to understand what you’re going through. 

I guess, somewhere, the way you look and having hair on your head and all those things are tied with your own self-image, with your own feeling of being feminine. And, while I never felt less of a woman in my head or less feminine, I felt I just looked strange. 

Initially, with my hair gone, I would wear these big bindis. Whenever I went for my chemos, I would wear all my lipsticks and everything and go for it. And I don’t think I felt less feminine, but I felt like others perceived me as looking strange, less feminine, less of what I used to look like. Sometimes you could see it in their eyes.

Q: Did you have a support group that you could talking to about what you are facing?

SM: I was vocal about having cancer. And, I have a strong circle of family and friends. I think they all just took me through. I had two female friends who were with me all the time. 

But support groups in terms of groups with other people, no. 

There was one group because I met somebody who had been through breast cancer and she had just recovered, a year and a half, two years before me. She became like a sort of guide for me. Then somebody else who had it and then she also, we made a little group- five, six of us, that’s it. 

Q: How did you meet them?

SM: One day, I felt that I should do something, may be yoga, to be friends with my body. It’s not like my body has turned against me. It’s me and my body together on this journey. So, I need to feel that connection with my body a lot more. 

So, this friend I used to go for yoga with before, said she had a student who had been through breast cancer two years back. But it was fabulous because that girl was like, just the most calm person, who did a lot of research. And then another girl whose sister lived in my building, we went to the same doctor, same hospital. So, then we got friendly. That’s how I met these 2-3 people and then we just connected. 

I felt like it was a bus and everybody was on this bus with me. And now I’m going to ride through this very rough territory together. But I was very lucky to have a very strong support system. I always feel like people who don’t have that, that is very rough. That way I always felt I was lucky. You always think like when you die, that’s when you really realize how much you’re loved. But it was quite something to feel how much you’re loved when you’re alive.

Q: During the treatment and now, did you experience a loss of desire for intimacy? And if you did, how did you find ways to regain that joy for intimacy? And maybe in different, newer ways than before?

SM: I definitely did lose the desire. I feel more sexy with my clothes on than with my clothes off now, which is definitely strange. I mean, I had no issues with my body ever. I think I just grew up in this way of being very not self-conscious. But now, I do feel like I’m different, physically. And breasts are such a big part of being a woman. 

I don’t know what I wanted to do about the intimacy. I think I still struggle with it, honestly. I don’t have an answer. I’m still struggling with it. 

I’m very conflicted about it. I feel okay and then not okay. I think I’ve gone past a lot of stuff, but this yeah I’m struggling with.

Q: You mentioned that you like this character of the supportive husband in the book, Bangalore Detective Club. Is it also because of the support you got from your husband during the nine months of the treatment?

SM: I think I’m very lucky to be married to the man that I married to. I got married very young at 23. Weve grown up together and it’s just been the two of us through everything. It’s also hard being married because it’s difficult. I don’t think human beings are made for marriage actually. You know, it’s hard not to be attracted to other people. It’s hard not to sometimes feel like I’m done with this person, So we’ve had all sorts of things between us where we thought that oh we’re never going to be able to live together anymore, but we’ve always made our way back to each other.

Shormistha Mukherjee is the author of the book ‘Cancer, You Picked The Wrong Girl’. She spoke to Agents of Ishq in an interview with Div Rodricks

Iss compliment ko main kya naam doon?

Yes, I am Ms Something Else. I wish the men I met were too!

When was the last time that someone gave you a compliment that you remember? Mine was from a guy I matched with on Tinder. Seven years, three heartbreaks, and one relationship later, nothing comes close to it. 

His display picture on Tinder stood out because it was taken in a rural setting—which spoke of his longing to stay connected to his roots—but his bio reeked of the Metro vibes, saying that he was someone who had the zeal to conquer the world. It was a beautiful paradox, or maybe, it was me romanticizing yet another guy who was going to disappoint me.

An illustration of a stylishly dressed man is standing under a large umbrella with a woman. He is telling her, "You're something else, you know?" It is raining. The woman is holding a walking stick and a flower. The petals of the flower have "He Loves Me," written on them.

We met on a rainy day. He—tall, extremely handsome, keeping it together. Me—short, gorgeous (of course), unable to keep it together. It’s not like I was nervous or something. It was a rainy day—which meant that the floors were more slippery than usual which could make my crutches slip and make me fall—only after falling head over heels for my date.

He knew about my disability, but it wasn’t the first thing that he got to know about me. I kept asking myself if that was the reason why he felt attracted to me. That evening was about good coffee and great conversations. I remember we spoke about our work, the weather, Pune traffic—the usual small talk—before moving on to talk about how we’re all stuck in a cycle that we don’t want to break, and how easy it would be once we find the right person to be with and yet how difficult it is to find the same. What?! Was that a hint for me to take?

The illustration is a closeup of a pair of legs, of a person sitting on a bench. The bottom part of a walking stick is also visible. On one of the legs there is a plaster cast, with messages of love and support, such as "Get well soon," and "Pair toot gaya, ab dil na todo."

Anyway, it was time to leave and time for reality to spill some water over my fantasies. I had managed to fracture my other functional leg a month back. It had been a couple of days since my cast was removed. And, it was raining. This meant that I needed two times more the support that I would usually need in a public setting. Was I not aware that all of this would make me appear more disabled in this ableist world? I was. Did I believe that it wouldn't matter? I did. 

You can’t blame me for thinking that it wouldn’t matter. Soon after we had matched, we were glued to our phones for three whole days without a break. It was at that point that he said those words that still make me smile, “You're something else, you know?”

An illustration of a woman looking into a mobile phone screen, on which there is a heart with a cross inside it. The word "unmatch"  is written above it.

Yes, maybe, I was really something else... And maybe, I'll always be something else—in this ableist world. No wonder our conversations faded out a few days after we met. I knew it from the time he saw me off in a rickshaw that this wasn’t going to last long—no pun intended. After a few hi-hellos from my end and a few formal responses from his end, it was time to stop hoping that it would be him who would be ‘Mr Something Else’ for a change. And maybe, I can’t blame him either. However, what I can do is trip him over my crutches, the next time I spot him in public. I mean, a girl can dream, right?  

Sweta Mantrii is an MBA turned writer, disability rights activist and stand-up comic. She has been advocating for the rights of people with disabilities through blogs and features, documentaries, awareness campaigns, interactive art mediums, and stand-up comedy for over a decade.

Some Sundays

Over copious cups, I waited for a romance to brew, and found myself left with nothing but green tea!

I’m never alone. My body is always with me. Sick disabled body. That gets upset at almost everything. Some days are spent just trying to create some equilibrium with it. That exhausts me, deeply, and sleep cannot drive the exhaustion away. A gnawing, an uneasiness. The desire to run away from all this. But how will the running help? Wherever I go, my annoyingly talkative body will tag along. I’ve never felt as lonely as a talkative body has left me feeling, when I’m alone with it. Then I wish someone was with me so that I could divert my mind from these body matters. And that is how, one after the other, the dating apps start getting installed on my phone. 

Love is what I search for. Sex is what I search for. Intimacy is what I long for. I know how the world sees my body. And so what...why can't I have my desires?

It’s not so shocking that I matched with some of them. This has happened before when I was living in small towns. Someone would bump into me online... full of hope! Overwhelmed with desire. What are you looking for? Nothing, just timepass. When the outside world oppresses you, then the body sitting inside the room gets restless, anxious. Then it would just be a matter of a few weeks. Knowing that the matter was not going to go ahead anywhere, either she would get bored, or I.  It’s not that I'm not serious about coming close to someone. But the way people look at my body, I know that nothing is going to happen.  One says, you are very brave for opening up in front of everyone.  Brave? Can anyone think of having a physical relationship with a disabled person after calling him brave?  I do not think so.

Meeting that girl was definitely a nice change. A tired body, a lonely mind was getting a small thrill.  "I live nearby. Should I come today?"  How brave she is. Meeting a stranger in this unknown city is not an easy thing. It can be dangerous!  "Yes, yes, come".  That evening, the doorbell rang. Simple clothes.  Like she’s come down for a walk. She is holding a book. Murakami's. Explaining what running means in his life.  I have read this. In fact I have read everything Murakami has written, a long time ago. That was a phase. 

She hesitates in giving me the book. What happened?  Actually I don't know if it's a good idea to give you a book on running. I began to laugh. 

So can't a disabled person read a book about running?  I understood her dilemma. This is the age of political correctness. Anything can offend.

The card shows two people, facing each other. Only their faces are visible. A thought bubble around one of their heads shows them kissing. 

Should I make tea?  No, I don't drink tea. Green Tea? Ok. I brought two cups and started heating water, comfortably lying on the bed. She sat on a chair across the room and started smoking. The disease has long taken away my cigarettes and alcohol. Now my kingdom is limited to my bed. Work, read books, and make green tea. While sipping tea, we dived into the ocean of conversation. Exploring each other's past. My stories often take me back to the time when I used to think of myself as able.  This love of the past often fills me with guilt. But hearing about her dreams and struggles, I was also moved. I didn't have anything special for the coming tomorrow, but this unknown person sitting in my room, sharing things, opening up to me... had instilled new hope in me.

Now, she would message every weekend: Should I come?  Yes, come.  She must also be getting bored. She had lived in big cities. Now Covid had brought people like us back to our hometowns. 

So it was the same routine every time.  She would come.  We would talk. About art, artists, painters. Share favourite music with each other. Talk about Murakami, or Kafka.  Drink green tea.  Everything was quite romantic.  But as the  days passed by, dark clouds began to darken the room, asking us “Where are we heading?” 

Her family was searching for a groom. My loneliness started creeping back. I had many people with whom I could talk and pass my time. I was not at that stage  where merely talking to someone from the other gender was going to balance my life. I was on dating sites because I wanted love, I wanted sex, I wanted intimacy. I needed someone to look at my body differently. I needed to believe that there were people who would find my disabled body desirable. Who would want to possess it,  love it.

With each passing day, the questions added up. Am I stuck in the same trap again where people just want to take emotional advantage of me, without touching my body?  The gravity that pulls people towards me, will it never reach my body?  What was the meaning of such a relationship?  We were not friends. There is a balance in friendship. There was nothing like that here. Inside me, everything was in turmoil.

Next time when she came, I asked. Does this relationship even have a meaning?  Maybe she knew this question was about to come. She kept mum. I told her what I wanted and why I couldn't meet her anymore. For some time the room was filled with silence. I felt the door was closing now. But then I heard her soft voice. “You can try whatever you want.  I don't mind.”  

The card shows a fully naked person lying down on a bed, on their side. One of their hands in tucked under their head. One of their legs is raised so that their genitals are covered. Behind them, are giant eyes that seem to be staring at them judgementally.

She opened a new door. Layer after layer, new things kept  getting revealed.  Wishes.  Excitement.  Fantasy.  Hers and mine.  Could she really accept and love my body? Looking into her eyes, I started day-dreaming. And then she said something which washed away all my visions.

“I just have one problem. Would you feel bad if I got disgusted by your body?”

Disgust? How did this word wander in here? After so many weeks of conversation. Such an emotional connection. How did this word land here?  Is my disabled body so powerful that just thinking about it in a sexual way fills someone's mind with such a deep emotion. 

Disgust.  

I am disgusted by genocide. I am disgusted by hypocrisy.  I am disgusted by barbarity. 

I never thought that thinking about my body could bring disgust in someone's mind. And if you feel disgusted, then why do you come and talk to me for hours? My body is not separate from me. At least not for the outside world.

Maybe I should have done something that day.  I should have expressed my anger.  But by the time I got agitated, everything was over.  She had deactivated her social media account. She did not have the strength to play with this disgusting body. Or maybe she didn't want to break me by repeatedly calling me disgusting. I also blocked her.  But it was of no use.  That word has become a part of my body. How can someone accept oneself completely,  knowing that a part of them is disgusting for others? How does one find pride in one's disability, knowing how society still sees their bodies?

I will take time to recover from this. Don't know how long this is going to take. At a certain point of my life I used to give a lot of importance to platonic relationships. Maybe the ghost of that time is coming back to haunt me. I need to think afresh. Until then, I will stay away from both- dating sites and green tea.

Kavi Hriday is a person with locomotor disability.

The Rasas of Intimacy: A Memoir

Intimate Rasas and the secret juice of life

What kind of girl do you take me for?

 – Promiscuous, Nelly Furtado

Vira

You might have heard of me. You might have read an article, or googled me, or glimpsed my face on the back cover of my book, or in the pages of a newspaper or magazine. Once, I was somewhat famous. Not so much now, thankfully. There’s a folder in a locked godrej cupboard in my parents’ home, filled with yellowing newspaper articles about my child prodigy debut into the world of writing, my New York Times bestselling graphic novel, my appearances at literature festival. Etcetera, etcetera.

If you’ve read one of these, you may have seen my face – slightly strained, self-conscious, bespectacled. You’ll notice the traces of acne, faint scars and slightly protruding teeth, not quite pretty enough; someone who has to get by on intelligence and diligence. Writes on epics and myths and all that. Must be a good girl, you think. 

And for years, I have been. A good girl to please others.

That child prodigy stuff was over half a lifetime ago. Now I feel like a washed-up writer, menopause on the horizon, my crone-self growing day by day; like a bit of a failure too sometimes, when I see newer, younger writers flash to fame. I envy them. Sometimes, admittedly, they are better than me. They’ve honed their craft, they’ve worked their sentences, they've gone at it. They’ve stayed at it, persistent.

Whereas sometimes I think to myself - you just dined off reputation of being a child prodigy for far too long. 

Not such a good girl after all. Flitting in and out of writing, never consistent with my output and routine, and I’ve kept my publisher waiting for my book far too long. 

I really wanted to be a good girl.

There’s a voice in my brain, the Sanskaari Naari, telling me if I said what I’ve really been upto, what I’m really thinking, naturally everything will be taken away from me. My myth-inspired books will languish in bookstores, untouched. You will not let your children, and nieces and nephews read my children’s books– I’m just too disturbing for that. Not a good role model. That was fun while it lasted, keeping everyone happy.

Perhaps that's why I haven't written for years. If I can’t be honest, real, truthful, I’ll have to be silent.

If I choose to be intimate with you – to show the ugly places, the vulnerable places, the places of shame, it may cost me. 

This comes with a price then.

Bhayanaka

There was a time, as a child…I don’t want to write about it again.

There was that time, on a lonely beach in Goa, when I felt terror, as two men chased me.

There was that time, in my apartment, when a neighbour tried to break down the door to rape me. 

Sometimes terror is not just an act, or rape.

Sometimes it comes in small doses. A slap, a word. 

Sometimes it is vaginismus or pain during a consensual act, when the body tightens, involuntarily, and I fight against myself as I spasm, and pretend to my partner that everything is fine, okay. I fake it. That is another fear. If I reveal the pain, that I will be rejected. I will be alone. 

He leaves me anyway. 

Sometimes it is the flare of fear in my gut, on a dark lonely street, when I spy a motorcycle and two young men, hurtling towards me, headlights on, and feel trapped.

Sometimes it is a proposition made in an office, or a place of power, and the belief that no one will believe me. (Is that what he really meant? You’re just imagining it all – that’s what Sanskaari Nari’s mother says in my mind.)

I refuse to remember more.

Adhbuta

The plastic that sheaths your lover, that barricades and protects your womb against the assault of sperm, is born out of death. Death that is hundreds of millions of years old, the decaying remains of organisms and plants, pressed and compressed together, turned into something invaluable in your hand.

When you make love, the piece of plastic that your lover throws so casually away afterwards – that took 300 million years to make. 

The ghosts of the past, dead matter, poking into our wombs. Past present, organic, inorganic, human and non-human. All mixing together. 

Promiscuous. Pro-miscere. Miscere. To mix.

Bibhatsa

Once there was a young man who – I realize this only in retrospect – was slightly infatuated with me. 

I was at that time probably quite attractive, but in my head I still saw myself as an acne prone, bespectacled nerd even though I was thin and tended to have a wardrobe that featured (cheaply purchased) outfits of diaphanous fabrics in cleavage forward styles. This produced a kind of cognitive dissonance that, now, is a source of income to psychotherapists. At that time it cordoned me into a sex-deprived lifestyle.

This young man, after taking me on a couple of (very cheap) dates (neither of us had much money) revealed a truth about intimacy that completely scuppered our chances at achieving precisely that kind of intimacy. 

Sex, he told me, was messy, because of the various body fluids involved.

 At that time, I was not completely inexperienced, but I could count my sexual experiences on one hand. I suffered from a problematic belief, not uncommon, that sex is something shameful, and that to get past the shame one must drink, find another willing body, search for dark place to mate and avoid all discussions of feelings, and never speak to each other again:

In my head I associated shameless, ideal sex with perfectly manicured, bodypolished men and women. Bodily fluids – although certainly involved – were transferred from one anatomy to the other with the least amount of spillage, the way society ladies poured tea into one beautiful, ceramic, gold-patterned tea cup without a splattering drop. 

In my mind I imagined good, well-mannered, properly-done sex with this sort of precision and behavior. In rougher moments – moments of passion perhaps – it would be like the way the chai-seller down the road would raise his glass on high and perfect, furious flow from one grimy glass to the other, without a single drop spilling. That strong, smooth, perfect gush of tea.

No mess whatsoever.

But now this young man had planted thoughts of stains on pillow cases {which provoked other anxieties--at the time I resided with a dainty, society-lady grandmother (for saving-on-rent purposes) completely opposed to spillage of any kind}. My housewifely mind became busy: how does one remove these? 

I know how hard I have scrubbed to rub out menstrual blood stains from sparkling white bed sheets in this house. Would Ariel be best? Or comfort stain remover? Or Vanish?.

Would this necessitate tissues? A dustbin as a convenience receptacle for post-sex-tissue deposits? 

These thoughts chased each other around my cluttered, disorganized sex-deprived brain.

How did other people manage this?

I spoke to a more sexually experienced friend who, when bodily fluids were mentioned, screwed up her nose and exclaimed “ew!”

Another told me to book a hotel (which I could not afford) for then stain removal etc would be the problem of the hotel staff to deal with, and they probably had secret manuals to deal with sexual stain removal. I imagined a coven of house-keeping staff at a hotel, conducting a strange ritual in robes to dissolve stains in a golden cauldron of Vanish! Liquid. 

When I explained that neither of us had much money, she said “This in fact is your problem. You  need to date a better class of men.” (Aka richer men, or men who had the money to spend on sexual escapades. Not the penurious poets and writers I tended to meet).

Money can resolve some matters pertaining to sex stain / body fluid removal, but it does not mean that the man in question is generous in bed. Or in other places.

But I did not know this then. 

So we never had sex. 

Hasya

In my fantasies of perfect sex, conditioned by anatomically perfect Hollywood people, bodies are smooth, unblemished and hairless and perfectly moisturized.

I have a condition called ichthyosis, (dry scaly skin on my legs)  (on some days I think it makes me a descendent of the famous Melusine, the mermaid, who must have had dry scaly skin on her legs, and apparently spent every sunday sequestered in a bathtub, but was nonetheless enchantingly beautiful and married a french aristocrat, and thus is ancestress to all the royal houses of Europe, and most of its aristocrats, which in my imagination, makes her ancestress of Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the latter a woman who apparently likes her feet sucked, and this may in fact be a desire brought about by the dry itchiness of ichthyosis.) 

(Maybe this is a confession on par with the balding confession of my former admirer, but I do not know you, dear reader, so in real life, we are unlikely to have sex.)

So I spend Sundays in homage to Melusine sequestered in the bathroom, rubbing all kinds of moisturizers and petroleum jellies before I shave my skin. But – I wear glasses, and in the bath, like Melusine, as I try to render my skin perfect, the hot water steams on my spectacles and so I can not quite shave my legs perfectly. So horror manifests, sometimes, in the throes of romance, I catch sight of a patch of hair skin behind my knees, on my calf, and the choir of house-wife ancestresses scream like Furies, and the sex is spoilt, and turns into some sort of clumsy weird farce, where in I try to hide the hairy patch from discovery from my lover. 

Once in an attempt to hide this, I attempted to place my cat (the nearest object at hand, as he was prowling around the bed, jealous of my attentions to male lover) strategically across the back of calf muscles, but this did not work, especially when cat revealed claws and resisted. I replaced the cat with a pillow, and then exchanged the pillow for a towel. 

At which point my lover, in exasperation, asked me “What the hell is going on?”

And then I had to confess the secret of the hairy patch missed during shaving on my calf, 

We began a conversation about various kinds of hair removal, how gender roles play a role in hair removal methods, and I began telling him the story about the time I had to have a pedicure and because of ichthyosis etc, the pedicurist had to shave the soles of my feet with a razor, in an unisex salon. I remember feeling shamed,  fas a vast line of young men were witnessing this as they waited in turn, to get their backs waxed. 

There is other clumsiness in sex. No one speaks of urine-scented genitalia. 

During my younger, hormone raging days there was certainly some sort of instinct or feel for sex, but now what I remember is the hilariousness of it. 

I do remember a young man who worried if I might need an iron to iron out creases on a dress post-sex, and his iron was not working, and this troubled him, as when I left his house, the creases would be some sort of scandalous signal that sex had happened. 

Karuna

There have been other hair-related issues. I remember another encounter with a young man who preferred hairless genitalia. 

When I tried to account for this, I initially shaved, but I could sense a slight disappointment. Eager to please him, I experimented with a Brazilian wax, which was an experience that I now remember more clearly than the sexual encounter: hours spent with a patient, waxing woman who described her experiences waxing the vaginas of other women. In this I felt a sense of community and sisterhood with the other women, who had endured hot wax being applied and yanked off their privates, in an attempt to meet sexual standards. As she applied and removed wax she told me about her life, her two daughters, one of who was disabled, the fights that she had with her husband, and her fear and worry for her daughters during the pandemic, as their schooling stopped. 

We spoke the word brazilian wax, were both Indian women, in a sweltering Indian summer – what was Brazilian about this, or about our hair or our private parts? I didn’t get it. She confessed to me that she did the Brazilian wax on herself as well. 

I remember a sticky bit ripping off, and wincing with pain. I tried to hide this, but she noticed, I remember her apology, her gentleness with me, the soft cooling pressure she applied with a wet cloth. 

In this, weirdly, I felt greater intimacy, and human connection, more gentleness and compassion, more care than I experienced with many a lover.

 Maybe it was about that rare camaraderie and friendship, that experience of shared and witnessed suffering bringing waxing woman and woman-to-be-waxed together, bridging socio-economic divides and lifestyles, bringing women together in shared mutual experience. The waxing woman, who gently attended to me, is most likely not of the same caste. I suspect this, but I do not ask. I try to forget caste, but sometimes I wonder if that blindness, that forgetting is worse. 

to think, in another time, place, it would have been a crime for her to touch me, that too, so intimately. 

 Marxism in a capitalist, classist, casteist society.

Raudra, or the List of Anger

1. I’m angry at the times I’ve been told that what I did wasn’t exactly sex (then, young man, what the f**k was it?) and didn’t ‘mean’ anything.

2. I’m angry at the pain I put myself through, physically and emotionally.

3. I’m angry at the time that I was told that I wasn’t good enough, or didn’t live up to someone’s else’s expectations of a lover.

4. Sometimes exhaustion is just repressed anger. I am tired of the hypocrisy of being a good girl. I am tired of the fact that a good girl upholds the establishment, the patriarchy, the caste-ism, and unconsciously, never examines her part or takes responsibility for how these structures are upheld.

5. I am angry at having to play by rules set up generations ago, embodied in texts that also tell one where one can be touched, and by whom, and prescribe punishments if you touch out of assigned categories. The rules can not be separated from standards of beauty. (The Sanskaari Naari herself is light-skinned, upper caste, appears caste blind in her dealings with the world, but this secretly hides an instinct, repressed into her unconsciousness which can tell caste apart. The sanskaari Nari is body positive to others, but careful about what she eats, lest she gains weight, and tweezes herself into incoherence. She is a hypocrite.)

6. I’m angry at my shame.

7. I’m angry that I felt the need to wax my vagina to please a callous, selfish and insensitive lover.

8. I am tired at the Sanskaari Nari within who wants things perfect, clean, sanitised, who can never critique her culture or its ancient inequities. Who can not live with complexity or mess, who is too scared, within herself, to break boundaries, to examine the aeons of prejudice and privilege that have made her, shaped her desires.

9. I’m angry at the idea that we must pursue passion, in our careers and in our love lives. Not everyone can.

10. I’m angry at the men who said they felt love for me, but no passion. Here, I express what I never could do to them – that to me, passion feels so close to anger; that it is anger, in another form.

11. When I experience anger in another, my response is fear. How is that safe? How is that loving? Can safe pleasure coexist easily with anger and fear? It takes an artist to manage this.

12. I am angry at myself.

Shantam

As I grow older I like to linger on the memories of the hilariousness of it, the endearing awkwardness and imperfection of intimacy. 

I’ve realized that the people who enjoy and have the most fun with sex are those who account for, and revel in the clumsy weird strangeness of sex, to see it as human, to be human. To not attempt to be a doll, an idol, a statue in the throes of sex. 

What does sexual experience mean?

Is it a vast amount of lovers? 

Is the ecstatic transcendental experience of orgasm (which I’ve had with myself courtesy of a vibrator, thank you online shopping)?

Or is everything all together, the absurdity of desire, the awkwardness of passion, the bewildering places where one finds compassion and intimacy – and the tranquility of having experienced it – and also let it go?

Is this tranquility, this “seen that, done that” attitude, peace, born of self-realization? 

Or is this peace a peri-menopausal plunge of hormones and loss of libido which I’m mistaking for the detachment born of disillusionment?

I don’t know.

Shringar

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”

– Audrey Lorde

I know this: my sexuality is for myself. 

Sometimes, I don’t wish to share it. It is just for me. I imagine it to be a tropical island surrounded by azure waters, a treasure. Sometimes, it shifts form – an oasis in the midst of a parched dessert, or a gem, a brilliant, multifaceted diamond for me to enjoy. Something that sparkles, alone, in my room, when I’ve curtains drawn against the light, a gem I take out only, when far away from the prying eyes of my neighbours. 

In that dim darkness, by myself, with myself, the diamond shimmers into a snake, I feel the coiling, tightening, the movement within me, the urge, the tightening squeezing, shooting up my spine, moving me, touching me within, the essence of me. 

As it rises, as I feel close and more intimate with myself, as I feel moved, tender, vulnerable, I feel that this beauty. Beauty is not something seen, but it is felt, in the aligning of the self, in the touching of that innermost part of self, in the tenderness, in the feeling, it is beauty. There is no other word for it.

I melt.

Girls, women – those of you who read this, do not give your beauty away. 

It is not true that you can not feel this on your own. 

At times, in the presence of a lover, it may be a touch, a moment, or even the touch of skin on skin, you will feel this in their company, fleetingly.

The world will ask you to give away this part of yourself. In the name of duty, family, love. To share it with others and to give their pleasure more importance than your own, or to give it up.

Don’t.

THE RASAS

What does it mean to use the Rasas as a framework for feelings? It’s classical aesthetic standard, where emotions and feelings are made distinct, categorised — a clinical aestheticization of the messiness of life, of generations past and present moving together, of the past breeding in the present,  of emotional experience. I am wary of the term classical, I am wary of classical ideas of narrative and literature, that attempt to sanitize, categorize, and in doing so leave out the blurred boundaries, the things that are not this nor that.

I am wary of categories that turn into rules. I am wary of rules, particularly in our cultural, civilization context, that attempt to separate, that do not allow for mixing, and in the end these rigid categories create hierarchies. Is Vira superior to Bibhatsa? Karuna to Adbhuta? 

Like caste, do emotions have a hierarchy? 

I am wary of what is left out, I am wary of what can be and what can’t be together. But in life, all the shades of experience are mixed in, unsightly and complicated yet deliciously messy, juicy.

That’s the truth, isn’t it?

Sanskaari Naari’s Cat Loving Alter Ego is a writer in real life, best known for her retellings of mythology for children. She hopes that if you like this piece, her books for adult audiences -- The Prince and The Missing Queen --may appeal to you. She lives in Bangalore with two cats.

Could I Have Been Misogynist Even Though I Was a Woman? Why?

Today, I feel to an utmost certainty that I am not pretty, and even slightly indulging in dressing up makes me feel like a fraud.

When I read Grunthus Grumpus’ article on Unfuckable Me on this site, it triggered a cascade of thoughts for me. Looking back I see now, it was my own misogyny that very early on, I had decided that I am not going to be pretty. 

I was not an ugly kid, but I still decided that I won’t be pretty. Today, I feel to an utmost certainty that I am not pretty, and even slightly indulging in dressing up makes me feel like a fraud. I disrespected femininity. I saw it as shallow. I saw it as an act, playing up the damsel role to impress perhaps to get the approval of men, and so, definitely inauthentic. I also disrespected the kind of guys who fell for that display of femininity. At times I would think I want to be a boy so I can show boys how to be better at using their privilege to create something positive, instead of just jockeying for supremacy. I wanted to access the power that even young boys seemed to possess- of being the last word in a discussion with friends, of everybody in your family pandering to you, of that automatic respect and partiality that teachers bestow on guys for being rebellious. 

The sexualised self of myself adopted stifling masculine notions of sex. In my teens, I ended up discussing sex with only guys, and I have inherited this shitty competitive framework that men are conditioned with when it comes to sex. Sex has actually become a list of to-dos for me. Have I done that? Have I experienced this? Next time I need to try that. How many times I have done it? This was so detrimental and toxic for me. I was so frustrated to not be able to masturbate as easily as a guy, not reach orgasm as quickly as the guy; just imitating this twisted focus on the sex and not the eroticism to reach the head space for sex. How many sex-ed videos and columns and books created by women have I watched/read to decode how my own body works and how my own desire manifests itself. Despite that, there is a sense of the male gaze transfixed at the back of my head.

There is this struggle when I don’t know if I am playing into it, or this expression of desire and sexiness is mine alone. Even the suspicion that I am catering to men can shut me down. Because my reality seems like an ironic dorky ugliness in the face of a singular type of beauty, my fantastical desire requires utter narcissism. In my real life, I may appear unconfident, hesitant and overthinking my awkwardness. In my fantasies, that is definitely not me. I imagine a space where I am assertive and I know what I want and can ask for it and have it. Also, everything is about me! There is no performance to please anyone other than me. But I can no more bridge the two in my erotic life. I also can’t bridge my intellectual belief of equality with men and my reality that teaches me to be suspicious of men, and that woman men.

These internal and external conflicts have no positive effect on my personal life. There is so much more that Gruthus Grumpus talks about, which I relate to in some way. I get her angst.

Yet, I am hopeful about overcoming my own thought-police, and bridging that gap between what I want and what is. Being aware of where all this stems from, and reading about gender helps me place my experience in context. I can externalize the problem, and work to be closer to an authentic me. I’m getting there, bit by bit by bit.

Tame Shewolf has been reluctantly blogging since 2009. She has always been interested in talking about sex and sexuality, but only recently mustered the courage to write about it.  

Kids and adults would point to me and say ‘Look at him with the swollen face’

At birth, the doctors found that the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around my head. They rescued my life, but the deformity this caused has left me feeling without friends and love

I was born on July 12, 1984. My birth story is nothing less than amazing. My mother survived the tedious, 12-hour labour and, contrary to how other babies are born, with the back of their heads descending from the womb and out the birth canal, I was born from my mother’s birth canal face first.

Also, mysteriously, the umbilical cord was tied to my face. That became the genesis of my facial deformity. The obstetrician had to maneuver my positioning in order to avoid contact of the umbilical cord fluids with my eyes, and prevent the fluids from concentrating and tightening around my head—both of which could have had a devastating effect on me. It would have left me with either a permanent disability in vision (blindness) or some terrible head disorder.

Instead, I have a facial deformity that has left one side of my face swollen. 

Since the beginning, I have had many consultations with both traditional and modern approaches to medicine. My peculiar birth story somehow made the traditional stories more convincing. Visiting mediums became my parents’ routine.

In Africa, whenever such a situation arises, the need for ‘seeing’ or ‘checking’, as it is called, becomes imperative. A traditional doctor—referred to as the ‘native doctor’—is saddled with the task of ‘checking’ or spiritually diagnosing the cause of the ailment and consequently prepares herbal medicines and gives instructions on usage.

My Christian background led my parents to visit several churches for prayers too for what was called ‘deliverance’. At the time, I was about three or four years old. From one native doctor to the other, one specialist health facility to another, one faith healer to another, I moved around to many places with my parents. All manner of substances as prescribed by the specialists were administered. I was three years old when I first had major facial surgery.

After the successful completion of the first surgical operation, that is, coming out of the theater alive, there was a need for a second major operation. I spent six months at the The Lagos Teaching Hospital (LUTH), where the first operation took place. I remember how my bed space was arranged. There was something like white Plaster of Paris tied all over my body, except for my eyes and nose. During that time, I was being fed through inserted pipes that passed through my nostrils. Not the best experience of my life! [how do you remember this?]

At the same hospital, I experienced my second surgical operation and the correction of the initial bandages and other healing elements—it was asserted that I eat fluid foods and live on the prescribed drugs for six months for the recuperation. According to what my father told me, years later, the management wanted to carry out subsequent minor operations. However, Dad refused, as he feared losing his son. The medical professionals assured my parents I would get better as I grew older. That the swollen side of my left cheek would witness a drastic ‘return to normal’. But that was not to be.

In the meanwhile, I would be at the receiving end of comments from the children in the neighbourhood. Some neigbours, kids and even adults, on seeing me come back to school after the surgery, would say, “Look at him with the big cheek, very swollen!’’

At six this felt humiliating and I felt isolated. 

Though I was given the education my parents thought I deserved, care (with the help of house-help, as they were busy) and other material support, my experiences with peers, even school teachers and neighbors, left indelible marks on me—consciously and sub-consciously.

My childhood years were characterized by the bad and the ugly. I still remember a classmate in secondary school calling me ‘the big mouth guy’, right in the presence of a 20- pupil class. She made these remarks in the presence of our class teacher who did not seem to mind what she had said. The moment felt earth shattering to me and I swallowed my feelings of insult quietly. 

I had no one to turn to for support. I had no friends to share my pains with. My parents were usually the busy type. I was raised partly under the tutelage of over 14 housemaids who didn’t understand what I was going through. They were all about business: doing all house duties as mandated and getting paid afterwards.

My mother later confessed to me that she and my dad thought I would grow up to be a dullard. All through my elementary school education, I struggled; the best I ever attained was a slightly-below average position. My promotion was like that of a camel passing through the eye of a needle!

The feat would always be achieved through consistent home coaching and after-school lessons—all arranged by my parents. To be candid, I didn’t take my schooling seriously throughout my elementary education.

The psychological effects of living with a facial deformity were ever present. Staying alone, being unnecessarily shy and moody became my habits. My confidence dwindled over the years as my personality witnessed a plateau, compared to the mountains of my peers.

Sharing with the adults around me that I was insulted at the school wouldn’t help either. Their reply would be: “Don’t disturb me! The burden I am carrying is heavier than yours!”

It was terrible, and very disheartening. These repeated responses engendered a sense of aloneness. I had no one to confide in!  And yet, being the first child, I had younger siblings looking up to me for inspiration… 

My post-primary education saw me go through another phase of enduring the shame, degradation and humiliation of being around facially handsome and beautiful colleagues. Again, my parents, having the financial resources, sent me to what they thought was the best secondary school in Lagos, Nigeria. It was a privately-owned post-primary education outfit, There, I met students from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. There, Idecided to take the bull by the horns and make friends (or at least talk mates. I eventually met two guys—Quadri and Emeka. They were quite understanding teenage men. They knew how to relate with me the best way they could, though they were far behind the brightest of students who couldn’t afford to talk to a facially deformed and an academically non-serious serious person like me.

Unfortunately, my friendship with Quadri and Emeka was shortlived. They both withdrew and left school at the second and third junior years respectively, due to family circumstances. They told me long before they left. And then I was in a world of my own. Interestingly, I started showing interest in my academics in my second junior year of secondary school. Till this day, I can’t fathom what caused this change or how I was able to transcend academic mediocrity to attain excellence in my studies. At that point, my academic skills attracted the company of handsome boys and beautiful girls—a dream-come-true experience.

But, they weren’t the friends I thought they ought to be; they actually ‘feasted’ on what I could offer—insight into the subject areas they found difficult to comprehend. To me, all I desired was company. After all, I believed it was better to be in the company of others than to be a loner. That became a way of coping with my deformity.

Meanwhile, I was finding it difficult to relate to my family on my facial deformity issue.

“Your swollen cheek will be a thing of the past as you grow older,” I had been assured.

This was when I was 14 years old. 

I waited patiently for a time in my life when I could behold my face in the mirror and say, “the handsome me is here and has come to stay”.

“At what age do you think I’ll be facially alright?” I would ask curiously.

“Before long. I promise your face will be way better than it is now”. 

But I needed a precise answer. “But what age do you think this will be?”

That’s when I received the biggest shock of my life!

“I don’t know! I’m not God” my Mother responded. It was a harsh one. I still remember.

“Okay.” I decided never to ask again.

As secondary school continued, I had more company come to me for assistance, not friendship. Yet, I was not perturbed; I was encouraged to do more for them. I was kept at arms length by girls I liked. 

Mary was one who refused my relationship proposal We stood alone and had the following conversation.

Me: I’ve been looking forward to asking you something

 Mary (curious): What do you mean?

Me (my heart beating faster): You know…I’ve been thinking about you.

Mary: Why think about me?

Me: I really want you.

Mary (chuckles): For what?

Me: A relationship (My hands holding hers).

Mary: I’m so sorry I can’t. I thought you wanted to call me for some kind of important chat (She looks at my face. I understand the body language).

Me: Okay. I’m sorry (shaking my head in utter disappointment).

Mary: I have to go (she lets go of my hand and walks away). 

Me: Alright

I leave a disappointed man.

She was one of those beautiful girls who would come to me from time to time to help her with her Mathematics, a subject she was not good at. This continued until I completed my secondary schooling. Sadly, I couldn’t establish any form of intimate connection with her, all throughout my secondary school years. Until I was done with school, there were no other communication I had with her.

This was the first and last time I chased romance. There was no romance really after it. There was no conversation with Mary either.afterwards

In Nigeria, between 2001 and 2003, it was difficult to gain admission directly into university or even the polytechnic. After secondary school, unless parents or guardians knew ‘short-cuts’ to expedite the admission process, students were likely to spend years at home seeking admission into tertiary institutions. I finished secondary school in 2001, having excelled in my Senior studies.

I waited for two years before I sat for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to gain admission into university.

During this period at home, I joined my mother in her local business.

She traded in staple food items—rice, beans, cassava flakes, locally known as ‘garri’ and other things. It was yet another school of hard knocks. Customers would take a thorough look at my facial deformity and express compassion (audibly or in gestures). That didn’t help me at all, though I understood they meant well. I just had to learn to how to cope!

My parents’ financial resources were dwindling. Sixteen at the time, I knew things were not the way they used to be. Our standard of living had drastically declined. While at home during this period, I wondered if going overseas was the answer to my problems. Maybe other doctors or specialists could help with my facial deformity. Again, and against my inclination, I had to ‘open’ another conversation.

‘Do you know of anyone who would be able to handle my case? My left cheek is still swollen.” I asked my mother. 

 “I really have no idea!’ Was the reply. ‘And please, don’t ask me those questions! When you get into university and graduate, you can get a job and save your own money for treatment,” she answered. Bitterness was written over her face. My mother answered, more hasher than I’d have expected.

It was obvious that I was on my own. I approached various non-government organizations but my requests for help proved futile. I was never attended to!

I had to learn to be practical and cope with my deformity by tuning out from the negative things people would say, both to my face and behind my back. I have been on my own, in my childhood, youth and young adulthood. The scars remain.

I am trying to ensure that I remain healthy by taking more of organic foods, and ensuring I don’t over-think my current swollen-cheek predicament. I live with the moment as I press on, while taking my body just the way it is. After all, “such is life’’, they say. 

Mr Ben, as he is fondly called, is a represented and published poet, playwright, essayist, children's author, novelist, lyricist, and voice over artiste. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, he delights in traveling, reading and meeting people.

‘Not just a tampon, even a swab of my vagina would leave me in tears’

One day I woke up with vulvar pain, and realised that it wasn’t just me, even the docs weren’t ready to handle it

Before I start, I’d like to point out that I’m French born and raised of Indian origin. My name is Ishta, and this is my story.

It started in 2016. I was 23 years old then and was working in the family business. I woke up one day with severe pain in my vulvar area and inside my vagina. The pain had been around for a while, but it just kept getting worse until that day. I woke up feeling like my private parts were on fire. A few weeks after this pain started, I went to see my gynecologist.

I was a virgin at that time (still am, technically), and my only sexual encounter was a chaste kiss on the lips with this very cute guy whilst playing spin the bottle. I am definitely an extrovert, but I was extremely shy too. Anything that came close to flirting or getting intimate with someone was scary to me.

The gynecologist was extremely rude to me, and screamed at me more than once for refusing to let her insert the speculum as I was in too much pain.  

I’d gone alone as it’s customary to consult your gynecologist on your own, especially when you’re above 18.

She also didn’t believe me when I told her that I was a virgin. She wanted me to get tested for STDs such as chlamydia. Anyway, when I went to the lab to get tested, the nurse was very kind and decided not to use a speculum. She simply rubbed the swab inside my vagina. 

But the simple contact between the swab and my skin was so painful that I was in tears. 

The nurse was confused but understanding about the whole situation. She told me that my private parts were red, which was quite unusual. 

When I got the results, I learned that I had a fungal infection and my gynecologist prescribed vaginal tablets. After inserting them I would roll in the bed from the pain and wouldn’t be able to move for at least half an hour. 

I’d be prescribed vaginal tablets and/or antibiotics once every two weeks. This was just the beginning of six months of being prescribed antibiotics and antifungal medicines continuously even though I had no symptoms of any sort of infection. 

I was in India on a holiday and the gynaecologists there didn’t try to do any exam on me because I was unmarried and therefore a virgin (I found it quite funny and endearing to be honest, but truth be told, I actually was a virgin). 

When I came back to Paris, we found out I had severe anemia—I’d had severe hair loss and felt extremely tired 24x7. so I got a blood test done. I got a few other tests done and was diagnosed with endometriosis. I was given a list of gynaecologists who specialise in endometriosis a gynecological condition where there are growths inside and outside the uterus, and the symptoms are painful periods and heavy bleeding. I went to see a bunch of them. Basically, when I would see them for the first time, they wouldn’t try to do any gynaecological exam, but would mention that they would do it at the next appointment. Obviously, I was so scared and traumatised that I would switch to another doctor every time. By then, I had understood that my pain had nothing to do with endometriosis. The thing is, I have learnt now that endometriosis can sometimes cause pain during penetration, if there are growths near the vagina. However, in my case, the pain was mostly located in the vulvar area. I would like to point out that in some cases, the inflammation caused by endometriosis can also play a role in chronic vulvar pain.

In 2017, I had an appointment with another gynaecologist specialised in endometriosis. When I told her about my chronic pain in the vulvar area and vagina, she asked me, in an almost brutal way, if I had been sexually abused or raped in my childhood. 

I literally broke down in tears and admitted I had been sexually abused by a man in his mid-forties when I was 12 years old. It had taken me a few years to tell anyone else about it. 

Truth is, I had forgotten about it for many years, and I only remembered it when the #MeToo movement started. 

She then asked me if I had heard of “vulvodynia”. So, I did look it up on Google a few months before meeting her but there was very little information about it on the Internet. She told me to go see a therapist and work on my trauma to get rid of the pain. 

That night, I was having drinks with a friend, and when I went to pee the pain was so intense I couldn’t move for a few minutes. I realised my pain was definitely linked to my trauma, but I also thought I made it up in my head. Basically, I thought my pain was only mental, not physical. Little did I know that I would meet, a few months later, a doctor who would change my life forever. 

I was talking to my friend’s girlfriend who has endometriosis as well, and she told me she goes to an algologist (a doctor who is basically a pain specialist) for her period pain. I had little to no hope but my mom forced me to go see the algologist. I was almost in tears as I told her about my symptoms and my suffering and she was so incredibly patient and kind as she listened to me and told me I was not crazy. 

The diagnosis was vulvodynia, which simply means, chronic pain in the vulva. She explained that my trauma must have played a role but there are various causes to vulvodynia. There are two types of treatment usually prescribed for vulvodynia: antiepileptics and antidepressants. 

Vulvodynia has nothing to do with epilepsy or depression, but it’s a form of neuropathic pain, and certain types of antiepileptic meds or antidepressants are very effective for this kind of pain. Since I kept saying that the pain was in my head, the algologist put me on an antiepileptic medicine as she was afraid that prescribing me antidepressants could make me believe further that I was making it all up.

It was such a relief to finally know that my feelings were valid and that there was an explanation for my pain! As soon as I started taking this medicine, my pain reduced. Within two years, the pain completely went away!

My algologist had sent me to a physiotherapist who specialises in pelvic pain, for perineal rehabilitation, as vulvodynia is often linked to a contracted perineum. So the first physiotherapist I went to, asked me to take off my clothes on our first session, and tried to insert her finger in my vagina, to no avail. She then told me I also had vaginismus. My first reaction was: what the f*** is that ?

So the definition is: painful spasmodic contraction of the vagina in response to physical contact or pressure, especially during sexual intercourse. To be fair, it can make any form of penetration difficult, even inserting a finger, a toy, or a simple tampon. So what is the consequence of this spasmodic contraction of the vagina? Basically, the vagina tightens because of the contraction, so penetration is partially or completely impossible to do. 

As you can imagine, this brand new diagnosis really pissed me off. I kept wondering: when will it all stop? The pain relief made me feel like I was finally moving forward, but the diagnosis made me feel like a huge step back. Since my pain would vary, depending on my stress levels, sometimes I’d be able to work for an entire day at office, and sometimes I needed to lie down at home whilst working.

Since the first physiotherapist I went to asked me to take off my clothes on the first session and inserted her finger without informing me beforehand, I decided to go see someone else. I started working on it with another physiotherapist, who was extremely nice and very particular about consent, but unfortunately, she was terrible at her job. She would insert her finger and start applying pressure everywhere and I would be in so much pain after the session that I had to take a very strong pain killer before every session. Plus, my perineum was even more contracted because of the pain (which is the opposite of what we were aiming for) and I started having trouble peeing. Sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to pee for 20 hours. 

When COVID happened, I left a job that wasn’t making me happy. Plus the fact that I didn’t have to sit all day, combined with my treatment helped me heal faster. I decided to stop going for physiotherapy sessions. 

So I set up my own Instagram pages in French (2019) and English (2021) where I talk about all these gynaecological problems. 

Last year, around February, I asked my followers for help. I was still suffering from vaginismus, and I didn’t know what to do… A physiotherapist who specialised in pelvic pain and based in Paris, responded to my Insta story and told me she would love to help. I happily accepted her offer, and man, I wasn’t disappointed at all. So she and her colleague both work at the same place and they are both experts in pelvic pain. 

They are extremely empathetic, and they have a lot of experience in that area, so they always take time out to talk to you, to analyse your story, your trauma, your experiences. They also have the latest machines to help cure vulvodynia and/or vaginismus. Unfortunately, those machines are very costly and from what I remember, only three health professionals have them in France. 

The first one is a specific luminotherapy machine with LED tubes that are inserted in the vagina for tissue repair, and the second one is a focus shockwave machine that helps relax the muscles. Of course, we first started with breathing exercises and my physiotherapist would insert her finger and apply pressure… without hurting me! Then slowly, as my vagina dilated more and more, she started using the luminotherapy machine. We also used vaginal dilators at times. 

A vaginal dilator simply is tube shaped device, that comes in different sizes, to help dilate, or rather stretch the vagina. It’s also a very effective technique to get rid of vaginismus. 

I have been doing these physiotherapy sessions for a year now, and guess what… I don’t have vaginismus anymore! However, I still feel pain when a dilator or tube from that luminotherapy machine is inserted in my vagina. 

According to both my physiotherapists, I’m still not ready to do penetration, but once I find someone I love and who loves me back, I should be able to do penetration like anybody else. In fact, they told me cute stories about some of her patients; for example, there was this girl who wasn’t able to do penetration until her boyfriend confessed his love for her!

I’d like to add that you can find a partner, even if you’re suffering from a similar condition, many people will love and accept you for who you are. In my case, since I was suffering from PTSD, plus all these gynecological conditions, my psychiatrist sent me to another psychiatrist to do this special therapy that was specifically designed for PTSD, called EMDR. Basically, the doc asked me to think about a traumatic event. Then, she moved her finger left and right and I had to follow the movement with my eyes. We did about 7 sessions, and it was really effective. I At the age of 28, I finally started going on dates, with men and women! 

Reminder: I had only kissed one guy in my entire life, until I turned 28! Strangely, after doing EMDR, I really wanted to “experience” with a woman at least once. Before that, I had always thought I was only attracted to men, except for Megan Fox (but I mean, who isn’t?). Coincidentally, a few weeks after thinking about it, I had my first sort-of sexual encounter, and it was with a woman! I had met her at a party, and developed a huge crush on her, which made me realize that I was attracted to women as well as men. Even though I have a huge preference for men, I still identify as queer. 

From the age of 28 to 31, I wasn’t looking for something serious, and I’ve had my fair share of dates and sexual encounters. I had always been honest about my condition (perhaps a little too much) with the people I went on dates with, and most of the time, they didn’t have an issue with it. I had been blocked a few times, and some people did suspect I was lying about my condition, but overall, I met very open-minded and caring people. Now, you must be wondering, how to have sex, when you have this condition? 

First of all, I’d like to point out that sex shouldn’t be all about penetration. Oral sex is sex. Women who have sex with other women don’t do penetration with a penis, but that’s still sex. So for a year, after I turned 28, I would only do oral sex. To this day, fingering is still painful, so I don’t let anyone do it to me. Then, in 2022, I started seeing a friend who became my friend with benefits, for a year and a half. He introduced me to anal sex, and personally, I really liked it, but you shouldn’t feel compelled to do it just because you can’t do penetration. Then, until 2023, I would still only do oral sex with the other people I met through apps, and anal sex with my friend with benefits. Beginning of 2023, I started doing anal sex with other people as well, not only my partner. By end of year 2023, I realised I was looking for something more serious. I’d like to love, to be loved, to experience that feeling at least one my life, so that’s my current mood.

Anyway, until I meet someone I feel comfortable with, I’ll continue doing the physiotherapy sessions once in three weeks. Fingers crossed! 

Ishta is French born and raised of Indian origin. She is currently working on starting her own jewellery business. She talks about her journey on @pelvicpain.in and @douleursfeminines (French version)

Not Feeling ‘Queer Enough’ Helped Me Become My Most Radiant Queer Self

Mumbai’s queer scene was self-assured and flamboyant. I was newly bisexual and scared. But being uncertain about where I fit in helped me discover spaces where I could be confidently queer in whatever way I wanted to be.

The afternoon light streamed into my hostel room. It was a golden summer in Manipal—ripe mangoes and gulmohar in bloom. Inside, The Half of It played on my laptop. Ellie and Aster swam, backs submerged, faces upturned, in a cliffside pool. There was something cinematic and erotic about their almost-temples-touching, circling silence. 

I looked at them with narrowed eyes; my thoughts spinning out of control. Was there even a 1% chance that I could imagine myself as one of the characters?

I prayed that I wouldn’t be able to. 

*

This was the first queer movie I had watched at J’s insistence. It had only been about six weeks since I’d moved away from home for the first time to the campus town of Manipal. The first one and a half years of our course had been online. Now, in our fourth semester, we had arrived with boriya-bistar to a foreign land amidst older students for whom Manipal was already home. It felt strange to be thrust into this space-time continuum where I was technically supposed to know everything, but felt as clueless as I had been during my first Zoom class.

Amidst all the quarantining chaos and my social anxiety, I became close friends with J and A, who were roommates and lived in the same hostel block. Living away from my parents for the first time and suddenly having to become an ‘adult’ felt daunting and lonely—the people around me spoke in an unfamiliar tongue and I got lost in the labyrinthine routes of campus. But it felt easier when I knew I had another room to go to, people to stress over assignments with, giggle and have deep conversations late into the night. 

Amongst these midnight confession sessions and trauma-bonding circles, J talked about her queer awakening—how she had fallen for her straight (of course) best friend, how the unrequitedness had crippled her, and her journey with her identity.

I listened. This was the first time I was encountering queerness in flesh and blood, but there was nothing unfamiliar about her. To me, J was just another person. Brilliant, funny, kind and reliable. J talked about a growing distance between A and herself, how it was irritating to share the same space all the time, and how she was glad to have me. We grew close with a terrifying intensity, and exchanged secrets and joys and insecurities.

Having grown up in four different cities and schools, I’d never had a stable and sustained group of friends. What was the point of investing in someone when I would be uprooted again? To them, I was just a change in variable, they would forget me. For me, it was the upstaging of my entire equation.

I had never known friendship could feel like this.

And then, I felt something more.

Suddenly, I was finding excuses to talk more to J, and secretly glad that there was trouble brewing between the roommates. My assumptions of needing a specific kind of “beauty” to feel attracted to someone, dissolved. I fantasized about holding hands and walking around campus and shopping for movie nights in the aisles of the campus store.

My fantasies—although innocently intimate and not-sexual—were definitely not platonic. My giddy butterflies were soon accompanied by the gut-wrenching sensation of starting to “question”. 

I had always liked boys—real and fictional. I had drooled over Season 2 Chandler. Gushed over Milo Ventimiglia in Gilmore Girls and This is Us. I had dreamed up scenarios where I was Annabeth Chase to Percy Jackson, Amy Santiago to Jake Peralta. I liked boys with silliness, heart and a sense of humour. My first relationship with a boy in my late teens had been healthy and safe, unlike everything I had heard about peoples’ firsts.

And so this infatuation for J was shocking. It felt like I had been straight all my life, and, out of nowhere turned gay. 

Listening to queer peoples’ stories made me feel like their journey began only once they “came out”. I tried to remember what I had been like before this. It was only in my first semester of college, when my classmate had proudly proclaimed herself as bisexual during an online class, that I’d started learning about what queerness was. I was taking complex courses—gender studies, film, history, classical and cultural sociology—all at the intersections of minority identities. I was meeting many new kinds of people, all at once. I felt the need and pressure to keep up, to expand my understanding of the world and to become “politically correct”. Being a “good ally” felt like an intrinsic part of my aspirations to becoming a writer, journalist and committing myself to the cause of social justice. Through the pandemic, I read endlessly about queer terminology and queer histories. To “perfect” the theory, even though (and perhaps, especially because) I didn’t know any real queer people. 

Was I suddenly supposed to accept that I was now a “real queer person” myself? One was the more common fear that all queer kids experience—”Fuck, what am I going to tell my parents?” “Am I going to be this ‘other’ in society?” The other was tied to my internalized homophobia. How could I not be okay with being part of a community I had so actively tried to understand and be in solidarity of? 

I held it in until I couldn’t anymore. I ‘officially’ came out to—surprise, surprise, J herself. I don’t remember much of that night on the hostel balcony, overlooking the ridges of hills, shrouded in the night. I just remember that I sobbed for three hours, asking the same garbled questions again and again.  I remember there were lots of mosquitoes. I remember that J was the first person who ever saw me cry. That she held my wrist and didn’t let go.

I confessed my feelings for J a few days later , only to be gently let down. We promised to take space but honour and rebuild the friendship in the long run. She didn’t hear me sliding down and sobbing as the door closed behind her—I knew that things would never be the same again. 

I returned to Pune for summer break in these throes of heartbreak. Soon after, I had a fallout with A (with whom my friendship had always been rocky). I was confident that J would either choose me or at least try to put in a sane word. Instead, she severed ties with me. 

I felt like my queerness had been trampled over. I was too devastated to explore the possibilities of this universe that J had opened. I wanted to forget that I had been abandoned by the person in whom I confided a terrifying and intimate part of myself.

How was I going to survive? Friend groups had already been formed and it felt like life in Manipal had ended for me.  I was bitter. My queer realization was the beginning of everything that had gone wrong. If I hadn’t fallen for J, we would still be the closest of friends. If I had taken more time, not been hasty, or not confessed, maybe things would have been okay.  Why had I figured things out so quickly? 

I met K in the next few weeks. Under shared umbrellas in Manipal’s torrential rain, identical plates of food in the mess, a perfectly complementary taste in music – something blossomed between us. I knew she liked me. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her back. And even if I did – I had finally managed to make one goddamn friend after the Semester 4 disaster. I didn’t want to put everything I had at stake again. My lovers became my best friends, my best friends became my lovers – Niyati, when would you learn your lesson?

K and I started dating. It was strange – I had barely come out a few months ago, repressed my feelings for J during the summer break, and convinced myself that my queerness had just been a phase. I hadn’t been in any relationship for over a year and a half. But my journey with K made me feel like I had been queer all along. I had thought it would feel unnatural to kiss a woman. It didn’t. (It just scared the fuck out of me). We took long walks, nerded out over history, science and politics and knew how to comfort each other. She was goofy, I grounded her. I was anxious, she always made me laugh. It was easier to share anything and everything with a woman. A part of me instinctively sensed kinship and embraced her presence.

All year long, I had grappled with coming to terms with my identity privately. I didn’t feel the need to proclaim it in a grand announcement to the world or even to many of my friends back home. After all, I was still the same old me – and my being queer was just a natural extension of my world expanding. 

My department had many other queer people. But their tattooed bodies and coloured hair; their fierce opinions and seemingly perfect understanding of intersectionality intimidated me. Even though I was terribly lonely after the loss of my friends, it never occurred to me that I might reach out to them, and bond over our journeys. I was newly queer, what did I know anything about queer politics or even what being queer was? What if I overstepped or misspoke? Even before I became friends with them, I imagined a second ostracization – one that would shatter my queerness. In that sense, K was my one tenuous connection to the visible queer world. I was happy to be in a healthy relationship and it felt like I had fulfilled what I thought was the bare minimum required to be a queer person.

After graduating, I moved to Mumbai. Everybody was hustling, and seemed to know exactly what they wanted and how to get it. Again, I was scared to be a misfit here – a person who wanted to belong to a new city and call it home, but didn’t know how to. 

K and I had broken up by this time. With my one tenuous connection to the queer universe gone, was I even queer? Even though I had spent over a year getting intimate with my queer self, it once again felt like I was a novice to Mumbai’s gay scene. I felt more lonely than ever. I saw stories of parties organized by queer organizations, like Gaysi on Instagram. Everyone had brightly painted faces and dressed in sheer fabric and glitter. They seemed to drink, smoke and dance the night away. Queer people in this big city put their voice on display, while I was still a teetotaller bisexual woman who was easily mistaken for straight. Nobody would have been able to single me out in a crowd and say that I was queer. I, with my unchanged teenage wardrobe with solid colour t-shirts, jeans and unflattering pants and no sense of personal style. I, who seemed to not be aware of any queer pop culture references, I, who had never engaged with the politics of queerness because of the fear of being wrong. At that time, this felt ‘lesser’ than being loud and proud about my queerness.

Then, I joined an organization with primarily queer employees. I had the same insecurities – was I going to awkwardly suspend between being straight and being gay? My first day at the office was when everybody had just returned from the annual Christmas break. I remember how person after person walked in through the doors, hugged each other tightly and exchanged gifts. They had piercings and shades of rainbow in their hair. They confidently wore bold coloured eyeliner with salwar kameezes and kurti-pants, confidently pulled off bright pieces of printed fabric and silk. They wore baggy pants and shorts and laughed about how ironic it was that a sex-ed space was filled with many people who identified on the asexual spectrum. They knew the ins and outs of popular queers in the city and every event that was happening in town. They sat on either side of me during lunch and played games with me. One person with shiny pink eye stickers noticed that I felt awkward and shyly slipped me a rabbit shaped scrunchie saying, “This is your Christmas gift”. 

I was struck by the warmth and everyday-ness of this space. It didn’t feel like they were deliberately putting any part of their identity on display. We had incredible discussions on gender, sexuality, feminism and queerness every day. My queerness had just been my own until then. But in the steadiness of this space, which allowed me to be queer in whatever way I wanted to be. I could be straight-passing and just be as queer and feel as celebrated, I found that I wanted to finally engage with the wider community at large.

Labels felt peculiar. Straight, biromantic, heterosexual, bisexual, demisexual – I had swum my way through these to make some sense of who I was. I had believed that if I didn’t define myself fully, I was giving the world another chance to not acknowledge my existence. I had been surrounded by queer people before and had been scared of  ‘getting it wrong’. Now in Mumbai, I was introduced to hundreds of these labels – with many people using lots of them all at once. These people had many different identities and self-expression. On the one hand, watching them inhabit this in-between space of fluidity felt freeing and expansive. On the other hand, I felt more intimidated and scared than ever before.

How was I supposed to dress, look and talk my way into this underground queer circuit? What should I put on my Hinge profile? What were these secret codes and words I wasn’t privy to? What was the use of coming out, I wondered, if I felt othered and intimidated by people supposed to be my own? 

I initially struggled to understand the people behind the labels. These were words and phrases that queer people had invented to ‘break free’ from how society perceived them. Words that more correctly described a way of being in the world that a heteronormative world could not imagine. When I first came out, ‘queer’ had felt too scary, too big of a word. The word ‘bisexual,’ – being attracted to two or more genders (I ignored the ‘or more’ at the time – two was terrifying enough) – felt like an anchor.

But surely labels couldn’t be the cumulative of who a queer person was? If we had invented labels to ‘break free’ and then used multiple labels for ourselves…would we escape one set of norms only to enter another box? Surely queerness was to be strange and unpredictable in the most delightful ways, because those ways were all yours. Surely, queerness did not look like any one thing. Did queerness even look like anything at all?

In the middle of all these questions, I was lucky to be initiated into the space of my queer colleagues – who soon became close friends. There was time to think, time to become, time to be unsure. My friends embodied the ‘cool’ queerness that I had hesitated to approach till now. They hop across events in the city with casual ease, put on makeup, dressed in the wildest, most beautiful ways that I felt I wasn’t brave enough to do, and talked passionately about social injustice.

I slowly started to experiment with myself in the wake of this steadiness that still allowed me to stumble sometimes. I wanted to experience how far my queerness could go. How boundless I could be as a person. Experience the spacious and incredible freedom that came with accepting that we stood out from the world. 

I chopped off my hair and got a tattoo. Had I done this earlier, I think I would have just done it to try and forcibly fit into the queer scene. Being uncertain and being allowed to feel like I was allowed to take my own journey, on my own terms, allowed me to experiment with my body and my assumptions. It felt more easy to imagine a world where I could be not just a straight-passing bisexual woman, but an uninhibited, queer person – but ONLY if I wanted to be. I could be one or the other, I could be somewhere in between, I could oscillate between the two, or find a completely different third thing. Nothing was lesser, nothing was inferior. I was just as queer in all my avatars.

Being encircled in this warm jhund of friends also taught me so much about horizontal relationships. Until now, my partners were my best friends, the people I invested everything into. My queerness helped me imagine a world where there were no hierarchies between friendships and romance. 

These days, I head over to their place on weekends. We cook pancakes. We read out poems to each other – heads on laps, limbs entangled. Sometimes, we dress up in campy outfits and go party. All of these can co-exist. We are a group of queer but ordinary friends – sharing our dreams, desires and grief.

On my ‘coming out anniversary’ every year, I wear the Pride shirt that K gave me. In a world that revels in being ‘loud and proud’, I speak my silences. 

Today, I don’t feel the pressure to come out all at once to anybody. No such thing exists. I can come out in different ways and intensities to different people in my life. I feel more excited than scared to immerse myself into queerness now. To keep sliding down the rainbow. To keep coming out, again and again, and again.

Niyati is a reader and a writer. She is curious, loves to walk along beaches and believes that kindness can change the world.

Unhooked and Unapologetic

How I found strength and liberation beyond bra expectations

I vividly remember being 10 years old when my mom’s older sister paid us a visit from America and surprised me with some training bras among other gifts. Just like the rest of her presents, she picked out the bras with a nonchalant air. But, before she could even present them, my mom’s reaction was a sight to behold—a mix of astonishment and embarrassment that prompted her to whisk my aunt away for a private chat.

From my vantage point, I could overhear their conversation. My mom, clearly flustered, attempted to explain to my aunt, in a somewhat agitated manner, that I had no need for training bras. Despite my aunt’s earnest efforts to extol their benefits, my mom remained resolute. It was evident that her discomfort wasn’t just about the bras; it was about the unspoken territory of “womanhood” that she had yet to navigate with her daughter. 

My mom had plenty of opinions on everything else under the sun, but conversations like these seemed to bring out a palpable discomfort, quickly followed by a hushed end. Finally, my mom decided to take the bras away and hide them deep within the confines of her cupboard.

Little did she know, her daughter was always one step ahead, particularly when it came to matters that made adults squirm in embarrassment around their kids. I found myself captivated by those bras, and I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that my mom had hidden them away before I could even get a proper look. I made a mental note to wait for our guest to leave and for my mom to forget about this episode entirely before making my move to retrieve them.

I managed to acquire all of them and took them into the washroom, examining each piece with excitement. There were five to six bras, each a different colour—grey, cream, black, blue, and white. They felt soft as summer cotton with delicate elastic at the ends. It was an enthralling realization that these bras symbolized my impending journey into womanhood. 

Thus began my first act of pre-teen rebellion. I hid the set of training bras in my toy cupboard, the one place my mom was sure not to check. On days when I would be at home, likely without supervision, I would sneakily retrieve one and wear it for a few hours before my mom noticed. I resolved not to tell anyone about my little bra endeavours, not even my friends, fearing they wouldn’t understand my eagerness to embrace puberty. 

There was something about that act that brought me closer to womanhood and adult femininity, as if I were undergoing a transformation, if only for a short time. Designed for my yet-to-sprout chest, the bras offered a subtle support, hinting at the breasts that would soon emerge. A training bra, unlike a regular bra, lacks heavy padding and broad straps. Training bras are often made of lightweight cotton with a touch of elastic for flexibility. The colors and designs are more playful and less intricate, tailored to a young girl’s developing body rather than the fuller support and more complex designs of adult bras. It felt like I was trading in a piece of childhood innocence for a glimpse of adolescence, and I was ready to make that trade.

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, I slipped into my favourite from the bunch. It stood out as the only colourful option, featuring a pale blue body with narrow, rainbow-coloured straps sprouting from it. However, I was soon caught by my mom who had noticed what I was wearing underneath. Cue the interrogation and disbelieve! How dare I sneak them out? According to her, my physique wasn’t ready for such things yet. She promptly instructed me to hand over all the remaining bras, promising that she’d decide when the time was right for me to wear them.

I found myself sulking, longing for some overnight miracle that would magically return my stash. But the thought of puberty creeping closer and the prospect of wearing them to school in the near future kept me eagerly waiting. 

I did start wearing them two years later, although I was a late bloomer when it came to experiencing the full effects of puberty, constantly disappointed by my less-than-mature breasts. It felt like I entered high school without truly needing regular bras, a training bra seemed to suffice. During that period, there were times when I yearned for fuller breasts, as if their presence indicated something about being desired, exuding sensuality. Everywhere I looked, it seemed I found myself admiring women with fuller breasts. At the same time, I was navigating my desire for women long before I even learned about other possible sexualities. 

I indulged my desires and overcompensated for my earlier thwarted wishes by purchasing all sorts of bras throughout high-school and initial semesters of college (even if I didn’t need them)—cute and colourful bow bras, padded bras, lacy bralettes, and fussy sports bras. However, I soon realised that having fuller breasts was fine, but tucking them into a bra could be incredibly uncomfortable. Wearing a bra became a disappointing and painful endeavour, and the more my breasts grew, the more I longed to free them from the confines of bras. 

When I enrolled at an all-girls’ college for my undergrad, I found myself not only physically surrounded by women but also immersed in vast theories and discussions on gender and sexuality. There I observed women who were confident in their sexuality and how they chose to express or not express their femininity.

The young woman within me finally found a voice within and outside that space. I began to realize that my relationship with my breasts and sexuality didn’t have to be dictated by a garment that brought me discomfort.

They might work for myriad others and losing bras might be a terrifying prospect for some, however, for me, bras came with a heavy load of expectations. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I never resembled those fuller models advertising bras, and that was one of the reasons I often felt disappointed by my own body and its development. I also realized that sometimes bras unnecessarily sexualized my breasts when I didn't want to be sexualized. The more I concealed something that was a part of me, the more it became an object of curiosity to be peeked at, and this frustrated me. The rebel pre-teen inside me longed to control my own sexualization, to exercise my own authority, with consent, and by those I wished to be intimate with. 

Thus, I began to toy with the idea of renouncing the bra altogether and understand how I wanted to display my gender. I started experimenting by attending classes without a bra, wearing a scarf, and investing in thick cotton kurtis instead of flimsy synthetic blouses to avoid any visible traces.

And eventually, I grew accustomed to the idea of my nipples sometimes showing underneath my clothing. Gradually, it seemed like the world also grew accustomed to how I carried myself. Now, I feel more confident embracing the natural movement and shape of my breasts, and I am comfortable sexualizing them when I am with my intimate partners. This confidence helps me navigate my day-to-day life without constantly worrying about being objectified by default. 

Although at times, I can't help but think it offers peepers an even better view. But that is a trade I am willing to make now.”

Fizapreet is a counseling psychologist based in Bangalore. She is queer and polyamorous, and is on a mission to squeeze in more time for poetry, writing, and creating art. 

Love Has Come Into My Life. But It Has Also Left My Life As Quickly

I am a trans woman. I wonder now if I will ever find love

I am contemplating whether I will ever find a love that is not fleeting. I complete 30 years in just two months. I am curious if it’s doable to find love for a girl like me who sometimes feels like she’s not even capable of loving herself. 

Greetings, I am Arina, a woman transitioning to womanhood. My gender is of utmost importance here. 

We say that love is supposed to transcend gender, but if that’s the case, why have I had such pathetic experiences in love? 

The first love affair I had was with a boy from my class. I was 14 years old and trying to explore my gender identity while living in a small village in West Bengal in a Muslim community. 

This love was comforting. Growing up in a small village as an effeminate boy, I found hatred and bullying a daily occurrence. When everyone in my family told me that something was wrong with me and I was the subject of mockery, this boy took me seriously. He would take on the bullies who tried to tease me for being feminine.

He always remained my support. During my sister’s wedding, my in-law’s drunken brother tried to parade me naked to show whether I had male or female genitals. This boy took me out of the wedding hall, rescued me from the humiliation, and provided me with his shoulder to cry on. When my parents told me that I was so haram that they would never go to Jannat because of me, this boy’s love felt like it came straight from heaven. 

Even as I was trying to comprehend the difference between the physical anatomy of a transgender and a cisgender person, love made me feel like a complete girl. Growing up as a queer person in a very conservative Muslim neighbourhood was a traumatic experience. This boy’s arms were the only thing I could find solace in.

But little did I know that the love that made me so full would break me down, give me a reality check, and burst my balloons of fantasy. 

He got a job in the army at the age of 17. He was ecstatic. He came to meet me before leaving the village. We made out and he kissed my forehead. He whispered in a low hummed voice, “Please wait for me!” 

That day was perfect. I was just expecting him to sing the “Toh Challe” song from Border for me. It would have made the parting more special. 

In his initial days of army training, he would call me regularly, telling me every tiny detail of the training. Gradually, the calls decreased. I needed him so much at that point. I made numerous attempts to call him. Sometimes the call was answered, but only for a very few seconds. 

My family was mentally forcing me to act “normal”, to fit into the society-imposed gender norms for cis males. I was indulging in self-destructive methods to overcome my pain—cutting myself, banging my head, using psychoactive drugs, and overdosing on glue were among the things I did. But he never called or attempted to meet me after his training. 

I steadfastly believed that he would come to meet me. I used to keep track of his arrival from his army camp, but was too timid to go and meet him, because the sudden change in his behaviour confused me. 

One day, I gained a sense of courage. I visited his house. He seemed embarrassed at seeing me. 

He took my hand and led me outside. I asked what had gone wrong, tears in my eyes. Why could he not meet me for nine months? Why could he not answer my calls? He seemed calm but cruel. He spoke the word “Sin”. I asked him to explain. He said sodomy was a “sinful act”. He said had committed a sin with me, and could not continue doing it. I don’t know how he became so radically transformed in the army camp. Who was educating him to hate?

His words pierced my heart, breaking it apart. I stumbled onto a road to find my way home. I rushed to my bathroom and grabbed a phenyl bottle to drink from. I was rescued by my transphobic family, those who sometimes prayed for my death. 

Despite this event, I remained hopeful about love. 

I was eagerly waiting for my prince to make my queer existence bearable and endearing. But it was challenging for me to find love in that orthodox Muslim area because I struggled to open up to people. 

It took me eight years to go on my second date. When I moved to Chandigarh, it was so much easier to find people who wanted to date queer people secretly. 

You could find someone even within a 100-meter radius. Their objective was simply to have fun, without any intention of getting into anything serious. I don’t blame those who are straightforward about this. But the ones I hate are those who arouse the feelings of love just to sleep with me. 

They were so eloquent in their talk that I started believing that to find love for a queer person, was not difficult. The relationships were fleeting and short-lived, and I found myself begging them to stay with me. 

But they left, leaving a dagger in my heart, creating a wound that was deeper than before. They left me with my existential crisis and left me with so many questions. 

Could love ever find a queer person like me? Would I ever find a love that won’t be ashamed of accepting me in public? I was looking for someone’s acceptance to validate my self-worth. I was at the mercy of other’s love. 

In the midst of constant heartbreak, I attempted to find love within my community. Though it was not intentional, it was rather destined. I had never met a transman before joining a corporate training programme organised by PeriFerry in Bangalore. (If you don't want to, don't name the organization.) I stayed in Belandur, Bangalore, for almost two months in a co-ed living space named Istara. 

This guy was well built and tall. When he took my luggage and showed me my room, I got butterflies in my stomach. He started helping me with the training program and talked to me in a very flirtatious way. 

Everyone in the program was noticing that something was brewing between us. One day, he placed his hand on mine. It was soft and brimming with compassion. We kissed and his hand was struggling to press my bosom. He laughed and took his hands off me. 

I asked what happened. He said, “Your face looks so broad and manly when closely examined”. My face was a reflection of my heartbreak. Realising this, he said he was only joking. But, I was aware that he was not. And it proved itself later. Soon, he began to make unnecessary comments about my appearance, even as he continued being in a physical relationship with me. 

He said his friend made fun of our relationship. “They think we don’t look good together as a couple”. 

These later words caused me a great deal of pain. 

He told me he was just passing time so he wouldn’t get bored. He said he would marry a normal girl anyway. I demanded an explanation of what normal meant to him. He remained silent and departed. I’d thought he would understand. 

I had thought that in him I’d found the love of my life. We had similar set of struggles and journey. Being transgender, would not have been a breeze for him either. He had faced similar struggles, including not being accepted by his family and being homeless. He had gone through all that I had, so I believed he would not break me. 

That’s why the lie he was telling me was so easy to accept. My expectation was that this time it would be significant, not like the fleeting and meaningless dates of the past. 

I crave hands that are not afraid to hold my hands in public. I always wanted someone who is proud and not making me a side chick for their entertainment.

And, when every wish of mine has been shattered, how can I direct my loveless life to do something meaningful for me? I no longer believe in love.

Arina Alam is an author whose work is inspired by the prejudices present in our society towards transgender individuals. She shares insights based on her personal journey as a transgender individual and has been featured in numerous online platforms and newspapers.

The Bullying I Faced In School, And How It Shaped What I Do Today

From the time I started speaking, I used feminine pronouns. And it made me the target of my classmates, teachers and even my father

Whenever Teacher’s Day is celebrated on the 5th of September, everyone shares nostalgic memories of their teachers, schools and colleges on social media. 

But that whole day, my insides are in turmoil. I keep remembering my school days, wondering why I silently endured so much, for so many years. 

My classmates would call me ‘Chhakka’, ‘Ladki’, ‘Hijra’ and give me all sorts of other names. 

I was disgusted with my life. I wondered why God cast me in this strange mold. 

I am my parents’ first born. My mother spun many dreams for me. After all, the first child is said to be somewhat special. So yes, perhaps, I was special to my parents.

My mother had a photo project. She’d take a photo with me every month, in my growing years. Then, on a corner of that photo, she would add a piece of paper where she would write my age, measured in months. This was her way of preserving our memories. 

When I started speaking, I was one and a half years old. I would use “feminine pronouns” in Hindi, to talk about myself, like khaaungi, jaaungi, naachungi etc.

I would think I was a girl, but society had deemed me a boy. Initially my parents found my contrariness cute, but as I grew older, I became a source of shame for my father and family.

Whenever my father was out, I would dance and play with my mother’s sarees. He caught me at this play several times and beat me badly each time. He would tell me to become a “boy”.

What would a four/five-year-old child know about what a boy is supposed to be like, or a girl?

School and college experiences are often bitter for queer trans* kids like us. I faced a lot of violence and teasing in my school.  If society labels you as a boy but your habits are those it deems “girlish”, you are mercilessly bullied in school. Similarly, if society labels you as a girl and your behavior is what is attributed to boys, that merciless meanness will follow.

I still have nightmares about my school, and wake up scared. The difference is that now, whenever I do wake up, I look around, feel reassured and remind myself that life is good now. I wonder why I didn’t have then, the courage that I have today.

Today I stand on my own two feet, no longer dependent on my parents for a home, for money or a secure life. And so, today, when I see the kids going to schools and colleges, similar to those I went to, I wish that what happened to me doesn’t happen to any other child.

Trans* kids suffer in school and this impacts our education. Our childhood, our education is ravaged because of this violence and discrimination. We are weighed down with stress. I spent several years, traumatized. I could never go on to college, after school. I was scared of boys and men. 

Those who are bullied in school often drop out. They either leave education entirely and do something else, or study via distance learning. I opted for the latter. 

While pursuing further studies through distance learning did help me gradually regain confidence, there were some negatives. 

I had no friends, no social circle. The college life of guppe marna, attending classes was something I never got to enjoy. Plus, IGNOU (from where I got my degree) has very little value on the ground. It doesn’t help get you a job. 

It’s to ensure that the reality can change for other kids that I and my partner Don Hasar–when we got together we realized that many of our life journeys and struggles had been similar–decided to start the Satrangi Sathi (multi-hued companion) program. 

Since 2021, we have been going to schools and colleges in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh., We talk to students and teachers about gender equality, sexuality, patriarchy and queer trans* lives and laws. 

Children/people, who do not follow the gender norms given by the society, are harassed in various ways. As they grow up, most of these children either commit suicide, become mentally ill or leave their natal families. Family or parents refuse to love and accept children/people like us.

We say that during the years of our schooling, there weren't any laws for our safety. But in 2009 the Right to Education Act came into force. It says that every child should have equal rights to study. The U.G.C Anti-Bullying and Harassment Regulations 2009, i.e. the law against bullying and harassing a child, was implemented for the safety of children/individuals. And in 2019, the Transgender Person Protection and of Rights Act was also enacted. 

According to this act, it is very important to discuss gender with students and teachers in every educational institution. These laws have provisions for the protection of queer trans* and other vulnerable children. There is also a provision for punishment and fine for those who harass and exploit children like us.

Going to schools and discussing gender has been healing to me personally. By telling people about my experience I acknowledge that this happened to me. When I speak, I can see in the eyes and hearts of the students and teachers that they won’t bully anyone. 

Bullying happens for so many reasons. It could be your height, that you are not good in studies, that you are Dalit, your skin is dark. 

So, when you think about it, the only people whose school experiences have been good are mostly those who are privileged, and are gender conforming. If you are marginalised in any way, you will face some amount of bullying.

We ask the students, “How are you responsible to the person sitting next to you?”

We do not get direct permission to talk about gender in this manner in schools and colleges. We take permission from the principals of these institutions by saying that our purpose is to talk about gender equality and mental health. Most of the principals and teachers see gender equality as a topic related to women empowerment. 

Often after an hour and a half to two hours of talking, teachers and students become quite emotional. They realise how several times, despite their privileges, they have knowingly or unknowingly subjected queer trans* children/people to violence and abuse. They realize that a person’s not following societal gender norms is not that person's fault, it is their nature, given by nature. 

This is how they give us permission.  But when we then talk about queer trans* lives and rights, we fear that the school authorities might throw us out. 

In one college, I was telling my story when a principal walked in and listened for two mins. The students were happy listening to me, but the principal shut down the session, saying that the time was over. Another teacher also asked us to wrap it.

It wasn’t direct, but the discomfort was obvious. 

We didn’t argue, I wrapped up my story in five minutes. But it’s unfortunate when teachers are so insensitive. 

After gender training in a government engineering college, a conversation was held with the principal of the college. The principal was very impressed with the issues raised by us. We encouraged him to build separate toilets for queer trans* people in their college. 

Through this initiative of making a toilet, he would be able to raise this issue of gender repeatedly in his college and create a safe space for queer trans* people. The principal listened to us very carefully, and he did get toilets constructed for non-binary people.

During the training of Asha workers in Kullu, a woman suggested that we should focus on sensitizing men and boys. She reasoned that most of the violence is done by men and still, whenever there is a talk of gender sensitization, the boys/men tend to easily walk out of rooms, as if gender were only a women's issue. 

Taking this suggestion into account and also learning from our experiences, we felt that there is a need for long and deep discussions with men and boys.

Our initiatives have felt like a huge victory for the queer trans* movement in the small towns and villages of Himachal. 

After the sessions, kids often message us on Instagram and WhatsApp, thanking us and write: “I thought I am the only queer person in this region, but I have a community now.”

Many youngsters ask us how to share their identity with their parents. 

We advise them not to do it immediately. To get some education and financial backing first. We also offer mental health support, fees for which are paid by our organisation. 

This work we hope will help ensure that no child ever becomes a victim of violence and exploitation in their school-college on the basis of their less understood gender identity. 

Shashank is a transgender person and the co-founder of Himachal Queer Foundation. They love sipping chai, chit-chatting gossiping, singing-dancing and cooking. Shashank is a feminist and now talks about the rights of LGBTQI+ people in Himachal through pahadi songs and stories. 

One day I was wearing shirts and whistling in class. And the next, I was told I was a girl and had to act like one.

The responsibilities of being a girl and an older sibling meant I had to wear shalwar kurtas and keep my legs neatly tucked.

A girl with long, dyed hair is whistling and on the other side is a girl with short hair, whistling.

Text on the card reads:

“I used to be a Tomboy"

When I told someone this, they said that they found it difficult to believe.I seemed so shy, they'd said. I don't think I was ever shy. Misanthropic yes, but not shy, I think.

A group of men are towering over a frightened little tomboy.

Text on the card reads:

Growing up, my house was full of young male relatives. Spending so much time with them made me dress like them. I wore their shirts. Even if they felt like dresses on my tiny frame.

My hair was regularly cut short (to avoid lice).

I picked up some Bollywood mannerisms as well.

I learnt to whistle like a professional catcaller.

And, I wore my little girl handkerchief around my neck.

A tomboy is whistling in the background. A tomboy is smiling.

Text on the card reads:

Photographs suggest the phase started when I was 2-3 years old.

I don't think tomboy was part of my lexicon at the time or even for a few years later. I use the term in retrospect.

At the time, I remember people saying girls didn't do such things when reacting to some of my mannerisms.

A girl with a bob cut in Salwar-Kurta is sulking.

Text on the card reads:

When puberty hit so much changed. The instructions to be less rough and tumble (with me) and be more modest extended to all males, my father included. For me, there were no more handkerchiefs around the neck anymore.

I had to sit with legs neatly tucked together. Shalwar kurtas took over from loose floppy shirts.

I remembered feeling bewildered by the physical and other changes

But I agreed to everything that was asked of me. I wasn't a difficult kid!

A tomboy is standing in a room with a cricket bat in hand, frowning. In the room, there is a fan and a poster of a masculine man.

Text on the card reads:

Our house also emptied of all these male relatives. They set up homes of their own, or left in pursuit of work.

And I acquired a sibling, so I was no longer the focus of everyone's attention. The logic was two-fold: "You are the elder one, so you must set a good example" and, "you are a woman now, not a girl anymore, so you must watch how you behave."

A girl with a bob cut, wearing a salwar kurta is frowning.

Text on the card reads:

The parental dictums of those times have coloured all my interactions with the Lorem Ipsum opposite sex to this day.

I am most comfortable with women but I am still not sure about my femininity-how to define it or even express it.

I am attracted to men, but am fascinated by feminine women because they seem to have something I don't, or can't, access within myself.

A pair of jhumkas and a pair of sneakers.

Text on the card reads:

I still don't know what my personal style is. I used to be bothered by this, but I think age and self acceptance is helping.

My hair, long and falling down my back, is the site of my vanity now. I have discovered earrings and dresses.

But I still prefer comfortable shoes that don't necessarily match my outfits. I toyed with makeup for a bit and then decided it was too much of a bother.

A girl with long, dyed hair is whistling.

Text on the card reads:

Getting a job brought in financial independence. It was truly liberating, allowing me to make my own decisions about what to wear, how to live my life and where to live it.

It bestowed me with the privilege to be me without having to pander too much to stereotypes and expectations.

A girl with long, dyed hair is whistling, and on the other side is a girl with short hair, whistling.

Text on the card reads:

I don't think I thought then or think now of gender,

But in retrospect I do wish that my choice of how to be was more organic and less forced.

A girl with long, dyed hair is whistling, and on the other side is a girl with short hair, whistling.

Text on the card reads:

And even now, I have a very special place in my heart for the pre-teen with a Hankerchief around her neck and whistling in an all girls classroom.

That image seems unsullied by expectations and remains innocent.

Read the full essay by Anonymous in the link in our bio!

I was prepared to sulk, until I saw a tiny girl with a hockey stick

A serendipitous meeting with a movie character changed everything I had so far been told girls could be

“D, who's your childhood fictional crush?” a friend asked one evening two-three years ago. I was about to blurt out Megamind but stopped to think more… 

OMG! The memories and feelings I had forgotten the existence of, flowed back, into my veins and into my fingers. And now, I am writing this piece as an ode to her. 

Let me tell you about the day I “met” her, quite unexpectedly.

I was 7 years old when my family and I went to the theatres to watch Ta Ra Rum Pum. To me, it sounded like the most exciting thing. It looked like one of those fun family movies with teddy bears and a magical world (judging by its movie poster). I was khushi mein waiting outside the theatre while my parents went in to get movie tickets. Going to the movies  was a rare treat, so in my mind, it was reserved for special, entertaining films .

I was excited until I overheard my parents saying they hadn’t got the tickets, because the movie was housefull, and so we’d be watching Chak De! India instead. 

Standing in front of the big Chak De! India poster, I took a deep breath. I considered it for a moment, and then groaned, “Noooo…” I threw a tantrum about how I did not want to watch a “serious” sports film. That poster looked BORING. I wanted the fun Rani Mukherji film. I also really hated sudden change of plans. But my parents insisted. We had travelled, spending precious time and money, for this. “Nothing-doing, we are watching Chak De! India,” they said.

 I had been taught to swallow my feelings. So, I held back my tears,  stomped into the theatre and  sat down with my hands folded, pouting.  I was ready to be miserable for the next three hours.

But, 10 minutes into the film entered someone who was about to change 7-year-old me’s life!

She was running through the busy streets with her hockey stick, dribbling the ball and finally shooting it at a car window, shattering it . “Komal” her dad yelled. “Laundo ke saath khelne aayi kya?” “Aadmi roti mangega toh kya degi?” her mom asked. “Jeh,”' she says, holding up her hockey stick. 

The little girl is looking at Komal with awe, while Komal is playing hockey.

From the minute she entered the screen, Komal spoke fiercely. She took up space. She was assertive. She wasn't afraid of pissing people off. She stood her ground about what belonged to her,  be it her bunk bed spot or her position on the field.

She was the polar opposite to me.

I was taught to never speak up, to always please elders, to smile even when I felt angry or mistreated… to, well, bottle my feelings up tightly, and make sure other people's needs were always put before mine. So, watching Komal on screen, being unapologetically herself and fighting for what she wanted, made me feel seen, even understood, for the first time. 

Along with being a complete badass, Komal  was also witty, playful, mischievous, and such a menace when she would tease or challenge Preeti, her rival, in the movie.  

I had planned on sulking for three hours, but I LOVED IT. 

I was drawn into the movie because of Komal.  There was this kind of spark or joy or something that opened up inside me that day sitting in that theatre, that is hard to put into words. She instantly became someone I would look up to, even years later. 

Even her choice of clothes was freeing.

Komal had that cool school boy look with buttoned-up shirts, hoodies and comfy pants. (Wait, girls could dress like that? It was allowed?!) She was vocal about her dislike for sarees - which I related to. 

Growing up, I didn't have access to masculine clothes. I spent a lot of my years trying hard to be more girly- wear dresses, earrings, grow my hair. I did it to make my family, neighbour aunties and cis boy crushes happy. I cared a lot about what others thought of me and how they saw me. And would push myself to fit that person they desired. “I like you but I wish you grew your hair, you looked so pretty,” my ex would say. “Tu asa kapde ghalnaar tujhyashi koni lagna karnaar nahi,? (if you wear such clothes, no one will marry you) some aunty would say. “I found you cute but too tomboyish”. I was constantly reminded that everything likeable about me was “not being a tomboy”.    

Even today as a masc queer person who is into other masculine people, I find myself trying to be more feminine. I feel like I have to like my chest and be less boyish, to feel desired by them. To feel liked at least for once. So I’d tell myself, “Don't be who you are.”

But Komal, she was carefree and didn't worry about what others thought of her. Getting married or impressing men wasn't important to her. She simply wanted to play the way neighbourhood boys got to. This resonated with me a lot. 

It reminded me of when boys in my area wouldn't let me play with them because I was a girl. Even if they did, I was the kaccha limbu.  I remember thinking being made goalkeeper was the highest honour, till I realised they did that to keep me out of games and never passed the ball to me. Neither did my school allow sports for girls. All I wanted was the opportunity to play.

I had never in real life or on-screen seen a lovable character like Komal represented. It didn't seem like she was hard to love. Not only was she the top scorer, but also extremely hot, cute and had qualities I wished I had. 

I  admired how she put her ego aside and passed the ball to Preeti, at  the end of the movie. It showed how she cared for her team; and for a goal that was bigger than her. It showed how she could be a good friend – even to someone she considered a rival. (Side note: I like to imagine Komal and Preeti are in love, in an enemies to lovers way. I desperately need someone to make a spin off romance series with Komal and Preeti, ‘pretti’ please. )

As someone who struggled with understanding my identity and took years to realise that I am transmasc, having a character I could resonate with–someone that was Indian, dusky skinned like me, and also from a small town–helped me know that there were others like me. I never understood the obsession I had for her, but it  makes sense now. 

Komal provided me with an outlet to express my masculine self, especially since I didn't have any masculine figures around me while growing up.

For years, I was an obsessive fanboi. Whenever I’d see Komal’s (Chitrashi Rawat) pictures in the newspaper, I'd cut and stick them on my cupboard or notebook. I attempted to play pretend hockey with a stick and bottle cap. I was struck with the eternal gay dilemma —do I want to be her, or do I want to be with her? Even today, though the actress is quite femme, watching Chak De! India is a sort of escape/guilty pleasure. 

Komal, I wish you were real.  We'd be friends. You'd teach me hockey, we'd go out to play. I can imagine us climbing mango trees, where you would be the strong fearless one , climbing high up, and I would be the scaredy cat neeche ready to catch the mangoes, looking at your strength and bravery in awe. 

On the left, Komal and Div are sitting on the grass giggling. On the right, Komal is swinging from a tree’s branch and is throwing a Mango to the Div below, who is flailing their arms joyfully, in an attempt to catch the Mango.

Div Rodricks loves telling stories through their comics, illustrations and five-hour long voice notes.

I was called a tomboy

A girl with short hair and playing sports? Must be a tomboy. Some liked it. Some didn’t. Four people who grew up being called a tomboy share their journey with the word.

The card has four people standing next to four different modes of transport. These include a spaceship, a nautical ship, a bus and a plane. The entire card is styled as an antique map and contains dotted lines depicting routes and journeys. This motif continues across all cards. 

I was called a tomboy

A girl with short hair and playing sports? Must be a tomboy. Some liked it. Some didn’t. Four people who grew up being called a tomboy share their journey with the word. 

The card contains a Amruta Patil's photographs - superimposed on a vintage ships. There are also illustrations of mermaids wearing caps and ties, as well as of other marine imagery such as  starfish, an octopus and a compass. Quotes from the interview below also appear on the picture.

Amruta Patil , 44

Writer and Graphic Novelist

– As Told to Paromita Vohra

Growing up, is “tomboy” a label that you identified for yourself? Or was it something that other people called you?

For lack of any other terminology, I went in the direction of calling myself a tomboy, even though I didn’t particularly like the sound of it. We didn’t have words like andro(gynous), butch etc. until later. Andro might have been closer to what I felt like.

In retrospect, it was just one way one could have the freedoms that were associated with boys and not allowed to girls – I realised this when I began interacting more with girls from Afghanistan and Iran, where we had a certain shared generational experience.

It comes to a closure when you start menstruating. But till that point, you get the chance to play in a much more ‘out of control’ way than you were allowed as a ‘girly little girl’. 

So I wonder if it had more to do with actually demanding a certain freedom of movement and activity than anything else.

Do you think being this way inaugurated a different life journey for you?

It did. I’m beginning to realise now that my parents were progressive, even though they didn’t intend on raising me as a gender neutral child. 

But my mother was just not that invested in visually making me a ‘girly girl.’ The lack of any impositions set me free to dress in other ways and to do things I wanted. They’re appalling now when you look at the photographic record – bicycling shorts, bum bags and four-sizes too large FIFA T-shirts. But essentially, I was never reprimanded for any of those choices.

However, when you usurp these freedoms, others also see you as being one of the boys, which has its setbacks. During the tweenage years and teenage years, the problem is that you’re never considered in the dating game at all – which was my experience because I’d done such a convincing job of assuming that role.

It resulted in several unrequited crushes. Even though I didn’t always see myself like that, I was received like that by others until I was older. 

Briefly, around the age of 14-15, I had a more feminine interlude. But I think the tedium of that was too much. So I reverted to being like my previous self, at around 17/18. I was short-haired till I was about 22. 

Did you feel like adopting more feminine ways when you experienced unrequited emotions? Also, that you were not seen as a person in the dating pool could be for diverse reasons. But could it also be the unsaid reason that actually – you enter that path for the possibility of fulfilling whichever capacity you wish – and then that itself becomes such a romantic part of life. 

Absolutely. I think I became such a missile-focused person because I was not squandering my energy so much in my teenage years. I really wanted to write, and the trade-off was not exciting enough.

My brother has always been shockingly beautiful. The message that I always got from everybody was, “You're interesting, and he is really handsome.” 

But that made me more self-confident about how awesome I was. These semi-shade comparison comments actually helped bolster the inner feeling that "Yes, I actually am quite interesting, compared to the other people in that limited pool I was part of.’ And yes, it absolutely does help to cultivate an inner life. 

I had an opposite journey of not being considered woman or girl-like, not because I was a tomboy, but because I was too nerdy, bossy, opinionated, I wanted to ‘be present.’ I wanted to be taken seriously.

Yes, there was some of that going on too. Even my physical development began very late, so I was kind of a bust-less boyish entity till I was about 19-20. So, that was a natural ally in some sort of physical presentation. But also, I was very smart in class, very opinionated - so there were all of these things. 

You said you wanted to align the masculine/feminine inside you. What was that journey about?

I think it has components that are emotional, there are others that are visual. Internally, I think it was just asserting, ‘owning it,’ not caring what other people think. Coming into my own professionally also helped reconcile a lot of these things. I had always been things on my own terms, but now I could do that even more so. 

I actually feel a bit gender-less in many ways. I don’t know how exactly to put it, but now I just play with it, whatever works with the form, with this particular body at this time. I’m not overly invested in how it’s turning up.

If there is a map of a journey of engagement with genders, where you kind of started off as a tomboy, where do you think you were in the middle, and where would you say you are now?

My body is changing, so there’s that partially. Initially, I was reading different kinds of things–I wanted to be like George from Famous Five, Jo from Little Women. For starters, they are the most interesting people in the story. So partially, it was a desire to ally with those ‘spirit animals.’ Once the qualities that marked those spirit animals were entrenched on the inside, it didn't matter how I manifested on the outside. Now the manifestation is more aligned with what aesthetic/form I want at the age that I am right now.

It allows me more colour and embellishments, many components to play with. I’m questioning my choice of words—maybe more than being genderless, it’s like being a hermaphrodite in a lovely way—both those things have come together more confidently.

The card contains Anjana Sharma's photographs superimposed on a vintage plane. The card also contains other illustrations like a compass and old coins embossed with a person wearing sunglasses and a cap.  Other imagery includes a compass and a treasure chest.

Anjana Sharma, 58

Co-Founder, The Good Life Goa

Interviewed by Vijayalakshmi

Growing up, is “tomboy” a label that you identified for yourself? Or was it something that other people called you?

It started with somebody addressing me as a tomboy and then me quickly accepting it. My mom would dress me up in shorts and a little patka. So nobody ever said anything because they just thought I was one of the little boys.

It just became seamless from there. At no point of time did I identify as being a boy. But I just used it to my advantage to get away with things that I wanted to do.

Was there something that you uniquely understood about being a tomboy?

I found that you were perceived to be a little more progressive. You were allowed to push the boundaries of what was acceptable behavior of a girl. Sometimes you could have been disrespectful, just a little more loud and a little more aggressive etc.

I was a very sporty person. My hobbies were swimming, playing cricket, playing football, and kick the can. As a tomboy, you're allowed to physically exert yourself also.

What was your style? What was your signature kind of clothing at that point of time?

You didn't have many choices. You wore hand-me-downs, which was fine. But if I had my way, even my skirts were divided skirts. Otherwise, you had to wear bloomers. So my mom would make me bloomers for everything.

So it was nice to have a supportive parent that way?

Oh, completely. My father was very strict, and conservative, but never discriminated between me and a boy. He had two daughters. He was extremely proud and he pushed us to do whatever we wanted. 

I remember coming home really scared one day because I had really gotten expelled from school. And I overheard my parents having a conversation. My mother was saying, “you are the one who spoiled her. She does all this rubbish.” And my father turned around and said, “Well, if I had a boy, I would have been proud of him. So why not her?”

How would you say that being a tomboy shaped the rest of your life? Is there a connection between that and who you are today?

It made me fearless. I'm single. I never settled. I've lived alone practically all my adult life. I have an older sister who's utterly and gorgeously feminine. She was a Miss India. People compared me to her all the time. But I just think I had very thick skin at a very young age.

I'm not a conventional dresser.

I have my own style. I'm recognized for it. It's part of my business now. So I think that it allowed me to shape my own individual expression. I hate being part of buckets. I want to be myself.

What is your style now?

It's very feminine. I don't dress like a man. But for example, over the period of my life, I've shaved my hair three times. And the strength to do that also comes from the fact that you don't identify with the conventional norms of beauty.

The best and the hottest men hit on me when I was bald. I've had the most glorious relationships. I've had the hottest men. I don't think being a  tomboy has anything to do with a lack of femininity. I think it's a question of accepting yourself. The minute you are comfortable in your own skin, you send out the correct aura and vibrations. And that's what being attractive is about.

Would you say that the word tomboy has relevance today? In this day and age where women can do a lot of things, unlike a lot of things that said girls were not allowed to do when you were a child.

It was another label at that time. If you were a marriageable age and a tomboy, it was a negative, right? It was a bad label. But if you were smart enough to twist it to your advantage, that's great. These are labels that society creates. Now, you have to, as an individual, have enough strength of character to understand what is negative and what is not.

The card depicts photographs of a Aryan Somaiya superimposed against a spaceship. Other imagery includes cosmic imagery like planets and rockets.

Aryan Somaiya, 36

Psychotherapist, Gender and Sexuality Trainer and DEI Consultant

Interviewed by Harshita Kale

Growing up, is “tomboy” a label that you identified for yourself? Or was it something that other people called you?

The word ‘tomboy’ was always about how others perceived me – I never identified as one. Any woman who ‘acted like a man’ growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s was either a Kajal Bhai from the TV show Hum Paanch or a Falguni Pathak, the iconic Garba Queen. Kajal Bhai was my favourite character, my first place to live in.

Could you give me a little glimpse of your relationship with Kajal Bhai? 

Kajal Bhai was the only person who asserted ‘I am a man’. Everybody thought that ‘she was just a tomboy.’ I think it was much more than that, that she was queer, at the very least, even though they weren’t explicit about it.

She was portrayed as somewhat unworthy of love because she was ‘like a man.’ The guy says, ‘Tum toh ladke jaise ho, tumse kaun pyaar karega?’ (You are like a man, who will love you?)

But then, she didn’t give a damn about how people perceived her. And that is something I loved and looked up to. 

Did you have a certain vibe that other people recognized in the character of Kajal Bhai as well?

I always wore boy’s/men’s clothing, and had short hair. I was also extremely athletic. I had long hair till about Class 4 or Class 5, when it was compulsory to wear plaits to school. But as soon as I came home, I tucked my hair into a cap, just like Kajal Bhai. I also always had male friends. 

People believed that I was a tomboy, that it was a phase that would go away. But it definitely wasn’t. I think people were also more accepting of the word tomboy than calling it any other name. 

Yes, it was less scary than perhaps being something ‘more.’

Yeah, it was less scary and also more acceptable – that there is hope that it will go away eventually.

And then when I got older, when I was about 15-18 years old, they started calling me Falguni Pathak. 

How did you react to people calling you a tomboy? And did being boxed into that label counter-intuitively strengthen your self-image/identification as a boy instead?

People around me perceived visual markers, such as the way I dressed, my speech mannerisms and my gait, and immediately concluded that I was a ‘tomboy.’ Usually, I tried to be patient with them – who could fight every battle and tell them that I identify as a boy, that I was trans? In fact, I didn’t have the vocabulary myself to articulate my identity at the time – I only started understanding myself better in my early 20s. 

The word tomboy was somewhat of a blessing for me – there was at least some acceptance, some visibility of ‘masculinity.’ I made my peace with the word a little because of this.

While there was some acceptance, did you face any backlash for not being ‘womanly’? If pop culture figures like Kajal Bhai and Falguni Pathak didn't exist, do you think reactions would have been a little different? 

I cannot recount the many times that that has happened - and which happens even now. There was pushback even from the boys I was friends with. Often while playing sports like cricket and football, they would say, “You are a girl, you better stay that way, zyaada mard mat ban.” Others would say, “You act like a boy, lekin hai toh ladki hi na?” The more I tried transgressing boundaries, the more they would try to box me in. 

A lot of people came up to my mother and told her ‘Make her wear girls’ clothes.’

Since other people who resembled me existed in mainstream spaces, the word ‘tomboy’ felt very safe in some ways– at least there was an identity where people couldn’t force me to change.

I am so glad that Kajal Bhai existed. ‘Tomboy’ was a very good exit point for me from fights and from discussions about why I was a certain way. People did say that, and still do - but then somebody would come along and say - ‘Are, she is a tomboy, like Falguni and Kajal Bhai.’

But there was still the connotation that it’s ‘curable’ – after marriage, it will be the husband’s problem - and automatically, ‘it’ll get better/okay’. And then the other lines of thought - ‘we’ll find an effeminate man for her!’ If she is a boy-like girl, then we’ll find a girl-like boy for marriage.

The fact that it was perceived as being a temporary phase was also why it was allowed, rather than accepted. 

Did you find other tomboys growing up? Did you ever feel lonely?

I had this one person in school who is now also trans. We knew internally, ‘ki hum ‘vohi’ hai (trans)’. The only solace was having that person.

But finding others like me was very rare. I think this was the only person I met. Since I was in a girls’ school, there were a lot of stereotypically ‘masculine’ girls who were sporty, but also became conventionally feminine by the time they came to the 9th or 10th grade. 

It was very lonely, that you don’t feel like a woman, the way your cousins or mother might have. I did question why I had the body I had, because I was not a woman. But characters like Kajal Bhai temporarily alleviated that despair, and gave me reasons to keep living. 

There are photographs of Kalpana Cardoso superimposed against a bus.  In the first, their hand reaches out towards a bubble which says ‘Team Tomboy.’ In the card, there are images of cricket balls with sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap. There is also an illustration of stumps. 

Kalpana Cardoso, 55

Cricketer (Selector, Women’s Senior Cricket Team, MCA)

Interviewed by Vijayalakshmi

Did you call yourself a tomboy when you were younger or is that something that others called you?

It was definitely what other people called me because when we were that young, we did not know the meaning of tomboy.

When I used to wear my brother’s clothes and go to play, I used to think, “Oh, my God, it's so much easier.” I didn't find people saying, “Are tu ek hi ladki hai jo khel rahi hai yeh ladke lok ke saath.”  So I decided, “Oh, this is an easy way” because my aim was to play; no matter what I wanted to play. 

Was there something that you uniquely understood about being a tomboy?

For me, it was the easiest way to get into sports. I was interested in cricket. So I could play cricket with the boys team only if I wore shorts and a t-shirt.

When I used to travel by train, to go for cricket practice, I had to travel by train in the ladies compartment, right? Whenever we used to enter the train with those big bags and our cricketing gear, they used to always say, “Nahi, nahi, ye ladies hai. Gents mein jao.”

There were a couple of times we got into these kinds of fights on the train. 

What was your style? What was your signature kind of clothing at that point of time?

When we joined professional cricket, we had to wear pants and t-shirts. To pack jeans and a t-shirt was easier than to pack a dress and then shoes according to the dress etc. It became easier to just throw on jeans and a t-shirt and you can wear those sports shoes the whole day. 

I had long hair till the 10th standard, but it became easier to cut your hair. 

Every time I was forced to wear a dress, for family occasions or weddings, I felt very uncomfortable. 

I felt like I could be who I am in those clothes (jeans and t-shirts). I don't know whether I can say who I am, but I was very comfortable in those clothes.

How would you say that being a tomboy shaped the rest of your life? Is there a connection between that and who you are today?

I felt throughout my life that I was comfortable to do everything and anything without people actually pinpointing that, oh, this is a girl doing something like that, you know?

If there was anything I would say I'm happier. There were these small instances when the rickshaw would stop for a prettier girl. Or if a prettier girl would be granted a request, but we’d be sent back.

These were the only few instances, where we were treated differently. But otherwise, it was all good. And I never felt that problem. I always felt that whatever I had, I could make the best out of it. 

I joined my job at the age of 18. In my Western Railway office also, most of our cricketers and most of our sports staff were all tomboys. We did not know anything different actually. We had a very good rapport. Nobody ever tried to change us.

What has the personal side of your life been like?

My full family has always been supportive in what I do. They never forced me to get married.

I knew that right from the beginning. The thing of leaving my home, my comfortable space and going to somebody else's house, just totally put me off. I was always comfortable on my own. And so I was never, ever interested in marriage. I mean, that's my happy place, being single.

Would you say that the word tomboy has relevance today? In this day and age where women can do a lot of things, unlike a lot of things that said girls were not allowed to do when you were a child.

I don't think so now. I don't think that girls want to grow up in that mold or they want to be branded as tomboy. In those days, we did not feel shy to be a tomboy. Now the girls feel like if they are more feminine, it is better because you're getting equal opportunities. And with so much peer pressure, they don't want to be different.

Why do I need to cover up when your friend comes home?

It took me a while to realise that I had been abused, and some probing to understand why I never told my parents about it

Recently, I have been thinking about how some people have to realise they have been abused. They don’t always know it. It’s a fact made known to them months or years after it has already happened. Maybe it takes a movie, or a friend sharing their story that makes them go “that’s what I went through too”.

It took me years to start looking at my own experience as possible abuse too. Not sure if I completely believe it now.

During my first year of undergraduate degree, a professor said to the class “I’m sure some of you in this class have been through abuse” and shared how as a counsellor and a professor, she sees many students who open up about abuse in counselling and in classrooms. I remember looking around the class and trying to play a guessing game about who it could be, quite sure that I wasn’t the only one in class.

The story I’m about to write is one we’re all familiar with. A child is abused in their own home for years before the parents learn about it and are shocked. Except in many cases, children can never share it with their family.

As parents to young children, they make it their personal mission to teach kids everything they know about safe/unsafe touch (or good touch/bad touch as it’s known) as soon as the kids are able to understand language. Ofcourse, it includes made-up names for private parts. Recently on reelstagram, a video went popular where the father is using hand gestures to educate his infant daughter about safe touch. The video shows that one does not have to wait till the children grow up to teach these “essential skills”. Basically, by the time you are in school, you are given everything short of a PowerPoint presentation on stranger danger, while the abuser is walking around the house freely.

An illustration of a house. A figure that is a dark shadow has its arms around the house. A girl is visible through a curtained window in the house.

When I moved out to Bangalore to start a new life, I used to think I didn’t have “trauma” that I carried around from those times. For some reason, I believed that all women at some point go through some form of sexual violence, whether it’s from an uncle in the family, a stranger in the bus flashing or boyfriend demanding sex in exchange for getting married. Having seen some of these in real-life as a child, there was nothing to complain about with regards to my own experiences because I considered it normal at the time. 

There was no violence or any physical force involved in it when it happened to me. I recall the times where it was as if we were in it together, where I didn’t feel like I was a victim. Even though he was only 14 or 15 years old at the time, he knew all the right things to say. At times I had to do something for him if I wanted to use his phone. Whenever he saw me, he would say that I was his favourite cousin and that’s why he did those things to me. At times, it felt nice to be wanted (which I’m realising has to do something with my tendency to seek validation in the wrong places). So, I would think I am not allowed to have any negative feelings because it wasn’t assault. It couldn’t be. Later, I would feel guilty for not having any feelings that people who went through such an experience were supposed to have. It’s a lot of feelings for a child to handle, so I just found it easier to accept what was done to me, each time it happened.

It happened so long ago that it feels like when I moved from that house and left behind some toys and clothes that didn’t fit in my suitcase, I left these memories too there. Maybe that’s what happens when you move from any place. You choose what memories you want to take or when you can’t, your mind does it for you, and it shapes how you view that time in your life.

I remember the first time I said “no” to him. I was 9. By that time, it had been going on for at least three years. I don’t know if it happened earlier than that, my memory can't dig up an answer. I remember him getting up from his bed and lying next to me. He tried to pull my t-shirt and put his hand in. When I said no, he listened. But a few minutes later, he did it anyway.

A close up of a girl’s face. In one of her eyes, is the reflection of a boy who has his hand stretched out towards her. He is saying, “you are my favourite cousin.”

I had thought about telling it to my family many times. At age 8, I did not know what victim blaming was. But I had already seen what it looked like in families. Indian families are good at blaming everything on women. Telling my experience to my family would have been the end to my already limited freedom. I had seen many instances of it before. I visited a relative’s house in Tamil Nadu when I was seven years old. There were two children aged 3 and 6. A distant uncle of mine had taken the youngest with him, removed her clothes and had taken pictures of her on the phone. When the story came out, everyone asked “why didn’t she stay with the women in the house?”

One theory in psychology says that children aren’t born with a blue-print to navigate the world.

So, they learn from observing others in their life, particularly their parents. Knowing this is important, because children are actively picking up how elders handle situations and eventually they also come to follow it.

Like every parent in our culture, my dad used to ask me to cover up whenever there were men coming to the house. And like every good daughter, I would do it, no questions asked. But my exposure to feminism and a newfound sense of freedom that came with it allowed me to present myself the way I wanted. So once when I was in college, when my dad told me to cover up because some old fellow was coming to the house, I asked him “why are you bringing such men into the house?”. He never said that to me again.

An illustration of a girl speaking to a man. The man’s face is not visible to us. The girl is asking him, “But why are you bringing such men into the house?”

He used to tell me that I taught him a lot about many things in life. While my reaction was because I didn’t want to go through the experience of feeling like a victim in my own house, it made my dad think about who we are placing the responsibility on while trying to protect our children. Engaging in this line of thinking is very important to let go of unhelpful things in our belief system. If home is really a safe space, what are we willing to change in the way we currently do things to really make it one.

Bio: C J is a teacher, counsellor and wannabe writer. When she’s not busy reading, she'll be walking around Rajajinagar wearing a helmet.

My bisexual panic

Of course, there were some guys I thought looked good. Who’d turn away from Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds? But would I date a guy if I could?

I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across an NRI who was around my age, and an influencer on Musically (then TikTok) and Instagram. He was a product of the love marriage of a handsome Indian man and a stunning German woman(I’d followed him on social media for weeks). At first, I thought that my appreciation was just about his good looks. 

Guys appreciate other guys who they think look good. Look up to them, want to be like them. For me, however, it was far more than just that. In my not-so-adolescent day dreaming sessions, I would think of adventures the characters I used to make up for my stories could have. Sometimes some characters would share an intimate moment or two, and sometimes those characters looked like me and Mr Hot NRI.

A few months after I discovered Mr Hot NRI, I had my first girl crush. I’d met her around in 2016. We don’t even talk anymore. We have not talked in years. For me she used to be a major part of my life and just a year later, we had zero contact. After her, I had a hard time finding my bearings, mentally. I was distraught. It took me years to regain some semblance of stability. 

The all-boys’ schooling environment was not of help either. I couldn’t relate to anyone or even open up because I thought no one understood. Sixteen-year-old boys are idiots, I was too. Life was fun for a while but bottling up emotions has never worked for anybody. Alienation after a transition from the new up-and-coming extrovert who was chill with everybody, to a guy who would rather keep to himself, and was sometimes “not good for the vibes”, was fated. 

There was self-hatred involved which went on for years till I finally came face to face with the reality of my sexual orientation. 

Slowly I got used to it, thought that it was just friendly flirting with a cute dude and friends because I am a major flirt. It was all completely harmless. Looking back, I guess I thought that I was in my own way just appreciating everyone that I thought looked good.

Mr Hot NRI started the journey. Over the years, there have been many but everyone remembers their “firsts”.

Watching superhero movies such as Blade, I could not stop looking at the glistening six pack abs, the pecks and the cute behind that Wesley Snipes was packing. Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King was not lacking in the eye candy section either, I was not far behind in noticing the gorgeous Jessica Biel and the super-hot Dominic Purcell. Even Bollywood hero movies with dashing stars like Ayushman Khurana or Adiya Roy Kapoor used to make me feel some type of way.

An illustration of a young man gazing with heart eyes at photos of actors Aditya Roy Kapur, Ryan Reynolds, Jessica Biel and Ayushmann Khurrana. The young man is being struck on the back by a cupid’s arrow with the bisexual flag attached to it. 

I could only watch topless scenes of men and stars boldly in front of others because it was normal, which is one norm I’m thankful for. When it came to women in bikinis I missed out in public(don’t tell my family I said any of this).

I used to be so confused. I knew I was attracted to women, but there were some specific men I used to find attractive that it used to make me feel weird about being me. Men like Ryan Reynolds, Bruno Mars. Pornography did not help. The sound of men moaning in heterosexual settings was arousing, which made me panic.

I finally surprised myself with my reality when I was wasting away, scrolling on Instagram last year. I saw this video of this gorgeous European woman, not much older than I, cosplaying a female character. Impressed by her cosplay, I checked out her profile only to find out that it wasn’t woman but a man. 

Two illustrations of a man cosplaying a female character. A young man is gazing at them with heart eyes. The young man is being struck on the back by a cupid’s arrow with the bisexual flag attached to it.

For some reason I was not surprised. Even though he had done a fabulous job of hiding his Adam’s apple in the video, and misleading not only me but thousands online, into believing that it was a woman in that video. I found myself saying, “He’s handsome and beautiful, I’d totally date him”. 

As soon as I said that out loud, I found myself dumbfounded and relieved. As if a huge burden had been taken off my chest.

Did I panic? Very much. I later found out that may have been bisexual panic because was I was a little aroused by this man’s cosplays.

I came to terms with this reality and slowly started accepting it. I have not yet completely assimilated in this reality and struggle with it still. 

That intimacy with a guy is still very far away from me, I do battle with it. Do I fantasise about boys regardless? Yes, I do. Though the farthest I’ve gotten is a kiss.

Yash studied at St. Joseph's University, Bangalore. He loves to read and write, even though he should write a lot more than he does. He is creative and a geek, though he refuses to identify as one. He is a major flirt.

I wanted love and found it. It just wasn’t reciprocated

After each encounter, I promised myself I’d talk about my needs, be vulnerable in a smart way. Next time, I’d win

I was only 18 years old when I came to Delhi for the first time. (That is a lie, I also visited Delhi as a 15-year-old to surprise my then, undergrad brother for his birthday. Needless to say, that does not count). And, as any 18-year-old almost 1,000 miles away from her parents would, I, too, wanted love (yes, a fulfilling career as well, but this essay is not about that). And so, I did what any sensible person seeking love in the 21st century is expected to do—I downloaded a dating app.

I remember seeking love. I remember, in Richard Siken’s words, wanting to be wanted. All these desires, however, merely culminated in a series of hookups. 

I remember the first time I slept with someone. It transpired in Delhi. 

I’d desperately wanted to “not be like other girls” who deem reciprocated love as a prerequisite for sleeping with someone for the first time in their lives. Thereby, the best course of action was to sleep with a stranger I had met on a random dating app. And, oh, memory, truly, is such a funny thing! How biased it is! For my memory little heeds to how the aforementioned stranger never called or even texted me after sleeping with me, little heeds to how he acted as a tattletale in reference to our sexual lore, little heeds to the deleterious aspects of the experience. What it does remember is how terribly I fell in love with a strange man.

I was having a rather debilitating day, so when someone proposed plans to meet, it seemed the best way out of the labyrinth of pain I was in. 

Thus, I ended up making a plan to meet the very day we matched on Hinge. I reached his house at 2 am and he took no time to make me feel oddly comfortable in his shared apartment. After initial discontentment, when we started speaking, the conversation became engaging. It was not that I had not gone out on dates before (I had), it was not that I’d not had extremely, perhaps even “tediously”, long conversations with strangers whom I clicked with instantaneously (I had). But there was something about sitting on his roommate’s couch and simply talking to him, on the 8th of March, 2023, i.e., International Women’s Day, while holding hands and drinking the cold coffee we’d made together, that made me susceptible to Cupid’s love arrow. 

It appeared as though we had discussed everything under the sun, from Albert Camus’ absurdism to the widows of Vrindavan. We had been talking for so long that I thought that he must have invited me over to his place, just for conversation. 

Finally, there came a moment when I realised that a segue was about to erupt. I could not help but instantly give in to his charms. 

I had grown up in a house wherein physical affection had not been institutionalised. All these years, my existence had been confined to four pink walls and all I had yearned for was to be seen. So, to finally be bestowed with the chance of feeling seen, wanted, and desired, I could not help but leap at the chance, without second thought.

Before I realised it, he was whispering sweet nothings into my ear and running his hand through my hair. Soon enough, he got me to oblige to all his sexual whims and fancies. When we were in the missionary position, I could only think of the following lines from ‘Little Beast’, “[...] he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving. You could drown in those eyes, I said, so it’s summer, so it’s suicide, so we’re helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.” (As a matter of fact, I even left a screenshot of this part of the poem on his phone after we were done, in the hopes that he would come across it someday, and consequently text me. Spoiler alert: He did not.)

Perhaps, all his purported romantic gestures and words were merely a part of his standard procedure in order to ensure that he would get laid. However, that did not perturb me at all. In that moment, all I cared about was being seen, feeling real—and his touch provided me with the requisite warmth to experience the aforementioned. It was enough. It was good. It was love. There was something about orgasming for the very first time in my otherwise touch-starved life, that felt like the pinnacle of love; I met God each time I got to kiss him. I could physically feel the tangible attachments materialising in my heart. 

This, most definitely, could never lead to any good. Yet, I found myself unable to stop. I was falling in love with a stranger and there was nothing I could do about it.

After the climax scene though, the energy in the room shifted. The sweet nothings quickly changed to nothing-at-alls as he substituted conversation with me for swiping on Hinge. 

An illustration of a man and a woman in  bed. The woman is hugging the man, but he is ignoring her, and looking at his mobile phone instead. A dating app is open on the mobile phone. He is wearing a scarf that says “loverboi.”

It was amply clear to me that I should leave. Now, it’s not that he had proscribed me from using Hinge, or any other dating app for that matter, I just did not want to. When I was with him, it was difficult to remember that other things still existed, that too, at the very same time. 

While leaving, I could not help but make pleading eyes at him, to give him a hint about the current contents of my brain. I pretended, however, as if I did not care a bit. 

Yet, I wanted him to ask me to stay.

I wanted to ask, “Will there be a second time?” 

Maybe, I did not care whether he said yes or no. All I wanted was a confirmation. An answer. Some solid ground to stand upon. But I reserved my silence, and walked away, without any declaration of love or anything else. 

I wished I could have been “cool, casual, and chill” about it. I dearly wished to have the ability not to make a big deal of it. 

Unfortunately, no avail. 

It was made abundantly clear to me that I was, in fact, like other girls, like other people. I could never extricate sex from its concomitant feelings.

I tried reaching out to him later, but he never got back. It was bittersweet. The bitter part is rather evident, it was sweet, however, because it meant I could alter his memory, as and how I pleased. I could be as delusionally romantic about him as I wished. However, I decided that the next time, I would be better. I would have my wants and needs on the tip of my tongue. I would be vulnerable, but in a smart way. The next time, I would not hesitate. The next time, I would not get hurt. The next time, I would win. You see, it is quite easy to promise yourself a number of things, as long as you precede such promises with a, ‘next time’.

There was a next time, but with a different man, but with the same result. The same longing from my side, the same thirst camouflaged as affection from their end, the same dissatisfaction as the outcome. 

Frankly, I was exasperated with being stuck in this rut of sleeping with people in the hope that it would lead to something more (spoiler alert: it never did). I had known that there exists no one-dimensional formula to cracking life or even dating. It is all trial and error. But in my case, it felt as though it was all, cent percent, most definitely an error.

However, I found immense solace when I was made aware of the fact that I was not alone in this disconcerting experience. A plethora of people I knew, both online as well as offline, denounced dating apps. Thanks to another love story which failed to take off, I took it upon myself to activate the self-defence of “intellectualisation”, and deep dived into the world of dating apps. 

Soon, I was made cognisant of why dating apps “fail” to work, as so many claim during conversations and, ironically enough, even on their bios. Dating applications endeavour to fast-track and institutionalise the, typically long-standing, intimate process of finding love and romantic/sexual relationships in order to gain profits for the companies behind them. They are not there to really help us “find love” as they so lovingly claim.

Illustration of a woman wearing a sleeveless dress. Her shoulder length hair is tied into a ponytail. There is a tear falling out of one of her eyes. On her chest there is a large, broken heart. There are bandaids on the cracks in the heart that have the names of various dating apps printed on them. The woman has been depicted as having six arms. Of these,  two of the arms are folded in front of her. The remaining four arms are outstretched, and each holds a mobile phone. The screens on the phones have images of broken hearts on them, and the text, “It’s a match.”

As much as you would despise hearing it, it all really does boil down to capitalism. This is what is known as, “the gamification of dating”. This is why you, and the rest of us, feel forced to “stick to a script” in order to “win” the dating game in the 21st century. We have a few select pictures which we use on dating applications because we think it reveals our “best selves”. We answer the prompts in the same tired manner in order to impress the abstract other. We treat each other as commodities, who are immanently disposable, especially so when the next “newer, more attractive, more interesting” match comes along. 

This also serves to explain why so many people do not even bother to actually start a conversation with a significant number of matches. People liken matches collected on a dating application to the number of “points” scored in the validation/dating game. To put even my dating application experience, in gaming terms, the result, as of yet, has been:

Dates: 78

Makeouts: 28

Love and relationships: 0

Thus, inadvertently, even I became a supposed happy participant in a unbridled hookup culture, even though I never quite had a predilection for hookups. Initially, it didn’t occur to me I could opt out of it. I had taken it as a given—one must do this for love. 

Yet, without fail, each hookup left me feeling unsatiated. Physically as well as existentially. I did not want this, I could not even make myself want this. However, I was petrified of acknowledging such a thought. For could someone ever love me if my body was not part of the deal? Could love ever be non-corporeal?

Nonetheless, it would be rather blasphemous of me to draw a thoroughly negative picture of my time on dating applications, especially taking into consideration the fact that I am still on Hinge. 

As conspicuously evident, I did find love, although unreciprocated, and it cannot be discounted. 

A myriad of love stories would disappear from this world if reciprocation was the cardinal basis for a “real” love story. I also found unparalleled confidence and spontaneity. Turns out, if nothing, going on 78 dates with absolute strangers, prepares you for a lifetime of walk-in interviews; it also provides you with ceaseless anecdotes as well as content for articles. Also, honourable mention goes out to my interminable list of ill-defined relationships, aka situationships.

As of now, I act as the “love/dating application guru” because I have gone out with 78 people through dating applications. I maintain a long list of learnings in my head that I never fail to preach to the novices. Notwithstanding, to be honest, I have learnt nothing. For a potential chance at love, I am positive that I would, once again, happily let all these “learnings” go for a toss and chase love, as though I were an 18-year-old, away from home for the very first time. 

Perhaps, then, when it comes to love, we are always 18-year-olds. We are always new and utterly inexperienced, dying to taste that first drop of tumultuous affection. Who knows?

Yana Roy is a queer, final-year undergraduate student of Sociology at Lady Shri Ram College (University of Delhi, India). She has a predilection for existing in liminal spaces and writing accessibly about as well as working for realms related to the conflation of human relationships and capitalism, artificial intelligence, media studies, and performativity. 

Me, My M.I.L and My Abortion

Based on Ibis Reproductive Health's qualitative research with 43 medication abortion users in rural and urban India

PART 1

The card features a young woman, and an older woman leaning against each other, and smiling at each other. The younger woman is wearing a salwar-kurta, and the older woman is wearing a saree with the pallu draped over her head. A speech bubble next to the younger woman has the text,” Kyunki…Sometimes support comes from unexpected places.”

Text on the card reads:

Me, My M.I.L And My Abortion 

PART 1

KYUNKI....SOMETIMES SUPPORT COMES FROM UNEXPECTED PLACES.

BASED ON IBIS'S QUALITATIVE RESEARCH WITH 43 MEDICATION ABORTION USERS IN RURAL + URBAN INDIA.

The card features an older woman telling her friends, “haha yeh pehli ekdum 9 mahine, 9 din baad nijli, haha.” A younger woman is standing nearby, with a tray in her hand, and a shy look on her face. In the background, on the wall, is the photograph of a family celebrating the first birthday of a child. 

Text on the card reads:

I'M KUSUM. IN THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE ONLY, SANJU AND I WERE BLESSED WITH OUR CUTIE PEHLI.

ALMOST TWO YEARS I'M PART OF THIS FAMILY BUT SOMETIMES I STILL FEEL LIKE THE NEW, AWKWARD BAHU. REASON? MY SAAS GAYATRI GOSSIPY DEVI AKA GAPPOJI!

The card features an infant crawling on the ground holding a strip of condom packets. An older man nearby has spilled his tea in shock. An older woman is telling someone on the phone, “Arre Sunathi, guess maine abhi abhi kya dekha heheh”. A separate illustration features a woman secretly trying to purchase an i-pill from the pharmacy.

Text on the card reads:

SANJAY AND I ARE VERY CLEAR SECOND BABY AFTER 4 YEARS ONLY SO CONDOMS ALWAYS IN STOCK! ONE DAY PEHLI FOUND THE CONDOMS AND IT WAS SO EMBARRASSING!

SANJAY COMES JUST ONCE IN A FEW MONTHS, SO SOMETIMES I DON'T GET TIME TO BUY CONDOMS. SO I TAKE THE I-PILL.

BUT I DO IT OUTSIDE SOMEHOW I - STILL FEEL VERY EMBARRASSED. SO I PRETEND I'M GOING FOR GOLGAPPAS

The card features an older woman gossiping with her friends about her daughter-in-law, who is making tea in the kitchen. Another illustration shows the group of older women giggling at the younger woman who is serving them tea. The younger woman looks embarrassed.

Text on the card reads:

HE LEFT YESTERDAY NA. MIYA BIWI WERE FIGHTING TILL LATE NIGHT.

"YOU COME FROM MUSCAT AND GO HERE & THERE, BUT DON'T SPEND TIME WITH ΜΕ."

2 SAAL EK BABY BUT MADAM KI PASSION KI GAADI FIFTH GEAR MEIN!

The card features a man, holding his arms out to his wife, and wishing her a happy birthday. The woman’s mother-in-law, who is remembering this scene, looks unhappy.

Text on the card reads:

TODAY SANJAY GAVE ME A ROMANTIC SURPRISE BY SUDDENLY COMING FROM MUSCAT.

MERE BIRTHDAY KE LIYE SIRF WHATSAPP CARD. BIWI KE B'DAY PE PERSONAL CARD HAAN?

SO EVEN EVEN M-I-L KA JALWA COULDN'T GET TO ME!

The card features two illustrations of a couple being romantic and intimate with each other. Some unopened packets of condoms are lying nearby. 

Text on the card reads:

SANJAY LEFT AFTER TWO RUSHED DAYS.

I DIDN'T REALISE HE HAD LEFT ANOTHER SURPRISE BEHIND.

The card features a woman asking a pharmacist for a pregnancy kit. Another female customer who is eavesdropping, is telling her, “Khush khabri hi hoga beta I’m sure.”

Text on the card reads:

IN THE RUSH I MISSED TAKING THE I-PILL AND REMEMBERED IT TOO LATE. I THOUGHT I'LL WAIT FOR MY PERIOD. BUT IT DIDN'T COME.

BH...BHAIYYA, EK PREGNANCY KIT CHAHIYE

KHUSH KHABRI HI HOGA BETA, I'M SURE!

The card features a woman sitting on a toilet seat, looking worried, and holding a positive pregnancy test in her hand. A number of thought bubbles verbalize her anxieties. 

Text on the card reads:

I WAS PREGNANT AGAIN.

IF I TELL GAPPOJI, SHE'LL BE EXCITED ABOUT A SECOND KID. SHE'LL WASTE NO TIME TELLING HER FRIENDS.

IF I SAY I WANT AN ABORTION, WILL THEY FEEL I AM BAD?

SANJAY WILL SAY "DON'T WORRY, I'LL EARN ENOUGH FOR THEM!" BUT HOW WILL I MANAGE 2 TINY KIDS AT ONCE? EVEN ONE WITHOUT HIM IS HARD.

The card features a woman hiding behind a tree, near a crowded pharmacy. There is also an illustration of a mobile phone, which shows a text conversation between two people. A pop-out from the same shows a packet of abortion pills.

Text on the card reads:

I WHATSAPPED MY FRIEND FROM MY COLLEGE. SHE'S A DOCTOR. SHE TOLD ME I SHOULD THINK OF MY WELL BEING AND GET ABORTION PILLS.

WHEN WILL EVERYONE LEAVE? WHY IS THERE A CROWD AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON?

I HAD NO CLUE HOW I WOULD MANAGE THE BLEEDING ON MY OWN AT HOME AND HIDE IT. I WOULD HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT.

The card features a woman purchasing abortion pills from the pharmacy. The woman’s mother-in-law, who has just entered the shop, looks surprised to see her. Another illustration shows both women looking stunned.

Text on the card reads:

FINALLY THE CROWD CLEARED...

SIR YE ABORTION PILLS CHAHIYE. PRESCRIPTION HAI...

BAHU ii

OH NO!

WHAT NOW?

PART 2

The card features a young woman, and an older woman leaning against each other, and smiling at each other. The younger woman is wearing a salwar-kurta, and the older woman is wearing a saree with the pallu draped over her head. A speech bubble next to the younger woman has the text,” Kyunki…Sometimes support comes from unexpected places.”

Text on the card reads:

Me, My M.I.L And My Abortion 

PART 2

KYUNKI....SOMETIMES SUPPORT COMES FROM UNEXPECTED PLACES.

BASED ON IBIS'S QUALITATIVE RESEARCH WITH 43 MEDICATION ABORTION USERS IN RURAL + URBAN INDIA.

The card features a young woman, and an older woman at a pharmacist’s shop.  The older woman looks surprised and curious. The younger woman looks flustered and uncomfortable.

Text on the card reads:

JUST MY LUCK MY M-I-L WAS AT THE SHOPS WHEN I WAS BUYING THE ABORTION PILLS! A BAD SITUATION BECAME WORSE.

KUSUM, BETA! YE KYA KHAREED RAHE HO!?

I'M SORRY MUMMYJI...I...I...I

The card features a mother-n-law comforting her crying daughter-in-law by putting her arm around her.

BETA. LET'S GO HAVE JUICE. LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS OUTSIDE THE HOUSE SO PAPAJI DOES NOT HAVE TO GET INTO LADIES MATTERS.

MY HEART WAS IN MY MOUTH!

The card features three main illustrations. The first features a mother-n-law and daughter-in-law walking down a street, near a juice shop. The second and third illustrations show them having a conversation with each other, while sitting at a table at a restaurant, drinking juice.

Text on the card reads:

SANJAY AND I DECIDED TO HAVE ANOTHER KID ONLY AFTER 4 YEARS. BUT BEECH MEIN GALTI HO GAYI

PASSION KO GALTI NAI BOLTE BETA. YOU KNOW NA, SANJAY AND SAMEERA ARE ONLY 2 YEARS APART. MY MIND AND BODY SUFFERED. ONLY I KNOW HOW I MANAGED, SOMEHOW.

SO, I SHOULD JUST HAVE THE BABY?

SHE IS SAYING SHE MANAGED, WHY CAN'T I?

SOCH LO. YOU HAVE A SMALL DAUGHTER. YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT YOUR BODY ALSO. HOW WILL YOU MANAGE? IF I ASK YOU TO CONTINUE OR NOT, YOU WILL SAY THAT MY MOTHER-IN-LAW MADE ME DO THIS. SO, THINK OVER IT AND DECIDE...

IT IS YOUR LIFE. HOW CAN WE FORCE YOU?

The card features a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, having a conversation with each other, while sitting at a table at a restaurant, drinking juice. In the background is a large window, which shows the busy street outside.

Text on the card reads:

WHAT WILL SANJAY & PAPA JI SAY? WHAT IF OTHERS IN THE FAMILY COME TO KNOW?

WE CAN TELL SANJAY TOGETHER, IF YOU'D LIKE! AND SANJAY'S FATHER IS TOO OLD FASHIONED AND CLUELESS. LET'S LEAVE HIM OUT. I'LL MANAGE HIM AND TELL HIM YOU'RE HAVING PERIOD PROBLEMS.

WHAT WAS I HEARING? I COULDN'T BELIEVE GAPPOJI WAS BEING SO KIND!

The card features two illustrations of a mother, speaking to her son over a video call, while her daughter-in-law, sits nearby. In the first illustration, they all look serious. In the second, the mother-in-law is making a joke and winking, and the son and daughter-in-law look shy. 

BETA, I'M TELLING YOU THIS IS FOR THE BETTER. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW HARD IT WAS FOR ME. YOU WON'T NEED TO LEAVE YOUR JOB EARLIER. PEHLI WILL BE BIGGER. BACCHE BAAD MEIN HO JAYENGE-SEEING YOU PEOPLE'S HIT RATE. I'LL TAKE CARE OF BAHU.

LEKIN 2ND KE BAAD TU VASECTOMY KARWAYEGA, PROMISE KAR. TUM LOGO KA HONEYMOON KABHI KHATAM NAHIN HOGA, LAGTA HAIL

The card features three illustrations. In the first, a mother-in-law is reassuring her daughter-in-law who is taking abortion pills. In the second, a child is shown clinging to their grandmother, asking for her mother to take her to the garden, but the mother is curled up in bed, feeling unwell. The grandmother is reassuring the child that she will take her instead. In the third illustration, the mother-in-law is gazing fondly at the daughter-in-law, who is getting ready to go out, in front of the mirror.

Text on the card reads:

I'LL SLEEP HERE TONIGHT. I'M HERE, DON'T WORRY!

MUMMY!!! GARDEN!!!

PEHLI BETA, MUMMY KO SONE DO. I'LL TAKE YOU. DOODH FINISH?

I FELT HAPPY AND LUCKY TO HAVE A FRIEND-MOTHER- IN-LAW.

FEELING FINE, BETA? SHALL WE GO FOR GOL GAPPAS?

The card features three illustrations. In the first, a mother-in-law is shown talking to her friend, in the living room, as her daughter-in-law makes tea in the kitchen. In the second illustration, which is the largest, the mother-in-law’s friend is expressing concern about a third person who has become pregnant. The mother-in-law is confidently telling her about abortion pills. The third illustration shows the daughter-in-law looking on appreciatively at the mother-in-law.  

Text on the card reads:

FEW MONTHS LATER

ARRE WOH PREGNANT HO GAYI HAI. KYA HOGA USKA?

PUCHO USE, AGAR ABORTION KARANA HAI YA NAHIN. GOLIYON SE HO JATA HAI AAJ KAL BHAI. KUSUM KI EK DOCTOR DOST NE BATAYA THA EK BAAR!

The card features a daughter-in-law trying on a new saree that her mother-in-law has gifted her. The mother-in-law is winking at her while cracking a joke. Two smaller illustrations show the women looking at each other for a second in silence, before bursting out laughing. 

Text on the card reads:

MUMMYJI, THANK YOU, AAPNE NE ITNE PYAAR SE SAATH DIYA.

TUMHEIN LAGA MAIN BAHUT BAATEIN BATAOONGI AUR SUNAOONGI NA? I KNOW HOW IT FEELS: KYUNKI SAAS BHI KABHI BAHU THI.

The card features a woman marking the day of her husband’s return from abroad, and thinking that she needs to buy condoms in advance. Her mother-in-law is teasing her about it. 

Text on the card reads:

SANJAY RETURNS!

KYA SOCH RAHI HO, BAHU?

CONDOMS KHAREEDNA PADEGA

FACING THE FEARS AND TENSION OF UNWANTED PREGNANCY ALONE IS HARD, BUT ABORTION HAS BEEN A PART OF MORE PEOPLE'S LIVES THAN WE EXРЕСТ. WE DON'T HAVE TO BE ALONE!

SEEK HELP WHERE YOU CAN, AND BE THE UNEXPECTED HELPING HAND -

WHETHER YOU'RE SAAS, BAHU, PARTNER, FRIEND OR STRANGER AT THE CHEMIST

Ayye! The rebellion I staged to save my “dirty” Sidney Sheldons

Amma shamed me in front of my crush, and so I had to have my revenge too, publicly!

I was 12 when I planned my first rebellion. Against Amma who had confiscated my school library books, ripped off the cover of my Sheldon, to scream into my ears: Ayye. Is this why you wake up early? To read dirty books? 

A mother dressed in loose Indian ethnic clothing standing in the doorway with her facial features scrunched in anger. She is glaring at her daughter, whose image is at the bottom-right corner of the image. The daughter is crying angry tears and holding a Sidney Sheldon book. There are flames fanning next to her, suggesting frustration.

At home, dirt was the mud my father’s feet carried in when he came home after work. As a construction site supervisor, who faced the drilling machine every day, Pappa collected dust and compliments in his hair and ears. The engineers and the site managers were envious of how relentless my father was. He could finish work caked in dust and smile in the heat knowing that he has saved one more real estate developer from falling behind his deadline.

But when my father returned home, the dust mixed with water and his poor attempts at being clean, was azhukku for Amma. When azhukku found its way into the corners of the sofa, the nooks of my sheets and finally to the ends of my mother’s searching broom, Amma would yell a guttural Ayye. Her throat would convulse in the scream and in her haste to sweep off the dirt, she would bang the walls with the broomstick as if everything needed a quick beating. Years later, I would know that my mother borrowed this cry from her beloved friend Lakshmi Subramanian, who refused to cross our gates, for fear that the beach smell and poor hygiene would give her an ookanam. At the end of the story, Amma would say that the gag reflex was a reminder to not “be azhukku pennugal” (dirty women). 

So, when my Amma screamed Ayye and pushed me off the stoop I was reading on, I was seething inside. If I had to hold someone responsible for bringing dirty books into my life, I would have dragged my chechi by hair. It was on my sister’s bed that I discovered the first bound copy of Sidney Sheldon, wrapped in her old pink churidhar, hidden from my mother’s razor-sharp button-shaped eyes.

That afternoon, when I discovered the book under my sister’s embroidered white pillow, I traced my hand through the bold lettering of the title, Tell Me Your Dreams and wondered how pretty Sidney was. Was she blonde like the woman on the cover? Did she write a book to defeat her sister’s pettiness? At that age when I started reading the Sheldons and the Steels, I had firmly believed that Danielle Steel was a man and Sheldon a woman. Only women’s heads could produce pages of thrill that would make you sit upright and devour books. If Amma could make six puttus in one hour along with chickpea curry and run off to catch a bus to her school, women could do everything.

But, an hour later, I was cursing Sidney and her ancestors, ruing the day my sister goaded me into reading this dirty book with dirtier words. With my insides stuck to my panties and my stomach cradling a stone, I walked towards the bedroom my parents slept in. “Is this how you made me?,” I mimed. “You dirty monsters.”

Tell Me Your Dreams had all the smells of a thriller. A lonely woman fleeing from the gaze of an unknown stalker. The Nancy Drews I read had a quieter start where Nancy kissed Ned, chilled with her girls and discovered a mystery.   

Until that moment, before I had run to the bed and found Sheldon, I had an asexual reliable woman narrator in my head who kissed (perhaps?) and solved a mystery. When the book ended, she would eat scones or drive her Mustang into the sunset. But Sheldon’s Ashley Patterson? Ashley was unreliable, scared and sexually charged. Every kiss with Ashley was a full-blown tongue to tongue atrocity where men would “dip” into her mouth and mix saliva. And then, just when I was making sense of what is now known as French kiss, words like tumescent penis would stick on me, reminding me of the day I dipped my hand into the sticky gooey atta amma made only to shriek at the stubborn mavu that went into my fingernails. Take it off, Take it off, I had screamed. 

In The Getaway Car, Ann Patchett says she found her first adult novel, Humboldt’s Gift at fifteen. Although she admits to not understanding much of the book, Patchett says with certainty that she still remembers the imagery and emotion to this day. But how to live with the image that sex involves the dirty job of putting one susu producing organ into another? Everyone says your first is special. Amma said first children like my sister are special. But what if the first book that introduced sex was also a first book of French kiss, incest, castration, blow-job? How to feel romancham that erotica promises when the first experience of fantasy is soaked in dirt? 

The image on the card features the same daughter deeply engrossed in pages of the Sidney Sheldon novel, equal parts confused and thrilled by an illustration of a French kiss in the book. There is an image of a penis with a swollen red bump, peeking out from behind the book.

Remember, I was 12. It had only been a few months since that biology class when Naina Miss left us with “the sperm and the ova met to create the zygote” and asked us to quickly flip the page to sexually transmitted diseases without solving the original question: But how does the sperm meet the ova? After a year and a half of head beating around sex, I had thought that I knew the answer when I saw Mohanlal and Urvashi disappear into a bedroom for their first night on TV. 

“The sperm flies into the air, meets the ova and becomes the baby!” I declared to my gang of girls. The declaration followed by a detailed demonstration where I taught biology to the entire class far better than Naina Miss. At the end of it, even with the rapid Q and A, I had scored a spectacular win among friends.

“But what about the vayaru squeezing? Why do they play with the belly button?”

“It is the hole for the sperm to enter.”

“Why do they drink milk?”

“Do you expect birthing a baby to be an easy process? Milk is necessary.”

I still remember that day with fondness. The sight of Nimisha looking up to me. The squeezes on my arm for solving the mystery that had haunted us night after night. Even when Anjitha, the eternal samshayam rogi, suggested the physical insertion of urinating organs as the way forward, I had asked her to urgently revisit her understanding of hygiene.

It is not that I was a good girl before Sheldon. By 6, I had written my first love letter to the silver-toothed Robin and asked him to kiss me during PT period. At 11, another love letter to a boy called Ranjith. But these fantasies were so clean that Amma would have said nalla vrithiyulla manassu (very clean mind) if she saw the white rooms adorned with white curtains, where I loved Roby or Ranjith, under the scent of Lizol and Surf. 

Even when the other girls carried napkins into bathrooms, I was the sentry at the doors covering them from surveying boys. When they learned to sit with blood, I revelled in the protection that I offered to the girls in class. In this flat chest-no periods phase, I was flying through corridors, jumping over short boys, throwing my dupatta and climbing over perayka trees to catch red ants that attacked Nimisha. So, what will Patchett say when a fantasy breaks and the dirt of your first imagery seeps in? 

But the body responds fast. This I learned after I took membership in the local library to find Sheldons. After knowing that my insides felt a strange gooey sticky feeling when Ashley had sex, I knew that I had always wanted a bit of that azhukku feeling. Yes, the dough that stuck to my fingernails was awful but the addictive one minute when I dipped into the dough, kneaded it with my fists and pressed it into shapes; how did I miss the sensuousness of it? How did I forget the love I gave to the cake batter bowl when I administered careful licks to pick chocolate and collect them all in my tiny mouth?

My story after this is like the fizz that pours out of the coca cola bottle. Whenever the week ended, I would hurry to the Sanmargadarshini library, ironically translated as the library that shows the virtuous path, to find a Sheldon and get dirty. Sometimes, dirty thoughts would leak into my schoolwork and make me destroy notebooks. Other times, they would find their way into my head when I saw my crush Moinuddhin walking towards me. 

All of this felt good until Amma yelled Ayye at me before Moinuddhin who had come to borrow my Maths notes. In her Ayye, I felt her friend Lakshmi’s disgust, Amma’s shame and Moinuddhin’s embarrassment at seeing me squirm under my mother's humiliating Ayye. The secret joy of reading Sheldon and fantasising about Moinuddhin was now mixed with many unbearable historic layers of humiliations that my mother gifted.

I had not thought revenge against Amma until I noticed how my mother shied away from saying sex out loud. Once, when Amma was narrating the story of a movie, which had a rape scene, Amma said: And then …something bad happened. Whenever Amma said something bad, chechi and I would ask what again and again. But she would never say what that bad was. Like she would never say why she did not let us watch the song in Devaraagam where a moaning Sridevi was lying on the grass while a perspiring Arvinda Swami watched from above.

Yet I have seen her share covert glances with Pappa when they remembered their letter writing days. In their first meeting, Papa had fallen for Amma when she had come in with a saree that was threatening to fall off her waist. “Your Amma had the flattest stomach,” my father said with a guffaw when we asked why they married each other. But these conversations were a minute long and punctuated by throat clearings. When Amma once proceeded to explain how Papa had written a five-page long letter when they were newly married, there was a throat clearing frenzy and a quick teasing back and forth that did not give information. “Your papa is a romantic man.” With that Amma had ended that conversation with a smile and a nod. 

The image features a family – the daughter with her parents. The daughter seems to be taken by the promiscuous image of Kareena Kapoor dancing in an item song displayed on the TV screen which they are watching. Meanwhile, her parents seem uncomfortable with what they are watching – as indicated by the mother’s perspiration and the father’s shifty expression and gulping motions

Even Pappa who had happily given us a teaser to their romantic times, had the most kalla (shifty) look when we sat before the TV. Once, when the channel stopped at the song Kehdona Kehdona, You Are My Soniya, Papa saw Kareena Kapoor’s strap threatening to fall off from her shoulder while she was dancing with Hrithik. When I made a pointed remark on the strap’s flimsiness, my father had dived for the remote and changed the channel to Asianet news. 

The plan was to stage a similar if not bigger humiliation where Amma would get a collective ayye from everyone around. So on the day when our uncles arrived from Gulf, when my father was seated at the table eating meen curry, I asked: Amma, you married Papa in 1981 but you had chechi in 1985. Why did you and Pappa have no babies for four years? 

Like any good detective, I had noticed how my mother could not take unexpected questions before a public audience. Quizzing her on sex inside the kitchen would lead to a careful answer where she would say daivam thannila (gods did not bless us) or athinoke athintethaya samayam und (there is always a time for this). 

But before my uncles, Amma and Pappa were caught off-guard. 

The image features the family again with the daughter having a curious expression, asking questions. Both the mother and the father appear to be flustered. The card also features two men dumbfounded by the conversation in the background coloured in blue-green.

“Athu pinne (That is..)”

“You could not have kids.”

“No, that is not it,” Pappa muttered with emphasis on it. 

“You did not want kids.”

“No, no,” my mother says looking at my uncles.

“You did not …”

“No, stop. We, I mean we... Pappa was in Gulf no, soon after marriage. And he came for leave after four years...”

As my mother’s voice trailed off, the room had gone quiet. My uncles were now eating rice ferociously while my father was looking at the staircase with purpose. 

“So, Pappa came in 1985 and chechi was born and then he came in 1987, I was born..”

“Kunji.,” my father began cautioning me as soon as he realised the ball was dropping.

“Ayye! You are saying Pappa and you had sex during summer vacay..,” the last of what I wanted to say drowned under my sister’s fingers and my uncles’s collective throat clearing. When I looked up, Amma had a hand on her throat and Papa had begun to inspect his plate. 

Days later, when I woke up, the Sheldon was back on my shelf with better binding and a tiny inscription from my mother: Don’t read this when you have exams. 

Deepti is an aspiring writer and a surviving PhD student.

Smoothing The Rough Corners Of Kink And Pain

My journey towards finding pleasure through pain in BDSM was rough. But I’ve learnt how to make it pleasurable.

I got into BDSM to satisfy my self-harm urges when I couldn’t hold back or keep my emotional pain, from decades of bullying, ostracizing and loneliness; in anymore after coming to India five years ago from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), when I was 17.

An illustration called Musical BDSM, which features people engaged in BDSM using various musical instruments. For example, They are all blindfolded and wearing various harnesses and cuffs, and tied with ropes.

The self-harm itself started with simple acts of fisting my hand and beating myself up in places where the bruises, if any, couldn’t be seen by others—out of guilt for being emotionally weak. For about a year, I scoured the Internet for anything that would explain my feelings to me. The physical pain I was inflicting on myself felt like chains that kept my emotional pain from wrecking the whole of me. It gave me relief from its weight, helping me to leave it all behind, even if momentarily. 

That’s how I came across the possibility of how my desire for physical pain could be linked to BDSM. It allowed me to give up all that control involved in my efforts to keep down my emotional pain and get some warmth (if not love) from someone.

That made me curious about various BDSM toys: riding crops, different kinds of whips, the Wartenburg pinwheel, wax play, blindfolds, bondage, etc. Some of them, especially the crop, were already sounding interesting to me.

As I entered my 20s, I found myself exploring and enjoying different kinds of physical pain such as spanking, nipple clamps (made then of repurposed clothespins) and fantasising about whips and wax play. I felt them sexually arousing me, even when I wasn’t in emotional pain. Of course, I was still doubting myself, “What if it’s just about me and my emotional traumas?”. So, like any other person, I consulted the only known free consultation service around me: Google.

I read a multitude of articles, journals, web comics, erotica and more. Other than those common blog posts which top the Google search results, I found a novel series called the Special Agent by C. P. Mandara. It was incredibly enjoyable and arousing and gave me the insight that though I might not enjoy the extreme kind of portrayal in the series, I definitely enjoyed BDSM/kink. Further, I discovered a site called Mangago where I found comics featuring dom/sub arrangements, which opened my eyes to my underlying interest in queer relationships and their representation in media.

Of course, I wouldn’t advocate these as educational resources but these were the only options I had back then, about three years ago. Things haven’t improved much since then. But when it comes to providing accredited sex education with a balanced pleasure and risk-based focus, I have discovered a lot of experienced and/or licensed sex therapists, sexologists and people who lead the kink lifestyle and are providing better information on social media which is an impressive improvement.

It was this period of research that taught me about sadomasochism, i.e., about how one can be both sadistic and masochistic, at same or different times, just like how I’m a switch. Though I started out on this journey fantasizing about receiving pain and pleasure, as I slowly dealt with my traumas, I could see how I also wanted to pleasure my partner and even torture them, consensually, with ‘too much’ pleasure and sensory deprivation. All these realizations taught me how those two sides of me don't need to be equal in amounts, or always stay the same way. It need not be the same kinks either when one is a sadist or a masochist. Further, I understood that an interest in BDSM isn’t always triggered by past traumas as shown in Fifty Shades of Grey or in my case. It taught me that trauma being the start of an interest in pain, impact play or kink doesn’t invalidate your interest in it, as long as you perform it consensually without permanent or lasting damage. 

Through this process of self-discovery, once I had such understanding in place to give me assurance that I’m not doing something wrong, I got more interested in finding people with similar urges and interests. Of course, again, I didn’t know where to do that as I couldn’t go right into it with the people I met in real life, considering the social taboos surrounding sex and anything slightly far from the “seemingly normal” standards. 

So, I turned to my online consultant, Google, which guided me into the virtual world of BDSM Tests at bdsmtest.org and kinky dating apps such as Fetlife.com, OKCupid.com, etc. From those apps/sites, I started to find people at different stages of their kink life—beginners, explorers, experienced kinksters.  

After much trial and error, online communication (chatting) and some help from the long list of kinks and percentages thanks to bdsmtest.org (100% Switch, 95% Masochist, 94% Rope bunny, 87% Submissive, 75% Experimentalist, 42% Vanilla, 83% Sadist, 76% Dominant, etc.), I started on my BDSM journey, through Telegram, with a straight and mostly vanilla person with whom the only thing I shared was my mother tongue. He was into slightly integrating kink with vanilla sex rather than full-on dominance and submission. This online set-up of Friends with Benefits (FwB) went on for some time before that person suddenly ghosted me because of “academic purposes and relocation”, as informed later. 

That made it the right time to restart my journey of exploration of full-on dominance and submission. After some time of repeating the same process as before, I was back to Telegram with a new dominant/sadistic (Dom) partner. 

Finding someone offline wasn’t an option at that point, especially in Kerala culture. To add to it, I didn’t know where in my district would I even be able explore these things. Moreover, my first FwB was in a different district. My second FwB was in a different state altogether. Thus, making physical proximity with the right people, an in-person reality, a practical challenge.

The only similarities I shared with this new online dom was that we lived in the same country and our overlapping interests in BDSM. Other than that, we had miles between us. Some time of detailed communication about kinks, fetishes, consent, limits, safewords, aftercare and more, as detailed as it can be between FwBs, slowly progressed to late night sessions through video/audio calls, disappearing photos and end-to-end encrypted chats. Those rendezvous helped us discover more about each other, our tastes, wants and likes such as anal, being addressed as ‘sir’, etc., though I wasn’t fully capable/confident yet to voice it all.     

As enjoyable as it all was, I was at an exploratory stage of discovering my desires, interests and what bodily autonomy meant to me. Simultaneously, I could also feel something uncomfortable piling up after each of our late-night sessions but I didn’t know what exactly yet, especially since master wasn’t doing anything beyond what I consented to and neither did he force me to do anything, which meant that I didn’t talk about that to my master yet. 

Back then, I chose to ignore this unclear inner voice of mine and agree to master’s prompt to try out neglect play, without humiliation/degradation or pet play, since those are absolute NOs to me. Though I hung on till that session ended, I absolutely broke down after that.

“But why? Everything seemed to be going well.” Well, in those hours of me crying alone from the breakdown, I realized that the structured setups of BDSM, combined with the limitations online chatting/calls put on the whole experience was bringing the pain from years and years of loneliness, and lack of warmth, back up. The neglect play seemed to be the nail in the coffin, triggering childhood traumas. It brought back memories from my childhood when I wanted to share my feelings of sadness due to being ostracised by the same classmates I studied with for 13 years, repeatedly. Contrary to my hope, it was a long and hard journey to navigate before and sometimes even after I had someone to share all those feelings with before becoming numb in some ways and taking advantage of it in other ways. It brought back the extreme loneliness that threatened to break me, thanks to my mom working hard to make me independent as I’m now and dad being unavailable, and if available, invalidating. It left me a crying mess which caused me to withdraw from my master and end things between us because back then, I still didn’t know how to handle such matters or situations, other than escaping. Now that I look back, I can see how wrong it was both to me and my master.  

Taking some time off from the BDSM world and sexual/physical exploration gave me some insights on what that “uncomfortable” thing that had been piling up was and how that might have subconsciously contributed to the unfortunate but very much needed ending. 

Be it due to the influence of my traumas or because I’m a writer focused on words and communication, the aftercare I needed, be it the time, amount and/or kind, was different from that of my partner's, just like how people’s love languages or learning methods might be different. My partner was more focused on the physical aspects of aftercare while it was more about the emotional aspects of it for me. Further, I also understood that as much as I enjoy the main BDSM session, aftercare is a heavily important part of the process and has added importance for people like me with emotional scars. Moreover, it signified how a lot of the aftercare part meant ‘detailed’ communication to me, no matter how long it takes and how later it is after the play session.  

Additionally, it brought to me the significance of aftercare even in vanilla relationships and how I might prefer integration of kink/sadomasochism into vanilla relationships rather than full-on sir/ma’am/madam/master, i.e., structured dominance and submission (D/S dynamics). Another insight was how my first experience with the ghosting guy might have been a bit too softcore for me like how the second one was slightly too hardcore for me which was both funny to know and enlightening. 

Today, physical pain during sex/foreplay, in certain amounts in certain body parts while not in others, is a fetish of mine that I indulge in with my partners in-person and rope play, wax play, blindfolding, edging, polyamory, etc., are more kinks to me. Of course, even among these and beyond, there's a lot more for me to explore and understand my likes and preferences. But one thing I definitely understand is how important detailed communication and honesty towards myself and my partner before, after and later is to me and after the implementation of those insights into my ongoing relationships, be it sexual, romantic or platonic, I can see how positively it impacts them and lasts longer with transparency and practicality, if it works for all those involved. It taught me how honest communication can be a tool or sometimes a weapon that I can leverage, in my work, to diplomatically create problems which are the catalysts for change, to create a better tomorrow.

Reshma Anil Kumar (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent Gender Equity, LGBTQ+ Rights and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Activist, Speaker and Writer from Kerala. They are also a Youth Policy Champion at the Youth Ke Bol collective, while doing their postgraduation in Gender and Development Studies.

‘Every month I’d be lying in the principal’s room, waiting to die’

Pavitra was told that experiencing period pain was to be expected, even when the pain she was experiencing was debilitating. Why did it take so long for someone to take her pain seriously, she wonders.

“Kalyanam ana yellam seri aagirum” (if you get married everything will be okay). Dr Sharadhama told me this. Not once, but every time I crawled into the clinic with pain looking like a bent dosa karandi (ladle).

At school, my age-attained friends would see me struggle every month with as sad a face as possible. They couldn’t do anything to relieve me of the pain and they couldn’t ask me what I was going through either, or even offer sympathy. Apparently their paatis and ammas told them that if they asked me what happened, even if it was a mere “are you okay?”, the pain would shift to them. So, they would convey their feelings through facial expressions. If we had had texts back then, they would have just sent a sad face emoji and not even look at me because my pain might travel through the eyes and infect them. 

I remember the very first time I got my periods. I barely had any pain then. Like every other girl, my stomach was filled with ulunthu (black gram) ladoos and raw eggs. Everyone told me that I was supposed to feel a normal amount of pain. My Amma told it would feel slightah like an ant bite in the stomach. 

It was after the first regular period, that I understood that staying conscious was not as easy as lying unconscious in the thittu (small elevated seating area) near our bathroom. Nothing was more painful than my amma sitting near me and saying that this was all because of my grandma’s genes.

“The only solution is to close your eyes and eat the meat I cooked,” Amma said. “Only I know the struggle of gatekeeping that one tumbler of tea or juice inside my stomach,” I replied.

Sometimes, I would feel like my stomach was screaming at me for still listening to Amma. So, I would fold my hands and dramatically fall on the bathroom floor to divert Amma. The tips she gave were simple and from her own life experience: “Take bath, eat nicely and roll on the floor”.

I couldn’t follow her because I hated the smell of my wet hair and puked twice in the name of karthiga shampoo. I ate one idly and puked yesterday’s tomato rice, our bathroom was only spacious enough to stretch my legs while sitting. 

After banging my body and head continuously against the bathroom door for three to four hours, I would slowly stop moving my legs and the pain would go away completely. Till date I don’t know when the exact moment of relief comes. How to witness? Even if the pain gives me a short break, my Amma would start talking about how abnormal I was compared to all other girls. Anything opposite to normal pain is abnormal according to Amma. 

This did not stop only at home. Whenever I got my periods at school, I would be down in the principal’s room lying down with the help of two chairs waiting to meet my parents before I died. All the boys in my class knew about my condition. No one discussed it loudly, but repetition had helped them understand the situation. I was no longer able to flaunt my regular period cycle to anyone. 

An illustration of a girl, lying down between two chairs, clutching her stomach. A screaming, red, horned demon has been shown emerging out of her stomach. 

What made my pain look abnormal was that no one else around me ever talked about period pain. All they said was that their pain was just a small uneasiness, but I had dying-on-the-floor pain. My amma and I couldn’t find any other girl suffering from period pain the way I did. All my class girls used to flaunt that they had nothing but some kashaya water at home, after which and their uneasiness faded away. My amma and I were tired of trying every possible method.

I had to go through this every month until one day.

Amma was shouting from behind, “Ayy iru vandi vitutu vara” (I’ll come after parking my vehicle) in a very loud voice that has enough panic in it to alarm the whole clinic. But, I felt nothing but pain. At that point of time my stomach was playing against all my body parts. My stomach was more like a cricket match ground, very heavy and packed.

Neither the sound of the nurse, nor the visual of the queue bothered me. I was my own ambulance. I rushed to the resting bed and started to cry. Sharadhama rushed to see me. I screamed “ayyo valikuthu”. The nurse said “periods”. She asked me “first day?” I shouted “mmm”. 

An illustration of a girl lying in a hospital bed, clutching her stomach. She has been shown sleeping peacefully after being injected with some medicine. There is also an illustration of the red, horned demon on the side. It is receiving an injection and swallowing some tablets. 

One injection. I cried. She left. My hands and legs became cold. Nurse said, “okay you can go”. I refused and cried more. Amma went to get the bedsheet from home. I slept for half an hour. 

WHAT? 

I couldn’t believe it. My body was completely silent. I regretted all the times when I believed my amma’s lecture about how every woman goes through this pain and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. 

Sharadhama called Amma and me for a small health tip session. She spoke in a normal tone. Loud enough that even the men in the room (if there were any) could also definitely hear her. She said the only solution for my pain was to eat healthy food for strength. 

But is it normal? My amma asked. Sharadhama said, “Once she gets married it will eventually go away. There is no solution until then.” She recommended a few tests and it showed that I had no medical abnormality.

From that time, the injection was in my usuals list for a long time and eventually I shifted to tablets for convenience. They even had my file saved in their computer. 

Now that my only problem about my periods was solved, Amma felt that I had nothing less but an uninterrupted femininity.

I don’t know if the pain will go completely after I get married or after few years, but I know that I don’t have to worry two weeks before my periods anymore. I flaunted how I lasted for the whole day in school without crying, even though that was my first day of periods.  

The pain they called abnormal which was usual to me has its own cycle now. It comes and goes. I use tablets when it reaches the peak or, sometimes, I drink inji (ginger) tea and tackle the pain. Among all the superstitions, unworked remedies, actively working stereotypes, the one thing I did was understand my body.

I pity those aunties calling this method of taking painkiller as artificial and dangerous. From my view at least, I will share remedies that actually work. 

Pavithra is a BA graduate, currently trying to write as much as possible. If in a room, you hear a laugh that sounds like kickstarting a bike then it's probably her, laughing at her own jokes.

‘Could I share food with others? Could I have a relationship?’

A diagnosis of herpes can be terrifying. But, here’s what I learnt after being told I have herpes

A little while ago, I went to the gynaecologist about a rash on my privates that I’d had for about half a week. It was so itchy and odd, I toh just thought it was a yeast infection jo thoda zyada khujli karke rash ban gaya, that it would be okay with some simple medication. 

My aunt came along with me, quite a normal phenomenon in my family–being accompanied to visit the doctor. My maasi explained that this was one of the best gynaecologists in Gurgaon, and her clinic was near by, so off we went. I spoke to the doctor for a few minutes, explained to her what the problem was, then went to the examination room next door. She put on her gloves and mask, then glanced at my coochie, and back at me. She then asked if I was sexually active, nice enough to ask me away from my maasi. 

I told her that I was, though the last time I partook in any sexual activity was a few weeks ago, and never usually continuously with the same partner. Single as a pringle wale din chal rahe the. She looked down again, then at my face, looked right into my eyes and said the words, “This is looking like herpes to me.”

An illustration of a doctor examining a patient with a magnifying glass. The patient has a shocked and worried look on their face. 

There was an instant dhol banging in my head and a hundred thoughts conducting a fast-forward march past from my brain to my face in the moments after she said that. The only word that could come out of my mouth was, “Wh- wh- what?” and I think she could see the panic that had settled between my eyebrows, crinkling my nose, disallowing the words to come out of my mouth. 

She said, “This is most definitely herpes, this is usually how herpes lesions look,” and then she asked about the two pimples (or pimple-seeming bumps) on my upper lip. The coochie rash and the upper lip pimple had actually started to come up around the same time, now that I thought about it, and that’s what I told her.

I had to calm down because, well, I was sitting there with my pants down with a likely look of abject horror on my face, wondering where it came from and who gave it to me. I think these are the first questions a person asks themselves when they find out something like this. 

We went back to sit in her cabin, and she wrote down on my prescription, “herpes genitalia & herpes labialis” above the short list of medicines she wrote down. My maasi read as she wrote the diagnosis and the name of the antiviral tablet (Acyclovir), the antiviral ointment I was to use (called “Herpex 5%”), and the two blood tests I was to take to figure out the type of herpes I had (IgG and IgM HSV) but she didn’t say anything to me then. 

I wanted to get out of there and back home as quickly as I could, so I could be angry, sad, and ashamed alone with my own tears, and my maasi seemed to understand that, too.

Walking to the market to buy the meds before heading home, she said to me, “Tuk herpes hoise?” which is Assamese for “You’ve got herpes?” I told her, yes, seeming like it. She told me, “It’s okay, babu, it will be fine. It’s not a big deal. What can you do now?”

I was grateful that she was not angry at me, because an STD diagnosis would be enough to anger any member of an Indian family, but this gratitude and relief was overpowered by my inability to speak at that moment. All I could say was, and I said it a few times, “I can’t believe this has happened. How could this have happened?”

I couldn’t sleep that night, because every time I would try to shut my eyes, my hands would go back to my phone, to incognito mode on my phone to read more and more about HSV (herpes simplex virus). That night, ridden with panic and guilt and shame, I learnt about the different types of herpes in terms of HSV1 and HSV2, and how that’s different from the typology of genital herpes and cold sores. 

An illustration of a person with a worried look on their face looking into a mobile phone. On the mobile phone screen, we can see that there are some google search prompts such as, “What is herpes?” “Causes,” Symptoms,” and “Will I die?”

Both types are prevalent, but can be differentiated by how frequent the flare-ups are and where the flare-ups occur. Type 1 (HSV-1) usually spreads by oral contact and causes infections in or around the mouth (oral herpes or cold sores). It can also cause genital herpes. Type 2 (HSV-2) spreads by sexual contact and causes genital herpes. HSV-2 usually sees multiple flare-ups a year, but HSV-1 is less frequent. Of course, this differs for each person. 

I learnt about herpes transmission: that it can take between 10 days to 10 years to manifest after you have been exposed to it. I also learnt that the flare-ups, or the cold sores, lesions, whatever you want to call them–it all comes and goes, but that the disease is lifelong, that it cannot be cured but it can be managed and treated when flare-ups happen. Flare-ups usually last about 7-10 days, but it’s safer to take it as 15 days. Giving it a few days after the lesions have disappeared before doing any sexy things with someone is a good idea. Your partner and you can then both be more comfortable being fully sure it’s not passed on.

I spent some time on my haunches in my loo, staring at my own vagina with a small mirror and the flashlight of my phone to examine what exactly it was that was happening to me. What are these stupid little lesions that have my mental health and sleep cycle all over the place? I freaked myself out reading up about it late into the night, until I stumbled upon three things I found incredibly helpful:

1. A handbook on the disease to understand how to cope and live a normal life once you have it.

2. Statistics on how prevalent it is (and it is very prevalent, mind you), and,

3. The last, but most helpful, a Buzzfeed list of celebs that have been spotted with cold sores at some or another point in time. That list included Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, Victoria Beckham, and so many others. 

Oh, this felt especially good, to know that famous people struggle with something like this, too, and so I am truly not alone.

And then I could finally go to sleep... that night. 

Some of the thoughts that were consuming me the consequent sleepless nights were about the stigma associated with STDs, about whether or not I could share food and drinks and ciggies with my friends and family anymore, about if anyone would ever want to sleep with me or date me again knowing that I have this disease (even though it is not necessarily transmissible if there isn’t an active flare up). 

What angered me greatly during the first few weeks was not knowing where it came from. I speculated that it may have been the last guy I was with, and it killed me a little bit every time I thought about his face. It was more the inability to remember whether or not there was anything on his lip that I should’ve noticed, it is this blank space in my memory where his mouth was that added lines to my forehead on most nights.

I was also trying very hard to figure out how I was going to tell anyone about it, until one fine day I called up a friend crying amidst a terrible bout of anxiety about it in the middle of the day. She listened to me and then told me that I was not even the first person to tell her that they have herpes, that it’s super common and nothing to break my head over, but that she understood why I was freaking out in the first place. 

When I asked her how I was supposed to break this to men I intend to get jiggy with, she said these words to me that I will never forget: “You have never given a f*ck what people think of you and that is who you are. Why do you give a f*ck now?” and to tell you the truth, I think that’s the kind of tough love I needed at that point, because it jolted me back to who I am instead of the timid shell that I had become for that little while.

I began to tell my close friends soon after that conversation, the ones that I usually share my food with at college, that I have this problem and that we have to be a little careful about it. I was worried at first, but it was a futile concern at that point because I have found out that the people I have surrounded myself with now are the most wonderful and the most loving friends I could ask for. I thought, for some reason, that it would be funny to them, or that they would think I’m gross and would want to stay away from me, but the love they threw my way when I told them about it was absent of judgement, ridicule, and pity, and it made me feel ever so grateful and relieved, once again.

An illustration of a person being hugged by a couple of friends. 

The difficult one was when I had to tell a boy that I had met multiple times before that I have been diagnosed with herpes. It was a phone conversation and it took a lot out of me to even dial his number to have that conversation. 

I felt heavy and sad about it afterward because, of course, he wanted nothing to do with me after that. I asked him to get himself tested, too, just in case. This was the experience that had filled my mind with these obtuse thoughts that nobody is going to want to be with me anymore. It was so difficult to come to terms with this, and I understand why now – because it simply isn’t true.

I got into a relationship with someone who knew about my condition; he was a friend first. He told me he loved me, we had wonderful and very safe sex, until I had a flare-up on my upper lip again and then I couldn’t come close to him for two weeks, though I saw him every day. The day it was safe to kiss him after those two weeks, well, you know what happened then.

More than that, I was petrified of my mother finding out, not because she would be angry at me or that she would find out I’m sexually active—she already knows that. More because I don’t want to answer the follow-up questions that come with it. 

This is more of a personal experience because of my relationship with my mother, but she did find out because she saw my prescription by chance, but when I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, she let it go. All she asked was, “but are you okay??” on a text message. and it only showed me how much love I am surrounded with. 

Today, I am a lot more comfortable talking about herpes because I am now able to recognise that it is common and not such a big deal, even though it seemed catastrophically life-changing at first. Of course, I’m not comfortable enough to put this out there with my name on it—they’re called baby steps. But I have had multiple flare-ups and I am learning to manage it better. I’ll tell you this—as someone who has herpes, if you have it, if you develop it at some point, it’s your responsibility to keep your loved ones safe, as hard as that is to accept. My friends happily offer me drags from their cigarettes or a bite of their food, and I have to remind them that they’re not supposed to do that for a few days.

What I’m arriving at is that having an STD isn’t the end of the world. It feels as though you will be shunned by the people around you and it is something for which we must feel great shame, because it is sexually transmitted and anything to do with sex and pleasure is generally frowned upon by society. But it is not the end of the world. At first, things come crashing down, but know that there is an end to that misery stemming from the shame associated with STDs, and we call it acceptance and vigilance.

Can you believe that I can laugh about it now?

If you are someone who has recently been diagnosed with a lifelong STD like herpes, please know that almost 45% of the world is like you, and it’s only a very small proportion of that 45% that even know they have it. You are not alone, and you are not dirty. Let nobody else in the world convince you otherwise.

Here’s the handbook that helped me: http://herpeshandbook.com/. I hope it can help someone else cope, too.

He Had Sex With Me. Then Told Me I Wasn't Man Enough

A train journey and a sexual encounter with a closeted man makes Vibhu Vasudev ask why men hold rigid ideas about masculinity.

The train was reaching Ernakulam Town station around evening, but late as usual. Going back to work after weekend breaks at the parents’ place by train is indeed an overwhelming trip. My father was closer to my elder brother while we were in school. He had more hopes and aspirations for my brother. I didn’t talk much as a child and was mostly by myself. But I remember the time when my father would—as he continues to—advise my brother. 

An illustration of two men in a city. One man is looking at the other, who is walking away. The man walking away is looking at his phone. 

He told my brother to warn those who were trying to use force against him. “When people don’t listen and try to invade your space, then you too use force to make them stop and even hit them, if the situation demands.” I guess even I had taken that advice to heart even though no one had aimed to hit me till now. 

Memories of watching movies on Sunday evenings with parents, when we had cable connections, are still fresh. All kinds of movies from mostly Malayalam and Tamil to some rare cases of English and Hindi films that my brother or I would want to watch. 

Back then I was a fan of Bollywood as I badly wanted to leave Kerala and wanted to be cosmopolitan, at least within India. I wanted to pick up Hindi more than English. I couldn’t understand English movies without subtitles then and it’s only recently, as I started teaching canonical texts, that I have discovered more Hollywood and western literature. It was not an easy or natural inclination for me, as I thought it was because I was closer to my mother while growing up. 

My mother doesn’t speak English often. She gets anxious, like Mrs Shashi Godbole from English Vinglish. But she is an awesome conversationalist and storyteller in her mother tongue, Malayalam. 

I remember watching “Avvai Shanmughi” as my first big screen experience. I also remember my mother laughing a lot then. My brother used to be a Rajni fan and still continues to be, I guess.  

My father believes that he preaches what he practices. I don’t intend to prove him wrong or hurt him anymore. But he was mostly involved in building a house during his prime. So, responsibility of the children fell on my mother mostly within the home. 

As an upper-middle class Nair household, discussions pertinent to manliness and manhood were often matters to joke about. Female sardonic humour, which is delivered with sweetly melting voices, often offer some deeply hard-hitting and propositional dialogues that could not be contained in a lifetime of retrospection. Those words resonate and linger in most of us while growing up to be a category of men that doesn’t really want to be like the first remembered action hero of Malayalam films, Jayan. That is to say, who don’t value the ideal performance of being a stereotypically heteronormative and patriarchally wired man. Nor were we entertained to be like the outspoken Mohanlal or Mammooty characters. Forget the roles of Suresh Gopi. Even though, allegedly, we were allowed to be anyone’s fan. 

Nair women unanimously loved the evergreen hero, Prem Nazir. They blush upon discussing his demeanour and genteelness. At least in my family and other ‘Mallu aunty’ circles. Since Tamil ties were also active in these family circles, the similar fondness was also found towards MGR and Kamal Hassan. A lot of these aunties loved sharing the ‘charming men stories’. 

I met a very distant family friend, probably in her late 60s or early 70s, at a wedding a few years ago in Kannur. She then asked this other aunt of mine if her sons aren’t getting married anytime soon. My aunt replied; “wedding will be there. Only doubt is if you’ll be around then.” This form of active give and take was a normal way of being affable and even intimate for many, especially amongst older Malayalis. 

Malayalis speak more sarcasm than Malayalam, always I have felt. 

I get treated as a man as I have a lot of facial hair and I have a stereotypically manly voice. I liked giving voice overs for theatre productions and documentaries. One of my income supplementing ideas was to become a voiceover artist for soft porn movies. Even if they are being dubbed from other languages. Dubbed versions of popular movies in other regional languages are a laugh riot from what I remember. 

I enjoyed being Caliban in “The Tempest” a lot. There was a line in the play in Act II, scene 1, where Sebastian calls Gonzalo an “old cock”. To keep a deadpan face without being able to blush in front of a class of almost 40-50 teenage girls in their first semester of British literature classes, was one of the toughest exercises in acting I had undertaken till date. Girls in the last three rows were specifically amused and sniggering away to glory, while most of the other girls in the class had their heads deeply planted inside their texts. 

The movies and their characters were my true friends while growing up. I wanted to slap the face of the first old man I loved, like Sridevi in “Chaalbaaz” slapped Anupam Kher after getting intoxicated in the movements of her tandav nritya. 

It’s these movie characters and literature that got me my clan as well. Most of my friends, at least by spirit, identify as loners. Hence, literature plays a great role in our lives. Literature is the companion to pain, rather a brotherhood that embalms the process of developing kindness and compassion. 

Baldwin and Lorde have been my favourite companions for some time now. As much as they helped me practice kindness with strangers, it also helped me forget the hurt and disappointments with people in general as well. Giovanni’s Room examines the subtle beauty of sexual healing over sexual pleasure. “To feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. Out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.” 

I don’t see myself as a family person but I don’t understand what kind of companionship or purpose might keep me going. Isn’t the purpose of life to live it? And what essentially does living entail if there is no love or no sense of direction on what to achieve when the waves seem to be forming concentric loops?

That’s what I guess becomes the process of finding oneself and finding love. Leaving the home of parents and all its inconclusiveness is always a difficult ordeal. The mind and heart rush with thoughts about everyone part of this home. Can there be a home without love? 

I got inside the Kochuveli Express. As usual, I was blessed with the berth next to the urinal and bath to be further serenaded with a trip of ever-changing synesthesia, born from the innumerable scatological endeavours—each new scent a fresh anatomy to demystify and a thāli to keep turning and ponder about. 

For some strange reason, the scent of pee always reminds me of the urine and fart infused stench that his boxers had, coupled with the scent of his Nivea moisturizer that he applied amply. He was my hot senior from college who lived in the same block. Nivea should seriously consider making him their brand ambassador for the sheer number of bottles he had collected and placed in his room to create a sea of navy-blue Nivea bottles. Is this dark blue a symbol of masculinity as well? I’ve often wondered. Slight artistic eccentricities of a small artist in the making, I thought. He couldn’t be the big artist, as he had his family business awaiting him. He must be still using Nivea though, as it still hasn’t gone out of trend with the men of the world.   

A guy was sitting on the opposite upper berth, with his huge backpack next to him. He had a slim outline with sleeky curls and tiny glasses. We looked at each other and locked eyes for a moment. We didn’t smile or suggest anything, but then I looked outside the window. Evening musk or murky yellow and purplish orange had slowly started making way for the darkness to get through. Later, as I raced my eyes against him, he was still looking at me. I was kind of titillated, rather than excited as these moments are usual in these track lines, while travelling or cruising. 

To cruise on the railway tracks next to the temple pond close to my friend’s place in our suburban village of a neighbourhood was a clandestine affair that everyone knew but was revulsed about and hence considered it blasphemous to even talk about it. The boys coming after an evening drench in the temple pond often smelt of Cinthol and Lifebuoy soap behind the ears and of Ponds or Cuticura talc in their armpits and chest. The wet powder sticking to dark bodies in the late evening mist wafting with burnt gingelly oil, agarbatti and sandal from the temple, was somewhat subtle and even tender on nights when the moon was fully out or when the temple had shut after every majestic utsavam. 

This boy came down to the berth I was sitting on, and this time he smiled, and I immediately smiled back as I was waiting to smile since I saw him. We started talking. He was very pally and touchy as well. I too made some touchy advances and later rested my head on his shoulder. He too rested his head on my head, which made it easier for him to touch me genitally. 

An illustration of two men sitting in a train, next to each other. One man has his arm around the other. 

Suddenly he started asking me about whether I have other kunnanmar (dicks/dickheads; slur for gay boys in Malayalam around Kottayam) in Bangalore that I meet often. I didn’t really acknowledge that question. 

Then he started asking if I’d continue living this way because we spoke a bit about marriage and family.

I said marriage to a girl was out of question for me. 

He just couldn’t accept that. He said I am fooling around, and he is asking a very serious question. But I did say I’m giving a serious answer with a smiling face which I guess was triggering him more. His feelings of maybe having had to bury a part of himself or not wanting to acknowledge the reality or gravity of this phase that we know exists but might not be a phase after all. 

He might have even seen me as a threatening force. Living on my own terms and conditions. The never-ending solitude of being a man. In this lost sojourn, every one becomes queer, and very few realise it, even fewer people accept it. Guess he wanted to belong to none of these categories and always be a man. He studied philosophy for his graduation. We spoke about Kierkegaard’s spheres of existence, and I was asking whether if it is not a very reductive way of approaching or observing life. But he was emphasizing on the importance of an ethical standpoint and outlook in life. He solely believed in the value of blood and family ties. Upsetting or distancing from family was also out of question for our boy. 

We were about to lie down after arranging the berths. He then asked me to come up to his berth. I went and then he started enlightening me about orienting myself into a normal and decent human again. I was wearing my crimson jute cotton short kurta with long wooden buttons I got from Commercial Street, Masjid Road. Simultaneously, he was also continuing to touch me genitally and kept saying how I need to make use of my masculinity more effectively and not wear these printed colourful boxers and stop using eyeliners. 

He saw my eye pencil fall out from my bag as well while we were trying to arrange bags under our berths. Then he said I had a huge dick. Most of the gay boys’ marvel over my dick and most of those who have come back to me have also done so for my dick and most often my dick becomes the mystery for most of them who have been around as well. Attracting mad dancers like Shiva or a spear of destiny up the arch of St John’s. Some even profess Sufi love and still continue to aim for the same age-old Mecca. The constant after it all is me and now, I see how being well endowed with a loaded lifestyle is mostly what matters when it comes to being together with someone even for short term. 

He then said that he now understands how all my “actual” work must be quite dick-centric. Everything I said about work and alike must be lies. The institutions I mentioned must not be crazy to hire me, he said. 

Then I was kind of switched-off for a bit and came down and resigned to my berth. Not really sleepy as these berths often keep me awake. The light opposite my berth and above the entryway was hitting my face directly, which kept me wide awake for most of the night. 

Then I thought to myself as to how most of this phobia or insecurity around masculinity is not caused by anyone but by men with strong homosexual tendencies. They live in denial, and they end up projecting their misery and insecurity onto others who have maybe accepted or at least started accepting themselves for who they are and what they like and what they want to identify as. This makes it troublesome for everyone involved in the equation with these men. These are some reasons that make me ashamed to acknowledge and discuss my gay relationships or rather situationships or even better will be to just say sexcapades to sound patronisingly simple and these sexcapades are what we mostly get in the growing jungles of city loneliness.

His name is Jenson. He is from Kottayam but working a job that he doesn’t like in Bangalore. Before the night ended, he called me up to his berth again. I went up again as I wasn’t particularly sleepy and his body was quite warm, so maybe ignore what he is trying to say and focus only on the bodily warmth was my intention. 

He then told me that he earned Rs 10,000 a month. He asked if I could help him. I smiled and said I’m trying to help myself. Then he got annoyed and told me to stop doing the shit I am doing and make myself worthy of what I have. He said, “life ordained you for greater things and why do you choose to invest in your costumes and make-up?” I didn’t know what to answer him then and even now. 

The time spent with Jenson was special. He is a fan of tough love. The kind that I am used to as well. Our love language back home was to explode and create dramatic outbursts when there are matters of hurt feelings to convey. He would have indirectly yelled at me at least more than twice until that point. It was also intimate and lovely to begin with when he asked me what I did for a living. When he wanted to know more about Kalidasa and Bhasa. But he became rock solid too soon as he saw the eye pencil. Touch and feeling up the crotch is friendship for him. The queer friendship that only seeks to satiate the skin’s hunger or lust. 

He is a straight boy who hadn’t had a good release in so long. His pre-cum itself came out in loads. I wanted to lick it and lip lock him with it, but he was already highly resistant to my gentle kisses or any fondling I attempted. My flamboyant subtlety and fragile advances were too much for his manly streak to tolerate. We were soon welcomed by the tearing cold winds of the early Bangalore mornings. 

I was wondering if he would be willing to exchange numbers with me but by the time everyone was up, he didn’t want to look at me and didn’t raise his head from his phone. Obviously, I expected too much too soon as always. But it was good when it lasted as everything else that comes and goes. 

When I went back the second time to his upper birth, we exchanged body warmth as I hoped but he also kept taking out some agitation on my dick by twisting my ball sac and pulling my foreskin. I tried to tame him with kisses and gentle touches. But that made him bitter and more passive aggressive. Later, he continued to talk about being respectable for the kind of profession I’m in as a teacher and how I need to always have a formal, manly and respectable persona to command attention and reverence and not play such roles as I am playing now that will only make me a butt of ridicule everywhere I go. 

I told him that I play different characters from films and other stories to feel more in sync with where I am in life. I told him I am currently Mrs Sulochana Thankappan from Thalayana Manthram. He said I am crazy then and he didn’t want to talk afterwards.

I had to get down at K.R Puram station and he wanted to get down at Cantonment as he stayed closer to M.G Road. Before I got down, I took out my eye pencil and darkened my eyes that had smudged in the morning mist. I then smiled at him, held his hand and said, “kaanam” (see you). 

Next time when I was in the same K.R Puram railway station, I searched for him on Instagram and found his profile that seemed quite inactive then. I sent him a follow request and a message asking if he is fine. It’s been years and he still hasn’t seen my message even though he approved my follow request. He posts pretty much every week with pics of his naughty new-born, Joe. He also has the same curls like Jenson.

Vibhu is a teacher of literature, poetry, film and writing. Hoping to be a full-time writer someday.

Tinder And The Saga Of “Blind” Dates

I dipped my toes in the world of online dating with care and caution. But I got swept away anyway.

Dating on Tinder… Yes… you heard that one right! Cautious, careful me knows what Tinder and online dating is. Since I have always been a sucker for sop and inhale romances like the oxygen I breathe, this whole concept has intrigued me. Coming from a century ago, I must be among the dinosaurs of the online dating world.

My first doubt, of course, was about being a blind woman on the much maligned space; followed by the bane of all our existences—accessibility of the app. 

I tried to navigate it and understand how it works, but reached nowhere. The layout was strange, and who knew what needed to be tapped to get going. 

There were accessibility horrors around every corner—like trying to upload a picture, write a bio. . . all of which was filled with unlabeled buttons that gave me no clue about what would happen if I clicked them. With such a daunting process to set up, both on Tinder and the other app I used: Aisle, one could only imagine what the journey would be like. I remember trying the famous app Bumble, promoted in India by Priyanka Chopra, which was the worst of its kind. There was no indication of how to get beyond the first screen using a screen reader. Many rants on the feedback page later, and no help coming my way, I turned to my seeing friend who has always been my set of spare eyes. 

The card features two women sitting close to each other. There are heart shapes in the air around them with people's name and age like "Sham, 37" "Raj, 39". One of them is holding a phone in her hand that both are looking into and smiling. 

She looked at it and explained the layout to me and together we were sort of able to make some method of the madness. We sat giggling like school girls engaged in some nefarious activities—what with there being hearts and all that on the page. My friend’s 15-year-old daughter, intrigued by this activity, peeked over our shoulders and let an ear-splitting shriek… “Tinder!!! Do you both even know what this is? It is a dating app… what do you want with this?” Such a reaction just ended up in more fits of uncontrollable laughter and earned us a teenage eye roll. She simply could’t imagine what her mom and aunt, at their age, would want to do with a dating app. Little did she know, there was a whole adventure waiting for her aunt there.

After exploring it for one whole day, we finally decided to give it a go. in about an hour, only because my seeing friend was handling things, I was now all set up and had some idea of how to go about liking, super liking and passing a profile. This, after all the basic settings of age and distance were fulfilled. 

You must be wonderin how I made my choice of persons to interact with? Don’t laugh yet… I looked at the name and age. If the name sounded interesting enough, I tapped the icon expressing my interest. What did I have to do with faces anyway? If I could’t have a conversation with the person, his fabulous face and personality was of no use to me. 

To have to wait for a seeing pair of eyes to tell me if the face was good enough to go with, would have left me standing with my phone in my hand forever, with no action. 

Now this whole concept of a match was also so new; and when I heard a strange sounding alert on my phone, I jumped. Looking at it, I found a message from Tinder. Was I shocked? You bet I was. Of course, since I’d mentioned my blindness after extolling all my other virtues, nobody really paid attention. Those who did, did’t believe that I meant what I’d said. Did I say strange are the ways of Tinder? Like I’d mention being blind for the fun of it or, to make myself sound mysterious or something? Sigh!

So, there was the first person ready to speak with me on the chat window, beginning with the regular introduction and pleasantries. I sometimes think it is at that point itself one figures if the conversation will even go further. Some are simply so boring with ho-humming and playing 20 questions. That is exactly what happened in the first couple of conversations. Just no vibe. Didn't crawl beyond the most basic questions on both sides. After letting it go, the super housekeeper in me, quickly got rid of them. Why keep unnecessary occupied space after all?

So far, nobody had touched upon my disability and I was almost waiting for the other shoe to drop in every subsequent conversation. One might say it did’t matter to them; I say they didn’t pay attention to the profile.

Then the shoe did drop. . . I began speaking with this guy who did pay attention and went into sleuth mode right away. I was waiting for this since this was familiar ground and educating the ignorant was my forte. All the regular queries about how I was typing and answering questions on the phone to how I managed to live life without being able to see… none of it was new. Then came the expected pause that went on for a bit too long…and then, came the not-so-subtle let down… “You are an amazing lady. So gutsy and inspirational”. Can you hear me roll my eyes? 

Although, I have to give it to him. He tried very hard to continue the chat for another couple of days, but just couldn’t get beyond my disability. He was the first among many others who, hearing of my disability, felt safe in putting me high up on the proverbial pedestal, from where I couldn’t be reached or brought down.

The image features a woman saying "tsk tsk" standing behind an enlarged illustration of a two mobile screens on both her side. On the phone screen to the right is an dating app profile and icon asking "where's the alt text??". On the left is an illustration of a mobile phone screen, inside which a woman standing on a pedestal and a guy wearing "Nice Guy" t-shirt is tugging at her while holding placard saying "You are an inspiration".

 Beside her is a man wearing a T-shirt that says , "nice guy." He is holding a board that says, "You are amazing."

I have to be honest and say I was quite disappointed and wondered just how a capable blind woman such as myself was ever going to find a date. I know, I wasn’t one to simply jump at the chance to go out. I was being careful and cautious me, who had been warned about how slippery this slope was, filled with all the slime and creepy crawlies present there.

Then, there came a phase of married men who were there to have “mature conversations”. What on earth was that? 

Some who said they were in boring and redundant marriages, were looking for companions, while others simply thought it was okay to chat since I was there as well. While intellectually I understood all of what they said, and shrugged it off as it being their choice, I was quite outraged on behalf of all womankind. After many such stories, I did come across some good people, whom I met with and ended up becoming good friends with, no dates, though.

After finishing my stint on Tinder, having tired of all the meaningless conversations, I decided to embark on to Aisle, another inaccessible dating app. Here too, I did interact with a few, most of whom were not even worth a second conversation. That is, until I met someone who was interesting.

Here was this guy who spoke my language, had much in common with me, and instantly wanted to speak with me. I panicked, wondering how I got here so quickly. Contrary, I know, but I was skeptical about someone knowing I was blind, and still wanting to go on. It reminded me of a male friend who once told me, a man didn’t care if the woman he wanted to hook-up with was blind or anything else. Not the most encouraging thing, since I was not the hooking-up kind, and was looking for at least someone who wanted to explore something long term.

I had been through a bad marriage, and spent years healing. It had not deterred me against giving a relationship another shot. Disability had left me lonely and not having to share all of me was slowly taking away my zest for life. Seeing people around me in relationships, being part of a twosome and together, made me sad all the time.

Maybe this consideration pushed me to speak with this guy, and it felt like an instant click. He wanted to talk all the time, every moment that he and I were not working. It felt exhilarating and rekindled that little spark of hope within me. It wasn’t without my customary caution, but I did allow myself to get sucked into the thrill of it all. He flew down to see me, wanting to spend time and explore things. 

Since I live in a conventional home set-up, where my parents did have some say in things, I had to at least run it by them. Only, they did not have a say in my going to see him. Assuring them that I would ensure my safety, I went to meet him. 

I felt so rusty and out of my depth for a while, but he made me feel comfortable. I had come prepared for anything, having given myself the permission to do whatever felt safe, and my heart desired. To think a sighted guy had flown across the country to spend time with me, a blind woman, seemed like such a big deal at the time. It was a great two days—of getting to know each other, some physical intimacy, and promises of many more meetings to come. Cautious me had already told him that I wasn’t having sex on the first meeting. I laugh at myself now, at all those disclaimers, since that was exactly what he must have come for. A long way to travel for that, but I believe there must have been something about me that appealed to him. We had both said we were not interested in marriage, but looking for committed relationships. Through the phase with him, I did so much psychology reading about relationships and so much more. Somewhere deep within me was that lurking doubt of it being too good to be true. It didn’t take too long for the other for that realization to come true. He went from someone who wanted to move to where I stayed, to slowly moving away. I found myself getting frantic with worry, all the insecurities resurfacing. This wasn’t my first rodeo, but being ghosted still stung.

He went from someone who called me from an international holiday location with buddies at all hours, insisted I make time to speak with him, to someone who began phasing it all out. The calls became few and farther apart, and when he finally spoke, said he was busy. I remember reading about all the red flags in those psychology reading I’ve mentioned earlier, and this was heading towards an eventual ghosting. That is exactly what happened, and I can’t say I was surprised; also quite distraught.

It came back to the fact that I wasn’t good enough. My disability had once again come in the way of what might have been a relationship. It hurt for a long time, since we had been in each other’s orbit constantly for about four months. Was I wrong in opening myself to another disappointment? It was encouraging there was no self-recrimination at all, since I was sure of why I had embarked on the journey, and that was progress. I was a finally done. 

Uninstalling all the dating apps I had on my phone, I deleted all my subscriptions and decided I did’t want to look for any more online suitors. It was like snapping a tether that had me bound to an expectation of finding happiness, where there was none to be had.

The image features a woman holding hands with a man who is breaking into pieces and fading away. On her back, she carries an open bag. Sticking out of the bag is a heavy rock, labelled Past Trauma. 

Over the years, I have begun relying on my own company (not always what I want), find happiness in my romance books, living vicariously through those. It has not taken away my desire for a companion, but has me resigned to the fact that there may be nobody. 

After all, where else can I go to find someone? With inaccessible spaces, little to no company to hang out with, the road ahead is rather lonely. When I read how folks are shocked that someone can go without physical intimacy for a few months, let alone years, I smile to myself- in the knowledge that is mine alone. This led me on to another path—that of discovering self-pleasure. Not that it was a foreign concept, but I always held on to the hope that I would share it with someone. A hug, the warmth radiating off someone else, and knowing it was shared. I set off on the hunt for sex toys, which at the time were not available easily enough. It was hilarious to ask someone travelling from abroad to look for one of those for you. I was met with embarrassed denials, and a little surprise, I’vet had a great time with it as well. I did find someone brave enough to slip some through in their baggage under the guise of something or the other. 

Once I learned these are available online locally, I have added many to my repertoire, and have found my own joy. It is not worth the angst and sense of loss and disappointment to go looking for someone to accept you for who you are, a person living with a disability; something that does not stop you from functioning just like anyone else. But then, I am not going to be the one to tell them that living with my expectations limited to myself, I can definitely say: I’vet been there, done that and learned from it all.

A disability consultant and speaker, Payal writes narratives on living life with disability. Creator of award winning podcast - Rasoi ke Rahasya, she loves to read, experiment in her kitchen and travel to new destinations.

I Was Happy To Give Them My (W)hole Heart, But They Wanted Kids And A Desi Bahu

I’ve had a heart defect since childhood. So, how do I find love in a world that’s obsessed with the body?

“So why don’t you want kids”

I stare blankly at the chat notification on my phone screen. How do people have the audacity to start a conversation on a dating app like this? Yes, sure, I’ve mentioned it on my profile, but at least say “hi” first. I reply with something about how it’s a personal choice. 

“But why?” comes the next question. At this point, I wonder if I should unmatch or admit to this person that I have had a serious heart and lung condition since childhood, in which pregnancy will most definitely be fatal. 

Collaged illustration of a young woman sitting on her bed with heart shaped pillows with an oximeter on her finger and medicines on her mind and looking at her phone where a man curiously asks "Why no kids????"

But then if I do mention the latter, am I prepared for the “sympathies” that will follow and then the questions on “what about surrogacy or adoption?”

Now, how to explain to this person that my life is pretty expensive as it is, because I live with an incurable condition that requires life-long medication and treatment (unless it gets really bad and then the only option left is transplant, which costs minimum Rs 80-90 lakhs). How would I also pay for surrogacy or handle a child’s expenses? And the hormones you have to inject yourself with to extract eggs for surrogacy aren’t exactly safe for someone living with my condition. Plus, I wouldn’t even want to. What if I pass on something to the child? To add to that, I don’t have that kind of energy to run around after a kid or even take care of them. How will I afford a nanny? 

How would I afford the child’s healthcare and education (have you seen how expensive decent schools are these days?) On top of that, I would feel terrible not being able to give enough time and attention to this child.

So obviously, after having this long conversation in my head with myself, I finally clicked “unmatch”.

Then, there’s the other category of men who will speak to you long enough and then drop the bomb that they intend to convince you to change your mind about having kids. Now, these naïve beings are completely unaware of my chronic disability, because it sadly is invisible most of the time.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you how my lungs and heart are struggling all the time without carrying my reports and oximeter everywhere.

I can’t help giggling at how cute these men can be. Their lives are so privileged and comfortable, the thought doesn’t even cross their minds that a woman could actually have serious health issues that could make it difficult to tolerate and sustain a pregnancy. Forget that, it’s hard for them to comprehend that women can have minds of their own and choose not to have children, whether they have a health complication or not. No such thing as choice, bro!

It’s scary, yet hilarious at the same time when they talk about how you’ll move into their house after marriage and live with their parents and pop out babies and everyone will just be so happy! This is another issue for me—I will never be the perfect “bahu” because I can barely do any house work. My lungs don’t allow it, and neither do my parents. And to be honest, I don’t want to go into someone’s house and take care of their family. It’s more than enough if I can manage to take care of myself.

My parents have always made sure that I have a comfortable life, so I can focus on education and work. Plus, having to live with a chronic illness is a full-time job. I have to make sure I get enough sleep so I don’t have trouble breathing the next day, take my medicines on time, do pulmonary-cardio rehab so my body can manage to do at least an average job on the low levels of oxygen I live on, be careful about what I eat so I don’t send my whole immune system into a tizzy, and then also make sure I’m not exerting myself too much while trying to work and have some semblance of a social life (which by the way has to be intricately planned so that I’m not doing anything else that tires me out the same day I’m planning to meet a friend for lunch).

Collaged illustration of a young woman with an oximeter on her finger sitting on a chair feeling dizzy in front of a busy study table with a medicine organizer and a board with posters, medicine timetables and more. Behind is a plant that is growing a heart.

Now, you tell me, how will I have the energy or the time to be a typical Indian bahu in the midst of all of this?

It became pretty clear to me early on in life that a traditional marriage could never be an option for me. And I’ve heard enough stories from fellow chronic illness survivors, women in particular, who were dumped by their husbands simply because they couldn’t do enough around the house for their in-laws or be baby-making machines.

Yeah, I’m good without all that drama, thanks.

Let’s move on to the body shaming now. As I live with a heart defect that cannot be operated upon, I have always been very thin, even as a child. It’s quite difficult to put on much weight when your oxygen levels have always been below 90. I dealt with my fair share of bullying all through school and college, being told I would never be attractive enough and no one would ever date me because men like meat, dogs like bones—some nonsense quote that was popular back in 2007. 

So, when I got out into the dating world, I was already living with social anxiety as I always thought every one I’d meet would only make comments about my weight. I always prepared myself before a date for the man to pass some derogatory remark about how I’m so skinny. Some of them were quick to do it, some were nice enough to never bring it up, but then there were those special creatures who waited to get intimate with me. 

And, right at that moment, when things would start to get hot and heavy, he would softly whisper something along the lines of “you should really gain some weight”.

Boys, nothing kills a lady boner like a critique about her weight when she is in such a vulnerable state with you! Hey, but you gotta love how he was only concerned about my weight and not the fact that I was obviously out of breath pretty quickly—an obvious symptom of my chronic disease people just don’t happen to see.

I also don’t know how to explain my health issues to these men because I have come across a few specimens who panic the second you say “heart condition”. It’s hard to believe that these are grown men when they cower away at the mere mention of a chronic illness! So now I’ve just added it to my social media handle profiles and created dedicated posts about my health, so guys can prepare themselves beforehand. I know, I’m very thoughtful like that.

Anyway, I’m still keeping myself open to the possibility of love entering my life, because I know I have so much to offer (other than children, lol). But in the meantime, I’ll continue to rant about how most men are hypocrites who act like they’re very broad minded and mature, but only want a (healthy) slave/child-bearer to take home to their family.

Roshni C, 31, has been living with a Congenital Heart Disease (VSD), Eisenmenger’s Syndrome and Severe Pulmonary Hypertension since childhood.

Juvenile Arthritis Meant That I Couldn’t Touch My Penis. Then, I Discovered Mindgasms

Naveen shares how he discovered the power of fantasy after being bedridden at the age of 13

Being born in a Christian family in India, masturbation and sex have been taboo topics since childhood. It was only after technology became affordable to me, that I could start exploring things related to sex—such as porn—on my mobile phone. Before that, masturbation was something that I discovered on my own. It started by touching the genitals. It felt so good, but I couldn’t figure out why it gave me pleasure.

At the age of 10, I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA), an auto-immune disease that causes persistent join pain, swelling and stiffness. As the disease progressed, I became bedridden. By the age of 13, I was unable to go to school. 

Image - In one square, an illustration of a young boy on a wheelchair who is touching his genitals with a backscratcher. In another square, a close-up of his face, where his eyes are closed in pleasure.

And so, the exposure I got to the external world started decreasing. I could not be with any of my friends. There was no access to sex education either. I was not on social media back then. Hence, there was no space for me to learn about masturbation, sex, or any such things from the outer environment. 

I was left alone most of the time, and so I was pretty much engulfed with loneliness. 

I had a crush on a girl who was in my neighborhood at that time.

At that time, I had very few friends. Even with them, there was no conversation about sex or masturbation.

It was when I became active on social media, that I was exposed to various disabled activists. It was here that I came to know about the concept of mindgasm, through the social media handle of disability activist Andrew Gurza. 

Mindgasm is a method where one can reach an orgasm without touching the genitals, by simply thinking or fantasizing sensual thoughts. Through social media I realised that many people with severe disabilities masturbate using this method to reach an orgasm. I also realised that I had been using this method even before knowing about its name.

As the rheumatoid arthritis progressed, my hands became disabled. This made masturbating difficult, because reaching my penis has not been possible since then. Then, I started to try mindgasm. While watching porn or any sensual scenes in movies or songs, I would fantasize and the thoughts helped me derive pleasure which led to an orgasm. 

Image - An illustration of a silhouette of a man in a wheelchair looking a radiating sunset in the shape of a beautiful woman, with balls of light floating around him.

Reaching an orgasm by simply using the mind is far more difficult that Reaching an orgasm through this method is difficult when compared the usual method of masturbation. Since it has to be done without touching the genitals, it requires a lot of focus and energy. Yet, it felt different to me. 

Mostly I was alone at home during the day time since everyone would leave home in the morning for work. So, privacy was available during the day, and I had people around me at night.

Apart from mindgasm, I try to masturbate by touching my penis using available objects such as a comb, TV remote, book, backscratcher, etc. The backscratcher is comparatively better than the other objects as it’s easier to reach the penis using it. But it is not as pleasurable as masturbation done by using the hands.

I have to use these objects as there is no space at home for me to ask for suitable objects or sex toys. Also, most sex toys available in the market are not easy to use. The design of sex toys should be inclusive, making them accessible for disabled people as everyone has the right to experience sensual pleasure and satisfy their sexual needs.   

There are a lot of stigma around the dating life of a disabled person, making it difficult for them to date. 

Most dating apps are not accessible. For example, the verification process in dating apps such as Bumble and Tinder are not accessible to me. This is because I had to pose with my hands in a way that they asked me to, in order to get my profile verified. Since my hands are disabled, I couldn’t use these apps. Dating in Indian society for a person from a Dalit family is highly difficult and inaccessible when compared with others who have an elite background. 

I haven’t seen any representations about the dating life of a disabled person.  

Exposure I got from social media and some disability activists made me understand the politics behind disabled people and their relationships. Gradually I understood various social issues and how much ableism there is in society, making the life of disabled people highly difficult to live in such an inaccessible society.

Since then, these two things changed in me: suffering and fighting.

No, the suffering did not end. 

But, at least now I suffer with the clarity that the problem is not with my disability but with the inaccessible society.

No, the fighting did not stop.  

But, at least now I know I must fight with the stereotypes and stigmas created by ableist, non-disabled people and not with myself.’

Naveen Daniel, pronouns: he/him, is a Dalit disabled activist. He actively fights against all systems of oppression with his words and art in whichever place possible and accessible

Dreams, Fears and Friendship: A Story about Abortion-and Love

A comic created by Agents of Ishq in collaboration with Ibis Reproductive Health, building on their research on self-managed abortions.

Dreams, Fears and Friendship: An Abortion-and Love Story is a comic that we at Agents of Ishq have created in collaboration with Ibis Reproductive Health, building on their research on self-managed abortions (SMA). 

The cover of the comic features the protagonist, Sapna being hugged by her boyfriend, and her best friend Shaggy. There is a crescent moon in the background. A smaller image also shows them riding triples on a scooter.  Text on the cover reads: AOI x Ibis Reproductive Health bring Dreams, Fears, and Friendship: An Abortion Love Story. (The word abortion is crossed out and replaced by the word Love). Written by Paromita Vohra Illustrated by Anshumaan Sathe.

Read the comic in English or Hindi 

Written by Paromita Vohra and illustrated by Anshumaan Sathe, the comic follows the story of Sapna, who is just starting out in the world when she finds herself pregnant, but not ready to become a mother.

Set in a small town, amid the lives of young people striking out on their own, sharing simple pleasures—from K-drama to gol gappas—the comic traces Sapna’s journey from fear, shame, ignorance and isolation to working out dilemmas and making choices with the support of her partner and friends. Using vibrant art and light, contemporary language, the comic destigmatizes abortion, provides information on self-managed abortions and most of all, shares the deep value of friendship and community in dissolving that stigma, so that abortion is not a lonely journey. Reflecting their lives with warmth and humour, the comic is something young people will be able to make their own. 

The Ibis Reproductive Health research, conducted in partnership with RUWSEC, SHRI and FPAI on SMA experiences in India between January and August 2022, found that when people are provided high-quality information and support, self-managed abortion is safe and effective. (This echoes the WHO recommendation that people can self-administer abortion medication without direct supervision of a healthcare provider at up to 12-weeks of gestation). 

The comic, in English and Hindi can be downloaded for free for a limited time.   

Scroll below to read the comic here! 

You can also check out our earlier materials on abortion here. They include comics, data narratives and explainers.  

Tere Jaisa Yaar Kahan! 10 Tales on AOI about Friendship that Get Us in Our Feels!

#HappyFriendshipsDay with some of Agents of Ishq's best writings on friendship-wala love.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

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Read it here.

Gut Feelings - IBS, Body Image and the Bowels Of Desire

How do you feel desirable and attractive in a body that does not listen to you.


I find myself sitting outside the gastroenterologist’s office every couple of months. It’s either that or outside the ultrasound scan area with a lot of pregnant people as we all chug water, waiting to be called in and have our bladders deemed worthy of scanning.

The first time that I was diagnosed by a specialist, I had taken with me months of test results and health records, and given him a thorough run down of what I was going through plus observations from my GP. There was a physical file and a Google Doc and everything.  The doctor took less than two minutes to browse through the scans. 

Looking annoyed, he stated that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome and why was I taking things so seriously anyway! 

I sat there for a good minute, stunned and feeling dismissed. Here was someone telling me that the reason for all this trouble, the suffering I’d gone through for months on end, was me. All of the pills I’d been taking were useless because of my inability to take that final boss of medications - the chill pill.

And now here I am again, bloated, nauseous, and ready to be told to keep taking my medications and try meditation (I have been doing both for three years now). I am worried that I will throw up in the middle of this waiting room. I call a friend to distract myself and cry a little near the hospital water cooler. 

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Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS is a chronic illness that affects digestive functions and is exacerbated by stress and anxiety. When I am in the middle of a flare-up, I experience a multitude of symptoms with varying intensities such as erratic and painful bowel movements, acid reflux, abdominal pain, nausea, and a lot of discomfort. The very unpredictable nature of IBS makes it hard to prepare for. ‘trigger foods they are called. One day, you’re fine and the next, you’re in bed, trying to do the mental gymnastics of what brought on this flare-up.               

IBS also brings with it a lot of shame because it is associated with bodily functions that are usually considered ‘gross’ This shame can become its own vicious cycle that makes a flare-up worse. When I have to deal with my symptoms, I find myself thinking that my body is the enemy.  How do you reconcile with a body that does not behave the way you want it to? How do you feel desirable and attractive in it?

Some people might wonder ‘Why do you need to feel desirable when you’re sick? Isn’t that vain’?

Yes, I am vain but also, the question of ‘when I’m sick’ is a tricky one because being unwell is sometimes a huge slice in the pie chart of my time. Like many other humans, I want to feel confident and desired but desire is hard to feel and reciprocate when a good part of my energy is spent either handling the symptoms or worrying about when they’ll show up next. It’s not like IBS brought forth insecurities in a vacuum. It simply added to a pile of existing ailments and anxieties. An IBS flare-up refuses to be left as an afterthought. ‘I AM HERE’, it screams loudly, amidst a cacophony of fart noises. 

Like, when it comes to intimacy, here are some of the thoughts that flood my brain:  Does my partner find me sexy when I’m bloated? Is the constant burping rendering me unattractive?

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Is the athleticism I’m showing when running to the bathroom impressing them?

I’m also constantly in fear of the next flare-up so when I go out on a date and want to have a good time, a part of my brain is calculating what the ‘safest’ item on the menu might be. When you’re in a body that does not listen to you, socialising, intimacy and partnered sex can become overwhelming experiences as you’re wanting to be in tune with your body but cannot. I have to battle the self-disgust that I sometimes feel because I become convinced that other people cannot love this body. I have to love it because I am in it. 

One time, I had a flare up the day before my partner’s birthday and during the midnight celebrations, I could barely eat anything. I felt so guilty at not being happy enough and not being able to even have cake to celebrate my partner. I retreated to bed early because I was so tired, though I’d have loved to continue partying. 

A date night that should have ended with some good times in the bedroom ended with me in the bathroom, sobbing over the toilet bowl because the food that I had eaten that day was not sitting well in my stomach but I could not get it to come out from either side!

Right now, my partner and I are doing long distance. We are planning a trip together to meet after two years and I am terrified of my gut playing spoilsport to our joyous reunion. I might be paying more attention to getting my medication kit ready than my luggage. Adventure awaits but only if there is a restroom nearby!

The guilt of not being able to meet someone’s needs when you are not in the best of health is a constant undercurrent. Sometimes, I do not have the energy to focus on anything but work (because money=healthcare) and sustenance. My sex drive had also drastically reduced when I initially fell sick as well as after I received the diagnoses post months of medication and testing. I no longer felt the need to do anything but wallow in my own misery. My partner was very supportive through it all but I imagine it was difficult to watch as I ran around the apartment after dinner, trying to find relief, one way or another. 

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As a lot of people with chronic illnesses and disabled persons will tell you, the difficult part is that there is no ‘getting better’. There is only management and taking risks where you need to. I am still in the process of coming to terms with my body but I’m not always successful. I am often cruel to myself because every time I take a step forward in my life, it feels like IBS makes me take two steps back. I’m trying to work with the status quo while also being terrified that it’ll worsen as time goes on. The goalposts of loving my body keep changing. So a lot of the effort of self-love goes towards unlearning the very capitalist criteria that are used to judge if my body can be considered valuable or ‘useful’. 

It also helps to read and listen to public figures who struggle with similar issues. Samantha Irby and Hannah Witton are my current favourites - I love the humor and punch-in-the gut (no pun intended) honesty through which they view their bodies. Now, I often find myself impressed rather than annoyed by my body in embarrassing situations such as having to deploy Olympic-level flexibility to take a stool test in a tiny hospital bathroom.

Moving my body the way it wants and trying not to set standards for consistent performance has been a game changer as has making the conscious decision to sometimes eat what I want to, knowing that the next day I’m going to feel terrible. It’s the game of life baby!

What I’m trying to say to myself and what I’m trying to live by is the idea that I am powerful and beautiful when I do the things I want to do, while tending to my body and my needs. I have to remind myself that the setbacks are not punishments- they are just signals that my body and mind are sending me when I need to stop and tend to myself. Now, is that not a body worth loving? 

Bio:

Darsana Mohan was born in 1990 and is a poet and writer from Kochi, Kerala. Her writing has been featured in The Alipore Post, Feminism in India, YourStory, Four Seasons Magazine, Women’s Web, Tint Journal and Bengaluru Review. In her spare time, she enjoys reading books and scrapbooking.

Love was a stereotype. Friendship was radical. And then, I met her.

If witnessing a relationship slowly die out like a star collapsing into itself were a color, it would be tangerine.

A year ago, exactly, as Christmas neared, we met for the first time after speaking over text for over six months. She came to visit me. We walked around, sat on swings in a park and spoke in measured tones - the awkwardness of our first meeting melting away like the remaining specks of sunshine on a December evening. As she was leaving, and I followed her down the stairs, she turned and tried to kiss me on the cheek. Shocked, I tumbled down the stairs. As she apologised while picking me up - my spiralling anxiety about a potential covid infection stood suspended. In a split second my mask was off, and I exclaimed impatiently - “Fuck it, kiss me!!” Six months of pent-up desire culminated in us kissing on a precarious staircase and awkwardly groping each other as we tried to make the best of those thirty seconds. 

It’s been a year, and it’s Christmas, and we don’t talk anymore. Two days ago, I sent her a text, ending things. The sky was tangerine. The sun sinking into the pits of despair as a cold winter evening descended on me. 

With the Fags, It Always Starts with Instagram 

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I returned home from New York at the beginning of the pandemic. Little did I know that the year-and-half I would be at home would end up being one of the most hellish periods of my life. People I loved died. People I loved shrank. And my girlfriend of four years and I decided to finally call it quits. 

Amidst the grief, I lost myself, and spent hours on the internet. I also joined a queer writing group – the one thing that saved me from myself. I first came across her on a queer Instagram page where she had written about her identity. From there I followed her on her personal page. And then began what would be, for the longest time, a one-sided longing - thirsty, filthy, escapist. I was shockingly horny and throbbing for her. Breathing in and out during yoga classes, I imagined her eating me out on my mat. 

One desperate day, I crawled into her DMs, responding to her tirade about bottoms. “Power bottom here” I texted, in a moment of rare courage and she responded. I made pathetic attempts to catch her attention, and she didn’t particularly reciprocate. And that was the reason for our first, albeit one-sided fight. I resented her for the lack of attention. At the same time, I memorised her Instagram page by treating it like night-time reading. “All desire is heterosexual” she stated in one. “Punish me like a straight girl” I pined. Soon enough I found myself talking about her during our weekly queer writing group meetings. After all, us city queers are defined by six degrees of separation. And in a moment of euphoria, Z, a friend from my writing group told me that she had recently broken up with her ex and was probably single. 

Fuck yeah! 

With Fags, Hinge is Lord and Saviour 

Sitting in my room in a city far from hers, I hedged my bets. She was recently single. Single people go on dating apps, right? So, I changed my location to where she was - a city I would not step foot in for several months. She showed up almost immediately. I stayed glued to her profile, refusing to budge but also refusing to initiate. 

“Oh hello, look who’s here” - came her message. And over the next several days we exchanged streams of words. “You’re the most interesting person I have met here in a while.”- her. “I won’t be in (your city) for another few months.” – me. “It’s okay.” - her. “I don’t date.” – me. “I am good with that; I am not looking to date either” - her.  

Our texts continued for around five months. One day she slipped in a sext. I resisted, given the virginal sexter I was, but finally gave in. And that night I sent her a picture of me shirtless, my dark hair cascading down my shoulders. Desire is a relentless thirst. 

Over the next few months, we spoke every-day. From aggressive sexting we moved to tender check-ins, narratives about our histories and anecdotes about our lives. I told her I was polyamorous, and my idea of intimacy involved not distinguishing between romantic and non-romantic relationships. She said that this idea was new to her. Monogamy was all that she had known, and she drew a clear distinction between partners and friends. But then neither of us were out to date, right? So, our ideological mismatches would not matter, right? 

As the days passed, we became a daily presence in each other’s lives. We would occasionally chat about our pandemic days, but mostly we would work together in silence over video calls. Slipping glances and smiling at each other across 1500 kms.

Only blue skies, no tangerine.

Fags are doomed to be lonely

I was moving to the middle of nowhere for a new job, and she was moving too. It was meant to be. And so, I arrived in her city, excited about my newfound freedom. We spent a night at an Airbnb on our first “date”. She gave me a book by Akwaeke Emezi. I was the favourite thing to happen to her in 2021, her note said. As she stood semi-naked freezing after her bath, I wrapped her with a towel and held her till she stopped shivering. She finally felt happy, she said. Same, man, same. 

Our first day at my new place in the middle of nowhere we cleaned the house and fucked the night away. We got defrauded of a shit load of money on our second. Spent our third at the police station lodging a useless criminal complaint. And as she left, I awaited her return. Longing is an instrument played till your fingers bleed. 

Soon, she moved to the middle of nowhere. She would come over, and we would speak about gender, our exes, our work, our friends, things that broke us and made us. We spoke a lot about our conflicting ideas of intimacy. She identified as a hopeless romantic. I, as an eyerolling cynic. She used the word love even before we had met. For me, the word carried weight. It meant commitment, work, a learning curve. I used the word too, though much later. We talked about bodies, her transness, and my newfound transness. And we kissed and fucked a lot. We also told each other we loved each other, a lot, a lot. 

But as time passed, and work overtook our lives, we texted less and her visits became sporadic. No one was to blame, but it didn’t matter. It bothered me. I texted her often. When she found the time, she would respond. “Hey, can you come over this Thursday evening?”- me.  “Hey, no, I am stretched really thin and have a lot of work.” - she. “Okay”. Okay? This was not a part of the plan - my new life was supposed to mirror perfection. And as I sat alone on my balcony overlooking naked fields, the sky was tangerine.  

By the end of the first month, I started growing disillusioned with my job, the middle of nowhere, and the slow metamorphosis of our relationship. I missed my friends  and everything the big city offered. My days consisted of working alone in a dilapidated apartment that overlooked endless dark fields, catching a sad bus to my workplace, and returning home to sit on my pot and smoke a cigarette. One cigarette turned to two. Two to three. Three to as many as I needed to fill the empty pockets of my daily life. 

Olivia Lang, in her book, Lonely City, writes that loneliness feels like being hungry, when everyone around you is readying for a feast. I was starving. And as much as I tried exorcising the ghost of loneliness, I found myself mutating into an unrecognisable.

And so, I turned to her for solace. Insisting she come meet me, more often. She did her best. But something had changed. She’d come, we’d hang and fuck, and then she would fall off the face of the earth. I would text her every day, only to be met with delayed sporadic responses. It was only when we sexted, that her responses flooded my phone. Suddenly our relationship felt like a transaction that would repeat itself with her arrival and departure.

I realised I was trying to flee my loneliness, and that she was my destination. I wrote her a measured email - “I love our time together” it said. “But I also feel like once you leave, you leave”. And so, I asked her for space, such that I could work myself out of the habit of an oppressive dependence on her. “I also think perhaps we should stop sleeping with each other. Because honestly, it makes me feel a little used at times,” I added. 

She wrote back the same night, apologised, and acknowledged her shortcomings. She was stretched thin and had a lot going on, she wrote. Her email was kind, an honest acknowledgement of what she could and couldn’t offer. “'I’m also sorry that the sex made you feel used. It was out of sheer love and desire” she added. 

We decided to not text for the next few months, so I could unlearn my unhealthy dependence on her. Everything I despised about romantic love and mandatory monogamy, I now imbibed. My politics on intimacy dripped away like a leaking faucet. But after a day of silence, came her text. She had spent her day trying her best to distract herself but soon she found herself returning to me. And in that moment, my fragile will was broken. “I love you”. “I love you too”.

Where are all my lesbians?

In the book Thirteen Ways to Love, there is a story called “Where are all my lesbians?” 

The author writes about her break up and uses the phrase “queer fragility” to describe the precarity of lesbian relationships. The first time I read it, I despised it. The second time, I was lonely in the middle of a brutal New York winter, and my trysts with queer dating hadn’t really led anywhere. I still found her pining annoying, but I was more empathetic. Today, I am terrified of reading it. Fucking queer fragility. 

And what kind of lesbian was I anyway? Being lesbian is a political identity, as poet and essayist Adrienne Rich argued in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. In pop culture, lesbians are unhinged, co-dependent, hopeless romantics and honestly sort of pathetic. Anyway, I was sort of an Adrienne Rich lesbian, or so I believed. 

“Not all feelings are valid” I exclaimed to her. “I don’t get this lesbian obsession with coupling up in the bat of an eyelid, why are we such stereotypes?”. “Friendships are radical, I don’t do well with hierarchizing intimacies. I despise romantic love - it is so shallow and vacuous. I intellectually disagree with it.” I would tell her animatedly. 

How the tables turn - I am a pop culture lesbian now. 

On the right to rage

I am a lawyer by training and so are most of my friends. We read and discuss critical legal theory which rightfully calls out the law for all its pitfalls. The most popular discourse is a critique of rights. 

“Is there a right to sex?” ponders philosopher Amia Srinivasan in a famous essay. Ratna Kapur in her book Gender, Alterity and Human Rights, argues, “On some level, our rights-related liberal projects are on life support and further palliation is pointless”. Denying a right to marriage to the queers (largely cis-gay savarnas) violates the equality code, argues petitions in our courts. 

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But fuck all that, is there a right to rage? I mean of course there is - rage is political and powerful and can overthrow oppressive empires. But I wonder whether we have a right to rage against lovers. Rage that seeks to shock the lover’s system into acknowledging (and meeting) one’s needs as opposed to measured conversations and therapy speak. Is that right to rage (vis-a-vis our lovers) accompanied by the right to be verbally cruel, mean, and hurtful? Most crucially, is that right accompanied by a guarantee to be forgiven by the lover once the storm calms? 

One baffled night, in the pits of despair, I exercise my assumed right to rage. I never addressed the principal question - Was she my lover? Was I hers? After all, we weren’t dating. Didn’t matter. I gave into my base impulse, and without warning, sent her paragraph after paragraph of accusatory angry texts. 

Everything is on your terms. Everything. When we talk, how we talk, how often we talk, when I can see you, when we fuck. You only respond consistently when we sext. My needs and expectations never matter. You disappear on me all the time. 

Weapons drawn; I ambushed her, and silently accused her of breaking my heart. 

So, is there a right to rage at the lover? Depends on who you ask. A friend read my texts and responded with a measured “Hmmm. “So, what do you think you will get out of this?” She added, “She is immediately going to go into defensive mode. Did you really achieve anything?” 

Another friend firmly believes that there is a right to rage at the lover. “Of course!” she exclaims. “Get mad, be cruel, be angry, say those nasty words out loud.” After all, what is a lover but a receptacle for our grief? 

And so, I exercised my right to rage, and she exercised her right to retreat. She shut down. Shut me out. And the brutal silence hung between us like a thick fog. Tangerine. 

The vanishing self 

After weeks of silence, as the anger settled and desperation crept in, I wrote to her. I apologised profusely and begged for another chance. “Intimacy is the only thing I value.” I said, “And it’s the only thing I am willing to fight for”. She took her time, but eventually we started speaking. In a week I was headed back to my hometown for over a month, and so we agreed to meet. 

We met in a restaurant designed for heady first dates, rather than heavy post fall-out conversations. I apologised and promised to do better. After our meal, I went home with her, and we fucked all night long. As she lay on top of me, she paused, looked bewildered and said - “Fuck I am in love with you”. 

“I am in love with you too.” I responded. “But I am also often in love with my friends.” I added. And she sat silently with that, before she ate me out. All desire is political, but sometimes, when people tell you that they are in love with you, one must resist the urge to reduce that moment to a political project. “I am in love with you too” is all that was necessary. And in a few days, I flew out, 1500 kms separating us once again, her teeth marks all over my collarbones, memories that I desperately clung onto as they slowly faded away. 

Does the label make it taste better? 

Still with me? Well then, let’s skip the mundane details of a month and a half of distance. Suffice to say, we broke each other, in ways I could not fathom possible. We argued and hurt and misunderstood - an endless cycle of disappointment, anger and exhaustion repeating itself. One day, after a charged exchange, I blocked her on Instagram and unfollowed her. At this point, I unabashedly acknowledge my role in sabotaging the relationship. I didn’t want to date her as an antidote for my loneliness. But then why do people date, if not to avoid being alone in this world meant for two? 

She wanted to speak in person about what had ensued. When I returned, she wasn’t ready. And so, I drove to the middle of nowhere, and for over a month and half, there was complete silence from her end. Every day I shrank a little more - consumed by her loss. By now, there was very little keeping me motivated at work. I hated the middle of nowhere and my health gave way. My depression and anxiety had returned with a vengeance. I once rejoiced in my singlehood, but now I longed, hesitantly though, for the comfort of coupledom. “I am in love with you, and I am ready to do the work of repair” is what I longed to say to her.  I woke up every morning and vomited into my toilet before catching my sad yellow bus to work. And I came home and smoked, and repeatedly checked her WhatsApp. Online. Offline. Online. Offline. Silence. 

One day, I erased all our WhatsApp messages from my phone. But I emailed myself a copy. Thus, in my email somewhere lies an archive - over 100 pages of texts between two fags exchanged over a period of a year or so – falling and failing. 

And then, one day she broke her silence - with the terms of a relationship that could be possible between us. A checklist of things she could offer and could not. An essay about all the ways I’d hurt her. I apologised and agreed to her checklist, without caveat. I wanted her back, and I acknowledged my faults, but in this process, I disappeared - my hurt no longer mattered. My grievances, locked away, gathering dust. 

Finally, she came to see me and spent the night at my place. She behaved as if nothing had happened between us. I resisted the muscle memory to kiss her. She kept hugging me, took my hand and kissed it, and touched me some more, and so I gave in, and old patterns repeated themselves.

Except something was different. It was like a part of her had checked out. But I, who had no right to rage and had made the mistake of saying out loud “but sometimes I am also in love with my friends”, must make amends. So, I walked on eggshells around her, agreed to all her terms - caveating every text I sent to her with “you don’t have to respond”/ “only if you have bandwidth and want to”/ “prioritise yourself”. 

The desire was gone. The hunger - gone. The intimacy - gone. The effort - unrequited. The nudes - met with polite responses. Blocks of text from my end, met with a line or two. The sex - followed, once again, by a disappearing act. 

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In the song, We Ain’t Together, King Princess asks “We say, "I love you", but we ain't together; Do you think labels make it taste much better?”. 

She tells me she wished I hadn’t followed my confession of being in love with her with the addendum that I am also in love with my friends. “It’s not the same for me.” she said. “I love my friends but it’s not the same as being in love”. “But why does it matter, that sometimes I am in love with my friends,” I ask her. “If I give you everything you need from a partnership, should that fact matter?”. “It does.” she says. But then what’s the point of being queer, I wondered. Aren’t we supposed to do better than the straights? Isn’t queerness more about how we arrange our intimacies? “Gender is not a binary,” the queers scream, but love is? 

“I don’t think we’d be good if we dated. I feel like you don’t see me,” she said in response to one of my texts about us exploring dating. Over another conversation she claimed, “I don’t think I can meet your needs.” Another night, “I think you see me better than you did before.” Of course, I did. Because for three months, it was all I worked towards. Loving her in ways she wanted to be loved. Texting her, on her terms. Meeting her, on her terms. I did everything possible to “see” her - till I vanished. 

“I am so confused, you’re so contradictory” I told her one day. “I am not saying we should date; but I am not sure what the reason is. Is it that I don’t “see” you? Is it because I am sometimes in love with my friends? Is it because you think you can’t meet my needs?” WHAT THE FUCK IS IT? I scream internally. “All these things can be true at the same time.” she says. 

One night, the last time we met each other, she came over and told me about how she and a gorgeous queer (‘T’) have developed romantic feelings for each other. They discussed it, she says, but decided not to date because they didn’t want to risk the friendship and were not mentally in the headspace to be romantically entangled. A part of me died - “pick me, choose me” I wanted to beg, but I only listened as she pottered around the kitchen talking about T. “I feel threatened.” I told her. But I stopped there. 

And as we lay next to each other, I said, “I need to let you go - but before that I need to know that you’re no longer in love with me - are you?” 

“I fell in love with you, but not in that way, I always held back because you were so clear about not wanting to date” she said. 

“Okay, so just to make this clear, you are no longer in love with me, right?”. “I love you, but I am not in love with you.” 

We fell silent. “I guess I am still grieving you, you know,” she says. I have no fucking idea what that means so I press her a bit more. She gives me vague responses, punctured by even more vague silences. And so, I give myself permission to cry in front of her. “Why are you still sleeping with me?” I ask her. “Because I like you, and I am attracted to you.” she says.

“Because I like you, and I am attracted to you”. 

And these words would come back to shatter me, irreparable. Make me feel disposable, replaceable, forgettable. Despite this, I rode her hard that night. She never really let me top, and despite me being a vers, we always had sex with her exclusively topping. But I didn’t give a fuck that night, and so I instructed her to sit up, topped her, and rode her till she gasped, breathless. 

She left and her Instagram was flooded with posts about T.  I followed them both. And boy were they at it - public declarations of love and admiration. “This is my favourite picture” T commented on one of her posts about them. “Arrey, you are my fav!” she replied. After all, it's no longer 2021, and she never promised I’d still be her favourite in 2022. 

One aching night she posted a picture of T sitting on her desk at 1 am. I had a meltdown, called my ex-girlfriend and sobbed away. “How did she move on so fast?” I sobbed. “Am I that forgettable, that difficult?” Is this our legacy - a war-torn landscape of haggard emotions. 

Endnotes

Oh, by the way, I quit my job and decided to move back home. 

WhatsApp; 12th December, 2022 

Me: “Give me a yes or no answer, okay. When I come back to (your city), is there any chance for us to give us a shot?”

Her: “..I really don't know, and I think I really don't want to be romantically entangled for a significant while and recuperate. That's the honest answer.” 

Tangerine.

WhatsApp; 14th December, 2022

Me: “At the cost of sounding annoying, if you and T are heading somewhere, do let me know… very hard for me to witness you moving on … given I am still grieving you”

Her: “As far as T is concerned, she is a dear friend more than anything.”

More than anything…. 

Tangerine. 

WhatsApp; 23rd December, 2022; 12:09 pm. 

Her (in response to a text about meeting before I leave): “I can't do earlier to be entirely honest. I still have (work) to finish and I'm coming down with a fever from exhaustion.”

Me: “Do you wanna take a rain check?”

Tangerine.

WhatsApp; 23rd December, 2022; 1:51 pm

Me: “I am calling … quits. Having reflected on the past year, I don't think there is any future for us, even in the realm of friendship. So, I am out.”

Her: “Alright. I'm not going to argue with that.”

Tangerine. 

27th December, 8:00 pm, Airport

Flight Announcement: “Flight xxx to (city) will now be boarding. Passengers with seat numbers…

WhatsApp; 23rd December - 27th December, 8 pm.

Me:

Her:

Tangerine. 

Epilogue

This is my story. It is not our story. Neither is it hers. 

Bio: Nam is a non-binary queer lawyer, academic and cat parent. Outside the world of law, she ponders, reads and writes about loneliness, intimacy and queerness. 

My Post-Baby Boobs - A Comic

Short tales about a pair of boobs living the postpartum life #WorldBreastfeedingWeek

The comic was made as a part of Kadak Collective for Gender Bender 2018

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Priya Dali is a work-in-progress human, an illustrator and the Creative Director of Gaysi Family, a media platform and a safe space for queer desis that was formed in 2008.

She is a maker of many, very queer things. Through her work, she conversations about gender, sex and sexuality and strives to make them accessible through comics, zines and other creative mediums. She is the illustrator of the children’s books; ‘Grace: One engineer's fight to make science education accessible for all’ published by Pratham Books and ‘The Boy in the Cupboard’ published by Gaysi Family and Lettori Press.

In her free time, she likes drawing bad jokes!

It Took Me Two Years To Realize I Had Been Raped

A male Dalit queer person on acknowledging the many shades of sexual assault.

CW - Rape

It was a hot summer day in April 2019, which I felt was going to be like any other exam day. I woke up, got ready quickly, asked Appa to drop me off at the Metro. My routine was as usual. En route, I sneakily admired my co-commuters with whom I’d sometimes imagine elaborate fantasies—walking up to them, talking, exchanging IDs or numbers, going on dates and what not. Then, freak out with my friends in class before the exam, breakdown internally and scratch my head with a pen during the exam, let out a sigh, catch up with friends and head home. Until I decided that day at the end of the exam to say, “F**k it! Let’s go for it!” 

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I texted my match because he had invited me over to his place a month ago, and today was going to be “D-Day”. I was going to meet him at a public spot. So, if I didn’t feel comfortable enough about him taking me to his place, I could just walk away. 

He was free and ready. Perfect! 

My heart was pounding so hard I needed a moment to catch my breath. We had been texting on and off for the last few months. He was sweet, appreciative of my skinny brown body and, whenever I felt unsure or anxious, assured me that we’d only be doing whatever I was comfortable with. He was only a few years older than me, and healthily skinny and definitely had many funny bones.       

My first date with a cis man had been not too long ago. We had walked around MG Road, Church Street, held hands in the gaps of racks at the bookstores, took a sniff off each other’s necks just shy of a kiss. We visited the exhibits at the Rangoli Metro Art Center, sat for a while under the shade of bright dark pink bougainvillea where he made the move to kiss; a revolutionary moment. So, it was all very new and exciting. 

Yet, there was some anxiety. It felt like being in Bangalore for the first time, but enjoying a very different experience altogether; reclaiming a largely Savarna, cis-het-occupied and ruled space. And, to make it my own and his for those few moments was exhilarating.      

I feel he probably felt that I was getting too attached too quickly, did not reply to my texts for a while, so I let go.  Then, I had met another guy—a lovely fellow with whom I’m friends now, and we kissed at a house party recently because we hadn’t kissed when we saw each other briefly. And then, there was this guy. The one I was so excited to meet that day.

It was around 1 or 2 pm, the sun was right above my head. I was in my usual grey hoodie, formal shirt and trousers trying to book an auto to the common meeting spot. Boarded one, soaked in all the excited-anxious fantasies. The backache-causing roads and honks of others that usually make me curse humanity for its impatience and haste seemed to have fallen silent. As the auto zoomed past Residency, Brigade, Trinity, Ulsoor, Banaswadi and finally our area, Ramamurthy Nagar, my mind went all over the place like a kid full of anticipation about going to the gaming area of the mall. 

“What would we do? What would I do? How would he look and be like in person? What does he want? Does he like me? Does he really want me? Would we be doing this or that? This way or that way? Am I ready? Do I smell fine? How would it be? Should I get any tests done after this?” 

I got off, waited at our meeting spot, and called him. He was on his way and would take a few more minutes. He arrived on a scooter, took off his helmet and his cute face smiled wide. It put an instant smile on mine. We spoke for a bit, I felt okay enough to go with him. It was a basic date on wheels, we got to know each other better then. We reached in 10 minutes. His home welcomed my nostrils with the stinging smell of paint, and then his cold pastel floors. We sat on the black leather couch, spoke for a while and he invited me to his bedroom. 

I told him I needed a moment, grabbed my local anesthetic and mouthwash, and headed to the bathroom. I suffer from chronic anal fissures, so if we reached the point of anal sex, I wanted to feel as little pain and as much pleasure as I could, hence the local anesthetic. I did my thing and joined him in bed. 

We faced each other and kissed for a few minutes as we felt each other’s bodies up, took off our clothes, until he said, “For how long are we going to just kiss?”. At that point I was on top of him. His eyes pointed south, his tongue licked his upper lip. “Hmmm. Sure, why not? Let’s try,” said my brain after a few seconds. I went down on him for a while, but his wiener went soft and he complained that I wasn’t doing it well enough. So, he got on top of me and got near my face to feed me. I let it in, until I was actually choking on it. Yay! Gag reflex! And then he stopped. 

He asked if I wanted to try penetrative sex. I was hesitant and kept saying, “I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t want the pain.” He was so persistent that at one point he held me down, kissed me and said something like, “Chill. You’ll be fine. I’ve done this before with virgins.” 

I replied something on the lines of, “Umm sure, but if it hurts, stop please.” He smiled, “Finally!” and nodded. I was at once excited and anxious, but more anxious this time. He put on his condom, lubed himself and me up, and tried pushing himself inside me. I resisted because as his glans was fully in, it hurt like hell. I asked him to not continue anymore, he told me to hold on a bit longer, that it was almost in. “One more push”, “breathe”. Then I’ll be okay. I continued trying to get my arms free, get up, but at one point, I just gave up, gave in, and he was in and out of me in two minutes. Local anesthesia clearly wasn’t strong enough, nor was I. He dropped me off at a street I claimed to be mine. 

Fast forward nearly two years. I have no idea why this memory decided to strike back in a whole new way. Oh wait, I do have an idea. 

My idea of consent, assertiveness, feminism was way more evolved and stronger, at least strong enough to declare what and how I want, need. I don’t know what brought the memory back out of nowhere, but I sat with the memory, reflected, processed, analysed it. 

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At one point, my mind said, “Isn’t this sexual assault, rape?” This was being processed in the back of my head as I went on as usual, until one cozy Bangalore winter morning I asked a friend to offer their view on it. They agreed that this was sexual assault and rape. They shared their experience of facing several similar moments with their partner when he’d just impose himself on them, not ask, just assume and do what he wanted with their body; which they resisted, of course. 

The conversation broke me, but even today I am glad I had it and that my friend opened up to me about their experience of violence by another cis man whom they trusted. And, when they shared this, it took me a few moments to register, for their partner was a guy whom I had met and spent some quality time with. And, this is a close friend who, if not for this conversation, may not have shared this with me or anyone else anytime soon. 

In one class we were learning about the Gestalt theory on humans. A whole/complete gestalt experience is one in which you not only are able to acknowledge and process it cognitively, logically, and share it with others, but also accept it emotionally, feel it completely. I shared my experience with as little detail in that class and asked my professor, “Have I had or am I having a gestalt experience now?” She pondered for a minute and replied, “No. I don’t think so because I am not entirely sure that you’ve processed it emotionally completely. Maybe sit with it longer, see how your body feels when you think of that moment of violation, assault, and see what comes up.” 

I don’t know if I’m ever going to have that experience or maybe writing about it is my version of experiencing a complete gestalt. 

As I write this, a tear rolls down my cheek, my chest feels empty, my breath relieved. For a few months after I asked myself constantly, “How did I let this happen?”

The question was a two-fold one. One, how could I as a feminist, aware of consent, let this happen to me, not acknowledge the violent act for what it was? Two, how could I as a feminist, even more aware of consent after that, forget about it (because whenever people asked me about my first, the details had always been blurry), not see it and accept it for what it was, and even when the memory was back in one clear piece, why was it hard for me to accept it?

Why indeed did all my learnings leave me? Because I am human. 

Recently, in a different context, a friend told me that “it’s okay not to label everything in terms of psychopathology”. Different context but it makes sense to me even for this one. I am human, why beat myself up and guilt trip and resent myself for not having done the right thing at that moment? 

Yes, I was sexually assaulted, but well, perhaps that’s how my body and mind decided to deal with it, protect me, and that’s fine by me. I explored it with a therapist. He asked if I wanted to file a complaint. I replied, “Nah. One, it’s too much red tape. Two, I am a male Dalit queer person who was raped by another cis man. In a world where Sarvarna cis women’s cases of violence in any form aren’t taken as seriously as they should be, where am I going to fit in? What hopes of justice do I have? What is the assessment or the process for a male body that was assaulted to prove that it was indeed assaulted? Now, it’s nearly two years. So, no. I just want to share it, deal with it now, and be done with it. Let go for myself, for I am more than that moment of vulnerability.” 

I have realised that saying no and ensuring that your partner respects it, or learning to deal with moments and people who refuse to take our ‘no’s is complicated and challenging, and needs to be taught. And, even with practise, we may not be successful and always safe in all contexts, spaces. Shame-free, open, comprehensive, inclusive sex-education along with assertiveness communication training and how to be there for someone following such violent moments need to be taught not just to kids, but everyone because violence by another, by oneself or both—hey it’s the unfortunate reality one can face at any point in life in any form. Hence, we are better off preparing ourselves and others to face it as best as we can at that moment. 

Time to rip apart this violent system that doesn’t easily let anyone learn to respect, feel safe, at ease, thrive in their own and others’ bodies, minds and spaces, and build one that is for all. Maybe I will carry a pepper spray, learn to hold my ground as much as I can and pick myself up with support from others in my own time. And I am gonna continue to let myself experience pleasure the way me and my partner/s need/want. That’s how I feel as I go, as I grow.

Vijay is a Dalit queer person and a trainee psychologist who reads, writes and tries to live life their way as much as possible, and hopes the same for all.

Talking To My Daughter About Sex, And The Body, Changed Me As a Parent and a Person

I wanted to be the kind of parent who could respond honestly to my daughter's questions about sex.

“Amma, how was I born? Where did I come from?”  

“We waited a long time before starting a family, and when we were finally ready, I wished for a girl child, and you were the gift God gave us.” 

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My daughter asked me this when she was five years old. My response was automatic - the same old platitude passed down through generations. I wasn’t satisfied with the conversation, though. I wanted more. I wanted my daughter to learn more and ask more questions, and I wanted to be the kind of parent who could listen, and respond warmly and honestly. 

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I sought guidance. I read anything I could lay my hands on. I attended sessions,  where I developed an openness to discuss puberty, sex, and bodies with my daughter in their true form, without hiding the details partially or entirely.

I was with a group of parents and a facilitator during one such session. Everyone had a story to share about their hesitations and openness. 

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One mom said her teen son loves animals and has seen them mate several times. He also refers to books and websites to learn more about breeding seasons and other things.  “I feel there is a certain suspense and innocence to the whole act of intimacy and I do not want to take away the thrill out of him by talking about it,” she lamented.

A dad spoke about always being shamed for looking at his naked body as a child. 

Another mom said that her family of five all slept naked sometimes, just to get comfortable with each other and their bodies. (I admit, I was a little flustered by this one; I didn’t think my household was ready to sleep naked together.)

The facilitator then shared her own story about how and when she talked about sex with her four and half year old child. 

She said, “Talking openly with children about their bodies, the changes that occur, and the various hormones that play with their emotions will help them become more confident and less confused.

By communicating freely with our children, a parent gives up the single narrative they believe in and begins to look at the subject from other angles. In reality, it is the parents that benefit more from this than the child.”

She was also clear that every parent has to work around their specific reservations and find ways of discussing sex with their children and that there was no fixed recipe to follow.

Later, I thought about my own childhood and adolescence. The many bodily and emotional transformations I went through, the crushes, infatuations, and so-called first love I experienced. I hadn’t had a lot of information about these changes at the time, and I conformed to the many stigmas and taboos attached with them. But, this ignorance wasn’t something I wanted to pass on to my daughter. 

Thankfully, I now have access to resources and people I can reach out for guidance. The networks I am a part of already have families who have crossed the threshold of secrecy around sexuality and sensuality. And, I know I can always knock at their doors for advice. 

I count Agents of Ishq (AOI) as one such map of sex and sensuality. I like to call it a both dictionary and textbook, giving sensitive subjects a fun and warm space to flourish. Most importantly, AOI doesn’t shy away from feelings and their complexity - it brings everything from  discomfort to straightforwardness, from incompleteness to fulfillment - to the fore.

And so, as I learn how to talk to my daughter more freely about sex and the body, I’d like to think I’m learning how to shed my own deeply-buried shame and prejudice as well. 

There’s no perfect way to have these talks - but here’s how I went about them, topic by topic.

Childbirth and Breastfeeding

(Age: 6)

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I figured out the conversation's starting point, which was to talk about childbirth. I’d already told my daughter several stories about her time in my womb. 

I told her how glad I was to become pregnant and how thrilled I was to learn that I was carrying a baby girl.

I described how she remained confident and at ease during all of the travels on trains and buses while the world outside feared for her safety inside my womb.

What I did not tell her, though, was the story of how she entered and exited my womb. I wanted to tell her how we prepared for the final lovely journey of a normal birth.

As an introduction, I went online and showed her many videos of animals giving birth.  We spoke briefly about the intelligence that all life forms are born with and how the universe/nature facilitates this intelligence's emergence into the world. 

"Amma, did I come out on my own as well?" 

"Yes and no, not every woman knows how to assist her own childbirth, but we are blessed with doctors and midwives that support us in this process. And, of course, I was quite lucky to have found an obstetrician who was extremely supportive of my decision to have a normal delivery."

Following this conversation, I played a video that showed a natural human childbirth in a hospital setting. This was the first time my daughter heard the terms vaginal delivery and C-section. 

With her mouth wide open in amusement , "Tell me what the pain was like for ten hours?"

"Sweet pain :) During parturition, the doctor helped ease me through the contractions and it wasn’t very painful as I know you were also working on it. My next wish was to nurse you for at least a year. That was another experience that was both difficult and joyful."

Breastfeeding continued for a year-and-a half after she was born, another topic we discussed over time. I told her about the benefits of breast milk, immunity, breast enlargement during pregnancy, and their sagging after months of frequent feeding.

One time, we had a new mom (a dear friend) visit us for a few days. My daughter was captivated by the beauty of the child clinging to his mother, suckling her breasts and eventually falling asleep.

She also saw the toll it took on the mother who fed her child at regular intervals, the strain it put on her back, and the pain she frequently felt around her breasts.

I recalled those tough times I experienced myself and suggested using hot packs to release the soreness and pain around her breasts. Hearing this, my daughter was quick in acting and made several rounds of hot packs with cabbage leaves to help my friend. .

I marvelled at this love being shown to a tired new mother and her baby. At how an upfront, thoughtful conversation had brought out the best in my daughter. Any discomfort I’d had about discussing childbirth and breastfeeding was laid to rest.

Bodies and Private Parts

(Age: Between 3 -7)

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Like many of us here, I grew up associating a "chhee factor" with private parts and nudity. It took great deal of time to unlearn before I could stop feeling ashamed about bodily parts. 

A friend first introduced the term "private parts" to me roughly a decade ago, explaining how she taught her son about private parts.

So, while talking to her about the body we spoke about how important it is to cover her private parts and not expose them to everyone. This went perfectly smooth with her practicing to dress her dolls well after she finished playing and not leave them around with no clothes.

Now, I raised my daughter in much the same way that I was raised, except that I never used the word "shame." 

"Remember the bedridden grandpa we met in that city?"

"Yes"

"Do you remember her daughter and the female assistant who helped him on a daily basis?"

"Yes"

"Apart from feeding him food and juice, they also empty his catheter bag, which contains his urine, and wipe him after potty. Every day, they give him a sponge bath and change his clothes. If the person assisting develops aversion and disgust, he or she will never be able to do full justice to their service."

"Oh, amma, will you be able to do such work?"

"I am not sure, it's difficult to say, but I hope I attain that level of free will if I ever need to be of such help to someone."

Such conversations about nudity and private parts helped me recognise my own lack of acceptance for my body. I've always had a protruding belly no matter how much I exercised or how many sports I played. 

According to what I've read online, there are numerous reasons for this, including posture issues, digestion disorders, fat accumulation, postpartum belly, and many others. When people question or see my belly, I tell them that it loves me so much that it doesn't want to leave me! :-) 

My daughter observes that I take the steps necessary to feel good about my physical appearance. And there have even been moments when she would make things easier for me when I felt self-conscious about my appearance. I remember times when I looked in the mirror and didn't like how I looked, but she would come in, be herself, and give me tips about certain outfits, put on some light makeup, or do my hair in a way that made a difference. Moments like these let me recognize how judgmental I can be and how difficult it is for me to make little changes to my dressing sense.  It's incredible to be around children who are so pure, non-judgemental and haven't been messed up by the media's fixed ideas of beauty.

Menstruation

(Age: 5-6 years)

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"Amma, will you show me your pad when you get periods?"

"I no longer use pads. I use a menstrual cup. If menstrual blood is what you want to see, I can show you."

"Yes, please show me."

I thought it was necessary to discuss menstruation with my daughter before we discussed sex. I had ordered the Menstrupedia Comic before I even mentioned childbirth to her. 

The book is divided into four chapters: puberty's physical and emotional changes, as well as the biology of menstruation. 

I was 8 or 9 years old and I remember  the "carefree" sanitary pad that was introduced in India. We had guests come over one time, and the ad appeared on TV. I asked my mother about the blue liquid they were showing. She felt so embarrassed that she changed the subject right away. 

I grew up in a conservative, orthodox family, and there were so many taboos attached to menstruation. For a long time, I also conformed to the notions of impure, not to be touched, and to be locked up in a separate room during the periods, among other things. 

I was glad that my daughter saw this as something that happens naturally and found beauty in it. I was also glad that she saw the blood on the napkin drawn in red and not blue.

Clothing

(Age: 7 years)

At age 7, my daughter was quite traditional; she preferred traditionally feminine clothing, such as lehengas and kurtis, and disliked shorts/pants and T-shirts.

Coming from a conservative background, I was at ease with her choices, but also concerned lest she should build her identity only around this one kind of clothing and become trapped in the ideology she creates for herself.

I wanted her to see that different people expressed themselves through different kinds of clothing. We sat and looked at pictures of my friends on Facebook who were comfortable wearing all kinds of clothes.

"So, what do you think?"

"I like them all, but I didn't like it when they put pictures of themselves that showed too much skin."

"Hmm, I don't always feel at ease, but I'm learning to be more accepting of other people's choices. Their clothes don't really matter to me; what matters is why they're wearing them. Is it to make an impression or a statement? Are they comfortable with their body and positive about themselves? I just want you to know that if you want to try on different clothing, go ahead, but keep your motivations under check.”

"Have you ever worn shorts and tank tops, Amma?"

"Yes I did, a few years ago, when appa and I were in California and Toronto. I sometimes wore them for myself and sometimes for appa. It felt nice to be in frocks and skirts, I felt so much younger and free."

"Why don’t you wear them now?"

"I like the simplicity and the elegance I find in kurtis, salwars and long skirts.  Moreover, my choices are also influenced by my surroundings. Having said that, I allow myself the freedom to experiment with western clothing again if I so desire."

"I don't like it when people stare at my arms or legs, therefore I wear full clothing."

"Yes, it is necessary to assess your surroundings. Whether you feel safe or not around certain people, I believe that is the best approach to take."

For many years, I believed that my long hair and conservative clothing defined my character, but with time, I realized that the length of hair and clothing said nothing about me. In fact, my hair and clothing choices helped with deconditioning my beliefs. I like to be mindful of my decisions, as well as why and for whom I make them.

Sex

(Age: 5-7 years)

For me, this was a very challenging subject. Regardless of how often I talk to her, she and by extension all children, are exposed to the incomplete idea of intimacy - love, kiss, assault - through the media.

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When I was eventually ready to discuss it, I went online and found the sex education video "Main Aur Meri Body" on AOI. The video explains:

All of this and more with a lightheartedness that made my job so much easier. 

"Do you want to know why people say you look like a mix of appa and me? or Why do we think your nose resembles my grandmother's?"

"No, amma"

"I would like to show you a video. If you feel awkward at any moment, please let me know so that we can discuss it later."

"Ok"

After watching the video (she loved it btw). 

"Listen, I know you are excited learning all this but remember some people feel uncomfortable discussing these."

"Ok. But why is that?"

"This is a private affair, and not everyone is at ease discussing it. And not all children your age are aware of this unless their parents or teachers at school inform them."

"Can I watch this with appa?"

"Sure, if he feels comfortable. It will be nice for him to also know that we spoke about this."

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She did watch it with her father, but beyond nodding and saying the video was good, they didn’t engage in a lot of conversation about it.

She and I also briefly discussed gay, lesbian, and transgender relationships. And, to be honest, I know very little about their lives and world. I am learning alongside her.

It is true that discussing difficult topics with our children elevates our relationship to a new level. There is more openness and less secrecy, more bonding and less disconnection.

We also had lengthy conversations about abuse (molestation/rape), human trafficking, and prostitution.

I hope to write about them separately in the near future. 

In the meantime, I’m enjoying being a mom-in-progress!

Sripriya Ravi Kumar (known to most as Priya Ravi) is a homeschooling parent based in Hyderabad. Together with her daughter Deeksha, now 10, she explores natural learning. She also holds the position of Marketing Executive at an Ed-Tech company, where she shares her expertise and continually learns about the latest trends and developments in the educational sector.

With Polyamory, I Grew Into The Person (And Lover) I Was Meant To Be

For years, I questioned if I could expand the definition of a loving relationship. And then, I did.

This story is an edited version of one of the many personal narratives of polyamory collected by Bangalore Polycules.

Ten years ago, I had already given thought to and discussed non-monogamy in my mono relationship with my partner at the time. I used to work very long hours in a bank, and he was a student who gave massages for a living and was often propositioned. It seemed unfair to hold him to an exclusively sexual relationship with me, young as we were. He’d never actually acted on any of the propositions, since he worried that I would not be able to handle it when it happened for real, and he didn't want to risk our relationship.

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When our relationship turned long-distance I started to have trouble with my end of monogamy. I was meeting interesting people in interesting contexts and I wanted to explore things further. I ended up cheating on him and felt so miserable for breaking the rules of our partnership. Yet, the act itself did not seem wrong. It came from a place of love,how could that be wrong? 

Traditional relationship knowledge had taught me that if I truly loved him, I would not want to cheat on him. However, here I was cheating, and yet I was perfectly sure of my deep and true love of him. Could traditional relationship advice be wrong then?

That relationship ended, but I had realised something that I could not unsee. There was more to relationships than what I saw around me: people who stayed together, often lying to their partners and themselves, denying their natural feelings, and yet they were considered to be a ‘relationship success’. That's not the kind of relationship success I wanted. I wanted real intimacy, real depth, complete honesty!

Polyamory to me is the right to be myself. The right to explore my full human potential, in love and in life. Polyamory has taught me not to take myself for granted, nor my partners. I have never been shy of doing hard work to invest in my loved ones. In polyamory, the effort pays off with multiple strong, honest, loving relationships I can count on, just like family. It holds each of us accountable for ourselves and our actions.

I feel blessed and lucky to have found partners who also envision and believe in the kind of life and love I seek. I absolutely love it when my partners enjoy each other's company. That is my favorite feeling in polyamory... to see two people I love sharing and coming together.

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My monogamous friends don't understand it. They keep asking me: How do you do it? How do you take a vacation with two partners and an ex? How do you host a party where three of your partners are cracking jokes with each other? How do you do a date night at home while your live-in sweetie joins you both for a drink?

Equal credit goes to my partners who have done the work with me - building and fortifying our relationship, talking and staying through the hard times, trusting that it is worth it at the end. Polyamory has made me far more individualistic and collaborative, both at the same time. Funnily enough. I am less dependent on my partners, less prone to blame games and rigidity, more honest, more open to closeness. What I have learned: Poly is not easy. It is not for the lazy or change averse. 

Polyamory has made me far more individualistic and collaborative, both at the same time. Funnily enough. I am less dependent on my partners, less prone to blame games and rigidity, more honest, more open to closeness. What I have learned: Poly is not easy. It is not for the lazy or change averse.

Insecurity triggers can be super random or unreasonable. When you invest well though and stay honest, the payoff can be immense.

Anon identifies as a liberal bisexual Indian woman.

I Want To Feel Cared For Even When I’m Having Casual Sex

The ‘no strings attached,’ nature of casual sex meant that I was left feeling dissatisfied and dehumanized. But being open about my need to be nurtured opened up a whole new world.

When I moved back to Delhi after graduate school, I finally wanted to pay attention to the parts of my adult life that had taken a backseat during the pandemic. I felt sure of the two things I needed the most—an inviting home and a colourful sex life. My hope for my new house was that if I had spent enough time in my kitchen brewing coffee and on my walls plastering it with dried-up flowers, bought as spontaneous gestures of love, my home would begin to smell of familiarity. I carefully curated corners of my house with unironic art and bought a sprawling lilac couch for my living room. Whatever adequately represented who I was made it through the cut, and I let it sediment in my bare apartment. In contrast to the warmth in my home, not a lot of serious thought went into setting up my Hinge profile. After gaining the quick approval of a couple of girlfriends, I began dating exhaustively.

There were midnight walks and bike rides, followed by catchy names that could spark an instant connection in case any of these men had to be recounted at a moment’s notice amongst girlfriends. There was the two-second boy, the lizard guy, the tired lawyer dude, the could-have-fucked-a-pillow-and-not-known-the-difference-boy — I tried to be innovative; evidently, I sometimes failed. These casual dates would often lead to casual sex. The following morning, I would leave the houses of my partners mostly feeling drained and dissatisfied. For the most part, this was not for the lack of sexual chemistry but for how often my sexual partners had been completely out of tune with my body. Despite being physically present, they always somehow felt emotionally absent. Most of my partners would stay the night, but that barely made any difference. Perhaps it would have been easier had they left in the middle of the night; at least the hope for a shift in intimacy would not have hovered over my naked body.

An illustration of a couple in bed. Text bubbles around them indicate that they are chatting with each other.

Through conversations with friends who had felt similarly, I knew I could not make peace with what the casual dating scene had to offer. The two seconds fuck and leave, the sparseness of conversations around sexual satisfaction and the ghosting felt like the raw end of a deal I had never consented to. I quickly found myself in a place in life where I neither wanted to jump into a long-term monogamous relationship nor did I want meaningless “casual sex” anymore. When I think of casual relationships, I heavily borrow from the cultural parlance that surrounds them. These relationships are non-committal and evade a deep sense of responsibility to the other. Casual relationships, by definition, in their “casualness”, involve little to no strings attached. From one-night stands, fuck buddies, friends with benefits, and booty calls, the arrangements of casual sex are as vibrant as sex itself. At the time, casual sex had felt liberating because it had given me the space to experiment with the voraciousness of my sexual appetite. However, the few times that I did receive care in them, I realised it had totally caught me off guard. It had almost felt jarring because of how unfamiliar it was in my former sexual encounters. 

A friend had shared Ella Dawson’s essay, “Stop Calling It ‘Casual Sex” which perfectly articulated what I was feeling in this phase of my life. Dawson questions the foundation of casual sex which is had with the intention that “it is not supposed to matter.” Care which is a given in committed relationships has always felt like a lot to ask for in a casual relationship. It made me wonder if non-committal relationships like situationships and my need for nurture were mutually exclusive concepts. 

Whenever my romantic relationships have fallen short, I have always turned to my friendships with the women in my life for answers. These friendships have always refused to fall within conventional labels — they have been overtly erotic, exquisitely romantic, and often sexual. Care, which has been sparse in my sexual encounters with men, has been the overwhelming theme of my friendships. The women in my life have nurtured me in ways that I can only dream of and hope for in a potential sexual partner. My friends have made sure that I reach home safely after a night out, check in with me regularly and even more so when I don’t seem like myself. They have had unwavering faith in my ability to get my shit together even when I thought I couldn’t. Their care is not a placeholder but has set the standard of the ways in which I expect my partners to show up just as my girlfriends had. It made care seem like a very real and reasonable possibility in the glow of which I had truly felt nourished.

I also look to my roommate and the relationship that she shares with her plants to understand the ordinary nature of care. She adores them— she rubs oil on them gently with a washcloth in a motion delicate and soft that not a spot is left untouched by her care. She thinks that this will protect them from unwanted pests. I’ve even caught her speaking to them in hushed tones because she believes it will lead to their longevity. She is uncompromising in her acts of care, even if they might be slightly whacky, unheard of, or might not even lead to the results she hopes for. But, in that moment she truly believes with her whole heart that is what they need. Similarly, in casual relationships, acts of care allow us to fulfill each other’s needs so that a trusting meaningful relationship can be built outside of the willingness to commit. The undefined nature of casual relationships itself offers redeeming possibilities to build healthy relationships outside of the structure of monogamy. This elasticity gives us the room to tailor care to our and our partner’s needs which can look radically different for each of us. It allows us to be loved in as many ways as possible without having to make a choice between our need for sex or emotional intimacy. 

An illustration of a couple cuddling in bed. There is a rope tied around the man.

A couple of months ago, my then-partner and I tried the Shibari knot — an ancient Japanese technique often used in bondage. As my partner interlaced this crimson velvety rope trailing it around my thighs and calves, he paused and explained with almost scientific objectivity, “Do you feel how tight it is?”, I nodded. Pointing at the small piece of rope that lay abandoned on my right ankle, he said, “The knot is supposed to unravel the moment you pull at this loose end.” Knowing that this quick release was at my disposal made me instantly feel at ease. The accessibility of opting out that I knew I had is ingrained into the fabric of BDSM. Through clear conversations and safe words, kinky sex prioritises communication in ways that not a lot of other types of relationships know how to. Situationships, friends with benefits, one-night stands and hook-ups do not exist on the fringes of the modern dating world but are equally or if not dominant modes of dating.

Often, questionable behaviour like ghosting, being dishonest or unclear about intentions or slow-fading leads to hurting people and loathing bodies in its wake. 

To value care as essential to casual sex isn’t to homogenise it but what it can potentially do is make it acceptable to talk without hesitation with our sexual partners, about what works for us and what doesn’t. Conversations around casual sex and casual relationships are important because they allow us to create sustainable practices of fucking, where no strings attached sex doesn’t necessarily also have to mean sex that leaves us feeling dehumanized, spent, and worn out.

BDSM in this regard pushes the boundaries in a normative society and prioritizes consent and transparent conversations above everything else. Care in casual relationships can exist on a spectrum ranging from truthful communication to tender gestures — there is no one-size that fits all. I know some of my friends prefer that their partners spend the night, another friend likes to spend quality time with her partner outside of the hot sex they have, and some of my friends have a breakfast ritual with their booty call. I, too, have found myself similarly placed with respect to my casual dates. I like spending time with them, getting to know them and occasionally going out, all in the service of intimate, passionate, and sometimes kinky sex. 

Another catastrophe of lack of care is how easily it can slip into the territory of sexual transgression. There is a fine line between sex devoid of care and sex that is unpleasant. My point in talking about this is any sex where performance takes precedence resulting in a partner being treated as an object, is sex that is being had on an extremely slippery slope. In sexual encounters where care and consent are absent, there is often a shared custody of dehumanisation. In a lot of ways, care and consent can not only work in collaboration but care can also act in the service of consent. There is nothing sexier than a partner willing to understand and talk about your kinks, is tuned into your body to ensure that you are truly present and is interested in offering aftercare. Care under no circumstances replaces consent but works towards creating intimate and safe spaces where these conversations can be had with ease.

Communicating our innermost desires and our needs in casual sex can demystify our ideas about how sex can be casual and caring at the same time. Lack of care in casual relationships often stems from the anxiety of making sure that one foot is out of the door permanently. It comes from the pressure to abide by the constructs of a casual encounter, lest you get called out for seeming too attached in this who-cares-less-Russian-roulette. I have been determined to be on the losing end of this bargain and in the process, I have met some wonderful people. I have been able to talk openly with potential partners about care being one of my non-negotiables. I want good sex as much as I want to be cuddled — maybe even make breakfast together, if that means we would be treating each other as people with full lives and even fuller hearts. 

When I have been vulnerable with my kind partners about my needs, I have mostly been thanked for my openness. I have sensed a palpable ease in my sex buddies being able to express this desire for care in return. This realization that care was important to me even if I was seeing people casually, also helped wean away potential partners who were unwilling to offer anything other than a quick fuck. My partners and I have subsequently been able to hold space for the ways in which we want to be loved and supported. Whether it was for my partners to call me more frequently, or be gentler during sex, the underlying security of being cared for has led to greater sexual comfort. Being able to admit hurt or articulating when we wanted different things created the space to negotiate our sexy arrangement without either of us feeling like we were being too much. We could ask for more oral sex, less penetrative sex or more time outside the bedroom if that’s what we needed. These honest conversations created a space to assume accountability to each other, not out of guilt but with a common understanding that as people our sexual appetite was as important as our deep-seated desire to be cared for.

Shatakshi has been chipping away at her New Year resolution to write more, read more! Her writing critically analyses all things gender and culture. She has been previously published in Gulmohar Quarterly, Jaggery Lit, Alipore Post and Feminism in India.

My Period Turns Me On, In Ways You Can't Image (As Told To A Lover)

It smells like a deeply ferrous tang, seductive like flowers or the night air, but richer, funkier.

You like to discover little details about me, no? Here’s one. I wash my crotch twice when I’m on my period. I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s automatic now, no thinking required. The lather is always pink on the first rinse, and a little rotten-smelling (yes of course I sniff at it, I’m a sniffer — thought you knew that detail by now). Anyway, I soap again, the lather is creamy white the second time around, I wash it away and get on with the rest of my bath. 

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And now (lucky you) a bonus detail — for some months, not long ago, something splendid wedged itself between rinse one and rinse two. I was lathering vigorously today when the memory of that other, short-lived habit rose up through the suds.

I would do the first rinse as usual, cleaning away the oxidized maroon gunk from in between my thighs. Then I would take a deep breath and slide a finger into my vagina for some of the fresh stuff, the bright red sauce my finger would come back out coated in. And then I would bring that up to my face and take another breath. The deepest breath of all time. The first inhale of the day hits the hardest, the first inhale of the month doubly so. That same briney wallop of a sea breeze, only less salty, more rusty, ah how do I say it —

— wait, let me run to the bathroom to sniff at the primary source — no it’s too late, my sixth day, only a sour hint of pee now — reaching back into memory then —

— a deeply ferrous tang, I guess you could call it. Seductive like flowers or the night air, but think richer, funkier — like sweat-drenched silk or too much attar. I would breathe that in, over and over and over, and it would fill me with a pleasure that is proving visceral to remember but impossible to describe. 

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Perhaps this would be easier to convey if you were living as I was at that time. Imagine: you spend all your time in what can be called a colourless, odourless apartment. You may interact with another human for around sixty seconds this week, and if you do, it’ll be with two masks on. All you smell is the freshness of laundry, and the dull creaminess of bottled curry paste (in which you cook vegetables that smell of nothing). The only produce with any bouquet is a bunch of mint. You stuff your face into it, and immediately regret doing that because it hasn’t been double-sanitized and left out to disinfect overnight. This is the sort of spare scent-scape in which you stand a heightened chance of observing and appreciating the twang of your own menstrual blood. 

It amuses me that I plunge into my vagina for this delight. You know I don’t otherwise go there in pursuit of pleasure. My lips have been gloriously sufficient for as long as I can recall, for longer than I’ve been menstruating, and up until now, my periods were only a dampener when it came to my rich finger life. If I ever did play around during that time of the month, it was in spite of my period, because a daydream or a conversation with you snowballed into something luscious and unrefusable. I would likely pause long enough to spread a towel out below me, and would certainly run to the sink and wash up afterwards, holding the bloody fingers aloft until I did. 

But now I find myself here, in this white-tiled bathroom lit with slant rays of mild spring sunshine, reaching inside time and again for one last hit, no, one more final hit, of this bottomless ruby glory that presses me up against the wall, that arches my back, that undoes every knot of tension and boredom in my belly. It is a full release and a reliable one, and I find I can plumb its depths for a good deal more. I tell myself to only ride the magic wave, not question it — but of course I will question, because I want this, this pleasure that I have discovered all on my own, that I pursued without anyone telling me that it is something I might or must like, I want it to explain something intrinsic and virtuous about me.

There surely isn’t any virtue involved here, but at least there isn’t any murkiness either — a kink for me to treasure, it seems, one so untethered from any sense I have of myself that it comes with no connotation, positive or negative. Someone else may tangle this up with desires to birth, to mother, to nurture, but I know enough of myself to understand that isn’t it — it’s an alive-and-kicking-ness for sure, but one that’s all mine. If anything, it conjures visions of some deity, Kali dancing atop the world.

Now many moons later, I roam the scent-ient world with a mask stuffed into my back pocket, and my period is once again a minor nuisance instead of a major sensation. I luxuriate instead in the silky salty note of your skin after a game of badminton, or (sincere apologies for the juxtaposition) in the ripe bouquet of pig’s blood before I slurp from my bowl of boat noodles. For now I lean back, my pleasure powering past the discomfort of the cold hard tile wall, and soak in the scent for a little bit, before I start the second rinse.

How To Get Naked In Front Of Another Person And Be Cool With It

Taking your clothes off in front of someone can be scary, exciting, uncertain, sexy and even funny. Read below to find out what some Agents felt when they got naked for the first time!

People Said I Should Drop Some Kilos, Instead I Shed My Shame

I want to marvel at fat women with fat minds and I want to marvel at myself.

The first time I bought something that was smaller for me, I was ten years old. Well, it wasn’t I who did the shopping but Mumma. We went shopping for a wedding and in a store right next to home. I found the prettiest purple lehenga. It was the outfit of my dreams and Mumma loved it too. I tried it on in the small wooden dressing room that was on the third floor, away from the hustle-bustle of the store. The only problem was that the skirt was just a little too tight. It went over my big thunder thighs, but the zip refused to close. I felt like crying when it didn’t fit, I wanted to use my nails to claw out parts of my fat so that I could fit into the lehenga. After a few more tugs, a few more commands to suck my stomach in, Mumma looked at me with such disappointment. Her ten-year-old daughter couldn’t even fit in clothes meant for a twelve-year-old. 

In that tiny little dressing room, Mumma told me she was buying the lehenga for me and I had a week to lose weight and fit into it.

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That was the first time I tried going on a diet and it was the first time I ever exercised. For a whole week before the wedding, I started using the treadmill. I used to walk on it for 20 minutes just before dinner. I remember that I could never feel my legs after these 20 minutes and I would always need to steady myself before going to the living room for dinner.

My dinner for that one week was fairly simple – a glass of milk and a banana. I don’t remember anything else from that week, only that the lehenga was slightly loose for me and that Mumma was so proud.

* * *

I don’t know what to think of the word fat. I tell myself that it isn’t a bad word, just an adjective used to describe a physical attribute. And yet, no matter how many times I repeat these words to myself, I don’t really believe them. I call myself fat and I feel bad, because some part of my brain says ‘you shouldn’t be fat.’ Being fat just means that clothes fit you awkwardly and that doctors don’t really ever diagnose you but instead blame your weight for whatever problem you’re going through.

To me, fat is more a weapon than a word. I think of people that I don’t like as fat, sometimes comparing them to myself on the scale of fatness and deeming them just slightly fatter than I am. 

Every time I do this, I also think, “This is not how it should be. Not how I, or anyone, should look at or think about fat people.” But then, is there really a ‘should?’ Is there any one lens through which fat people must be gazed at?

In a 2017 essay, author Carmen Maria Machado writes: 

Whenever I see a fat woman with a fat mind who is excellent in that fat way that I love, I want to be her handmaiden. I want to kiss her feet and the hem of her dress. To rub her aching shoulders. To follow after her on my knees with a dish of milk in my unworthy hands.

I want to see fatness the same way Machado sees it. I want to marvel at fat women with fat minds and I want to marvel at myself.

Was I actually fat, back then? I certainly thought so, but looking at photos years later—when I am actually, clinically obese, the kind that makes you bad at doctor’s appointments and great at online shopping—I look ordinary.

Machado mentions how she thought she was fat when she actually really wasn’t and when I read this part, I just let out a tired “oh same.”

There are rarely days when I have been happy with how I look, with how my body is shaped. I look at old pictures sometimes, from when I was around 12 and I wonder why I don’t weigh that much now. I know, I know, a 20-year-old should never weigh the same as a 12-year-old, but sometimes I wonder why I didn’t focus on the body I wanted.

***

Her body split through her wedding gown, unmoored; a dam that could no longer contain the river of her.

I rewatched The Little Mermaid after reading Machado’s essay and this time, I paid attention to Ursula, the sea-witch, instead of Prince Eric.

It took me 20 years and reading Machado to finally realise how absolutely wonderful Ursula actually is. She was the smartest character in the whole movie. She didn’t fall in love after seeing a man once and she wasn’t stupid enough to change herself because of that man. Ursula capitalised on how naïve Ariel was, and stole the show in all her red-lipsticked glory. She had a personality that seemed too big to fit in one frame and I feel like that is why her giant tentacles made sense to me. Her body seemed never ending because that much brilliant-ness (for lack of a better word), cannot possibly be contained. 

Machado describes Ursula as lascivious and vulgar, ambitious and arrogant. This description was my absolute favourite part of the entire piece. In photos, my shoulders are always curved and drawn in, to try and make myself look smaller. I want to reach a point where someone uses the words lascivious and arrogant to describe me. 

Perhaps that’s the body I want.

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***

In 2021, I was alone on most days. I could do absolutely anything I wanted and I decided to stretch my body a little further than I should have.

It was nice being alone. I could exercise for hours and no one would stop me. I would put on a video on my laptop, with my pink yoga mat under my feet and move till I couldn’t anymore. I usually ended these hours not being able to move anymore, laying on my mat, a layer of sweat painted on both of us. Lying there, I could feel every inch of my body, I could sense even the smallest difference in my body, my stomach was flatter than before, my arms felt stronger. I thought I was getting healthier.

Exercise wasn’t enough though, so I stopped eating. Not completely of course, but I made sure that I never ate more than one or two meals a day. It was quite easy to follow my own workout routine and diet because no one was around to check me. I never felt like I was doing something wrong, I knew I was pushing my body, but it felt right. 

I was working hard to get what I always wanted – a thin body and I was so close. 

Being thin doesn’t make everything magical and Disney movie-esque, that happens no matter what size you are but I didn’t know that. I thought everything would be easier, I would do better with exams, I would be less anxious, I would be better with people, and I would finally be attractive enough for a guy. That really wasn’t true though and while some things have changed, it isn’t because I am thin or because I am fat.

***

I met Aryan on a random day in a random month, but I remember our first conversation. I remember how we became friends and I remember the first time I cried because of him. 

He and I got too close too fast. I felt like I could tell him everything about myself and it would be alright, because it was him and he understood me. He saw me have multiple panic attacks, he helped me when I couldn’t eat, and I thought he was what I needed in my life.

Something changed and I don’t know if he noticed. I don’t know if he ever meant to hurt me but I hoped that he would worry about me, worry that he was losing me and that everything around us wasn’t as happy and light anymore.

“I am attracted to you, just not enough.”

Liking him was never a problem, I think I liked him a bit too much. The problem was that I stopped liking myself after I met him. I don’t know if he actually liked me or if he was just bored and I happened to be around. It is scary to think that it could be the latter, but it makes sense. He wasn’t the type of person to care about anyone but himself.

I don’t know if my mind or the alcohol I had that night is responsible for me not remembering the first time we kissed. The only thing I remember is his hands on my waist and my tears after he left. I do know this is when everything changed, I didn’t know what to think of my relationship with him anymore because we weren’t really friends anymore, just two people who shared a secret.

“You toh only know how to do one thing – not eat.” 

“Your face is too big for your body I think.”

I stopped being friends with him a while before we actually stopped talking, I was holding onto the memory of a friendship that I thought was important. I didn’t feel like I was a friend to him anymore, I felt like I was a chore at times and useful only when he needed something from me.

When I did tell him I liked him, all I got was a thank you. The tears started and couldn’t stop because I really did fall in love with a man who didn’t deserve a second of my time. Most of our time together, I found myself apologising to him, but I probably should have apologised to myself.

It was suffocating being around him but I thought this was what liking someone felt like. When I was younger, I accidently stepped on an ant hill and all the ants started climbing over my foot in revenge. That feeling of an army of ants swarming over me is how I felt when I spent time with Aryan.

***

Clothes come in different sizes, but for some reason people think it’s better to change their own size instead of going for a larger size that already exists. 

Little hypocritical of me because I still buy clothes that are smaller for me. I think it is easier to comment when other people are involved, but whenever someone tells me that I should probably buy clothes my own size, I get defensive. This isn’t just with clothes though, if anyone ever comments on my weight or my food habits, I feel weird. It feels like a very thin layer of shame is covering me, like that thin layer of sweat after a workout. I always look for ways out, reasons to explain why I am wearing that particular dress or why I am eating two slices of bread instead of one. 

When I go shopping with Mumma now, she picks clothes that are too big for me. I cannot pinpoint when this change happened but I know it was a slow one. I was told that I need to wear clothes that do not touch my skin, that do not stick to my rolls and bulges. I was expected to cover myself, to wear a disguise, so that no one can actually tell if I am fat or not. 

Mumma and I were shopping for my birthday and I found myself a pair of blue linen pants. They fit perfectly but Mumma thought that they showed too much of me. When we were at the billing counter, she asked for the same pair of pants, but two sizes up. She thought it would fit perfectly, and cover just what needed to be covered. I have never actually worn those pants because they never stay on my hips and I need to constantly hold onto them, worrying about accidentally flashing someone.

I grew up trying to fit into something that was far too small for me and now I am told to always pick a bigger size, to hide myself. It’s being constantly told ‘You don’t fit’ and ‘You don’t fit in’.

For a long time, I thought I should be a Disney princess. Then, I fell in love with Ursula and her muchness. But I wonder, what happens if I get to be a little of both. If my body has the pleasure and ease of expanding and contracting and changing. Who says my body has to be an either/or. Maybe it’s actually everything. 

***

Nikita is a third-year student currently preparing for a law degree. She loves sports, and would sell a few family members to see Lewis Hamilton.

Somewhere Between Mills & Boon, Assault and A Dutiful Husband - I Discovered That Sex Is Power

It was only during my honeymoon that I realised that sex could be painful.

We moved to our hometown, a not-so-small place in Uttar Pradesh, when I was just a little girl. My father thought this was the right decision after his early retirement from a government job with the Defence Services in Mumbai. Moving from that buzzing metropolis to this conservative town in Uttar Pradesh was a huge cultural shock for me and the other kids. It was like we went straight from the freedom and confidence of Mumbai to a place that suffocated us with its supremely judgemental atmosphere. I felt like a fish out of water there. 

I did not know that wearing a skirt on Holi would turn out to be a deadly invitation for sexual assault in that town. A bunch of 8-10 boys attacked me from behind. I walked home with silver handprints on my shirt and my skirt. Those stains clearly screamed ‘assault’ louder than my suppressed sobs. It was all painful and ghastly, and  not only have I hated Holi since then, but also hated those who enjoy it!

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And yet, amidst all this, somehow my sexual awareness began. All that I encountered outside was at odds with what surged inside me. 

I remember stealthily reading erotic literature that elders in my family had. Especially my Mom’s ‘Manohar Kahaniyan’ and her Bengali magazines with arousing pictures and graphic advertisements of I-still-don’t-know-what! I also graduated to Uncle’s novels like ‘The Day of the Jackal’ and the ones by Harold Robbins. It took me many years to unearth my Dad’s ‘The Sensuous Woman,’ though. Finding Mills and Boon novels made things even better – those sensuous, sentimental novels supplied by a tiny second-hand bookstore in our town became my staple diet.

These books gave me many ‘unholy desires’ which I continued to satisfy locked up in the smouldering heat of our tiny washroom, lost in the imaginary world of romance and sensual self-stimulation. I would also daydream about my then teenage crush tenderly merging into my being, of course, in typical Mills and Boon style.

Meanwhile, my mother told my father that she was concerned about my new voracious reading appetite. My father dutifully tried to give me a sermon about how different the real world was from the rosy romances glorified by Mills and Boon and immortalised by Barbara Cartland. He also subtly advised me to preserve the jewel between my thighs for the one-deserving-man who would be my husband. Little did he know that the jewel between my thighs had been giving me plenty of pleasure already. I mean, my mother must have wondered why my poor teddy stank of pee when I was just in grade 1! Umm!

All this self-exploration did not come easy to me though. There was always a whirlpool of guilt because of the many incidents of sexual abuse. In fact, a certain sense of suffocating in shame and guilt remained with me whenever I felt the normal stirrings of sexual longing. 

I was sexually abused multiple times in that town, and also in Mumbai, as a kid, barely in primary school. This one time, I was singing and running down the stairs to go to the grocery store for toffees when I bumped into our Driver Uncle. He often used to bundle all the kids into a jeep for a ride around the housing complex before starting his official duties for my father’s colleague. 

But that day, he hurt me both physically and emotionally. There was another incident when I was travelling with my family on a train. I was assaulted by a moustachioed man when I stepped out of the lavatory into the cramped space of the compartment corridor. I was only in Grade 7 then and have been extremely suspicious of day-time travellers boarding and travelling in reserved compartments ever since. Pleasurable sex seemed like a distant dream, a possibility so remote, I couldn’t even envision it. 

But, after a point even a darpok like me decided to take control and fight back. When an insolent fellow groped me in a crowded marketplace, I chased him and delivered a solid whack to his butt. But, he was dressed as such a decent gentleman  that outraged bystanders tried to hide him  from my ‘unjustified-wild-attacks’!

Over time, I grew to be cautious. I wore baggy clothes and glasses firmly perched on my nose - like a dowdy schoolmarm. I judged people who could casually flirt and maintain friendships with boys. I couldn’t trust boys. So, I convinced myself that I was too ugly, unsmart, uninteresting and unexciting to ever get any attention from them.

That was a rather confusing phase of life. On one hand, I felt inadequate and conscious of my body image because I was tall and broad-shouldered with hardly enough breasts to be considered feminine. On the other hand,  I was getting molested almost every time I stepped outside. Was I pretty and attractive or not? Or, did I have some evil X-factor marking me as easily ‘molestable’? 

And yet, somehow, I was still a stupid romantic fool at heart. I believed that someday I too would get married and fall in love or learn to love. 

When I think of my earliest imaginations of marriage, I remember how my dear father suggested that I preserve the jewel between my thighs for my future husband. When I showed that ‘loving letter’ to my closest friend, she was aghast by this bold and candid advice. I think my father might have tried to sensitise me about marriage and real-life, later in life, but he died in a dreadful accident at sea. And, I was left with this jewel-saving advice, the memories of harassment, and the secret thrills of erotica I had read.

None of this prepared me for the physical reality of marriage. No amount of research on stealthily stolen books or magazines, biology classes on the reproductive system, curious surreptitious study of my fully aroused Doberman’s anatomy, nothing was actually real enough. It was only during my honeymoon that I realised that sex could be painful. 

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I was upset and angry about not being warned about this pain. But, well-meaning relatives and even medical professionals in those days were usually so tight-lipped about so many important concepts like vaginismus and dyspareunia anyway. 

Thankfully, my honeymoon was not a total disaster. My equally virgin husband acted on good advice and served me a gin-spiked-Coke. That actually helped me relax at least a little though it didn’t stop me from gabbling nonsense all night. But while I talked easily enough, my tense muscles refused to cooperate. 

It was much later that I discovered my own reasons for freezing up. My experiences with sexual assault, humiliation, and more, were weighing down on me and had brought me to this point. I have tears in my eyes even as I write this, thinking about the sensitive heart of my hubby, who never has ever forced himself on me, and bears all my sexual eccentricities with gentle compassion. My tangled journey has been decades in the making, and this writing is my attempt to unravel it now.

As if the honeymoon experience was not enough, I had yet another rocky start to my married life. My well meaning Mom had thought it was necessary to find a way for me to avoid the trouble of periods during the wedding rituals, and thus I was dutifully prescribed some pills to shift the dates of my chums. That threw my regular monthly schedule into total disarray, combined with the nausea and side effects of the pills. Meanwhile some friends from our progressive girls’ college had given me an advertisement for a new product that promised a hassle-free, liberating experience - the ‘Today’ pessary. 

This was supposed to act as a shield against unwanted ‘accidents’ in case other forms of protection failed or weren’t used.

‘Today’ had just been launched in the Indian market and was available only through mail order. I must have been one of their pioneering customers, I think.

The consequence of using that pessary was dreadful. By the time I moved to my husband’s place of posting in a remote town in Himachal, I had already started feeling discomfort in my private parts. I kept quiet about it, believing it to be a usual occurrence due to all of the disturbances in routine and the travel. I also thought maybe I was just sensitive to synthetics - in this case, rubber from the condoms we used.

My hubby dearest had to go on field duty two days after he got me home. For the next fortnight, I was all alone in an alien environment where I knew only my landlady and the neighbour on the ground floor. I still remember the agony of my first UTI - I thought I was dying and had no clue how or whom to describe my plight. When my hubby returned, we travelled on a rickety, borrowed scooter for two, long, agonising hours, up and down the bumpy hill roads, to consult the only lady doctor in that district. We found she was on unofficial leave for some puja at her house. 

We still waited for a couple of hours before we headed back to consult the only (male) doctor in that remote hill hamlet. He sat in a tin-shed near the bus stand, and had at least twenty patients waiting to consult him at any hour. But, oh my god, the effect of the medicines he prescribed was immediate and just magical. That humble unassuming doctor was my saviour. 

A few months later when I went to my hometown for my brother’s wedding, I heard many of my friends had used the ‘Today’ pessary and had similar painful experiences. Since then, I made it a mission to caution women on the threshold of marriage about the basics of hygiene before intercourse, and also about using pessaries and recognising and addressing symptoms of urinary tract infections. 

Honestly, when it came to my marriage, I just wanted to live by my mother’s well-meaning advice: Be an ideal daughter-in-law, a truly sanskari bahu so that no one could blame my widowed mother for not “bringing me up with the appropriate family values.” Besides, in a stereotypical Indian marriage, you are supposedly blessed to be married to a compatible and suitably-earning man from a respectable family where they can provide you with all the basic necessities of life. The woman should just learn to adjust to the expectations and demands of her man after that. I truly never expected or believed I deserved much more that that. 

Sex or satisfaction simply don’t count, at least not for the woman in a marriage. While my husband did try his best to be an enlightened partner, studiously trying out all that the forbidden XXX journals prescribed, I don’t really remember ever experiencing a high during the act with him.

One day, while I was dutifully trying to ‘make myself learn to love’ my hubby, he was staring at the wall-calendar like a zombie. He was in the throes of peak excitement when I realised he was actually fantasising about a rather silly-looking girl on that wall-calendar. I was devastated, scandalised, outraged, but most of all, vulnerable in my bitter hurt. I thought I was definitely prettier than that cheaply-dressed twig wearing a mini skirt. Besides, she just happened to be on the calendar of a local bartan-wala’s shop. It was I who was partnering him in that intimate act, and yet I was far from his mind. 

It hit me hard. I thought to myself: Men don’t need a loving woman to turn them on. Their turn-ons can be anyone in any form at any goddamn time. Friends, relatives, neighbours, strangers, film stars or porn stars. So, ironically, I finally learnt the meaning of ‘a pole in the hole’ being the ideal description of the sexual act! (Had giggled over it in school!) There was no place for love in sex, I felt. 

All this time I had never once experienced an orgasm with him.

I remember one time when I did experience an ‘O’, though . I was a mother of two by then. I was travelling in a rattling ambassador cab to a hill station and feeling extremely exhausted and angry at my in-laws. They had arrived at our tiny flat in a group of five, and expected the royal treatment from their bahu who was already drained by an excessively breastfeeding infant. While fuming at the brutal injustice of this, I actually fantasized about the uncouth cab driver. And, I experienced a mind blowing O! No one detected my ‘crime.’ but I felt repulsed by that incident. ’ Love and sex are not always the same indeed.

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Over the years, I began to use sex as a privilege to exercise some control in my marriage. I cannot pinpoint exactly how this started. But, perhaps it was when I grew far too overwhelmed with domestic chores and the physically exhausting demands of mothering my two little darling daughters. I felt relentlessly judged by a patriarchal family and society. I discovered that the only weapon I had was to hold out or refuse some forms of sex. It was a painfully slow growth of self-confidence but I did begin to learn to assert myself in my relationship!

I was a fiercely protective mother to my daughters. I wanted to make my daughters understand the difference between good touch and bad touch. I could not let them have horrid experiences like me. But, I also worry that I may have soured my kids on pleasure and trust permanently? I often wonder to myself, ‘Is it because of me that neither of them have any long-lasting relationships?’  

Life may be an endless discovery of disillusionment but companionship is what matters the most. Physical intimacy might be far from entirely satisfying but it does provide some sustaining moments of pleasure. Fat bellies, incongruent sleep patterns, physical exhaustion and poor libido notwithstanding, one does derive some sexual pleasure at regular intervals to remain sane. Of course you need to add on a couple of absolutely essential body massage experiences too! You finally discover that in all probability, the Prince didn’t go riding into the sunset with his beloved Princess, but rather realistically, they both fell asleep under a shady tree, with the gentle sound of a rippling stream amidst the intoxicating fragrance of water lilies! That would be a truly satisfying fairy tale ending! 

I hope my daughters have a different life, perhaps not a fairy tale, but one that involves a more fulfilling idea of companionship and trust in their romantic and sexual lives. 

Midas spent a lot of time in a cocoon, before metamorphosing into a not-too-flamboyant but certainly more confident, bad-ass butterfly, touching lives, hoping to sprinkle some gold, just like her namesake!

Hyenas, Orangatuns And Discovering My (A) Sexuality

Questions, questions, and I had no answers. Until a Reddit meme showed me "Asexuals are…"

"Look at her tits, bro," said my well-meaning classmate once in the social science hour.

"Eh," I replied. "They were much sexier before she decided to take her clothes off." 

He looked at me like I had violated the twelve sacred commandments of porn consumption, all at once. "Kela, why would you say that? Look!"

I looked, and I looked more, and I'm sure even the teacher looked, but it wasn't until half a decade later that I understood what I should have much earlier. 

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I started my schooling by making everyone believe that Power Rangers were real. "Listen to me, the Yellow Ranger stays here, at our school," I told them. All they had to do was sneak into this vacant room on the third floor with the questionably concrete stairs and he would be happy to hand out morphing gadgets. My classmates would begin arguing about which colour they get to be and then I would feel super important and cool. Thankfully, nobody would be brave enough to creep into that room, and we would never find out who lived there, possibly the watchmen, or possibly the sisters (nuns) with their stern and soft and tired faces. 

Once they’d grown some pubic hair, though, my classmates forgot my scam but would no longer be part of my bullshit. They ostracised me from dhora-dhori, a game where kids chased each other like Timon and Pumba. But I didn't think anyone in my class was cute enough to be called Timon and Pumba. I thought of them as the hyenas from Lion King instead — secondary antagonists.

The hyenas in class used to laugh with their stupid teeth when they were happy and cry with their stupid teeth when they were whacked by the fat stick that the teacher used to make himself feel like a gangsta. Years later, just before matriculation, two hyenas would elope to another state after having steamy sex on Teacher's Day, manifesting some kind of post-traumatic daddy disorder that definitely goes back to the caning.

I thought I was the same as the hyenas — I wouldn't mind running off from school with my partner — but something was off. This became more and more obvious with each passing grade. 

The hyenas invested their energy in riding my face through the mud fields of Assam, stealing tiffins and peeking over the urinal walls to check out the size of my dick, and then proceeded to swat me in the balls the next hour like some Spartan general testing out the limits of his army — only to lead the discussion towards girls and their pussies. I was still very preoccupied with jump-dancing in my room, slaying dragons, making pacts with wizards and charting landscapes quivering with adventures, all while imagining someone I'd share my life and my adventures with. 

Clearly, I wasn't partaking in the same erotic fantasies as the hyenas, even after growing older, even after starting to find power rangers boring (the CGI had stopped looking realistic) and even after after picking up emoboy stoic philosophy and self-help books that tend to fascinate emoboys of that age. Even as I thought that was a sign of growing up, the hyenas seemed to have skipped many levels and were more enthu about Mia Khalifa and Johnny Sins.  Most of them already planned to pursue science, expecting a fat salary and a hot wife who would keep them super happy like Yo Yo Honey Singh whose songs were all the rage before Ed Sheeran came and made everyone fall in love with an anonymous person's body. 

Degenerates like me took humanities. I expected a different crowd here, one filled with similar degenerates. Yet half a country away, far from home, nothing changed. Everyone still had a thing for everyone else. But it was here in Bangalore that I learned the world isn’t only filled with hyenas, that there is in fact a rather strong fauna diversity to gawk at.

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Iguana, a self-established hopeless romantic in college, kept asking if I liked anyone. I kept saying no, but then she wouldn’t believe me. "How's it possible, bro?"

Cat would offer help. "What if we set you up with someone? It will be like that Community episode where they try to get Abed a girlfriend until they realise Abed could get any hot girl he wants on his own." 

Raccoon, dating a guy named after a popular character from a popular Nintendo game, said she knew someone in college with  a crush on me. "Nice," I replied with a straight face.

"I used to fall in love every other second," the Orangutan said. "I had once fallen in with a Cat. I later learnt that she was in love with me also. She wrote this poem and published it in the school magazine under my name. But it was too late."

In between cab rides and canteen food, Llama, who wouldn’t date anyone shorter than her, asked, "Are you sure you're straight?" 

Questions, questions, and I had no answers. Until a Reddit meme showed me an incomplete keyword "Asexuals are…" and Google suggested "invading Denmark", "gods" and "coming for the iron throne." 

Like some of my friends who were allies before they figured out they were queer themselves, I didn’t realise I was asexual until I began relating a little too hard with the memes. It led me to places such as r/aaaaaaacccccccce and the AVEN Wiki. The friendly spectrum-based nature of this new identity and its individually negotiated vocabulary not only gave me the dignity I deserved, but also the freedom to think outside compulsory sexuality – the assumption that all people are sexual – tattooed on the body of our society as well as its institutions and its people.

I have been in relationships before. The last one nurtured me, propelled me and seemed four years too short. I did also eventually like someone in Bangalore — a close friend of mine, an Iguana — but it wasn't until I was head over heels for her that I felt attracted to her in any other way. 

It's a funny time to be on the a-spectrum in India. As a country that refuses to talk about sex, and only beginning to accept romance, I'm surrounded by old people who will celebrate my "celibacy" (provided I'm not of marriageable age yet) and sex-positive young people who will break their heads wondering how I can exhibit sexual inclinations despite being asexual.  

It's also a funny time to be in the LGBTQ. A bisexual friend of mine recently said, "If you're asexual, how do you know you're not attracted to men?" He had a crush on me for years, and suggested that I try going out with men to see if it worked. Or I could kiss him and find out. This is no different from what straight people tell gay people — how will you know you're not into girls if you haven't kissed them? 

The ace community parachutes in with their memes. "I think of attractive people like beautiful sunsets. I don't want to fuck a sunset." 

Maslow in his triangular hierarchy of needs, very popular among psychology and business enthusiasts, had put sex at the base, along with food, shelter, air, food — the very things that keep us alive. In other words, sex must be an inextricable part of the human experience, and nothing could be more normal than wanting it bad and all the time.

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The converse must also be true. When fans asked the showrunner of Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock is asexual, he said “there’s no fun in that.” Predictably, most asexual characters on TV are aliens, robots, or psychopaths. The few characters that are human end up implied and not canonically confirmed. This reminds us of the way heteronormative studios in the 20th century coded gay characters by their dressing sense and mannerism to avoid referring to them as gay. The result being that the knowledge of asexuality and its agentic nature remains out of the mainstream and people like me wouldn’t find out that it’s a thing until much later in their lives. Over the past decade, canonical gay and lesbian characters have multiplied incessantly, with western studios trampling on each other to pursue their shiny and golden tokenism, but we await a film to explicitly mention asexuality.

It’s no wonder then that I wanted to feel visible. I wanted someone - anyone to relate to. It used to make me sad. Koisenu Futari comes to mind. The plot is basic — what if two asexual-aromantic people start living together and call it a family? (And yes, they use the terms asexual and aromantic). Watching that one Japanese drama made me feel more seen and more heard than I had in my whole life, even though I'm not aromantic, even though I inhabit the opposite end of the a-spectrum. There was something odd and crippling about the loneliness of not fitting in, especially among people already fighting from the margins. The show and the online community made me realise that there are people like me everywhere, not as visible, maybe because it's not safe to come out, maybe because there aren’t enough stories telling them what happens after, maybe because they don’t know what it means. Maybe I could do something about it.

Growing up different in every way, asexual and autistic, fantasy bridged the divide between me and the reality that be, as my power ranger stories inspired, but it also did something else. It’s given me purpose, hope and something to like about the world. It’s given me enough, until I could see the world as more than hyenas, as sparkling, funny, compassionate people who dance and love and have sex in the most brilliant and weird ways, even if I’m not into it all the time or experience it differently. 

It’s given me the courage to question the essentialist assumptions of sexuality - that it’s something inherent, unchanging and meant to be quantified and fit into neatly drawn boxes, like a sorting hat that assumes you’re either one of the Four - heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual - or you’re nothing at all. 

Most importantly, it’s given me stories to write about, and people who might read them.

Lonav is a self-proclaimed zebra, although friends argue he’s an ostrich. He loves writing, raccoons, music, and neuroqueer conversations, among other things.

A French Fling And My Epic Romance With Masturbation

How old were you when you had your first “libido lightbulb” aka when you first got curious about sex and your body?

I was ten years old when I discovered Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, carefully hidden under my mother’s scented saris on the topmost shelf of our Godrej almirah. The sensuous and erotic writing just blew me away. And, Nancy Friday immediately became my secret goddess. 

Before reading her, I had no idea that people made love aka had sex naked. I had only watched steamy scenes in Bollywood films - so, I thought sex just involved rubbing the bodies against each other, kissing the stomach, and caressing the thighs. 

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Nancy Friday taught me otherwise. So, over the next few months, I took to sneaking out the book from the almirah and relishing the juicy details of lovemaking. I also learned that I could use my pulsating thighs, my mouth, my ears and even my thick black long hair for pleasure. I was so exhilarated to be on this secret journey of pleasure and titillation that I had started doodling all this imagery on paper. 

Hell broke loose the day my father discovered these doodles. My drawers and shelves were checked, and the book was confiscated. I don’t remember seeing the book after. 

But Nancy Friday and the accounts of pleasure remained in my mind. At night, I would fish through my mind as I tried to remember what I had read. I remembered things like how a silk scarf can be used between the thighs to arouse oneself and one’s partner, how one could do this with their long hair, and how one’s partner could cup your breasts from the back and lick your ears as you sat on your heels. Perhaps that’s all that my juvenile mind could absorb, but that was the beginning of my sexual exploration. I was quite mind-blown by the sensation of inserting my finger into my vagina. I masturbated actively, my fertile imagination conjuring up threesomes and fivesomes.  

I did not have an orgasm in my many intense masturbation sessions then though. Possibly because I had not known enough about where that elusive spot was - the G-spot or even the clitoris.  

I was 17 when I first kissed a guy. Though I did have a physically intimate relationship with a senior from school and we spent some beautiful afternoons in his bedroom kissing and caressing each other's bodies, penetration never happened as this boy also had a reputation of being a flirt and had already had an affair with my best friend. I felt I could not trust him and I was not ready for the ‘next step’.

Then, I went to a girl’s college - so, there was not much scope of meeting guys. 

Later when I started working, I just poured all my energy into work. I did like two men but both of them had girlfriends, so again I was not too comfortable being intimate with either of them. In many of my intimate encounters, no matter the surging feelings inside me, I also felt I had to be alert all the time to something…maybe to avoid the hurt of being ‘used’ by men, as we were told. 

Finally though, when I turned 24, I had my first orgasm. With myself. 

This was soon after reading not erotica but actually this novel 11 minutes by Paolo Coelho. At the age of 15, Maria - the protagonist of that story - had discovered orgasm on a fine afternoon when no one was at home. She says: Orgasm!

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It was like floating up to heaven and then parachuting slowly down to earth again. Her body was drenched in sweat, but she felt complete, fulfilled and full of energy. If that was what sex was! How wonderful! Not like in erotic magazines in which everyone talked about pleasure, but seemed to be grimacing in pain. And no need for a man who liked a woman's body,  but had no time for her feelings. She could do it on her own! She did it again, this time imagining that a famous movie star was touching her, and once more she floated up to paradise and parachuted down again, feeling even more energised. Just as she was about to do it for a third time, her mother came home.

After reading this, I felt these lines were about another realm of sex that I had not known before. Until then, all I felt was that sexual depictions in media and films were just mechanical and women were just objectified in them. I simply wanted to experience an orgasm of my own. I was desperate but I just did not know how. 

Then, I remembered there was an old massager lying around at home. It was a gift from a family-friend after their foreign trip. Among its several fittings was one which looked like a penis and now I understand why. I got it out of the storage, fixed the ‘penis’ fitting, plugged it in and held it down under. 

Within a few seconds I was in paradise like Maria, I could see rainbows floating under my closed eyes as I screamed in pleasure on the floor. From then on, the massager was my best friend, hidden under the bed. I would sneak it out in the night, plug it in and just go all the way to heaven in one go.

It was only during a work trip that I finally learnt to relax and use my hands. I was turned on by a Mills & Boons novel that I was reading and I wanted to bring myself to pleasure. I was thrilled to realise that I could stimulate myself to such heights of pleasure with my own hands. It was like one part of my body was talking to another! So natural!

But, I liked using my hands to pleasure myself when it was entirely on my terms only. I remember the time my then fiancée and I tried to have phone sex. He instructed me to touch my vagina and pleasure myself. But, somehow, that just failed badly. I couldn’t deal with a man telling me what to do with my pleasure spots. And, he blamed my ‘frigidity’ on my escapades with my vibrator - that innocent machine!

I still ended up marrying this man though. I knew we were not very compatible but there was a considerable social pressure for marriage. And, when I had ‘real’ sex with him, things were not that great either. I found the experience of ‘real’ sex to be extremely painful and traumatic. I suspect I was suffering from vaginismus then, and my vaginal muscles could not relax enough for sex to be pleasant. 

Things didn't quite work for us in the marriage. We separated within a year, and I moved to Europe for higher education. 

And then I met a man in France. A charming man, much older than me, and he was going through a separation at that time. We hit it off immediately. I don’t know if it was the French air or his way of talking or what it was exactly. We ended up having sex the very first time we met and we kept having sex for months after that. 

For the first time in my life, I felt like the sex was intimate. And, I had full-blown multiple orgasms! 

I have never felt the same things with any other man. I have explored many relationships after that but that sort of intimacy and multiple orgams has been evasive so far. 

But thankfully, over the years, I have mastered the art of bringing myself to an orgasm. Having read quite a bit about G-spot, labia, and vulva and the clitoris, I have used all that info in my many self-exploration and self-pleasure sessions. Today, I can proudly say that on a lonely night (or day) I can guide myself to paradise and beyond. 

Meemaw is a bookworm and a language nerd. She has travelled across ten countries, only to realise that the secret to pleasure lies within the self.

Could I Feel Sexual Pleasure Again After Sexual Assault?

After sexual violence conflates sex with violence, is there a road back to pleasure?

The night of my rape coincided with a drunken admission of attraction. Not, of course, to my assailant — different man, very different equation. But the difference ultimately meant little.

It is only the second time I am out past midnight with a man on whom I have been harbouring a crush. The last time was a lot more pleasurable. That first time, the desire had been mutual, had led to gloriously clumsy congress. Tonight, we walk arm-in-arm, we banter, I think we flirt, I try to kiss him, I am rebuffed. “It is not right,” I am told, “We’re colleagues.” And then, “It’s time you went home.”

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I’d like to think I take the dismissal with grace. I am still unreservedly happy, in the way only an illegally inebriated 21-year-old unsuspecting of the dangers of her insobriety can be. 

A different colleague, seemingly the picture of chivalry, is to drop me home. The journey that ought to take half an hour takes three. Violence follows so close on the heels of failed romance that it leaves me unable to conceive of desire and sex in the same breath. Unable, also, to conceive of sex and joy together, or sex and pleasure — and least of all, pleasure through sex, this last fallout being an ongoing struggle.

This story, however, does have a happy ending (pun only reluctantly not intended), and so I shan’t delve into the darkness of the two-plus years that I sometimes call my dry years. Suffice it to say that the most distressing aftermath of sexual assault — self loathing, depression, suicidal thoughts, paranoia, emotional dissociation, self-harm, body dysmorphia, post-traumatic stress — is only an incomplete truth, filtered for comprehensibility.

Currently, my great regret in the whole matter is that there is no objective way of knowing how much sex I could have had in those years, or of what quality. There are no counterfactual scenarios to resort to, and no way, therefore, to make up the deficit now.

There is only the nostalgic splendour of the past with which to dye hopes for the future. Like that time I slept in the closest embrace I had ever known because the pizza occupied half the bed. Or the time I fell off the bed in ecstasy, an inevitable minor accident incurred in the course of drunken sex. There was the breakfast S made me, B’s magic pianist’s fingers, and the blush-inducing smut that A could elicit from me.

If it isn’t already obvious, before my brain got its wiring crossed and cut my body entirely out of the circuitry, I was a lover of sex. I delighted in the messy, intimate business of giving and receiving pleasure. A necessarily speculative exercise, perhaps, and without any real guarantee of a satisfying climax — at least for some of us — but exciting nonetheless, virtually limitless in its potential for self-expression and exploration.

All of a sudden, however, I found myself having to conceptualise anew a sexual relationship with myself. Where I once used to be libidinous, even aspirationally promiscuous, I longed now for the legitimacy of traditional monogamy to redeem shame I didn't want to admit I was carrying, to prove that I was not damaged goods, that I still held currency in the meat market. This was my inheritance from a single night. Banal misogyny worn as second skin.

Cut to a hitherto uneventful Sunday in a city of eventful weekends. I am sitting across from this ridiculously attractive person who insists on looking at me with such single-minded, leisurely attention, such unconcealed admiration, that the generosity of their gaze amazes me. I fail to hold eye contact — it’s been a while since I had the confidence to acknowledge desire. But the chemistry is maddeningly inescapable. The edge of my skin is electrified in a way that my mind has forgotten how to make sense of, but which makes my body certain of how this evening will end, without even knowing how to begin.

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We fucked like a couple of feminists, all urgent tenderness and unfiltered, subversive lust. 

Then, all the same old cliches. Sex changed everything and nothing. Dawn would still come too early, eager for a glimpse of the wild, shimmering world of our two bodies, catching instead only sloppy kisses: a weak resistance to its herald of departure. Goodbyes would have to be said. Hopes of encores would rise in our chests and die before they could become promises leaping off the tongue.

But, by the time the sun would rise on our decadence, I would know again, bodily, what desire felt like. I would know that pleasure resided at the nape of my neck, and joy in the massaging of my toes. Just like that, this event of a few hours would have remade me.

Or, perhaps, it wasn’t just like that. Perhaps, those hours spent exploring, on a therapist’s orders, the naked body staring back at me from the mirror had a part to play. Perhaps in tracing its curves, in taking stock of the rolls of its stomach, of those asymmetrical breasts, the darkness of its thighs, the stretch marks on its hips, perhaps in cataloguing, over and over, the blemishes that I saw, I forged a familiarity that pulled me back into my body. An intimacy that could grow into love. I suspect I owe something also to my many failed, frustrating, and eventually fun experiments with sex toys, to the rituals enacted in honour of Pleasure.

I do not credit my partner for revealing to me some sort of a second coming of sexual gratification — although I was certainly gratified, and more than once. I do, however, credit them for a visceral reminder of the expansiveness of the experience of sex, and not its performance. More importantly important, I am grateful to them for lending me that attentive, admiring, generous gaze with which I am learning to view myself.

“That’s the dream of sex, isn’t it?,” writes essayist Olivia Laing in The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, “That you will be liberated from the prison of the body by the body itself, at long last desired, its strange tongue understood.” To me, this liberation looked a lot like healing. I do not yet aspire to promiscuity, and although I am shedding that second skin, I cannot yet claim to love the shape of the scars it reveals. But I am glad for what they represent — the closing of wounds. And, I am learning to respect the inflections they have bequeathed upon my body.

Suvanshkriti studies political science and cultural studies. She is interested in the intersection of literature and politics, especially questions of identity, multiculturalism, and liberal rights.

My P.O.P (Pending Orgasm Project) : A Bloody Tale

I don’t know how to masturbate. I don’t know how to pleasure myself. It just did not occur to me at any age growing up. Never. Nobody talked about it either. Our rebellion was limited to buying cigarettes and smoking them in hidden corners of the small towns I grew up in. Touching the self part - just didn’t have that ‘natural’ urge for it. 

I never felt like watching porn either. But, I was shown porn by men who just got thrills out of making teenagers watch naked bodies doing weird things. Like dude, at least ask me! This one dude had called me home to play Ludo. So not fair! His guts to show me porn when we would have played Ludo instead! The second time when this other dude showed me porn, he was at least honest. He told me with enough hard work he had landed one of those blue film CDs and that I should watch with him. I watched all of it till the end. The kisses, the sucking, the spanking, the thrusting, the sweat, saliva and the semen. I got deeply terrified and the very next day I got my first ever period. 

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I was packed with information from friends who had got their periods and were already bleeding-wise. But, my mother just fixed a pad in my panty and handed it to me. Really Mum, don’t you think the information is, you know, just slightly inadequate? I don’t blame her so much. I do, however, blame that porn exposure - it was such a shock for me, an unaware kid, that I got so scared and started bleeding through my vagina instantly. Or so it felt to me.

Anyway, I only felt like masturbating when I heard my friends talk about it and how much they enjoyed it. The curiosity was not so much about pleasure, but just to know first hand ‘Hai kya ye cheez?’ It was also a curiosity about why some say you won’t need a man if you can pleasure yourself. Lol. Isn’t the greater purpose of masturbation emancipation of self, then? 

I won’t deny that I had a lot of fun when my friends talked about orgasms and how they would please themselves. Someone used to lick ice to soften the edges and then insert the chill melting ice inside their vagina. Someone wanted to know how it felt, so her friend volunteered to help her masturbate. Someone found spit very erotic. Someone was turned on with an image of a person sucking their own cock. To each their own, I guess.

But, I did not feel a thing. So much so that I can sleep while watching porn. Boring! 

I have tried inserting a finger in my butthole. I have tried to suck my own nipples. I have tried to insert a max of three fingers together in my vagina. I once chatted online with a certain ‘married man looking for young girl’(username) on an anonymous website. He was there to jerk off to a young girl. When he realized that I am not game, he started talking casually and told me that life is tougher in 20s and gets better in 30s. And, I want to believe you, ‘married man looking for young girl’. 

For the longest, I thought the urethra was the clitoris. But, thanks to all the sudden and frequent female pleasure positive content online - the stand ups, the memes and whatnot that would come on my screen during mindless scrolling - the quest for the clitoris had made a place in my subconscious. Now, I had to find it. (Not that clitoris and I are besties or even know each other well even after I know its address.)

So, orgasm has been a pending project for a very long time now. Next to maybe, learn to swim, get over your fear of riding a scooty, wear a bikini, idk. An important reason perhaps for this is that I have never had a private space. And in all my attempts, I realized that sitting on the floor of the washroom won’t help me.

I did have a private space on rare occasions. This happened when I was in fancy hotel rooms - once for a youth training and once for someone’s wedding. The full-length mirrors there always tempted me to take nudes and admire them. And, I would do that. These rooms also had bathtubs. While the photographer, model, and the ‘art’ admirer in me had a good time, I forgot my oldass orgasm project. 

So, later I made elaborate plans to book a hotel room somewhere outside my hometown and do it in a bathtub while drinking beer or wine and/or smoking. This fantasy of mine also featured  a silk robe that I don’t own. But, this plan has not been put to action yet.

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A few months ago, my parents had to urgently head to another state because of a relative’s death. I was all alone in the house, had my me-time, and binge-watched OTT content. Soon, I realized I had all the time and space to do whatever I wanted to. I thought it was time for my orgasm project now. 

It was not difficult. I started old school and my queer ass searched lesbian porn first. I touched and kissed myself wherever I could reach. I was really wet and I was feeling something very different, very hot, very pleasurable. I threw my phone away (cuz porns are boring. Period.) and I was visualizing a threesome with two of my almost-lovers: both super-hot, one was a femme bi, and the other was a soft cis-het guy who had once kissed another guy but was sure he was straight.  

I was wondering if I had finally discovered an orgasm at 26 years of age. But then, I started getting bored of the hot almost-lovers. I thought I could stay focused if I saw myself in the act of pleasuring myself. Remember the photographer, model and ‘art’ admirer? So, I turned on the lights. And, I saw blood on my hands and on the bed sheet. I realised that what I had taken to be an orgasm was essentially period blood!

I took a bath, switched off all the lights, changed the bedsheet and went to sleep. 

PS – I still haven’t been able to hack it. Or, I have just stopped caring about it.

Moorie is busy thinking about the answers to questions like what even gender is, what does rest and resistance mean for the mentally ill, or if medicine is a propaganda.

Ammuma’s Haircut and Her Romantic Past

If Ammuma's hair was one to divulge, what would it reveal about her life?

My Mom ran the unforgiving blades of scissors through my grandmother’s hair. Locks of hair floated to the ground. Ammuma’s expression was nonchalant. 

Parkinsonism had taken over my grandmother’s health and she was finding it increasingly difficult to take care of herself; a lifetime spent taking care of those around her coming full circle. It was decided that the first order of business after the diagnosis was to get her hair cut to manageable proportions, an attempt at a fashionable 20s flapper bob on her spring curls. 

Watching her hair being cut, I remembered her elaborate yet simple hair care routine. It was almost an unspoken and unwritten ritual. And, it never ceased to pique my childish curiosity in the many summer vacations we spent at my grandparents’ place in Kottayam. 

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Ammuma made her own concoction with copious amounts of coconut oil with sauteed onions and squashed hibiscus leaves from the yard. She would run her fingers vigorously through her charcoal-black curls, massage her roots, and douse her hair with this concoction. She did this before her bath every morning, humming a broken tune all along. And, she was committed to this ritual without leave. 

As she stared aimlessly into the air while  vast amounts of her precious hair were chopped off, I wondered how that woman from my memories would react to the scene unfolding before me. 

Ammuma’s hair had a life of its own. It has been the dutiful confidante for all her secrets. Her only constant that bore witness to every passing moment in her life of over seventy years. Ammuma had never cut her hair, but her hair fell of its own accord as if the secrets got too heavy for it to hold. 

As she grew older, her voluminous curls started to shed more profusely. She worried about bequeathing pathological hair-fall genes to her daughters. So, she would ritualistically apply another concoction of bhringaraj leaves on their hair as a preemptive measure. These recipes now exist in my mother’s recollections, a tacit heirloom that must have traversed centuries within the women of this family. 

Ammuma does not talk much about glorious triumphs or lived experiences that usually comes with age. She had a diffident and calm demeanor that would always be an obstacle to her getting her way in things. She strove to not be the least wanted person in any room she was in. She led a life expended in servitude, from the only girl child in her family, to her marriage, to motherhood, and later grandmotherhood, before the onset of this disease, and she did it all with only the veins in the back of her hands to show for it. 

Maybe it is my self-indulgence that makes me believe she stole away moments from her day for herself, moments where it was just her and her hair in a clandestine friendship, a bond shared by them in isolation, in their own little spiritual world filled with scented oils and scalp massages. 

To trace my grandmother back to the woman she was before she became my Ammuma is inconceivable to me. She was not from an era that would lend itself to pictures either. There is a solitary black and white photograph of her:  a tall figure in a floral sari, her hair loosely pulled back. I don’t ever remember seeing her stand as tall. 

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Ammuma is from an era where it was considered that the longer your plait grew, the more your charm would be. It was this same charm that enamored my grandfather. Ammuma was often compared to the actress Sheela, but in my Mom’s opinion Ammuma stood in her own league. 

My Mom would talk of how Ammuma’s long luscious curls were her biggest asset. Even over the years of increasing personal neglect, Ammuma oiled and washed her hair every morning without break. I think it is the beauty of Ammuma’s hair and her relationship with her hair that makes for a fascinating story of this otherwise demure woman. 

If her hair was one to divulge, it would talk about how she engaged in her own sorcery with food in her sanctum of a kitchen, how she took pleasure in playing cards so much so that she taught her grandchildren all the tactics of rummy, and how skillful she was when it came to needles and threads and the old timey sewing machine rusting away in the attic of my mother’s home. Her hair would harp about how a little schoolgirl used to tie it into pigtails with matching ribbons every morning as she made her way to her convent school, how her grandmother used to comb her all the clots of her thick curls back then. And, just like my mother does frequently, it would recite the story of my grandfather waiting outside my grandmother’s college to catch sight of her in a davani sari with her hair braided long when he was courting her. It would say all those things that people rarely ever talked about her, like how she sang along to that one folk song whenever it came on the radio, how she is a closeted chocolate aficionado who loves Cadbury’s and how she used to dedicatedly enjoy the novel spreads in the weekly lifestyle magazines. Her hair would applaud her for doing the best job at raising two generations, for holding our family together in a way no one else did, and it would do so proudly, for having been on that journey with her. 

If my grandmother’s hair could talk, it would have also begged to not get cut.

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Now as each tuft of hair fell against the air, victims one after the other of the sharp blades, I saw in them the lore of a life lived, never to be heard by another. It is not a look of helplessness that clouded my grandmother now, but one of resignation. I could not unsee the unfairness of this whole act. It is cruel and ungrateful of the universe to demand her hair - something that is so divine to my kind and selfless Ammuma. 

I don’t get to see her often now, as I live in Delhi far-away from the comfort of the weather and food at home. Returning home after six months, where I grew out my hair for a new look, I was met with all sorts of welcomes: comments on how much weight I had lost, enquiries about the flight journey, and even remarks on the political climate over there now. 

My grandmother, however, held my hands, pulled me close, put both of her palms over my head and felt through my hair with a wide grin all along. I marveled at how a five-year old me could never have pictured having longer hair than Ammuma one day.

Hari is in an on again off again relationship with writing, whilst juggling his bachelor's studies in social sciences. When he's not busy on his quest to visit every monument in Delhi, you can find him obsessing over old Hollywood and rajma chawal.

The Women Who Bathed Together

Arya for the first time has seen her aunt's breasts and wished to never have boobs. Read Arya's essay about bodies and bathing!

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The first breasts I ever saw were my Aunt’s. We were bathing in the pond and walking out of the water to soap ourselves. She carefully undraped the mundu that she was wearing to re-tie it tighter before she could go for her swim. I looked at my flaccid chest and wondered about things I still could not decipher, no longer flaccid.

I still believe Amma got married to Acha to  enjoy swimming in the ponds surrounding my grandmother’s place. That was a small house isolated from the world but surrounded by mango trees and three ponds. No wonder my grandfather moved there after marriage. And, when all his three sons were married off to swimming wives, the women followed a tradition - they would all go for a swim together, laugh and play in the water, and then leave with red eyes to the temple to pray.

The green pond used to scare me. When I was at an age where Amma bathed me, I would accompany these women including my Chechi - who was six years older than me - and watch them bathe. The gushing of the water and the occasional slithering of a water snake scared me. I would dip my feet in the green water and watch the fishes come to sniff my feet. But I envied Chechi. She could dive in and pop up at another end of the pond with water flowing out of her face holes. 

And, then there was A. A and I grew up together, she was just a month younger than me. She was the prodigal daughter of the whole family and the one everyone wanted me to be. She would sit beside me to watch this show and all I wanted to do was push her into the pond. I always found her to be the annoying sibling but I still loved her like my own. We loved each other in spaces where we did not exist together. 

One summer when Amma and Acha left me in Kerala for their sanity, my mischievous Aunt decided to torture me. She pulled me onto her lap, massaged my hair with oil, and carried me to the pond. There, she dropped me into the water as she removed her clothes. I was struggling to find space to stand even though it was summer and the water would reach my chest if I stood. She yelled “Aryu, just beat your legs and you’ll be fine” I somehow did beat my legs hard enough to be able to float, but the pain of water lodged in my nostrils made me give up. My Aunt lovingly took me in her arms and caressed my face until I came back to life. That did not stop me from joining these daily baths.

Summer mornings are the best time to immerse yourself in the water. A and I would strip ourselves naked and plunge into the water. She would swim around in circles while I dove to tickle her underwater. Chechi would be washing her clothes next to my aunt. Aunt told us that she was a big girl now and she needed to wash her own clothes. Chechi couldn’t strip herself naked, she would wrap herself in a white towel before she went for her swim. I always wondered why this happened only to realise that Chechi had grown what my Aunt did too - breasts. 

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I remember that one instance when Amma called Chechi to her room and locked the door. Amma held a packet with a half-naked lady on it and asked her to start wearing this new thing. Chechi would complain about feeling suffocated like some plastic hands holding her chest. I never quite understood the reason until the day I saw her mundu fall. My Aunt told her to tie that thing even tighter. At that point, I realised I did not want boobs at all. I just wanted to swim free without it.  

Chechi would slowly dip herself, go for a swim and leave. It was just my Aunt and us. As we grew up, my aunt would talk to us more. She would recite O.N.V Kurupu’s poems or even play Anthakshari with my sister as we bathed. Once, she joined us for the bath, dove to the bed, and found a chapati rock. She held it between her two fingers and threw it onto the surface. The rock skipped five times and plopped back below. I thought she was a magician but soon she taught us to skip stones. Chechi, A and I would collect rocks before going for a bath so we could skip them until I threw one right at A’s eye while trying to skip it.

The pond was never quiet. When we would leave after our bath, the snake would come out with his head popped up for his swim. The turtle would walk up the shore to eat the moss and kingfishers would slowly dive to grab fishes that once ate my feet. It was their home that we women enjoyed the most. 

As summers grew hotter, the pond grew smaller. Once, before my Aunt could shake the water to let its owners know that we were visiting, the snake crept its way around the pond. He wasn’t scared. He was swimming in circles and would stop and look at us women. What a pervy snake! The snake always had to greet us. He would wait for the women to oil their hair and walk towards the steps of the pond. As we removed our clothes, he would stick his head out. Our naked bodies excited him and his tongue would slither out of his mouth. He kept doing that every time we showed up. 

A month later, the pond was cleaned and the pervy snake was taken somewhere else. By then, I was growing in places I thought never grew up. I could no longer dip my naked body into the water and my Aunt gave me my first mundu. She tore a piece from her husband’s red mundu and wrapped it around my body. She would tuck the end at the top so it stayed but after two minutes of jumping and swimming the mundu reached the shore. She would tie it again and it would glide off my body and wander off onto the water's surface. She always insisted on it being tied. I always felt like the mundu never belonged to my body. It was holding me in places I never thought needed to be held and covered. 

The mundu was always considered to be the rite of passage for every woman in my family. But I never wanted my breasts to be held by my uncle’s old mundu. It slipped away from my body the second I dove into the pond. It took away the power my legs had as I beat them to swim. I was never allowed to be naked anymore. 

It seemed as if women were scared to be naked around each other. Perhaps it was difficult to accept that breasts are more than just instruments that convert blood to milk, or beyond the cleavage that men stare at from distances unknown. I loved that my body was growing in places. My chests jiggled and my bum had more roundness but the mundu never allowed me to embrace the wetness of it. And, the pond grew into a distant place every time I bled. 

Every time my periods started, I was shunned from everything the house held, I was no longer a woman or a family member. These practices made me hate being a woman so much that I never understood how beautiful the experience of being a woman truly is. 

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Until, one day I was on the second day of my period and wanted the comfort of the water over my stomach. When my Aunt was away, I dove into the pond without anything over my body and felt every pulsating whoosh of the water. It gushed over all parts of my body that were aching and I immediately felt all sorts of oohs and aahs. When the old blood tissues escaped my vagina, fishes would gather, trying to eat the small bits and pieces that floated around. The pond was my resurrection to womanhood. 

But, I felt alone. The snake, the turtles, and the fishes made noises of their own but they weren’t like the sounds of other women that echoed in my ears. I felt lonely and unwanted.

We all grew up and grew older. New bathrooms were fitted by the side of the house and the water level rose. The women never went together to the pond.  The stones were left unattended by unwashed chaddis and the pervy snake died a tragic death. Even if we decided to go for a swim, we never went there together.

I stand on the gravel steps looking at the green pond that changes colour every time you scoop the water. I don’t have anyone to tie my mundu and so I take the longest one and wrap myself as tightly as possible. I float on my back and watch the blue kingfisher look at my teasing breasts. ‘Perverted animals’ I think as I turn my back to swim. The mundu unties itself and winds around my legs. It ties my ankles like weighted anklets. There is no ground for me to hold and I can hear the snake laugh from its hole. I breathe in and breathe out water. I hear the water breathe into my ears. The sunlight fades as my head drops further below. The green water is black now but from a distance, I hear “Aryu, beat your legs and you’ll be fine” and so I did. I moved closer and closer to the sound and reached the surface. I open my watered eyes to no one as I breathe the pond out.

നാകാൊ നേലിെിെന േകാനാരായണൻ കോു േപായ് (4 legged Nangeli woman was kidnapped by Kolu Narayanan)

(The four legged Nangeli frog (Nangeli is often referred to as Nangeli who belonged to the Ezhava community) was kidnapped by Narayanan Snake)

Asexuality And Shah Rukh Khan: Ek Prem Kahaani

But the older Abhramika grew, the more she realised that her idea of romance was probably not the same as that of others around her.

Thanks to Bollywood, I grew up a hopeless romantic in Oman. In fact, I would still say I am one. Cute romances can make me melt like an ice-cream on a hot summer day. I was a sucker for Bollywood movies with unrealistic but adorable romances. But the older I grew, the more I realised that my idea of romance was probably not the same as that of others around me. 

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I remember being 13 and sitting at my best friend’s house along with our sisters, talking about dating and boys. They were discussing sexual expectations from relationships. Who engaged in what acts of sexual intimacy, what more would they want to do, and at what stages in their relationship would they be comfortable doing ‘it’. I did not understand half the things they were talking about, I was not even very familiar with that vocabulary. I also felt strange for another reason. Sexual expectations had never come in my list of expectations in a relationship. I wondered if it meant that I was quite ‘vanilla.’

On our way back that day, I told my friend, “I somehow feel like we all grew up together but I ended up somewhere different.” 

The more conversations I had about sexual intimacy with my best friend and my sister, the more I was reminded that something was missing. My sister would laugh and reassure me that I was just ‘a late bloomer.’ She would say that when it’s time, I would experience everything that everyone else was talking about.

The world around tells us that all love ends up in passionate love making, and that romance without sex is a romance that is dying. I remember waiting to feel the rush of sexual hormones that my biology textbook and peers talk about. I thought I’d wake up one day and the need for sex would fill me. But nothing like that ever happened. 

So, I felt like I should push myself to be in a relationship. If I didn’t feel the rush of hormones expected out of me, then I would force it. If I didn’t feel any sexual needs, I would fake it. I would push boundaries in my relationships and violate my body’s needs for trust. Only then, I could feel differently. And, I could experience the pleasure that books and TV shows and movies spoke about. The one that came automatically with being in love. Otherwise, who would love me? 

I lost a relationship as a result of my lack of sexual giving. This was after I had stretched myself so thin, I thought I would snap in half. I got sexually abused in a different relationship and convinced myself that this is how I would be loved. I thought if I could just push harder, moan a little louder, and lie a little better, I could feel differently. This was love after all, this should have been the next logical progression in feelings, right? But, I just continued to feel disgusted, sick, and a heavy sense of self-loathing in the pit of my stomach. 

At some point when I tried to understand myself with compassion instead of judgement, I stumbled across the word demi-sexual. My then partner told me it was absolutely ridiculous. What was the point of all these labels? Everyone wanted emotional connections in their sexual relations, that is how sexual relations worked. A different person in my life who was hitting on me, told me that this distinction between romantic attraction and sexual attraction was all in my head. Everyone experienced them more or less together, that is what was normal. I wondered if that is how it was, how did people hook-up and do one-night stands? But, I was 19 and didn’t know better. I kept my questions to myself and pushed my boundaries some more.

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All of my conversations only led to me feeling more alienated and lonely. They all ended with me staring into the night, wondering how I could ‘fix’ my ‘broken’ self. All of my questions always ended with the same answer, try harder. It was apparently possible to want sex without love in a world of hook-ups – but not love without sex.

When I was 6 years old, I wanted to marry Shah Rukh Khan - the king of romance. Most people around me wanted to marry him. He sold romance in his movies like no one could. But I wanted to marry him after seeing him in Chak de India - a film with barely any romance from his end. 

At 13, I went on a spree and watched as many of Shah Rukh’s romantic movies from the 90s as I could. I desperately wanted someone to look at me the way he looked at his on-screen partners. His romances made sense to me, even though they are the peak of unrealistic Bollywood masala. He would look at his partners, and spread his arms wide open and I would melt into my seat. 

I was so in love with him that I made my parents suffer through DDLJ in the theatre when it was re-released. I don’t think my father could understand how Shah Rukh Khan in the middle of a mustard field was anything but stupid. But I knew better. In fact, I knew the words to every single song in the movie, and nothing said love to me like SRK singing Tujhe Dekha Toh. 

Recently, as I stress about my Master’s program ending, in the middle of trying to unravel my multiple queer identities better, I have started to re-watch his films. My ADHD brain has happily hyper-fixated on him and I am lost in the world of the King of Romance all over again. Some things do seem ridiculous now, but I’d still happily watch DDLJ again, completely unironically. I’d sit through the melodrama of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham just to see the way Shah Rukh Khan looks at Kajol on-screen. I feel 13 all over again, sitting and hoping someone looks at me that way. 

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In my hyper-fixation, I recently found out that Shah Rukh Khan had some ‘no-kissing’ contract when he signed films. I have a brain that reads into this too much.

To me, his romances were hardly ever sexually tense. I just recall intense gazes, romantic dialogues, and of course, Shah Rukh Khan spreading his arms wide open for his lover. They consisted of intimacy and physical affection, hardly ever leading to the bedroom. 

Even as a sex-repulsed asexual, I often express love through physical touch. I dream of partners who will kiss me on my neck and my forehead. None of these dreams are sexual in nature. They are sensual and intimate and ways to say ‘I love you’ without saying the words. SRK would kiss his on-screen partner on their forehead and I would feel butterflies in my stomach.

Somehow, Shah Rukh Khan’s romance brought sensuality to my screen without insisting on sex as one thing. Suddenly, it makes sense. Shah Rukh Khan was the only actor who sold romances to my asexual identity. Even before I knew how to label it, the romance in his films didn’t make me feel broken. Didn’t make me feel like I had a ‘still loading sign’ attached on top of my head. 

This was opposed to a lot of rom-coms I saw, where romantic scenes made me question what was happening. What was something that everyone knew that I didn’t? 

I guess people do know something that I don’t, and I won’t ever know it either. For the most part now, I don’t want to know. I’ll keep my dreams of a partner who will open their arms to me and sing Tujhe Dekha Toh in the middle of a mustard field, and the rest will hopefully fall in place. 

Abhramika is a recently graduated Master's student in Work and Organisational Psychology. She is deeply passionate about mental health advocacy, and aspires to help create more inclusive and empathetic workspaces in her future.

Queer-Ratri: How Dandiya Queen Falguni Pathak Liberated Me

Here's some reasons why we just love Falguni - it's not just her music, it's her effortless queer ishtyle too!

My Clients Celebrate Relationships With Me That They Can’t Even Mention Outside The Therapy Room: A Therapist’s Diary

A therapist wonders if we can relook how we approach 'problematic' relationships

“We have this great mental chemistry,” my client – let’s call her A – said, as she described how someone she was seeing had started this new thing where they sent very emotional songs and messages to each other. They are both in the creative field and while she has known him for a long time, they re-connected at a recent work event and became close. The evocative words of the emotional messages is just one of the many ways in which my client and this person in her life witness each other in moving, intense ways which is about their artistic personhood and mental life, not so much about physicality or intimacy. They send messages to each other if they read a striking line or passage from a book, and spend hours dissecting what a phrase in a poem could mean.

The following week, however, my client isn’t feeling so excited. She says her friend has suddenly disappeared, and she doesn’t want to ask him where he is and why he isn’t speaking to her. He has shared in the past that being a good father to his children is very important to him, and she doesn’t want to come in the way if there’s an emergency with his kids, or perhaps even his wife.

Ordinarily, she would be judged and cast as the vamp or ‘the other woman’ just for being involved with a married man. Professionals (therapists included) might not be so blunt. But perhaps they would point to how her childhood attachment problems are making her choose a man who can “never be hers” – as if marriage is the only thing that comes in the way of men’s emotional availability. I too took this position once, with a client who came to me around five years ago. At the time I was relatively new to the field, and it took me some time to understand the judgement beneath my jargon. My veiled attempts to steer my client away from the person didn’t go anywhere, and I had to admit that my strategy wasn’t working. Then, I was propelled to take a different tack: to focus on what it was about this relationship that was cherished by this older client. When I took this road, the client opened up and shared what worked about that relationship and why they wanted to preserve it. To the heart, it doesn’t matter if a relationship has social approval. I was able to learn so much about how relationships work. That relationships have a pull because they hold both the reminder of our old wounds as well as the promise of their healing, and also that human beings are wired to be around each other, to love  deeply, even if those relationships or feelings don’t fit into our personal or social categories.

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Besides, my (present day) client A, is quite happy with the way the relationship is. She has no desire to marry him. Yes, there is discomfort at times, because she remembers that he has a conventional, normative family to go back to while she doesn’t. Does she want to leave her current life and marry him? Probably not. What matters to her is that he makes her feel like her thoughts and ideas have value, and she has value. He’s never been cruel to her. In fact, he would have gladly continued an intense friendship and not even named this a romance if my client had not. In one of our earlier sessions when she had just met him, she said, “I don’t feel like I need to possess him, keep him around. I feel so free. I feel like this is how I am accessing my queerness, because I don’t need him to marry me. I am loving him in such a free way. I am just glad for the way we reinforce each other’s creativity”.

Perhaps my client’s relationship is questioning what we were all born with – that there is only one right way to do relationships. Her relationship often questions the idea of “What does the right thing to do mean?”, and by default also turns the question to us, as therapists – what is therapy? Is it about making people conform? Is it about creating new rules of right and wrong which may not be like the old oppressive rules, but are still oppressive and normative in their own ways?

Another client, who is a devoted teacher, absolutely loves her students and is very interested in helping them develop a critical thinking even if they use it to question her. She was very troubled by a fantasy she began to have about one of her older students – of them Latin dancing together. This had startled her and she explained to herself that maybe it's because a lot of 12th grade boys tend to look like adults, thought legally they aren’t. But even while giving herself this explanation, she felt extremely guilty. “Do such thoughts make me a paedophile?” she asked. As a professional, it would’ve have been very easy for me to start moralizing and confirm her fears or start working with her to “control these urges”. To be honest, a part of my mind did go there and think of the politically correct thing to do. But something held me back. It was a feeling of “Wait, let’s explore what this could be…”

And so, what she and I did instead, was try to understand what her fantasy could mean. Did it tell us something about her loneliness? About her relationship with desire which had become fraught after she called off her marriage and had had no dating prospects that worked out since? Or perhaps, as she herself said, “The male gaze of these boys, I don’t return it. And as a feminist I even find it odd. But still, my 16-year-old self who thought she was ugly, that girl, finally feels vindicated”.

A conversation ensued on how, her college-time feminism was both a response to being bullied in school for being ugly, a way to say “I don’t need beauty, I have the power to fight for my rights, and that is what will anchor me”, and also a way to have another currency (intelligence, activism, seeing through the world’s illusions) apart from looks, in which to dwell and find self-worth and relational worth. The hurt of rejection could be processed by creating an inner circle of one’s own, which cares about different things. However, in the process, some ideas had become rigid, like what qualifies as toxic or abusive behaviour in relationships. The client told me that she actually liked it when her ex-partner would get slightly possessive and jealous. However, she could not allow herself to even say she liked it because of the strict interpretation of feminism she had picked up in college – and perhaps often vocalised. Could something we seek as a refuge or a response to a tough situation, be over-defined and become rigid in itself, trapping us? And if yes, can we redefine some of these ideas?

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If her college feminism and other mental health professionals also inculcate shame in her, for her feelings towards the students, instead of looking at her as an imperfect human who can change, then how is this new shame any different from the older shame imposed on women for not being good enough?

When we reflected on this together, it helped us realise the bind of certainties, binaries and neat boxes. While life is messy, knowing the shortfalls of these imposed ideas (new or old) also helped us to feel a certain sense of freedom and compassion for her position and from that place, we were able to think of ways to bring desire back to her life and let go of, or at least hold lightly, some of the ideas that were feeling claustrophobic to her.

And as for me, as a therapist, as I let go of these fixed frames, and tried to make sense of the client’s experiences, a new understanding of what is ‘empowerment’ emerged. After all, how can something be empowering (ergo feminist), if it falls prey to rigid rules? Isn’t empowerment a term for the freedom to make new choices as situations change?

My colleague and co-founder of Guftagu, Aryan, shared a similar experience from his time working at a helpline that also had an option of email. “The client sent the helpline an email, where he spoke about his sexual experience with his brother. But, the point of distress he shared was about the brother moving to a new city, losing touch and not giving him that importance any more. The counsellor who attended to the email before me, responded with ideas of consent and abuse, hinging on incest. But when I read the email, I could also see the feelings of loss and grief and betrayal. He was missing the brother’s touch, the intimacy and the emotional closeness. In his eyes, he was in a relationship with the brother, he was madly in love with him, and was his ‘wife’. He felt accepted and loved. In his mind, it was a legitimate relationship and one where he thought, even at a distance, the brother would miss him. But unfortunately, none of that happened. He felt used, ignored, unwanted. He was grieving the loss – perhaps also at not being seen by his brother, the way he saw his brother.

“It was quite painful to read – his first love, first sexual experience, first access to his own queerness - and his feeling abandoned. I tried to respond to the email with acceptance of these emotions, talking about how this relationship helped him recognise his queerness and therefore, how the feelings of loss are quite valid. No matter how it happened, in this first experience, there was also a way to share that queer loneliness about being ‘abnormal’ or different, before it hit that this was a bubble. That doesn’t mean the bubble was not unique or lovable, a fairy tale for him, that naturally, he was grieving. When someone breaks this fantasy (a reality of queerness in itself), moves away and tells you to forget all this, you suddenly see the ugly unaccepting world – imagine the shock! This is what I tried to respond to.

“However,” Aryan said. “I wasn’t allowed to respond that way. The organization and my senior told me that I had to label the relationship as incest/abuse and write on the lines of safety and harm reduction and not ‘promote’ a problematic relationship. They said this has nothing to do with queerness, and I am normalizing abuse”.

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Helplines can get into binaries and solution-focused modes because of the nature of the work - which tends to be crisis oriented. However, a solution focus can quickly turn into judgement, black and white thinking, and taking away a client’s agency and discard lived experience in the belief of educating them and being helpful.

Unfortunately, this sort of a stance, in professionals and organisations, is quite common. We grow up learning what is socially okay or not okay (e.g., incest is not okay, extra-marital relationships are not okay) and most of our training does not help us unlearn it, but rather teaches us to focus more on studying why people may not be falling in line and what can be done to get them to conform. A “moral panic” is induced. We feel like the order of society is shaken and it is our responsibility to bring it back and that this will protect the client/patient. However, most clients/patients need us to listen to their complex realities, not fix them. So, the lines get blurred – are we here to enforce morality or to promote the well-being of the person in question?

Does this mean the lens of harm has to be done away with completely? Of course not. Because in many cases, actual harm may be happening in relationships. For example, in India it is quite common that my clients had mothers who had been ill-treated by their husbands or in-laws. The clients are acutely aware of this. This often translates to them not wanting to see if, for instance, their mothers resent their children’s happiness and individual identity; that they might create guilt and shame if their child wants to do something the mothers don’t approve of. This is hurtful and, in many cases, harmful too. A trans client of mine was made to feel this way by his mother. She would say if he did gender-affirming transitions, he would be responsible if she had a heart attack or an upshoot in her diabetes, due to the shame of this upsetting news. She would often tell him, “Why don’t you do this process after I die? Just a few years more… At least then I will not have to be humiliated by people.” It was tough to untangle the love and care from these difficult, harmful behaviours.

Some harm, some hurt is part of every relationship, as our jagged edges collide. We won’t always agree on things and sometimes the disappointment can hurt quite deeply as it brings up our older, stronger unmet needs. However, the key lies in identifying where we are on the hurt/harm continuum. Hurt/harm is hardly ever a yes/no question. We need to figure the intensity, the intention and most importantly – our capacity to change. Most of us grow up seeing unhealthy behaviours in our families and without realising, model them in our own relationships. But if made conscious, do we work on them? Do we give our relationship what our parents did not get from each other and the society around us? If not, perhaps that situation could be harmful for one/both/all the people involved in that relationship.

Doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, lawyers and many such professionals often frown upon, make fun of or judge extra-dyadic relationships like relationships outside of marriage, polyamorous relationships, relationships with age gaps, with authority figures, with family members, open marriages and so on. The team members of Guftagu resonate that many clients have shared with them stories about their relationships which they cannot share with anyone else – family, friends or even other professionals. They feel they will be shamed. Perhaps shaming is the impact of the professional community’s default way of dealing with the inherent “messiness” of situations which have no existing social script, like there is for institutions like marriage. And often the rationale that results in shaming is that, as professionals we should help our clients make the right choices and not get into a soup, or lead to problems vis-à-vis society at large.

However, who are we to decide harm absolutely? How do we know if our idea of harm is not coming from our own social location?

For example, before homosexuality was removed from DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) diagnosis, professionals would provide conversion therapy or make their displeasure of gay relationships full of the belief of “helping” people. Even if we feel one or the other person in that relationship is being harmed or abused, will passing judgement help? Conversations on what power means, what the age gap or power differential could mean, how consent can be better negotiated, care, respect and so on, are more likely to be helpful, as they help us reflect on the extent of hurt/harm, if any, and also allow for a multiplicity of ideas beyond just harm or abuse, arrived at together with the client. It can help us see enlivens the person about the relationship in question. Understanding where their pleasure lies, will help us help them far more than deciding what harm has been done to them from our fixed position.

We all bring our past, its unmet needs, patterns, defences and wounds into newer relationships. If the new relationship was not a fertile ground to grieve the losses of older ones, perhaps it would not have the kind of pull it does. As we are engaged by films or novels, that mirror our personal dilemmas and tough experiences, so too we are often attracted to people who have the potential to make us reach older wounds and unknown parts of ourselves. It is this sense of intrigue and mystery which is the hot spring of desire. And this inexorable mix of attractions and mystery, comfort and safety which can help us understand ourselves better, is un-served if it is simply categorised according to a binary of bad or abusive, without complexity.

Are we really being progressive if we cancel people, relationships or relationship practices? Or do we simply replace old rules with a new form of normative control, which outcasts people emotionally and socially, as we decide if their relationships, lives, feelings are “real” or “valid” or “not problematic”.

The answer to such a complicated question seems to be in more than one place, as it should be. Our brains are wired to think in two ways - fast and slow. The fast one helps us survive – but it also relies on shortcuts for efficiency. Categories and enforcement soothe that part of our brain and also favour larger systems like marriage, capitalism, patriarchy, parenting that depend on these binaries to control us. Woke positions can sometimes become similar controls, if they aren’t interested in nuance and curiosity -- the two elements that breathe life and love into relationships.

Our emotional and relational lives are quite complex and rich. As therapists, if we can resist quick binaries of harm and health and enter into a deeply curious relationship with the clients we serve, we may be led down unmarked paths, to a different, perhaps more joyous world.

 

Sadaf is a therapist with 7 years of experience working with individuals, couples and families using a nuanced, depth-oriented approach. In her free time, she likes to engage her curiosity in writing, reading, baking, art and chilling with her cats. 

Forbidden Cookies Taste Sweet - Falling In Love With My Older Married Aunt

It didn't bother me that she was married because I just wanted to be with her for whatever time I could.

I used to call her Cookie. She was very beautiful. I had a crush on her since I was very young even though she was 15 years older than me, and my distant aunt too. She used to live in Pune with her husband and two kids. I lived in Mumbai.

We met or spoke very rarely yet I used to feel strongly for her. I used to feel so much lust towards her. I wanted to be in bed with her. But as I grew older, around 20, my feelings for Cookie began to change. I really wanted to get to know her better as a person. Over the years, for me, I had developed some kind of bond with her but I still felt like she saw me as a small child.

Then, suddenly, everything changed.

I was chilling at home one day, and out of the blue, Cookie called me. She said she needed to talk to someone. She didn’t sound okay and I was worried that something was wrong. She asked for a video call and I immediately said yes. I didn’t even realise that I wasn’t wearing a shirt at that time. When she called, the sight of her terrified me. She had a black eye, her face was swollen. She told me that her husband was abusive towards her, and had been like that since they got married. He would get drunk, hit her and sexually assault her. I suggested she should call the cops, but she didn’t do it out of fear. Plus, her parents didn’t support her and had said that after her marriage, it wasn’t their concern how she got treated. I was 23 at the time and didn’t know how to react. I said I wish I could do something to help and she replied that she just wanted to be heard. She just needed someone to talk to. So, for about an hour, I listened to all her struggles on that call. At the end of it, she thanked me for listening.

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That call was the beginning of a friendship you could say. We never really put a name to it or discussed it. It was just a new version of our relationship. More intimate, warmer. I was working at a call centre back then so my work hours were a little erratic. But we texted every day. Very routine, mundane, monotonous texts about our daily routines. As far as I knew, I was a shoulder for her to cry on when she was very vulnerable and didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Although from my end, there was a lot of infatuation. For me, she was this perfect person and I just wanted to be with her.

Compared to the girls around my age, my conversations with Cookie were very different. We would talk about anything and everything. I was very vulnerable and open with her. I would share things about my past, my family – things I hadn’t shared even with my closest friends. I never had to filter my thoughts. She just listened instead of telling me what to do all the time. That was very amazing for me.

The texts slowly became calls. One morning, I had just woken up when she called me. I told her I wanted to use the washroom and she started teasing me about having a boner! I was blushing full on. I didn’t know what to say. I panicked and just hung up on her. She then called me every morning and teased me the same way. She’d say that she was okay with it and that we could talk about it. Once, during a call, she asked me to show her my boner. For a quick moment, I actually turned the camera around and did so. Her face turned red, her jaw dropped. That was my first time ever of phone sex over video! I don’t even know what to call it. She asked me to masturbate on video. I remember, my phone was so horrible. It had just a 2-megapixel camera. But when I did what she asked, she just stared at the screen the whole time, her eyes wide open and her face blushing. Through that call I kept thinking, is this a dream? Am I really awake? I was feeling really shy, because this had never happened to me before. I was getting excited wondering what she was thinking on the other side. I really wanted to look below her face. Was she playing with herself? Deep inside, I was also really happy. In Dhoom, the way the character of Uday Chopra imagines any girl he sees with a car, and two children – that was me. Only in my case, it would be four kids because she already had two of her own! We would video call each other all the time and spend the whole day together virtually.

In the meantime, her relationship with her husband kept worsening by the day. He kicked her out of the house at one point and she came to Mumbai with her kids. Her parents lived in South Bombay and I lived in the suburbs which was far from there. But luckily, my grandmother used to send food to her parents’ house every Sunday. I was more than happy to deliver it, because I could see Cookie more often. I asked her to attend this function at a Bandra church every Wednesday evening so we could now meet twice a week.

The day I turned 24, I asked her to meet me. We hung out for a while, went to a club, drank together, danced together. That was the first time I held her so close to me. My hand was around her waist. I still remember how good she smelled. We had such a fun time! After I went back home, I couldn't stop thinking about her. Maybe it was the alcohol, I took out my phone and texted her saying I really liked her. She replied saying she felt the same way too. My heart began racing! I was just filled with joy! We began to meet more often. She would come to my office and we’d hang out after I finished work. My colleagues also met her many times. They seemed unbothered that she was older than me. Maybe because she didn’t look much older.

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Once when we went out, we got very drunk. She suggested that we take a cab instead of my bike so we got one. We sat in the backseat. She leaned on my shoulders and said that she really liked being with me and how I took care of her. I looked at her, and we kissed. Our first ever kiss. We started passionately making out in the cab itself. 45 minutes of kissing each other, on the neck, on the lips, biting each other, putting my hand inside her t-shirt, I loved it all.

When we reached her house, she said let’s go to the terrace. Sadly, I didn’t have a condom on me, so we didn’t have sex that night. The first thing I did after dropping her back home was to buy 10 packets of condoms! Finally, when we did have sex, I was over the moon! I had always wanted to be in bed with her and I was really, really happy. It was like the typical puppy love that all couples initially have.

Whenever Cookie and I had sex, there was a lot of foreplay. It seemed really adventurous. This didn’t happen with the girls closer to my age. As in, the foreplay was not as intense and they were also afraid of PDA (Public Display of Affection). I really like foreplay because it builds the tension between both people. Cookie was bindass! She and I would tease each other a lot in bed, have a lot of fun. There was no pressure to do anything because she knew her way around me. Initially, she would show me what part of her vagina to lick, how to fondle her breasts, what things she enjoyed. She had had so much more sex than me so she had a lot of clarity in thought. I always knew I would be good in bed because she herself had told me how I could make her feel pleasure and she was patient while I got better.

All of this was happening in secret, of course. My mom suspected I was dating someone. She would frequently ask if I was seeing anyone. I would simply deny and move on. My mother is like the CID so I was scared. Very scared. But the family knew Cookie and I had a good bond and that we got along well, so no one suspected us. We would act very casual in front of them.

Only two of my closest friends knew what was happening. I’ve known them since we were six and I share everything with them. They did warn me initially not to take things further with Cookie because the situation was so complicated. But once I told them I was dating her, they never judged me. They were very supportive but advised me not to keep high hopes, that everything could spiral down anytime.

Until I met Cookie, I’d never care what anyone else thought and just said whatever I wanted to. Maybe I was harsh and rude at times. But she would sit me down and make me think about my behaviour and my words. I slowly became more thoughtful towards others, thought about them a little more. If I wanted to be treated with respect, I had to treat others the same way. It’s always a give and take. That’s something I definitely learnt from her.

For six months I was in my La La Land with Cookie and then one day, I heard the husband had come back. He wanted her and the kids back in his life. Apparently, he had realised his mistake and become a better man or something. I didn’t buy any of it, it was all lies to me. I guess I had hoped somewhere along the line that she would divorce him. But that never happened. She told me one day that she was going to meet her husband - she wanted to give him another chance. I asked her what about us? She seemed very unaffected by that question and just said yes, we can still be in touch. I said if she went back to Pune, I couldn’t travel there often. She just replied: then let’s meet only some times, what were you expecting. That she was after all a married woman. I was just shattered…so disappointed. I met her a few times after that. She would always say she missed me, she missed having a conversation. So, I guess she was not as unaffected. There was something.

Honestly, through our entire time together, I was never unaware of reality. That she was married, she was my relative and that I couldn’t be with her forever. Even her kids and I knew each other well. But none of it bothered me because I just wanted to be with her for whatever time I could. But the ending was so abrupt, which is why it really hit me hard.

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Then, life went on. I got busy with work and avoided going to family functions altogether. We didn’t meet or talk for very long. But some years later, I met Cookie again at some event. It hurt seeing someone whom I’d shared such an intimate experience with. I wondered, what was all that effort and time for? Was it all a waste? We spoke that day. I remember, I was smoking outside the venue and she joined me. She asked for a smoke and I offered. She told me what we had was really beautiful, that she had never had such an experience and that she will always cherish it. It was nice and sweet of her to say that but I had moved on. It didn’t really matter to me. The truth is we could’ve been really good friends and figured something out if things had ended differently.

Much later in my life I heard that Cookie went out with many younger guys. I heard it was because she wanted to have lots and lots of sex and her husband didn’t give her enough affection and time. Looking back, I realised that for me, being with her was a dream come true. But I never knew her side of the story. Maybe she was looking for sex and not a relationship. I could be wrong, I could be right; I really don’t know.

People have this stereotype that it’s easy to impress an older woman and date her. I feel it’s not true at all. Older women have seen younger guys and know how they think even if the guys don’t spell out their thoughts. But it’s not about ‘older women’ and all that really. I’m not at all saying don’t date an older woman. I mean, what’s the harm in it? People are okay with a younger woman dating an older man. Look at Milind Soman and his girlfriend. But when Priyanka Chopra married Nick Jonas, she got so much flak for it. For me, compatibility matters. Age is in our mindset, really. A woman older than me, if we are on the same page? I would be happy to date her.

But the one thing I’ll always stick to is that I’m never going to be with someone who hasn’t fully ended their previous relationship. Even on dating apps or when I ask out someone I meet, I ask them if they are currently with someone or still in the process of ending things. If they are, I immediately back off. I don’t want to get involved in any way. I’ll wait till they have ended things, settled down and moved on. Because if not, they can be vulnerable and I don’t want to just be a shoulder to cry on or a dick to ride on. I’m not very into casual sex. I’ll only be with someone who’s as madly in love with me as I am with them. It has to be a two-way street.

I once met a woman online and asked her what she expected if we got into a relationship. She said nothing yet, because if she had any expectations and they weren’t met, she’d be hurt. She’s right in a way. But I feel if you set your expectations openly, make it clear that you’re looking for something, that will bring stability. I don’t feel it’s asking for too much. There may be mess-ups, people may break their promises, or cheat, or lie – it’s human. But that doesn’t mean you don’t set any expectations. For me, if I don’t have any expectations, I don’t think I can have a future in that relationship.

 

Jason D’Cunha is a 28-year-old guy wanting to know what love really is, and is still in search of his Miss Perfect. He is often found sitting and admiring couples around the city. (He is still friends with Cookie and hopes she tells him why she did whatever she did.)

GunmasterG9 is a 24-year-old guy, who is an amalgamation of someone who's perpetually confused but constantly ambitious at the same time. Disaster is a natural part of his evolution toward tragedy and dissolution. A passion for music, a love for art and a wish to be a Pablo Neruda in a world full of Chetan Bhagats!

Healing, Not The Law, Gave Me My Justice - This is My Survivor Story

M tells us a complex story about violence, justice and ideal victims!

CW - Contains descriptions of rape.

In early September 2015, I moved from India to a different continent. I was partnered the moment before the plane took off and single the moment it landed. I had been in a committed – and monogamous-  relationship, but since I was moving for work with no real return date, we decided to be ‘mature’ and split (little thinking that romantic feelings aren’t simply switched off).

After a few months of getting used to a different life, in a new country, I felt ready, even excited, to date again. Dating apps were new. Late one December evening, my flat-mates convinced me to make a Tinder profile. The possibility felt thrilling.

A few weeks later, I came across A’s profile on Tinder -  a seemingly tall and attractive white man. I can’t remember what his bio said, but something about it must have appealed to me. I swiped right. We matched. My bio included the fact that I was (still relatively) new to town and looking for people to show me around. His opening gambit capitalized on this, and even went so far as to claim he could show me the best secret bar in town; I fell, hook, line, and sinker. After some back and forth banter that I thoroughly enjoyed, on Monday we fixed a date for Friday. But, Friday seemed an eternity away. I found him very charming and he was on my mind a lot. I texted him again. Eventually he dropped his number and we moved to WhatsApp.

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On Thursday, a day before our scheduled date, he asked, close to midnight, whether I would be up for a walk. As a woman raised in Delhi whose gut instinct was to be cautious (or paranoid, depending on where your line lies) at every little thing, this made me uneasy. But I also liked him a lot. I immediately texted a close friend asking for advice. He said to meet outside so that everything stays above board. But the outside scared me even more – anything can happen in the night, I reasoned. So, I ignored my friend’s sage advice and instead invited A home, thinking that if something were to happen at least my flat mates were around (although both were fast asleep by then).

As soon as A entered, it was clear that he had had a fair amount to drink – something about a disappointing work event. I poured us both a glass of wine. We sat on the couch, talking – what felt like a very natural extension of our in-app banter. It didn’t take very long for him to put his fingers on the nape of my neck and bring me in for a kiss. I remember liking this gesture a lot – it felt like he was taking charge but not in an overtly aggressive way. We made out for a bit, after which he suggested heading upstairs to my bedroom. I agreed, excited.

Once in my room, the first thing he noticed were the political posters on my walls, all vocally professing my leftist leanings. I remember him saying something about how this made him even more attracted to me. As a young woman starved of validation, this was intoxicating. We collapsed into my bed together. He was quick to undress me, commenting on how ‘fit’ I was, making me feel incredibly desired. I didn’t want to have penetrative sex with him, and almost as if to make up for it, I felt compelled to give him a blowjob (this is something I often feel even now, despite being purportedly older and wiser. Something about the assumed male expectation of penetrative sex makes me apologetic, almost sheepish, about declining it, and I try to assuage the unfulfilled expectation with oral sex; I’m not sure that I have gotten any better at not feeling this strange guilt). I obligingly put his penis in my mouth and started to suck on it. I could see he was enjoying this, and I enjoyed that he was enjoying it. It made me feel powerful, that I could make a man feel so pleasured and so vulnerable in such a short      time. I kept going. A few moments later, he put his hand on the back of my head and thrust his penis deeper inside my mouth, causing me to almost gag. With a few more thrusts, holding my head with his hand to make sure I was enveloping his member whole, he ejaculated inside my mouth. We lay back on the bed afterward, talking for a while. I enjoyed this conversation too, and remember feeling happy, satisfied, almost giddy, as I fell asleep. He slept over and left the next morning.

On the day of our scheduled “date”, I wasn’t sure if the plan was still on. I texted him sneakily saying that I’d still like to see that much acclaimed secret bar. I didn’t hear back. I was disappointed, but I knew better than to text him again. I carried that disappointment with me for weeks afterward. In the first few days, it was a furiously burning flame of unreciprocated desire, almost tortuous. Gradually, it died down, to be replaced by a dull throbbing sense of despondency for a while.

Two months later, he messaged on Tinder just out of the blue. When I said that I had WhatsApped him the day after our first encounter, he said he hadn’t seen it. He seemed keen to meet. I could sense that this was only a  bullshit excuse, he wasn’t really looking for any sort of emotional connection (despite my recollection of our conversation both before and after sex being, to me, amazing). He just wanted sex. 

Some of you might say I shouldn’t have expected to find anything more than sex on Tinder anyway, although subsequent events have proven the inaccuracy of that statement for me. While it was a bit disappointing that he wasn’t interested in anything more than sex, I could roll with it.  I was in my early 20s, and I thought that being a modern, liberated woman meant being “sex-positive”, which I misunderstood as being ready for sex, even at the cost of one’s own desires or wishes for a different kind of relationship (I’m glad to say I’ve learned not to ignore what I want, and to say yes to sex if I want it but also to say no when I don’t want it in a particular way or context). And anyway, I was no longer as interested in him as I was when we first met two months ago. However, our schedules just did not match and we ended up not meeting then.

We did meet a few times in my two odd years in that city though. Each time, the experience was pretty similar to that first time. Each time, I gave him a blowjob. Each time, he put his hand on the back of my head and  I almost gagged. In return, he would always make an effort to pleasure me orally, but it wasn’t ever particularly satisfactory. I remember complaining to a friend that it felt a bit like a race to some sort of imaginary finish. Perhaps I should have communicated what I wanted, but I don’t remember dwelling on my own pleasure in those      encounters.  I had internalized heteronormative ideas about sex to such an extent that  to be desired by a man was the primary goal. I was concerned about his orgasm, with little consideration for mine.

In those two years between 2016 and 2018, the #MeToo movement happened. But more importantly, and closer to home, my own politics grew. I had always identified as a feminist, and always recognized that the personal is political, but that meaning revealed itself in new and intriguing ways (of course, this process has no endpoint; I am still learning and evolving and growing every day in the way I think about and practice my feminism).

Whenever I recollected my experiences with A, they didn’t feel unpleasant. I didn’t feel violated or exploited. Yet, over the years, I realized that I had essentially been forced to keep his penis inside my mouth, that he had shoved it deeper by force. And I also gradually realized that in legal parlance, that is rape. It took me time to process that A had violated me: not in the sense of how we usually think of violation (premeditated and/or aggressive), but more that this kind of violation is, well, the norm. And me somehow being inside this definition of sex, not being used to thinking about my own desires, made me go along.

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I expected to feel sad, angry, or hurt about that realization. But I didn’t. Then I felt guilty for not feeling them. Why was I - a self-professed, vocal feminist, described by a colleague as a ‘militant’ feminist even - feeling this way? Every time I remembered A, it was with fondness, almost a wry wistfulness for the youth of my experiences with him, a certain strange nostalgia for the young and still-forming me, and this me’s relationship with A. These did not take away from the rational realization that I had been raped, not at all. They simply…coexisted. 

In fact, even after my realization that all of these experiences were rape, before moving back to India, I messaged him to let him know I was leaving, and whether he’d like to meet “one last time”. And, it was just as every other time. I think I wanted to recreate my experiences with him – that feeling of finding someone so very attractive and appealing, that giving over of myself to someone else without cautiously considering every angle and potential consequence of the interaction, that recklessness of youth. 

After I moved back to India, I have been working almost exclusively at the intersections of law with gender and sexuality, on issues such as reproductive rights, sexual violence, and consent. I take these issues incredibly personally, and my work is very close to my heart. Amidst all this, the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that A raped me (or at least, as certain as a woman can be in an environment where women are repeatedly questioned and maligned as soon as an allegation of rape is made – I found myself questioning myself even as I wrote this piece). Yet, once again, those feelings of hurt or anger or sadness or shame or guilt never came. I have never wanted A to face any sort of punishment, legal or social. Emotionally, I do not feel the need for justice, or revenge, or really any action at all. When #MeToo happened, I did not feel the need to out him as a rapist on social media (or the need to out any of my other abusers, although I did make a general post expressing solidarity with the movement and acknowledging myself as a survivor). I supported the women who did want to speak about their violation. You might wonder why, and I have thought about it a lot.

A violated my boundaries and I do believe that A’s acts are unjustified. I do not forgive A for what he did to me.  But, I hold that rational, logical belief along with an absence of negative feeling. In fact, I hold it alongside a presence of positive feeling – not for A’s acts, but for everything else (I’ve even been smiling while writing this piece), for the kind of person  A was – immensely smart, funny, attractive, and excellent company and conversation. I feel even grateful to him for being a significant part of my own sexual journey, for helping me to realize what I find attractive and what I don’t, and how often there is such a thin line between those two categories, a line that wavers based on my own position in life, my mental health at a particular moment, and myriad other factors. It’s not either, that I am blaming myself for not recognizing the experience for what it was. Quite the contrary. Most of all, I am trying to be kind to myself – to not blame myself for not immediately knowing it was rape, or for not feeling guilt or anger now that I do. I am grateful to myself—for being able to carry this lived experience, and the memories of how it made me feel, and all the accompanying confusion, with me. My relationship with A helped me understand what kind of relationships I want: conscious, intentional, and mutual. My own emancipation has been so much more important to me than A’s punishment, as a (perhaps unconventional) feminist response to the violation itself. I can say I’m much older and wiser now, and that perhaps something like this wouldn’t happen to me again (which is not the same as saying it was my fault).     

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Last year, I was back in that city for a few months. One evening, while walking to my primary partner’s place, the thought of A popped back into my head out of nowhere; I think I had seen someone on the street who looked like him. 

In a very spooky coincidence, the next morning I checked my Tinder, and there was a message from him. We had not spoken since I moved out of the city about three years ago, and I hadn’t told him that I had moved back. He asked if I would like to meet. I said yes but didn’t really commit to a time. Once again, due to busy schedules, we didn’t meet – but he messaged a few times and even dropped his number (forgetting perhaps that I already had it from two years ago). 

I couldn’t meet him before leaving the city because of how much I had on my plate. But every time I did ponder meeting him, there was no strong opposition. There was merely… ambivalence, undecidedness. Eventually I let time take its course, and it didn’t happen. But again, I was surprised by my lack of negative memories of him. I’m pretty certain that were I in a position to be able to meet him tomorrow, I would not immediately say no. I may not say yes, but I would not immediately say no.

“Rape” is always a negative word. But we are also told what kind of negative we are all supposed to see it as. We’re told that rape is a “deathless shame”, a fate worse than death. And that our reaction to violation should match this feeling. In progressive conversations we might agree, that there is no such thing as an ideal rape victim. Yet we tend to portray the experience of rape and the feelings of survivors in black and white . This might be the pressure of how legal and social systems think about rape victims – without asking rape victims what they think. Our need to punish rape often translates into an insistence that the survivor of rape conform to our expectation of what they are feeling. But in lived life, this black and white does not always hold true. For example, there are those who continue to be in love with their rapists, or those who love them because they are family, or people they have grown up with. Our unwillingness to accommodate that feeling creates a double shame for such people. The fact that they feel these things does not cancel out the truth of violation and violence. The insistence that they should want the same thing the law mandates, sometimes is very far from the justice that might make them feel better.

As a lawyer I say this with some unease. We live in a landscape inundated by the logic and rationality of the discourse of law. But we need to equally consider the logic and truths of emotion. When we think that way we would root our responses in what makes the rape survivor feel better, rather than what makes society feel better, in accordance with what it deems the story of rape or assault should be. Is it the law we serve, or the needs of victims?

In all my personal experiences and professional work, I have learned that the word “justice” means different things to different people. In my own case here, much of my “justice” came from my own feminist grappling with my experience. It came from my understanding how  much patriarchy played a role in it all, the personal growth that emerged from this understanding, and my gradual (work-in-progress) liberation from sexual norms in which women’s desires really aren’t important. For another woman, the sense of justice could come from the rapist acknowledging their wrongdoing. Yet another person might want their rapist to apologize or be held accountable, or seek therapy. Others still, might want the rapist to be legally punished.

I write this not to deny any experience, but to make more space for more experiences in this dialogue, and hope for a more diverse and meaningful journey of justice. Rape is abhorrent and often a horrible thing to survive. At the same time, can there be room for survivors who don’t feel shame or guilt or sorrow, like me?

 

M is a lawyer who is originally from Delhi but is still figuring out where in the world she belongs. Her only skill is ranting about feminism, but for fun she likes to read, dance, and travel by herself.

Bodies in Pain: Reclaim, not Shame

Angel's journey of accepting that her period pain was real, not imaginary or inconsequential.

I have been bleeding every month for the past twelve years, and the ordeal has only grown more harrowing over time. The first time I bled, it was a murky brownish discharge. I had feared that I had soiled myself and washed it quickly without telling anyone. But soon after, I remembered that since it was also the year when most of my other classmates got their period, there was a good chance that I had too. Moreover, mummy had said, “It’s a natural biological process and nothing to be ashamed of.” So, just to be sure, I mentioned it to mummy. Without evidence, she was initially suspicious, but then she taught me how to put on a pad and asked me to report back in some time. When she confirmed that I had indeed started my period, she called my aunt and went shopping for gold bangles. In high school, when I cried out in agony from stomach cramps, the headteacher called me to the office and scolded me, saying - “You are no longer a child. As a woman, you should be able to bear the pain. At this rate, what will you do when you have to give birth?” In that moment, though still weeping, I began to look with suspicion on the expectations of women to bear both pain and children. She called mummy, scolded her too for not teaching me to bear pain gracefully, and asked her to pick me up from school. At home, mummy gave me warm kanji and a paracetamol. I felt embarrassed for not being able to deal with my pain on my own and felt betrayed by my body. Behind the pain that made me feel so vulnerable was the shame in taking painkillers. So briefly, when Amma, my grandmother, suggested natural remedies, I caved in and drank bitter gourd juice, ginger tea, boiled fenugreek water, amla juice. But staying off painkillers was scary. On one occasion, I felt lightheaded and sat on the washroom floor until my aunt came and found me. I was too embarrassed to admit it, so I said I had slipped instead. Over the years, I shifted from Paracetamol to Ibuprofen - the magic pink pill. It helped me become functional quicker on days that would otherwise be spent rolled up in bed. The year I finished school, my PMS symptoms began to get more varied – some were hilarious like when I cried for 20 minutes because my curtains were red in colour, and another time because my cupboard was messy and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Others were, however, not quite amusing, like when I started getting menstrual migraines. Some days, the migraine was debilitating and chained me to the bed or pushed me into dark corners where I would sit and contemplate my entire existence. On other days, it was like a manageable, yet persistent feeling of discomfort that worsened around bright lights and loud laughter. Quite surprisingly though, my migraines seemed like an imaginary affliction to many people. “Are you sure it’s a migraine? It’s probably just tension headaches!” “Don’t be so dramatic, sitting in the dark and all. It’s just a headache.” “Just take a painkiller.” So, for a couple of years, I pretended to have an upset stomach or a flu to get out of social situations when a migraine attack was underway. Sometimes, I even felt like a fraud and wondered if I was in fact, imagining the pain and discomfort. The moment of redemption came when my fabulous English professor in college made us read Joan Didion’s essay “In Bed.” Every word of every sentence made sense, and I, once and for all knew I wasn’t imagining my migraine attacks. I started charting my attacks and noticed a pattern emerge: pounding pain always followed by a terrible mood, existential angst and on the worst of days, throwing up what sometimes felt like every piece of my insides into the toilet bowl. Bloating, sweats and nausea were the nicer cousins that migraines brought along. After a day or two of this hungama, bleeding and cramping would start. So, I met a kind gynaecologist in Bangalore who diagnosed it as mild PCOD. She asked me to continue taking Ibuprofen for the cramps and prescribed a tablet called Dart, which is a combination of three medicines: Paracetamol, Phenazone and Caffeine to soothe the  migraine in the days preceding the period. It was a relief to just have this acknowledged and treated calmly, let’s say ‘normally.’ When Covid-19 hit and we were all stuck at home with relatives, my aunt and cousin sisters started talking about periods openly because with five women at home, somebody was on their period at any given time. Further, discussions on social media also saw women come together to share their period experiences. Amidst all this, I felt less alone in the debilitating world of period symptoms. However, after I started my master’s studies, I found myself feeling incredibly guilty for requesting sick leaves owing to migraines and cramps. The classes were online, and absenting myself from class due to cramps just didn’t feel like a good enough reason as getting a fracture or having a fever, or even having poor net connectivity would. Although I no longer felt the need to lie and pretend that it was some other illness, I still feared that all the sick leaves made me look incompetent and weak in comparison to others in the class who seemed to go about as usual, without even the slightest indication of being on their period. My fear was further reinforced when one of my friends recounted an instance of losing out on attendance and marks, after some teachers dismissed her requests for period leaves. So I apologized profusely in my emails to my teachers, as if it were my fault, and promised to catch up with lectures as soon as the symptoms passed. Was there another way? What would I want instead of having to ignore pain, bear it, quell it, repair it? Joan Didion concludes her essay by saying that she has made peace with having to live with migraines –“I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen...For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties...There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings.” But I am not there yet. PMS is a bitch, and I still fight it in every way possible – I cry, take painkillers, rub ice cubes on the pounding side of the temple, eyes and face, and carry my hot water bottle everywhere I go. I imagine that I have more period years ahead of me to be able to greet migraines and cramps like an old friend, to lie down and let it happen. Angel Maria is a postgraduate student who buys books faster than she reads them. She occasionally blogs at brewingcauldron.wordpress.com

QUESTIONS. RUMINATION. CONVERSATION Or What is he doing right now?

  QUESTIONS Is he licking her ears? Is his finger on her clit as he chokes her? Is he wrapped up in her warmth, breathing her neck in? Does he prefer her smell to mine? How does he like sleeping next to her? What does a different love feel like? When he holds her tight, does ILoveYou escape from his lips irrepressibly, like it couldn’t be held back, however impractical? When he holds her, does he know, whatever the differences, however fleeting the union before the light of day, does he know that there’s a part of him that fits here? That there’s a part of him, on impulsive, reckless nights, that wants to never leave. He holds her and something clicks? Does he see her smile across the room and feel pleased for no reason? Does he laugh as much with her? Does she kiss him on his stubbled cheek without reason? Does she also have trouble keeping her hands off him? RUMINATION The force of persuasion he brings to a pursuit, it’s in the face of this openness that I am disarmed. Not to say, in clearer moments, I don’t sense that there may be more going on. The shadow of a cop out lurking on the flip side of radical honesty. But then, there he is, showing all his cards, for better or for worse. What does one do with such cheek?   CONVERSATION I know you are far away. And in someone else’s arms. Probably even happy. Leaping on the bed, getting yourself closer to the fan switch. Touching her breasts in your sleep. Getting your hand inside her T-shirt, to the warmth. I am okay. Knowing you has been such an enriching experience, if not always pleasant or easy. I may learn to love again. I hope I can.   Carol D’Souza: tea-drinker, walker

Love Paranoia

After every rejection I ask, is it my disability?

 There is a question always lurking in the shadows. Behind the conversations that come alive on the other side of night, sliding into DMs. In casual flirtation turning into somber consolation. Soul connection fizzing out with the revelation of truth. After every rejection. Always the same question. Is it my disability? Desire stalks me like an old muse. She watches every story that I post on Instagram but forgets to wish me on my birthday. When will I receive my gift? Physical, emotional, fantastical. Anything will do. But you are never satiated, are you? No, but that doesn’t mean I should not be offered a drink. They say for people to love you, you have to first love yourself. I LOVE MYSELF. I really do. I have written clearly on social media how much I love myself. Not once but a thousand times. Repeating the proclamations of self-love as if I have found a religion. And still, deep into the night, there is no one to kiss me. No hands wander on my body and claim to be lost. It’s all about chemistry, my dear boy. And you were never good at it. And you failed at organic chemistry. My chemicals are okay, sir. Maybe it’s physics. The angles that my body makes…must be a geometric anomaly. I will go look for a box that contains my compass. The most disappointing arguments about being unable to find love as a disabled person happens within me. But there are many who can’t find love. It’s not about disability. But. But. But…It is about disability,   a voice inside me cries. And we all agree. It might sound irrational but it is true. How can they love my body when they can’t even look at me? How can they love my body when my existence is some form of inspiration? Have you ever fucked a person because they are alive DESPITE their disability? Conversations about my love life is a black hole where friendships come to die. You will surely find someone to love one day. Woah. Thank you. You will find someone not into sex. Woah. Thank you. You will find someone. Not my friend. Not my sister. Not anybody I know. The chemistry won’t be right. It won’t work out. Woah. Thank You. I would have simply blamed my disability for this state of affairs. If only I had been confident about everything else. My body is also ill at times and somewhat dysfunctional. Imagine a product that comes with a partial guarantee of satisfaction. Better. Imagine going to a mall full of sex toys and picking up a dildo which says NO GUARANTEES, SLIGHT CHANCE OF UTI. No sober woman is going to buy that intentionally. Truth be told, I won’t buy it myself. Even if I love myself. Capitalism, baby. But there is more to it than a functional body, right? Pleasure. Intimacy. There is. Of course, there is. But have you been in a situation where you have to lecture your partner about intimacy every time you even think about lovemaking? It’s pretty boring. Like you will get tired even before you start talking about it. If you are on the same page, you can have fun. Lots of fun. But they have to first be comfortable with your body. And to be comfortable they have to be around you, don’t they? And to be around they have to treat you as an equal, right? With life, I often find myself roleplaying, till I find out that I am bad at even being a submissive. When I get hints of intimacy, I start yearning for love. When I get hints of physical attraction, I yearn for emotional connection. There is nothing in the middle. It’s nothing or everything. Maybe that’s a coping mechanism. I often console myself by saying I am emotionally very attractive. All kinds of people come seeking my attention. Straight and gay, men and women, single and married. But aren’t many of us disabled people that way? Meaning not people, but safe spaces for the able-bodied world to heal. Unpaid, temporary spaces. Devoid of any furniture. Replaceable. It hurts. There is a bitterness that seeps into you when you are constantly shamed for who you are. And disabled people are shamed in a number of ways. Through exclusion. Through segregation. Through justifications. It’s the justifications which hurt the most because you internalize them. Why would they be friends with me? Why would they love me? Why would they even care about my existence? Over the years, I have made peace with everything. Someone doesn’t like me. I understand. Someone doesn’t love me. I understand. Someone doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I understand. Someone wants to use me emotionally. I understand. Someone doesn’t care. I understand. The violence of having to understand. There is an underlying violence to this peace. A violence that produces no visible blood or wounds but eats away your soul to an extent that you pretend to love yourself, you pretend to be hopeful, you pretend that everything is alright. What else do you want me to do? Fall apart and cry in front of the world, asking them the question they will never answer — Is it my disability? Abhishek Anicca is a writer, poet and disability rights activist. He has an Mphil in Women's & Gender Studies and a PhD in procrastination.

Do You Dare Confess Your One Sided Love?

He loves someone else, but he doesn't mind me loving him in this one-sided fashion.

If I ask if you’ve ever been a one-sided lover, your answer would surely be yes, and if I just tweak the question a little bit and ask you whether someone else has ever been your one-sided lover, your answer would again be a yes. There's a high probability that someone must've loved us one-sidedly, but never mustered the courage to express it, and eventually suppressed it within themselves. Every once in a while, throughout our lives, we also slip into a one sided love for someone. It’s not necessarily a one time thing, it can happen, again and again.  So, this tale starts with me loving someone one-sidedly and them having that same kind of feeling – of one-sided love – for someone else! If that were not enough, one gentleman who had been loving me in this one-sided manner for long, decided to express it to me around the same time. His confession bore no results as he was married and I don't get involved with married people.  But yes, I did hear him out properly, on the condition that he wouldn't expect anything from me. He agreed. Many a time, just expressing the love you have for someone makes you feel lighter.  This happened to him too. He said that he had been carrying this burden for a very long time and by sharing it with me, he felt a lot better, lighter. To tell the truth, I never thought that he liked me. Hence, I was quite surprised and even happy to know about it. He had all the qualities that I like in a man, he was sensitive and tried to understand what others had to say. I told him that if he had said the same things to me before getting married, then there could've been a chance. But now, there's no hope. He heard this regretfully. He used to think, he said, that if he had confessed his love to me, then he might have lost me as a friend which he didn't want to happen. We are still friends. I respect his feelings, but have clearly stated that I don't feel the same about him. This is not the first instance when somebody has expressed their one-sided love for me. Another friend of mine did the same. But in such cases when I can't reciprocate the feeling, I try to be as clear as I can and also keep in mind that nothing changes in my behaviour towards them. If they are my friends, I make sure our friendship does not get affected.  Coming to my one-sided love story. Like I said before, I know this ordeal, I have been through it. I got to know this gentleman through a dating app. I fell for him even without meeting him, and was confused about how to tell him about my feelings. The last gentleman's courage at confessing his one-sided love had given me some courage. I asked myself, what might be the worst outcome of my confession? He might block me. I mustered all the courage I had and asked him to meet me. Quite contrary to my expectations, he agreed! I met him and spent some time with him and tried, in an indirect way, to express some of my feelings. After reaching home, I got caught with the feeling that I should not leave anything unclear. I messaged him saying "I like you very much". I didn’t receive a reply, but he didn't block me either. We both know that we don't want to live with each other, he loves someone else, but he doesn't mind me loving him in this one-sided fashion. We do greet each other once in a while and whenever I am missing him, I drop in a text saying, "I miss you". What difference does it make whether he loves me or not, I love him and that's enough for me. Believe me when I say this that confessing my feelings to him gave me a sense of calm which was missing for a very long time. Whatever irritability I had gathered into myself because of keeping my feelings buried, now vanished.  So what are you waiting for? Confess your one-sided love, but do it with care. The concerned person shouldn't get the message that you expect the same kind of love that you have for them, from them. Another thing is that once you've confessed, you should be ready for all kinds of reactions from the other person, though it depends on their age as well. For instance, all the people I have spoken about, me included, have all crossed the age of 30. And we are also friends. Maybe if we had to deal with the same situation in our teenage years, we would have acted differently, but now we know something about how one should express one’s one-sided love. We’ve understood the difference between expressing the love we have and expecting the other person to just immediately fall in love with us because we opened up about our feelings before them.  So, express your love but don't forcefully pursue the person or make them feel uncomfortable. If a friend of yours confesses their love, then don't get agitated, listen to them. After all, they fell in love with you after discovering something good in you. Don't treat them like a criminal.  As the poet Firaq Gorakhpuri writes, "Koi Samjhe To Ek Baat Kahun, Ishq Taufeeq Hai Gunaah Nahi." (If someone were to understand, I might say That love is wisdom, not a crime)   Kashish deeply values the relationships in her life. She loves to be by herself and prefers to spend most of her time this way. She loves stories, poems and ghazals very much. She believes that every person’s life is a story by itself.

Breaking My Heart And Finding Myself

Imran on why queer break-ups are hard, but you can't lose yourself entirely in love.

I was chopping some vegetables in my small tuition center when three young boys came in. They wanted to join my classes. I asked them to come back the next day. I still remember that day when I saw Gaurav for the first time. It was the 3rd of July, 2010 and he was standing in between the other two. While he was still in class 11th, he was already 19 years old. At first glance, his eyes mesmerized me and I felt like I was floating among the clouds. I had fallen in love with him. It wasn’t just an infatuation. In a few days we started messaging each other and slowly realized that we were both in love. A few days later I noticed something peculiar. Whenever I used to thank him for something, he used to giggle a lot. So, one day I asked him about it and he said, “Let me tell you the full form of THANKS, it means Ten Hugs And Nine Kisses”. I was tongue-tied as in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the formality, the kind of morality that needed to be followed in a teacher-student relationship.


One day it was raining heavily and I had taken my scooty out for a ride. I was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and shorts. I saw some kids playing in the rain and joined them. After a few moments I saw Gaurav. He was wearing a capri and a t-shirt. He directly approached me. I asked him what was he doing there and he replied that his house was just around the corner and invited me home. I readily accepted his invitation. When I reached there I found out that his family had gone to their village. My heart was racing. He asked me whether I wanted to have water and I politely declined. Then, he sat beside me and said, “You’re my teacher just for 2 hours and after that, a friend”. I smiled and said, “Done!”

After that, he started to come closer to me. I was in the same trance as he was. My body and lips were trembling in excitement. I suddenly leapt forward and took him in my arms. My heartbeat was off the charts and we were both breathing rapidly. He tilted my head upwards and started kissing me on my lips. This was my first experience of actually kissing anyone. As we slowly made our way to the bed, it seemed my soul was more hungry than my body and I believe we were both feeling the same thing. In that moment we were just one body with two souls inhabiting it. He covered me like a sheet and his arms gave me solace. He looked closely and admired my body, and took me under his control.

it’s a chill breeze and we walk amidst it

the body desires a body to wrap itself in

the wild cold kiss of dew upon the skin

let’s wrap something for the souls to join in

 

Our lives then took off. After completing his boards he joined a graduation course from IGNOU and in the meantime I made it to the merit list for a regular course of B.Ed at a prestigious college. But this impacted Gaurav negatively and I dropped that course to be with him. He used to stay with me all day and went to his house just to sleep. His parents never objected to him staying at my place. My brother-in-law used to work in Australia, so my sister lived with us. Whenever we wanted to have some private moments, I used to take him to my sister’s empty home instead. We would watch movies, have a bath together and then I would cook for both of us. Three blissful years went by like this and then one day he told me that we will shift to Chandigarh, where he would work and I would stay with him. We were already living like a married couple when I got a call for a scholarship that I had applied for, from an NGO. I wanted the money to apply for a B.Ed course from a private university. After a lot of thought, I decided that I would let Gaurav take the scholarship instead as he was economically weaker and was interested in pursuing a course in graphic designing. He needed 1.32 lakhs for it, out of which he got 1 lakh through the scholarship. I borrowed ₹32,000 from my sister and helped him get into the 1 year diploma course of graphic designing, from a renowned institute. The course went on from 2016 to October 2017 and he became very skilled at his work.

Though he had gone ahead in life, I was still where I was when he was in class 12th. I was just a graduate while he was far ahead of me, but we were still living our lives happily.


It was the day before New Year’s Eve of 2017. When he didn’t visit me, which was unusual, I tried calling him but his phone was switched off. I panicked and rushed to his house where I found a lock at the door. In desperation I tried his mother’s number as well but that was in vain. After almost an hour, I got a WhatsApp message which had a handwritten letter which said,

“Sorry Imran. I can’t live with you as I have a lot of compulsions. Please consider making Sunny (a friend of ours) your life partner. And please don’t try to contact me again or else I’ll have to kill myself.”

I crumbled onto the floor and started crying. I felt cheated. I felt hurt. I couldn’t see or feel anything. I was left all alone. After about 12 days, I decided to build myself up and applied for the position of a teacher at Azim Premji Foundation in Uttarkashi. But this episode pushed me towards depression. My childhood had been full of hardship, and now this episode was similarly, darkening my life.


For a long time after Gaurav, I believed that I wouldn’t fall in love. It’s already quite difficult for queer people to find love and express it freely. Maybe that’s why I was so happy when I was with him. After the breakup, I concentrated on my career and today, I’m happy that I’m finally self-dependent. As my anger and pain slowly subsided, I realized that there isn’t any harm in falling in love once more or wanting to make someone else happy. But it’s equally important to keep in mind that the effort needs to be put in by both individuals in the relationship else it isn’t an equal relationship. When there’s a setback in the general life of a person i.e. job, education, etc. one can get some help from their family or friends but when it comes to falling out of a queer relationship, then it’s quite possible that family or friends wouldn’t even come to know about it. To be honest, I’m afraid someone will break my heart again but the hidden lesson after Gaurav was that even in love, we should seek equality. I shouldn’t lose my individuality so much that another person becomes my whole world. I must take care of myself as much as I would take care of them. Today I work as a writer and would like to thank Gaurav as his exit made me a self-reliant person filled with confidence.

 

Imran Khan is a qualified post graduate. He is teaching as a youth animator with professional experience for an NGO working with women empowerment and mental health. He is also a researcher, content creator (print and audio) and translator.

My Wobbly Bits: Making Friends with My New-Old Body

In my 50's, I'm rearing a kid by myself and greeting new body parts ever so frequently.


A millennial from my yoga class, whose body and backbends I love, said to me after a recent session, “I envy women who have given birth – my hip opening is never as good as yours!” I want to tell her the least my body owes me is a perfect warrior pose after all the warrior-ing my uterus has gone through. I want to tell her about my pelvic wattle hiding under that warrior pose. I want to tell her about all my wobbly bits. But I don’t, because it’s been a long time since I heard something complimentary about my body, other than “You look fit for 50,” which sounds like a consolation prize more than anything else. In my forties, my uterus went through its most spectacular innings. Two and a half decades of (reassuringly) released monthly blood clots pinnacled to a uterus ripe with a baby who exceeded full term before he was born via C-section (the overhang of which resulted in aforementioned pelvic wattle). Thus making me a how-the-fuck-did-she-do-it mother at 41. In effect, I am one of the few fifty-plus women I know who has to factor in school pickups and drops and plan travel around school holidays. While my peers bask in empty nests and house no. 3, I am rearing a 12-year-old all by myself and greeting new body parts ever so frequently. Last time I checked, my chin had grown a chin. And my thighs were wobbly and had grown dimples. I guess the stage was set when I walked out of my marriage with a four-year-old in tow. I had no time to grieve as I was busy calculating exactly how many eight-rupees-a-word articles I would need to write to make expenses and school fees. Or how much I would have to shell out in legal fees before I could wangle child support out of the other parental unit. Or how many millions of copies my books needed to sell before the 6% or 8% royalties translated into an amount that would at least buy me a year of school fees. At least I got a baby out of it, I tell myself. If life as a freelancer was rough, my uterus was going through its own journey, having been subjected to childbirth (and its aftermath) and menopause within a span of ten years (for my mother, this transition spanned 25 years). At least I no longer have to pretend to want a real job. A friend who was going through a separation at the same time found the ‘being alone’ thing overwhelming and told me I was “good at being single”. Maybe she was right. I was so busy going through the motions of survival that I did not miss a lover – steady or sporadic. My body was “closed for renovation.” At least I don’t have to show up for coitus. Of course, the thought of not having to perform in bed was liberating, but single parenting required a consistency and equanimity that made dating and career management look like a breeze. Post childbirth, my body was letting me down in ways I never expected. My backbends were now no more than the slightest arc. Extended nursing made my breasts tired and I had grown so comfortable not wearing a bra that wearing one now made me feel shackled. There was also a lump that came visiting my left breast, but turned out to be an abscess. I had more than enough reason to burn the bra. I found myself veering towards clothing that didn’t demand a bra. I avoided solids, tees or anything flimsy. For yoga, I somehow wing it with layering a spaghetti top or wearing one of my two sports bras grudgingly. I embraced sarees. There is so much a saree does for our wobbly bits. The pleats talk your belly away. The petticoat tucks in and evenly distributes belly fat, and you don’t need fancy underwear to tuck it all in. Nor do you have to worry about the pelvic wattle oozing out of your underwear. Also one can choose to show as much or as little wobble as one feels like. Or oomph, which is basically wobble that got a good name. I wonder when the past tense in the description of our bodies/skin/hair became so normalised. “I used to have great hair” or “My waistline had a good run” or “I once had a flat tummy” or “My legs had abs”. I guess we are all grieving our past bodies in some way. At least all my body parts are working. And no matter how much yoga I do, or how much I walk, my wobbly bits are here to stay. A recent revelation: I no longer had a thigh gap, so when I walked normally, the poor things were rubbing against each other, resulting in a lot of chafing. When extra moisturising/creaming/powdering didn’t help, I switched to boy shorts. By then I had already developed my goonda walk - which is basically walking like a badass with my feet at least a foot apart, turned outwards to minimise friction. I was already on the path to ageing disgracefully so this was no big deal. At least I have never had to swipe right for sex. Or love. A friend of mine once said (and I am sure she meant it in the nicest way possible), “You are not about your looks, babe!” It made me gloat over my beautiful brain for a wee bit but then it made me wonder, what if I want to be about my looks? Am I (apparently) never going to be contender in that area? Do I have to rely on my brain forever? And isn’t that too much work for the poor thing? I recently picked out on old dress (it was kind enough to still fit) to wear to a Christmas party but I noticed my cleavage now had wrinkles and looked nothing like my old cleavage. Sure, I last wore it nine years ago at my first book launch, and yes I have aged, but I hadn’t noticed my breasts had aged too. Perhaps they had acquired gravitas after all the gravity defying? I put the dress away and wore something else. Since then, I find myself staring at my cleavage in my yoga class in aadhomukhashvanasan (downward dog) and I find myself wondering - how many more wobbly bits to come? Years ago, I remember staring at my mother’s chest in hospital after her first valve replacement surgery and then her second and thinking - hmmm she will have to live with these drawings on her chest forever. I feel bad and shallow for worrying about my cleavage wrinkles so I start thinking about what’s right about my body than what isn’t. And in that moment, I become my mother. Four years ago, during a course in Dance Movement Therapy at TISS, where we dug deeper into the traumas of our mind and body and joined some dots, I met my body again. It told me it missed being loved. I realised it was always enmeshed with my life’s journey – a true survivor, a constant companion through a time intensely spent, a score keeper, as it were. I had no idea when I had chosen to unsee it, but it was never too late. I now meet and greet my wobbly bits every so often; they are as much a part of me as the parts I want the world to see. And that’s how I found my body.   Lalita Iyer is a journalist, counselor, sourdough intern and author of books for little people and big people. She exists on instagram as @partcat.

Bad Habits, Good Women: My Conversations with Nuns

Unmarried, celibate, religious – is every nun the same kind of woman? Nikhita finds out!

My grandfather believed he was a funny man. When I was a ten-year-old, he wanted to know when I would stop growing. According to him, my prospects of finding a groom taller than me were looking increasingly modest by the day. Being ten, I knew nothing about finding a groom, much less one appropriate in height. I said, Don’t worry, chacha, I’m not getting married. Chacha responded – Oho, are you going to join the convent then?   It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Malayali Christian woman in possession of a desire to remain unmarried must be in want of a convent. (My friend Sister Aquinas disagrees. This is her fifty-fifth year at the convent). At fifteen, the age when the Naomi Campbells and Kate Mosses of the world were scouted by modelling agencies, I was greeted by a pair of nuns who (in some sudden and terrible lapse of judgement, I assumed) felt I’d be a good fit for the religious vocation. I was mildly upset at this proposition. Did I look so prosaic that the only thing I was getting scouted for was the nunnery? I wince now, at my insufferable teenager self. In the second year of college, a soon-to-be seminarian friend suggested I join the convent in order to give him company and proceeded to die laughing at what he believed was a very original joke. Little did he know that me joining the convent was the oldest running joke in my family. Last week, he called me. Among other things he told me about his new friend who was a nun. She had turned forty over the weekend and they had Chinese for lunch at the seminary that day. Her treat, he said. In the category of unmarried woman, nuns reigned supreme and so when a child announced she did not want to get married for reasons she herself did not know, humour was naturally found in imagining the ‘rebel’ child-turned-woman at a convent.  If you weren’t going to marry a man, well you must marry God. Single woman? What’s that?  When I relate these accounts to Sister Celine, she cackles and lets out with a sigh, Deivame nanni (God, thanks). It appears she is relieved I did not join the convent.  In 1964 Sister Celine or Celine Sister as I know her left for the convent with five of her classmates. Five from my class of fifteen. We are all nuns today. I ask her what made her want to become a nun. Well, she said, they held a camp on the last day of 10th class. And some of us signed up for it. We knew we were signing up to become nuns but we were also children. So even our best understanding about this commitment was limited. She adds – I too felt like marriage was not for me but that was just at the back of my head. It never occurred to me that I was becoming a nun to escape anything. I spoke to Celine Sister and other nuns with a very straightforward intention: poking my nose into their lives. The Malayalam films I grew up watching cast plain but pleasant women to play their nuns. The nuns on screen all had a certain pained look on their faces. Maybe because they were permanently required to be mild and maternal in a Mother Mary-esque manner. In the childhood relic Ayyappantamma Neyyappam Chuttu (2000), the plump Mother Superior dotes over an orphan child with a very adult name, Monappan. The nun in Priyam (2000) earnestly assists the romance of her best friend. But the nuns I know in real life have little interest in playing mumsy or cupid.  My catechism teacher, Sister Beatrice, drove around in her little grey Alto doing errands that, to this day, I know nothing about. The one time she beckoned me warmly towards her I felt special and hoped she would mother me like the film nuns. But we parted ways shortly after she gave me a little talk about the inappropriate length of my shorts. I count this as my first heartbreak. Then there was Sister Grace, determined to spot any kala-pila between the boys and girls and diligently report it to our parents. At least she was honest in that she told us she would do exactly this. She was also prone to poking my ribs from behind with her bony fingers every time I nodded off during Sunday morning mass. I remember many of the nuns from my childhood as strict women with pursed lips because this is all I knew about them. Like the people who made the films I watched, I too had no idea who nuns were when they weren’t a mass in habits. I was always too terrified to ask them. Being asked to go join the convent always felt like a taunt because the picture painted in our jokes was that women in the convent led bland and uninspired lives. Therefore being sent to the convent would prove effective in curbing whatever unruliness denounced marriage in the first place. If I spoke to the women I wasn’t going to grow up to be, what would I learn? So, I set out to talk to some nuns, and maybe understand a very specific life I might have been expected to lead had I been a young woman in Kerala some decades ago. First, I spoke to Sister Aquinas. Then to Celine Sister. Later to Sister Vimala and others. Now I know two school teachers, a doctor, a nurse, a social worker, the co-owner of a chayakkada and a woman in love.  Celine Sister herself is a retired Zoology professor. This year she turns seventy-four. But she tells me that she feels as young as sixty. Do I sound old to you? She asks me over call. I panic a bit but manage a near neutral No…? Exactly! I can feel her beam at me through the phone. That’s what they all tell me. Already I have fallen for this woman.  Occasionally Celine Sister interrupts our conversations to remark, But you must already know that about me, no? She is referring to her teaching years and the many adults I know who have studied under her. But the truth is, I know very little about Celine Sister as a teacher. I knew her for her frequent presence at funerals in the family. Weddings not so much. I knew her as chatty but not with me. I knew her only as a nun and of that identity too, I knew very little. Later, on another call, I ask the seventy-year-old Sister Aquinas at what point she started thinking of herself as an older woman. Well, not until now, she says with some amusement. I don’t consider myself old. But if you think I am, I suppose I must be old, alle?  Feeling very sheepish, I make a quick and clumsy U-turn into the past. When Sister Aquinas talks about herself, she too shies away from any categorical understanding of her life. I ask her about the motivations behind her decision to become a nun. Did I not want to get married? Is that what you’re asking me? she asks me.  I believe I became a nun because God called me to it. If I simply wanted to avoid marriage, I could not have remained long within the Church. Girls are confident now. There are many women who neither join the convent nor marry. They don’t have time for either. They might be happy. They might not be happy. I don’t know. I can tell you how it has been for me. In Kerala, and I’m sure elsewhere too, the word ‘Sister’ can be employed in an abundance of situations. In hospitals Sisters are nurses who look after you. At the church they are the nuns who look over you. More infrequently, the term ‘sister’ is actually used to address one’s sibling. Maybe because ‘sister’ is a word loaded with meanings of caregiving and kinship, I was given to assumptions about the maternal bearing of nuns. Or maybe because of how easy it is to think about women in terms of these divisions – married and single, caring and uncaring.  As, the sisters – the nuns -  spoke of themselves they slipped effortlessly out of the girdle of maternal instincts regularly expected of women, whether they reproduce or not. Celine Sister is a teacher first and everything else after that – I know this sounds unbelievable but when I step onto the podium of my classroom, I am possessed by some spirit. Outside the classroom I am a friend to my students. Inside it they are not my biggest fans but the feeling is mutual. When I bring up her nun-hood, she expertly guides me back into her classroom. It reminded me of an incident from college when a friend told a professor that she was like a mother to all of us. She winced and shot back with lots of feelings, Yuck. In our conversations, Sister Aquinas frequently returns to her friendships both inside and outside the congregation. My companions and I travel together. They have accompanied me across the country. And I feel like all the travelling I’ve done is nothing short of a blessing. It comes with my vocation. She adds, You know, I have grown to like being an older nun. It means more respect, more esteem and I’m not mad at all. She speaks fondly of her friends back home, many of them who continued to visit her even after she left for the convent. Nothing much has changed. They have their families. And I too have my work. But we have our childhoods in common.  No two nuns were alike. But nearly all the nuns flitted uncomfortably at the mention of that sinister creature, the single woman. Did you not feel confident as a young woman? I ask Sister Aquinas in response to her feelings about girls now. Her response is quick – It did require confidence to leave home and join the convent. Even today. But being a single woman comes with consequences. From your own family and from society. Frankly, it’s an uphill battle. Besides, it was not ‘single’ I was trying to be. None of the stories lingered even accidentally over their single women aka unmarried statuses. Their stance is a very Yes, we are unmarried. And what about it? And I too begin wondering – Yeah, no? What about it? And yet, in another universe, Celine Sister might not have joined the convent, she says. All my friends were going. I just went along. It was just like school. Except we studied to become nuns along with other subjects. Homesickness in the first month. Crying to sleep through the nights. The occasional parent or sibling who visited her. She tells me she was never particularly pious. I was never the girl who went for mass regularly. Nobody knew me for my godliness. But in the end, I was the one who ended up a nun!  She tells me she loves being a nun because it is an extension of her teaching.  Some people cannot see that I really do enjoy my job, even at my age, Sister Celine says. I am now in my seventies but I keep myself busy. I sew, I mend and I garden. I still teach and still have duties to discharge. And you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing.  For Sister Aquinas too, being a nun exists alongside her line of work as a social worker.. In fact, the religious vocation often enables and is a conduit for her profession. Born into an aristocrat family, Sister Aquinas laughs when she tells me she did not want to make the rich any richer. She quickly adds, now don’t go write about me like I’m some communist nun. It’s a cliche, she says, but I became a nun because I really did have a calling Celine Sister is a Mohanlal fan. When I was a hostel warden I used to take my kids to the movies nearly every weekend, she says. And we never missed anything with Mohanlal in it. Later I ask seventy-year-old Sister Aquinas to pick between Mammooty and Mohanlal. Neither. Sathyan is my hero. What about Prem Nazir? I ask her. She briefly considers the option. No, not him. He was always just walking around singing. The Malayalam word for nun is kanyasthree (കന്യാസ്ത്രീ). It is one of those words which when translated into English tend to sound somewhat abysmal — virgin woman. I’m petrified to bring up celibacy in conversation. But I attempt to make a clean segue from Mohanlal and Sathyan to their sexual desires and fantasies growing up. Sister Aquinas says she won’t lie. I went for confession. And if that didn’t work, I would cry. Sometimes when I was overcome with feelings, I went into the chapel and had a good cry. It always made me feel better.  Sister Celine tells me, It’s normal that we too have human feelings. But the point is that I overcome all obstacles. She says that Mother Mary is her go to lady. Sister Aquinas recalls an early interaction with her mother before joining the convent. My mother took me to a statue of Mother Mary outside our church and told me I couldn’t cling onto her anymore. Mother Mary would be my substitute mother. And that’s how it’s been since then. Sister Aquinas insists that she would not have remained in the convent if it weren’t for the older nuns who understood her as a young girl. We are all companions in the convent, old and young, says Sister Celine. You know, we are all busy women. More than you’d imagine. Pockets of friendship formed in their brief interactions with the mutual understanding that companionship was nearly always temporary owing to their vocation. Sister Vimala, though, made very few friends in the convent. She left the convent aged fifty-two because of the abusive treatment meted out to her there. It was hard for me to live within a system of rigid rules, cruelty and jealousy. With a lawyer backing her and substantial pension to live on she was ready for battle. The first time she expressed her desire to leave the convent her companions tried coaxing her out of it. The second time, she was taken to a psychiatrist who deemed her mentally unfit. Initially, my mother stood by me even when others frowned upon my decision. But when the situation worsened, even my ties with amma came loose.  Backlash was inevitable and nobody had to warn her. I debated everything and endured all hardships for years before I arrived at my decision. Even then this was a challenging migration and continues to remain so. But nobody can tell me I made a mistake. I was a lecturer alongside and had earnings from that. I know women who want to leave but cannot since they have no jobs or families to support them outside.  Though no longer a nun, she still likes to go by the name Sister Vimala. People kept forgetting I had left the convent even when I walked among them in churidar and sarees, out of the nun’s habit. Even my lawyer, the day we finalised the legalities of the process and she was leaving, waved at me from her car and said, “Goodbye and good luck, Sister Vimala!” So I tell everyone I meet to call me Sister Vimala. I like it that way. I always knew about the politics within the convent. I had studied in a college run by nuns. The jealousy, the hierarchies. And the rules have always been different for men and women. Despite these misgivings, she became a nun because she knew God was guiding her through it. Today, I don’t go to church. I don’t say the rosary. I don’t confess. I’ve put my religious life behind me but I am still  a spiritual person. I turn to God for comfort even today as I speak out against the church. A man in my hometown left his religious habit. He was welcomed home by his family with open arms. Even my father, who as a young man joined the seminary only to be booted soon after he was caught stealing and drinking Communion wine, today lavishly boasts about his escapades. While many women in my family secretly empathise with Sister Vimala, as my mother does in our kitchen conversations, they too easily dismiss her in public.  Sister Vimala uses the word ‘escape’ to describe her departure from the convent. She lives alone now in a flat she bought on loaned money and her pension. The first night after you leave the convent is the most frightening, she tells me. It almost makes you want to turn back. So I always tell the women I meet, “My doors are open to all seeking a temporary abode.” Sister Vimala chose to remain unmarried. But this wasn’t the case for Lillykutty, formerly Sister Alice.  For Lillykutty, love led her out of the convent. The young nun eloped with a rubber plantation worker who had been hired by the church. And they never looked back. They now run a popular chayakkada in my hometown. A distant relative, Gladys aunty, too found love as a nun. Forty-two and working as a nurse in Italy, she a lovely older gentleman among her patients swept her off her feet and out of her nun-life too. Back home people love to tee-hee and tell me Gladys aunty-kku lottery adichu, edi (Gladys aunty hit the jackpot). With her lover’s passing, she came into considerable wealth which she now spends on family back in Kerala on her occasional visits from Italy.  I suppose there’s no word for gold digger in Malayalam. But the adults around me are keen on making up for it with their elaborate descriptions of Gladys aunty and her sayipp (സായിപ്പ്, white man).  As a child I knew nothing about being a single woman when I blurted out to people that I did not want to marry. But it turns out that when they joked about me joining the convent, the adults around me knew far less about the women who were nuns, than they did about me. Like the lives of women in a nunnery, the lives of those who left one were also not at all alike. Celine Sister tells me that she’s looking out into her garden of roses while talking to me. Maybe this is my post-retirement hobby. I’m not bragging but I wish you could see the roses.  She adds, We know each other now. Call me sometimes like this and we can talk. Now we’re friends, she assures me. In the Malayalam film Jan.E.Man (2021) by Chidambaram, during their father’s funeral, a middle-aged nun is accused by her brother of abandoning her siblings and joining the convent after their mother’s death. She is silent and refuses to apologise. Later it is revealed that in his will, her father has left her some assets should she ever leave the convent and start life afresh. Someone who imagines that a woman does not have to be only one thing, and certainly not one thing forever. This moment in the film evokes my conversations with the nuns. I set out to write about older nuns but I ended up with stories of women who, each one of them, had the most prosperous personal lives I had encountered in a while. They had rich experiences before they became nuns and even after and beyond it. It seemed foolish to imagine them as an amorphous mass in their habits of grey or brown or salmon.  Being a nun, Sister Celine told me, is another way of living. It’s actually just that. Now ask me something else.  Nikhita Thomas is still looking for someone to bully her into writing more. She loves a long list of ladies. Her blog, if it arrives some day, will be named Finding Franny. And writing will magically happen on it.

The Case Of The Missing Butterflies In My Tummy

I thought if I gave myself a push, I’d fall into the hormone pool everyone was swimming in.

Anu said she’d spent most of fifth and sixth standard trying to twist Irfan into falling for her. In seventh standard, her plan came to fruition and she was the first of us to be in a relationship. It was two months of stolen glances between them and jealous giggles between us in Celine Miss’s class, before the PT sir – Nizar sir, caught the two of them walking on the boys’ corridor and took them aside to “talk”. There was no getting past Nizar sir, we knew, but A was sneaky and she was confident she could do it. We weren’t sure if her boyfriend could, though. He was an always bored looking fellow, and I can’t remember if that was her doing or not. He had the mysterious, jet-black long hair, lanky bad boy charm, sans the “bad”. The lunch bell rang and Anu came back with her normally bouncy hair swinging sadly on her navy blue pinafore-d shoulders, and we offered speeches of condolences before the next period’s teacher came in. We assured her that she would get someone better, maybe in the ninth standard. Two years passed and most of us disbanded and formed smaller groups of three. I’d forgotten Anu’s quest for romance, mainly because I was too busy focussing on my own. Naveed was popular, nerdy, curly-haired and armed with dimples so deep, I could dig wells into them. I’d stare at him in Maths class but not English. I’d imagine writing long love letters in my best handwriting telling him how much I liked him. I’d whine to my friends about how attractive the newly sprouting podi meesha on his face was. I never imagined being with him, going on dates with him or kissing him, though my friends and all the English movies I watched told me I should be doing exactly that. I thought that maybe, like most of my life, I had starting trouble and that if I gave myself a good, hard push, I’d fall into the colourful hormone pool everyone was swimming in. I wasn’t going to rob myself of the quintessential “teenager experience” of loving and hoping and dreaming because of stage fright. Excitement is not the word for what my body went through when I thought about being with Naveed. I convinced myself that I wasn’t feeling any butterflies in my stomach because they were still sleepy caterpillars, waiting to grow. So I wrote him a letter. On a white sheet of paper, I wrote what I imagined I should’ve felt when I thought about kissing him. And I kept doing this. Kept repeating this pattern of thinking about how “normal” people would react to attractive classmates, hot celebrities and the likes and applied it to how I thought and conversed about him. The caterpillars in my stomach never got a chance to evolve. I let them sit there, waiting their turn. *** Two relationships, four years and a move to a coconut tree-less Bangalore later, I got into a relationship that felt like a warm morning in an otherwise cold November. We were best friends and when I asked (shouted) him out while we were stuck in traffic in a very loud Electronic City, it felt like I was asking him to be my bestest best friend, instead of the traditional boyfriend. He said yes, and we did pretty much the same things we did before – fight, joke, help with assignments and share food—except now we held hands. I was happy but my caterpillars showed no signs of change, and they seemed to be growing in number. It was around this time that Bangalore was opening up a rainbow-coloured world to me, and in my second year of college, I learned about asexuality. I discovered then that actually my friends and I thought about intimacy in very different ways. Until then, I thought everybody felt the way I did when I thought about sleeping with someone – squirmy. I used to pin my feelings to my Indian upbringing where we never spoke about sexual health or sexuality or anything of the sort. It surprised me how easily the term ‘asexual’ fit itself inside my stomach and made me feel warm and full, like I’d just eaten a bowl of kanji. Finally, I felt free to tailor my own fantasies and not fit myself into hand-me-down ideas of fantasy. I felt like I was in love, not with somebody, but with this newfound knowledge of myself. My caterpillars had finally grown into blue butterflies that made me giggle and occasionally hiccup. I was slightly jolted out of my Shah Rukh Khan’s heroine moment when I realised I had a boyfriend who wasn’t ace.  I wasn’t sure about breaking up with him because he was also my best friend. But I knew I had to pursue this part of myself as devotedly and persistently as Anu did Irfan. Sitting at Tata Cha, our conversation kept going in circles like the rings of tea in my cup. He was convinced that we could make it work. I was confident that we would be losing something in the process. *** This was almost two years ago. And although I’m not sure if I’ve learnt a whole lot about myself, I know I’ve gotten more comfortable with who I am. The space around me doesn’t feel balmy and pressurised, like the inside of a pressure cooker. Rather, when I spend time with myself, it’s like watching a good K-drama with some ramen after a hard day. I stepped out of that hormone pool I had forced myself into five years ago and honestly, I’ve never felt freer. Maybe cycling’s more my thing. Who knows? Tinaz is usually found looking up at clouds or doing unpaid promo for Korean dramas on Netflix. She loves 2am chais and constantly updating her 'To Read' list. She writes occasionally at https://sosimplyunordinary.wordpress.com/ 

See-Saw Sexual Confidence Ka!

What people said brought their sexual confidence up or down!

Our sexual confidence yaaniki how confident we feel about our sexual selves, especially in moments of sexual intimacy can be quite the seesaw ride - kabhi upar toh kabhi neeche. We spoke to a bunch of peeps who shared what shifts their sexual confidence ka seesaw up or down.

Things people said brought their sexual confidence down!

People bragging about their sex skills: Rajan, a 29-year-old Delhi-based media professional, says that when he was 14, he heard the cool dudes in his class boast about how they had sex with their 20-centimetre-long penises and came 6 times in half an hour. “I hadn’t had sex myself yet, but I did have a girlfriend, and I thought that I would have to perform like that too if I wanted to impress her. It bothered me, because I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to do that. I realised only much later that they were lying.” Many men point out how the bizarre expectations set by porn and friends create a false impression about what sex should be like. And when it doesn’t match up to those expectations, that can affect them. Hearing others rate the sex they had: Some people think sex is all about the ratings, proficiency and positions, and less about actual intimacy, sharing and feeling good. These people are all about trying the hottest new positions, or have ranked each of their ex-lovers on a numerical hierarchy (“Oh he was so good, a total 10!”). Unfortunately, this also leads to a culture that makes you worry about hitting checklists rather than enjoying yourself. Feeling unpopular or undesirable: Danny, a 28-year-old screenwriter, says he feels people who are asked out by others often must be sexually confident, and remarks that this popularity can make the less sought-after people around them feel under-confident. “I was interested in two girls one after the other, both of them ended up flirting with my friend instead of me. The second time, I thought I would never ever get my confidence back in my life.” Your sexual preferences being seen as weird: For some people, discovering fetishes that go against societal norms could deplete their sexual confidence. Some men, for example, like playing submissive roles in bed (or being physically dominated by their partners), while society generally tells men that they’re supposed to be more dominant. If you feel society looks down on your sexual preferences or fetishes, it can make you less confident. An uncommunicative partner: Lots of people report feeling under-confident with partners who are unwilling to discuss the specifics of what they really want in bed. They say it’s frustrating because they would feel much more confident if they were doing what they knew their partners liked. A partner faking orgasms: The knowledge that your partner isn’t being fully honest with you about their enjoyment, or that they’ve been faking orgasms, can be even worse for your confidence than not talking about it at all. “I had been with a girl for two years, and in our last fight, she said she had never had an orgasm with me,” says Dinakaran, a 30-year-old lawyer, “If she could fool me for so long, how will I ever know if anybody is telling the truth [about their enjoyment of a sexual encounter]? It destroyed my confidence in a lot of ways.” Faking orgasms is also a sure-fire way to ensure that your partner will never know what actually works for you. General confidence: In the documentary Ask the Sexpert, there’s a scene where a patient is describing his symptoms to the 91-year-old Bombay-based sexologist Dr Mahender Watsa. While he’s supposed to be explaining his biological problem of erectile dysfunction, he starts explaining that he’s also facing financial problems, which is affecting his self-esteem. Dr Watsa points out that the patient has already identified that there’s a link between his general confidence and his sexual performance. Many men report that they feel much less sexually confident when they aren’t feeling good about themselves in life.Be kind, don’t rewind: A lot of people mentioned finding it frustrating and depleting to be compared to their partner’s previous lovers. The general consensus seems to be that nobody enjoys picturing their partner with someone else, especially when it comes to sex. Insensitive partner/s: Priyanka, a 27-year-old artist from Bangalore, recalls that her ex had difficulty maintaining an erection. He told her it was because she wasn’t attractive enough, and this affected her severely. She later found out from a mutual friend that he had had the same problem with another woman they both knew, and was merely shifting the blame onto her. It’s not uncommon to find people trying to offload their own problems and make them the responsibility of others, and it can be particularly hurtful and depleting. Other person going starfish during sex: “Having a girl go starfish on you is the worst thing that can ever happen,” says Sunish, a Calcutta-based lawyer. By “going starfish”, he’s referring to when the person you’re with goes absolutely still and unresponsive, like an immobile starfish or “dead fish”. He says it leaves him completely unsure of what to do next. (Maybe the best thing to do is stop and ask your partner how they’d like to proceed.) Losing your erection: Purab, 34, says, “My erection is directly tied to my confidence. If I feel ki kuch theekh nahi ho raha hai, it affects my confidence in that moment, and then I lose my erection. Losing your erection is again embarrassing in itself, so that makes me lose confidence even more.” He’s learnt to back off and make a joke or pause for a bit when this happens.  

Things people said brought their sexual confidence up!

Knowing you fit beauty standards: Nina, a public policy student in Mumbai, draws her sexual confidence from having “conventionally attractive” features as defined by pop culture. “I’ve always been thin, and we’re told that’s beautiful. I know it’s wrong to believe it, but it’s what society believes, and you internalise it too.” She says she would find her own confidence depleting if she looked the opposite of prevailing standards of beauty, and is aware of how such norms can hurt people whose looks don’t fit within it. Compliments: Compliments boost everybody’s confidence! Siddhra, a Bangalore-based fashion designer in her twenties, says she feels confident when people compliment her lips or butt, while Manush recalls his fourth girlfriend telling him he had a big penis, which was a compliment he hadn’t received until then. He says it was a nice surprise. Having more sex and getting better at it: “When I started having sex, I was extremely confident in my own abilities. I watched all the porn there was, and if my penis went inside the vagina, I thought I had done everything. Then I started to have sex with a few more people, and the more I learnt about the real female anatomy, I realised I was awful at it. The more sex you have, the more you understand that there are different things that work for different people. Your own sexual knowledge and repertoire of tricks grows, and you learn to read cues better. This makes you better at sex, and, in turn, increases your sexual confidence.” Manush, a civil servant in his thirties, says building experience with a partner is a great way to boost your confidence. “You’re both learning and unlearning each other’s bodies together, there’s no pressure, so you have the room to learn what works without feeling embarrassed.” Feeling comfy in your body: Barney, a 28-year-old lawyer, says, “I took a martial arts class, and some other courses that made me feel in tune with my body. This made me comfortable in my own skin, but it also made me more comfortable touching other people, sexually and non-sexually: I was aware of my own touch and its strength, and less worried about whether my touch was threatening.” Discovering your kinks : Some people say that discovering their own preferences actually gave them a boost, if they weren’t considered embarrassing or shameful. Disha, a student, says she discovered that she liked being “spanked” a few months into her relationship, and that knowledge made her feel like a more adventurous being, which made her feel more sexually confident too. Hearing a partner moan: “For me, my sexual confidence is tied entirely to my partner’s reactions,” says 30-year-old Vipreet, a web analyst, “So smiles, moving her head from side to side and jerky movements are all good signs, moans are great and nothing like an orgasm. There’s no other metric [to measure your sexual skill], is there? If I see that my partner is enjoying herself, my confidence shoots up, and vice versa.” Signs that someone is into you: Many people derive pleasure from their partners appreciating them, or other signs that they find them attractive. Mridula, a 20-year-old student, says that she feels more confident when the guy she’s with seems visibly enamoured by her, which she notices through facial expressions (like widened eyes), bodily indicators (rapid breathing), or moans and groans. “I feel more in power, like I can have more fun, toy with them and tease a bit,” she says. Both of these feel like rather healthy and positive things to base your sexual confidence on: after all, feeling good about yourself, and feeling that your partner had a good time having sex with you, are two of the most important aspects of sex, and are actually great ways to know you’re doing it right. Vanity metrics: And then finally, there are those false flags that give you misplaced confidence you shouldn't have. Vipreet, who believes that a woman’s visible or audible cues are the only real metrics that matter, points out that some people look to what he calls “vanity metrics” for their sexual confidence. He says that these are useless indicators, like the “number of thrusts per minute”, which may build confidence in your prowess at sex as a competitive sport, but only if you know nothing about sexual pleasure. Manush points to another “vanity metric” he used in his youth. “I was having sex with a much younger woman. Really bad sex, in hindsight. Unprotected, with me coming on her belly and thighs. I kind of was “proud" in a strange chauvinistic way that I could control my ejaculation without protection. It was strange and stupid.” While such vanity metrics may boost some people’s confidence, it’s important to derive your sexual confidence from the things that actually give you and your partner mutual pleasure.

Stars In My Eyes ft. Meena Kumari

6 people tell us why the Tragedy Queen mattered to them on her birthday!


Cinema icons have an effect on our lives and cultures far beyond their screen presence. What truly makes them ‘icons’ and not just ‘stars’ is how they somehow forge an intimate relationship with us. They bring alive our fantasies and open a world of possibilities for us. Through them, we find a language for our many emotions and experiences - dreams, love, friendship, heartbreak, conflict, queerness, and expression of our most private selves.

One such icon from the legacy of Hindi cinema is Meena Kumari whose birthday falls on August 1.

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She continues to be remembered for her iconic performances, songs, and her poetry. Her poignant portrayal of loneliness, desire, and melancholia in films like Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) and Pakeezah (1972) earned her the title of ‘Tragedy Queen’ 


In a song from Benazir (1964), she sings, 


Hum mein apna ilaaj-e-dard-e-dil karna bhi aata hai ... 

hum aaise jeene waale hai jinhe marna bhi aata hai

(I know how to heal my broken heart,

I live knowing how to die as well)


It was said that her life was not very different from her on-screen persona. 

She also became a queer icon between the 60s-80s. Her songs, films, and even her poetry offered many queer people a language to express their love, desire and pain that was often rejected by the world.

We asked some people what Meena Kumari meant to them. Here’s what they told us:

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Aditya, 24, Queer, Gay


I think tragedy is an overarching theme in Meena Kumari’s public image – her films and her personal life. For me, I was most drawn to how she performed this tragedy.

When I was young, I didn’t have the language to identify as queer or to frame my own experiences. Still, I had this connection with Meena Kumari. I felt like her body was expressing what I was feeling. She gave me, like, a surrogate language to perform my own grief.

As I grew older and discovered her poetry, I felt I was discovering Meena Kumari as a person, beyond an actress on screen. That’s when I realised, wow that’s why she’s so good [on screen]. That feeling on screen came from her whole persona.

There is an amazing song which she has sung and written called Chaand Tanha. I’m obsessed with it! It’s about loneliness. Not just of one person but of other people too, of couples who may be together but still feel lonely. It’s like a collection of all the loneliness in the world. So huge and grand!  

Chand Tanha - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_L8eFA5a6c

Just like how you look, how you sit and how you lie down, how you grieve is also a language. Letting out grief doesn’t mean you can’t give it a form. By giving your vulnerability a form, you’re honouring it. It’s not disrespectful or fake. Someone like Meena Kumari helps you open up a little more and think about your emotions or vulnerability differently.

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Maanik Mahna, 57, Gay


​​I was six and a half years old on March 31st, 1972 when she passed away. I still remember that day’s front-page article in the Hindustan Times. It said “Meena Kumari Dead” and there was a picture of her from Pakeezah running away from the nikah (marriage) that Raj Kumar had proposed to her. There was a connection I felt instantly. I’m almost 57 now but I still remember it. I wonder, sometimes, is it like a past life connection?

If Meena-ji and I were in the same generation, I wouldn’t mind being her lover. There would be nobody else I would turn heterosexual for. 

At 14, when I listened to a record of Meena-ji’s poetry “I write, I recite”, I was completely mesmerised by her voice. It was also the beginning of my tryst with Urdu shayari. I would attribute my poetic sensibilities to her.

If you look at Pakeezah, the film is, of course, pure poetry. But it’s also the tale of a woman who desperately wants to love and be loved, and cannot achieve it because she’s a tawaif (courtesan). Her personal life was also an eternal quest of finding love and fulfilment. I think a lot of gay men identify with the tragedy of that. It’s said she wanted it to be engraved on her grave that she ended life with a broken song with a broken heart, but not a single regret.

I don’t really have a favourite memory of Meena-ji. I think she lives with me. My partner who lives with me sometimes says he feels a presence in the room all the time. And I say, yeah it very well could be Meena-ji. There's not a day when I don’t remember her, watch a YouTube video about her, or read something about her.

Even with the film I’m making on her life, I just want to thank her because I feel that her spirit, her rooh, is making this possible. On June 3rd, 2022, I finally got an appointment with her niece and elder sister in Amristar. Even with her sister I feel like I am surrounded by connections of a lifetime.

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Inderjit Negi, 41, Queer Male


​​I saw her first in the film called Chitralekha on DD National. It’s a period film where she plays the role of the prostitute, a sex worker. And, opposite her is Ashok Kumar, who is a sadhu, a rishi, a saint, somebody who has renounced the world.  The film has the song Sansaar se bhaage phirte ho. It’s about accepting yourself, your queerness, your body, its needs and its hunger. Hunger for food and hunger for other physical needs. I am not really a die-hard Meena Kumari fan, but these multiple layers in her songs are why I feel connected to her. 

Sansaar Se Bhaage…: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17kq4TkpeUE 

She got some of the most tragic and poignant lyrics. There’s another song Hum tere pyaar mein sara aalam kho baithe hai. She says that I have completely lost myself, because I am so devotedly in love with you. She says love is like a cage and that you put me in it, but I have started loving being in this cage because it is with you. It’s very much like that teenage love when you’re unable to express it because you’re already dealing with your sexuality and all that. That’s the relatedness, I feel. 

Hum tere pyaar mein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onb3sBz3xV4 

If you watch Pakeezah, she has a dual identity where she dresses up one way for the world and differently when she is alone. That again draws a lot of parallels with the queer community. You dress up in drag, you’re laughing, you’re entertaining, but your soul is hurting, you are unable to truly embrace yourself in front of the world because the world is judgemental. For queer people, the only way to express yourself was mostly by depending on films, film songs and film characters. The relatability with her tragedy, the films where she united with a lover – what she truly sort of gave the queer community was hope.  

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Vivek Anand, 60, Gay, CEO of The Humsafar Trust


In Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, her introduction scene is pretty late. When Guru Dutt first sees her, he starts at her feet and slowly the camera moves upwards and there’s a long shot of her – regal, royal, draped in a sari. And that expression on Guru Dutt’s face is probably the same as the millions of people who watched this scene and went “Wow! Who is this woman?” This was my introduction to Meena Kumari too.

In that film and in Pakeezah, she plays women who are yearning for love and respect. That, I feel, resonated strongly with us as gay men.  But on the other side, she’s also flamboyant, very high-camp. Just look at her costumes in Pakeezah! She displays her best self. She was not a size 0, or a sex symbol in your so-called "defined parameters", but just look at her!

Her roles were not of a queer icon, she became one. She was an icon to queer people through the 60s, 70s and 80s. I just look at her and say, "If she can, so can I".

This song Chalte Chalte Yun Hi… from Pakeezah was a gay anthem. Because that’s how we were meeting our partners – on trains, in parks, in railway stations. There were no dating apps. Way back in the 90s there was a documentary made on gay culture in London. And you saw a bunch of drag queens in a party there and they're all dancing to Chalte Chalte… She cut across barriers of caste, class, culture – she was global.

I just want to tell her: “It's been 50 years since you passed away but there's not a single day that I don't miss you. You have been a part of my existence, my life.”


Chalte Chalte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH73z7rVDqs 

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Umang Sabarwal, 30, Cis-het Woman


I've not seen Meena Kumari’s whole body of work to interpret her persona, so it was always this suna-kaha, hearsay version of her as ‘the tragedy queen’ not just in terms of her roles but also what I heard about and read of her life. I found that very endearing. I felt like she was a cultural icon of sadness.

But just a few years ago, I read excerpts of her poem on Agents Of Ishq and then my Spotify shuffle landed me on recordings of her poetry. I began listening to these recordings – of the ghazals she had written, in her own voice, and that was the moment I fell in love with her. It was the poetry, her voice and just the sadness in it.

There's a line in this Meena kumari poem called Chand Tanha Hai. She says Humsafar koi mile bhi toh kya, dono chalte rahe yahaan tanha (So what if there is a companion, they walk alone together). Unlike the popular version of sadness, a Guru Dutt kind of sadness, which was about relinquishing the world, her pain was more private and deeply poetic. This line is so beautiful. There's a lack of bitterness to it and a greater sort of beauty in accepting the sorrow that she faces. And she makes it feel like part of our lives' experience. I think she's special for different people for different reasons but this is my connection to her.

I just want to tell her you are beautiful and maybe go easy on the drinks this time! “Write more” is also something I would tell her.

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Nithin


The most common narrative in films trains us to find pleasure in union, right? But with Meena Kumari, her films are about the pleasure of being in exile in love. It’s about the love for the one who dies, the one you lose in some way.

Feminist responses – especially second wave feminist responses – to films usually talk about why women who don’t conform to society’s rules are punished. But, in an article I wrote about Meena Kumari, I suggest that as one of those women, she is actually offering that there is a pleasure tied to that punishment. 

If you look at Hindi songs around her time itself, they worked a lot with that emotion or bhaava. It followed a tradition of ghazals which were about separation and pining and yearning. I think it’s also her training, a creative force, almost. She performed songs that had that bhaava and, as a poet, wrote ghazals in turn with that bhaava also. So, this melancholia was really something she had internalised. 


Seen Zoned, IRL

It turned ‘seen’ instantly, like never before. Bundles of crackers went off in my heart.

The beauty of WhatsApp lies in the fact that it has connected me to the people whom I have never spoken to when we met.  For instance, one of my friends became my best friend after we started texting. One day after my birthday, he had texted me for the first time. He wished and also apologised for late wishes. I could feel the muscles in my stomach intertwining, a hurried impetus rushing down my knees while the Sunday sun caressed my oiled hair. That morning was different. I didn’t feel hungry at all and took a bath first, and this is never the case on other weekends. I switched on the geyser and read that message all over again; behind that smiley I could see him smile, showing his metallic braces and flicking his hair back with his long fingers. I quickly showered and sat down to eat dosa, before it got over. But I have no memory of eating it. All I can remember is me sitting cross-legged in my grey track pants and hair rolled up in a towel. We texted about usual things and on seeing his display picture, I thought he had changed, that he looked better previously. That day, the letters in my book seemed too difficult to understand, all of them zoomed in and blank. I gave up and decided to visit my friend. In vain my eyes were constantly on the tool bar, did I receive a message? What is it? He told me about the new cafe in our town. One thing about this whole conversation was that the very moment after sending a message, he was gone. I don’t know why he did that. Perhaps I had fallen for that habit too. I didn’t reply to those messages as soon as I saw them, though my mind and heart synced immediately, briskly thinking what to reply. Fingers shivered while I typed and each letter on the keyboard popped up. Initially I texted him. I was the first one to start conversations, but eventually chats became boring and they started becoming like interviews, I asking questions and he answering them. There were no questions from his side. What if he became disgusted, creases on the forehead deepening and eyes becoming smaller and smaller, like that face which he often made after losing a football match with juniors? I stopped texting and got busy. I tried forgetting about my online friend. But he texted again. I seen-zoned his message for a minute, but realized how much I had missed talking to him. I pulled the quilt close to my neck and held my phone close to my eyes, while my head rested on the pillow. I typed letter by letter and read the message before tapping on the send button. It turned ‘seen’ instantly, like never before. Bundles of crackers were going off in my head and heart. For once, I stopped hearing the fan in my room. That night it felt like he had all the time to talk to me, tell trivial things, laugh over his own dumbness. He typed longer messages than mine. I read them with all my attention, placing a strand of hair behind my ear.  But, all this seemed imaginary when I met him. The boy in my head – or maybe in his display picture - had grown up, and he looked weird without the braces, I thought. Those teeth now gnawed at supari. He spoke with his eyes piercing into mine, I shifted my gaze. While the other guys seemed to not care, this one made sure I ate a little and tried to know what I had been up to. See this is why, dil yahi rukh ja zara. I kept nodding and glancing at the tables across the room. When plump girls do not eat, it becomes another joke on dieting. Some of the uncles and aunties threw glances at the bottles on our table, the boys and I. X did not seem to like my presence; I did not like his presence either. Since we were glued onto the same sofa, we decided to talk. “I am back into business..” he said, then a round of talk on stocks and shares sprouted on the table. I felt disconnected but was nodding and occasionally smiling. I do not know why I did that. I left after the bill arrived; perhaps I had been waiting to go home. All the excitement to see them (him?) had vanished and become stale.   Even so, my heart tumbled a bit when he texted later that evening, asking if I was fine, that I had looked uncomfortable. “We talked all business stuff that’s why I wanted to ask..”. That damn heart sprang back to its position. I had to (did I have to?) assure him that I had learnt about shares in economics classes and that I was acquainted with everything that they spoke. Some cuss words also, that they said. I do not know if this statement stemmed from the stereotype of me being a girl or that an Arts kid only knows Shakespeare.  My professor VJ says, after breaking away the only way is forward. I take a step back and exit the chat.   Purvi secretly wishes Ayan Mukherjee directed her life. When not dreaming of mountain treks and kdrama leads, she happens to write and live a secret life.

Stories From A Survey: Manju's Story

Stories From A Survey: Mohan's Story

Fan : Why I Love Shah Rukh Khan

If you love him, you love him the way he loves his heroines – unabashedly, inexplicably, and forever.

I rediscovered my love for Shah Rukh Khan in the first few months of the pandemic. I had just turned fourteen, and it had been a while since I’d seen a Shah Rukh film. Before that, all I had were memories of a sort-of fondness for Shah Rukh, tied to my memories of watching old childhood favourites like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Main Hoon Na. Occasionally, I would see him on the big screen for films like Happy New Year and Zero. Then… 2020 happened. In those initial dystopian months, all seemed lost. We were stocking up on food, I was realizing school wouldn’t reopen for a while yet, and I didn’t see my friends for weeks on end. In that time, I remember slowly getting lost in Bollywood’s unfailingly bright and hopeful films, especially from the early 2000s. And, as a result, I remember slowly getting lost in Shah Rukh Khan. I think, at first, I began to love Shah Rukh Khan because he represented a softer time in Hindi films, where love was the motivation – but also the reward. In this love, the woman wasn’t simply a way for the hero to go on a journey of self-discovery. She wasn’t just an accessory to his quest. This was a love that was kind and fierce and true, where Shah Rukh’s world revolved around the woman. He would die for her, and she owed him nothing for it - not even her love. My nostalgia for this kind of empathetic, hopeful cinema (especially in 2020) and my search for this kind of brave, charismatic, sensitive hero is what initially took me back to Shah Rukh Khan. But the honesty, vulnerability and playfulness that is special to him, that he brings to his roles, is what made me stay. These qualities – the things that take Shah Rukh Khan and make him the King of Romance, the Badshah of Bollywood – are best captured in some of my favorite Shah Rukh music videos: Chaiyya Chaiyya, Yeh Ladka Hai Allah, Mitwa, Koi Mil Gaya, Tumse Milke Dil Ka Hai Jo Haal, Maahi Ve, and Deewangi Deewangi. His song picturizations are a large part of why I love him – they sometimes feel like the most Shah Rukh part of his films. These music videos are colorful, romantic, spirited, and, above all, fun. They make me feel happy and nostalgic and safe – to me, there’s something incredibly comforting in the familiar rhythms of the songs and the steps. Whether he’s dancing on top of a train with Malaika Arora or romancing Kajol at her best friend’s wedding, I can’t take my eyes off him. It’s like everything that makes him special has been compressed into those four minutes of song and dance – a Shah Rukh overload that you can’t help but be charmed by. In a TED Talk that Shah Rukh Khan gives in Vancouver, April 2017, he says, “I sell dreams, and I peddle love to millions of people back home in India, who assume that I am the best lover in the world.” I love Shah Rukh Khan because of his sincerity, and his genuine faith in the love that he is “peddling”. I have never once doubted his love for his heroines, because the way he looks at them - whether he is Raj or Rahul, Veer or Ram, Aman or Om – never changes. There are scenes from his films and music videos that I love to rewatch, just because of that look in his eye: the look that says he would die for his Anjali, his Simran, his Zaara. You believe him, and then you begin to believe in him, and all the love that he offers. In that moment, you fall for him right alongside his Anjali, his Simran and his Zaara… and then there’s no turning back. How could you? After all, as Rani Mukerji says - nobody loves like Shah Rukh Khan. Why I love Shah Rukh Khan is a complicated question. I haven’t been able to find the right words for it, to convey exactly what him and the characters he plays onscreen mean to me, and why I keep coming back to them. This feels strange. After all, I have so much love in my heart for him. There is just something magical and indescribable about him, something that I’ve tried hard to capture, something that all his fans connect with. And I suppose I am exactly that – a fan. Being a fan is weird for me. In the beginning, it was embarrassing to call myself that, because it meant that I cared. To care so strongly for a superstar who doesn’t even know I exist felt silly. As a teenager who lives in Bombay, the glitz and glamour of Bollywood stars aren’t supposed to affect me – I’m supposed to be cool, removed, unbothered. So, I simply dismissed the word, despite quite obviously being a fan. I didn’t want people to know exactly how much I cared, how much I loved. It isn’t the done thing, to be a ‘fan’. Being a Shah Rukh fan puts me in a national club of people – most of whom wear their love for their hero on their sleeves, who call themselves SRKians, who make edits and start fanpages, who visit Mannat on Shah Rukh’s birthday and take photos outside the gate (something I’ve tried doing, much to the embarrassed protests of my friends. I had to eventually take the photo discreetly from across the road, with Mannat somewhere in the background.)  This isn’t as acceptable as being, for example, an Ariana Grande fan, or a Taylor Swift fan – collectives that do many of the same things, but speak majorly in English. But being a Shahrukh fan – an SRKian – also means that I’m never alone. There are millions of people all over the world who feel the same as me, who find themselves and their hopes and dreams in the worlds that Shah Rukh creates. We watch the same music videos and interviews five hundred times. We hang posters in our rooms. We learn the choreography to his music videos. We try and convert our friends and families. We defend Shah Rukh and our love for him more often than we’d like. The special thing is, though, that even though my friends might be slightly exasperated with my fan behavior, they can’t help but settle in besides me to watch the next music video, and the next, and the next, and talk about the magical way that Shah Rukh looks at Kajol, or how handsome he looks in a sherwani. They don’t bat an eye when I tell them that my fifteenth birthday party is SRK themed – instead, they all participate wholeheartedly, coming dressed up as various characters from SRK films and learning the choreography to Maahi Ve. So… why do I love Shah Rukh Khan? I love Shah Rukh Khan because I’m a fan. And it is weird, to be a fan, but it’s also exciting and liberating. More of us should try it. It frees you from worrying about what’s silly and what’s cool, and allows you to just be - to love what you love. And isn’t that exactly what Shah Rukh Khan stands for? In the end, this is the magic of Shah Rukh Khan. If you love him, you love him the way he loves his heroines – unabashedly, inexplicably, and forever. I guess some things are best left unexplained. As Rahul Khanna once said: kuch kuch hota hai Anjali… tum nahi samjhogi! (Happy Birthday, Shah Rukh Khan. Thank you for giving us your love, and letting us love you in return.) Tara Bhattacharjya Gupta is fifteen years old, studying and living in Bombay. She likes listening to music, watching films, and collecting earrings – and she used to think her dad looks a lot like Shah Rukh Khan.

Where is my Education? A Transman’s Story

The everyday struggles of a trans man attending university.

This story was originally published on the Transmen Collective's website.  I was in my first year of college when I realized that I was trans. I had found this term which fit the thoughts in my head about my gender identity. All the signs were there, but I was still afraid of actually identifying with that term and coming out to people. I was afraid of the impact of my trans identity on my future. After a year of going back and forth in my head, I finally came to terms with my identity. No one can predict the future and everyone whether cisgender or transgender has to deal with their own struggles in life, so why not just go ahead and live your authentic life anyway. Still, I packed away the eventualities of getting a haircut and transitioning in the far off future and was content by just accepting myself and getting accepted by my friends. The next two years of college were absolutely fun-filled. I was in my own bubble of ignorance, being in a relationship for the first time, having a great group of friends and also being among the teachers’ favorites. I was not even trying to pass as a guy till the very end of the third year, so being misgendered was not even a thing to consider. But in those two years, I had also decided upon my preferred name and finally ended up getting a haircut as well. So as a trans man who chose to go on to get a master’s degree in Philosophy rather than quitting studies to get a job and start my transition, ‘Where is my education?’ might not be a question that I am supposed to raise. However, that doesn’t negate my discomfort that I experience on a daily basis. The tasks to which a cisgender person doesn’t even have to give a thought about cause intense inner turmoil to me. Starting from dressing up for the day- wearing oversized, baggy clothes just so I am able to pass as a dude, going through metro’s security -pausing a moment, wondering whether to go through the men’s line or the women’s line depending on how confident or scared I feel on that particular day. The turmoil doesn’t end once I reach my classroom, then the struggle for standing up for yourself starts. Thankfully, I haven’t yet experienced any bullying or jokes about my demeanor from my fellow students or faculty. So I like to believe that the students in a university setting are respectful of their fellows. Nonetheless, the human mind doesn’t need outside criticism, it is very capable of making you feel bad about yourself by comparing you with others. When I look around myself, and all the other guys in the class are taller than me and sport a beard, I get envious and my confidence goes down. The key here is to remind yourself that although you are never getting any taller but one day maybe in just 2-3 years, you too would have that beard and muscles. Right now, I am in the second and final year of my course, I feel much more confident and assured of myself. I have 7-8 people whom I can call friends, who know the truth about my identity and accept me for who I am. Back in the first year, I had only a couple of friends with whom I had done my graduation, and I used to have no confidence and felt very miserable coupled with the fact that I was also going through my break up at that time. So I just drowned myself in music and one favorite subject and helped my classmates who were struggling in that subject. I used to be intimidated by the very thought of talking to anyone in my class as the first question people usually ask is your name, and that was the very question I wanted to avoid. Whether to tell them my legal name or my preferred name? Do they see me as a girl or a guy? It so happened that I ended up telling half the people my legal name and the other half my preferred name, and just hope with fingers crossed that in a class of 200 students, no two people at the same time called me by two different names. The most difficult aspect in the classroom, however, is the professor asking your name in front of the whole class because then you have no other option except to tell them your legal name. So in the first year, I stopped attending the lectures of the professors who had a habit of asking names. And in other lectures, I wouldn’t even raise my hand to answer a question for the fear that the professor might ask my name. However, in the present semester, I don’t even have these options as the internal subject I have chosen has only a handful of students and the professor knows us all by name. So getting deadnamed or legal-named is pretty common. But now it doesn’t bother me as much as when I was under-confident and didn’t feel as accepted by my friends and family. Oh, and when I give my exams under my legal name, sometimes I pause and wonder who is that girl whose exams I keep giving and getting her a decent score, impersonating her just like that scene from Munnabhai MBBS where someone else gives the exam and the real person is actually paying carrom somewhere else. My confidence helps me find the humor in potentially triggering situations now and that just makes every single day all the more interesting. If you too are looking for your education, go ahead, find a bunch of friends who act as your support system, be confident and genuine and tackle everyday issues with a sense of humor. Chitraksh Ashray, 25, a member of Transmen Collective, is an introverted trans guy who is mostly found bent over books, both during his day job as well as in his free time.

Friendship: The Movie featuring Uncertain Love

Shocking - Queer people confused if their flirting is romantic or platonic!

Shocking - Local aspiring filmmakers think of the groundbreaking idea of making a lockdown film, while in lockdown. The local aspiring filmmakers in the headline happen to be my best friend and I. We are pretty self-aware that way, so we decided that the whole film won’t be based on the pandemic; it will be about other things that have never been explored before like loneliness in isolation with the background of a global pandemic. It would be a zero-budget film and we would write, produce, direct AND act in it. We were convinced that we would be legendary and that no indie film has ever done that. Ever. Cut to, second wave of Covid-19 in India. Legendary local aspiring filmmakers have decided that they’re too good for a lockdown film. We are 22, technically proper grown-ups now. We should not be making a zero-budget film. We are talented and we deserve production. For now, our producers have the same surnames as us, and they’re more disappointed in us than they were before, but we would make them proud this time. This new film would be about two friends. We decided to write about ourselves, of course. The film would have lots of swearing, some sex, casual drug usage. Fuck, we cannot show it to our producers. “It’s eventually a story about friendship, you know? Like I want that scene in the end where we’re both passing a joint and just chilling and everything is going to be okay,” my best friend said. Hearing that made me breathe better. It had been months since I last saw him. With the rapidly rising cases in Mumbai, I was being really careful and I hardly stepped out. I was mindlessly consuming content, sleeping away my days, working just enough to not get into trouble and swiping people left and right (mostly left) on dating apps. Even before the pandemic hit, when it came to relationships I was always stuck at the ‘talking stage’. The longest, most elaborate talking stages until one of us backs out or ghosts or suddenly realises that they have feelings for their best friend or one of us is too ‘gemini’ for the other or one of us mutes the other on call because they talk too much and too loud at 3am etc etc etc. The pandemic only made the talking stages shorter and ghosting easier. It also solidified my belief that I might actually die alone and unloved. I never stopped swiping though. Not because I was still hopeful, I swiped simply out of habit. It was mostly girls I had ghosted/been ghosted by. Random queer acquaintances I had seen around, couples looking for a third (of course). Some new people, yes it wasn’t all that bad. Then there was her, let’s call her Z. I have known Z for over 3 years, we are great friends, she introduced me to King Princess, made me watch Skam (Spanish one, s2 is very gay) and has been my plus one to so many gigs. We see each other on these apps, waste our super likes on each other and bond over failed talking stages. Just your typical gay girl stuff where we flirt so much, are so close, constantly hit on each other, share everything but have no idea if all these feelings are platonic or romantic. I super liked her. 2. The pandemic situation was a little better and I could find a small window where it would be safe to travel to Pune. My best friend was renting out a place there. It was a perfect escape from our respective hometowns. I just had to pack my bags, get myself there and I knew I’d be well taken care of. So I did. We began writing together. The script had progressed. Our characters were coming out to be relatable, likeable and strong. We were touching the right topics and maybe this could actually be something? More characters were introduced. Romantic interests obviously. While my best friend had dug out a lot from his own experiences to write his part, I wasn’t sure if the script needed me to have a partner. I gave myself one anyway. It somehow validated my character in the script to have someone care for them, love them, look out for them. Smoking our second joint, we decided it would be a good idea to discuss our real dating lives so we could write about our characters’ dating life better. That conversation, that exact moment was when I realised how different my straight boy best friend’s life was from mine. With my gender indentity and sexulaity spilled across the spectrum like blood on the wall after a gruesome murder of my love life, I don’t really know what I was doing. So while he went on about his latest hook up story, I sat there in my queer confusion. My queer confusion feels very irrelevant—it’s 2021, most people I know are queer, most queer content creators I know are creating well, queer content. All the first queer books, songs, films have been made. I’m pretty privileged to have a supportive community and all the resources I could possibly need to help myself. Nothing about what I’m feeling is unique and I don’t really have anything else to talk about. I can’t really point out what exactly I’m struggling with. And explaining this to my good-looking straight-boy best friend takes too many words that I can’t find in myself. So I took out my phone, and texted Z—I knew she’d understand— “dhbfhbgtjjhioyjhijytin” or any other variation of keyboard smash, that’s code for I’m feeling feelings and I don't know what to do with them in genZ. We hadn’t spoken for a few days. Weeks, actually. It had always been like that. We texted when we felt like and usually nothing had changed, except this time, she said she might have a girlfriend ?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!??!!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? My heart sank a little. 3. We were now at the end of our script, not too bad for a first draft. Good amount of conflict, kind of funny, talks about the things that matter. How do we wrap it up now? The original plan was to end it (spoiler alert) with my best friend’s character leaving a restaurant fuming after a fight and my character follows him out. I’ve always found the act of following someone out as this special deal of love and tolerance amongst two people. Who gets to follow you out? When you turn your back to the world, who gets to tap your shoulder? Back in school when your friend would elbow you and tell you that her stomach is paining, she might throw up, she runs out of the class and you are her best friend so you follow her out, the teacher knows and she lets you go. Or you are a little older in college and you’re sitting in a class when your friend’s boyfriend is breaking up with her over text and she is about to cry. Even though it’s a group of 5, everyone knows when she runs out to cry, you get to follow her. You’re the best friend and she will need specifically you to tell her that it’s going to be okay. Getting to follow someone out has always been this personal privilege for me. And I thought my character would get it too. But my best friend suggested that his character’s love interest follows him out and not my character. What? Why? Dude you haven’t even known her that long?? Are you going to let a girl come in between us? Did your character ditch my character for a girl? Will you ditch me for a girl? Is it my personal insecurity or a plothole in the script? Am I jealous of a fictional character that hasn’t been written yet? I should’ve known that it was going to get complicated. I mean we are friends trying to make a film about friendship with the characters based on us as friends. This is some Meta-Dosti shit we are trying to make. So when he said “Nahi meri girlfriend mere peeche aayegi, tu kyun aayegi'' I took it way more personally than I should have. Why would his character want a random pretty girl who may or may not be the love of his life to follow him out and not my character, his best friend? Why would my best friend tell me it’s a story about friendship and not let me follow him out? I felt like the gay best friend in a straight man’s story of self-discovery. He didn’t mean to make me feel like that obviously, but at that moment the script and life, so closely related, intertwined in my head and I couldn’t help but feel abandoned. Imposter syndrome decided to come knocking just then. I felt I had made a huge mistake by trying to write a character about myself; in my head I declared it was narcissistic, uncreative and pretentious. I wanted to say it out loud but how could I when my best friend had also written a character about himself? Someone who always tried to do the right thing, someone who always stood up for the people he loved. And I obviously shouldn’t have texted Z. I wasn’t sure if my heart sank because I liked her and I realised it only now when I don’t have a chance? Or did I get sad because she found somebody and I didn’t? How and why was I so upset with both my best friends? I didn’t have a solid reason to be this upset, with either of them. They’re the two people who understand the biggest and most important parts of me. With one I share my love of films, with the other my queerness. Both of them were there for me, when I needed them. I want to use better words to describe that feeling but I felt plain and simple stupid. Not in an invalidate feelings way stupid, but in a why-would-you-feel-that-in-the-first-place stupid. Both of which I’ve been told not to feel by infographics on mental health pages on instagram but sometimes humans just need to feel stupid in peace before they can ask their best friends to love them. I took some time with it. Felt stupid. I told my best friend about my confusion with Z. Shocking - Queer people confused if their flirting is romantic or platonic!! I told him I might have feelings for her to which he said - told you so. But I might also simply be jealous and would miss the (huge) part of our friendship where we cried about not finding anyone. I don’t think I’ll talk to Z about this though. So that part of this essay (and me) still remains one big keyboard smash. I told my best friend that I was feeling stupid. He called me stupid and said we should rework the ending. It’s still a story about friendship. Maybe I follow him out or he follows me out. So that evening, my last one in Pune, we kept the script and our phones aside for a while. We just sat at his balcony, watching people go by on the road below, passing a joint and everything might just be okay?   Ami Bhansali, is a writer, filmmaker based in Mumbai.

Discovering My Sexual Self Through Therapy

Now that I have been living by myself, the quietness has given me time to take off these masks.

Getting therapy was one of the many firsts of living by myself. Shouldering many responsibilities and living with my family, and caring for a parent with significant disabilities, I had no space to think about myself. My therapist created a safe space for me to help me heal from trauma and gave me the language to understand myself better. I told her about my experiences with my vaginismus support group, the dilation process, and the constant fatigue of healing from this condition. I felt safe and cared for talking about my sexual well-being. Most recently, I talked with my therapist about my sexual identity. When I think of defining myself as ‘bisexual,’ my shoulders immediately become stiff. As an educator, I create safe spaces for young people to embrace their sexuality, but thinking about my own sexuality makes me feel vulnerable. Because I have vaginismus, I fear what people I might want to have sex with will think about me. I feel this immense burden to prove myself and to act in a specific way. When I am with a man, I freeze up about thinking of penetrative sex. I feel like I am giving them hopes only to let them down. Now that I am thinking about being with women too, I fear I don’t know if I have the right to claim this space. I have been trying to understand why that is. I grew up in an abusive household entrenched in shame and secrecy. I wore masks at home to hide my feelings from my parents. I did not tell my father about the ongoing sexual abuse that I faced as a pre-teen because I was afraid of what he would do. I did not want to bother my mother because she was in an abusive marriage. I wore masks for survival. I even wore a mask in my first relationship. I had to pretend to be this person who wants a happy, married life and wants to fit into his family, wants to live with his family, and give myself the family that I never had. Eventually, he succumbed to family pressure and that relationship ended painfully. No matter how many masks I wore, it was not enough to protect my relationship. In his last email, he told me that I hope I also find a person I can settle down with, and one of the things I wrote in my reply was that I will not marry someone that I don’t love. When my ex and I were trying to convince his family, I was not only gripped by fear of losing him, but also of the fear of being the only young woman and person among my cousins and in my family to take the marriage route. When I told a friend about my reluctance to marry, they reminded me that I did not have a positive example of a good marriage growing up. I don’t think that is the only reason though. All I want is a partner who loves me deeply, cares for me, and understands me. I want love. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who compels me to put a label on it, and for whom love is not enough. Now that I have been living by myself for some time now, the silence, the quietness around me has given me some time to take off these masks. There is a memory from my early teens and childhood that is buried too deep inside. That memory continues to surface, bobs its head out, sinks in, and suddenly crashes like waves against the rock. I remember cuddling, kissing, hugging, and making out with a female cousin. I remember using a doctor’s set to examine the vulvas of my neighbour’s daughter and another cousin. I was curious, fascinated, and if I am being true to myself, then slightly titillated. That young girl in me did not have gender labels. She knew that marriage and love happen only between men and women, and on TV and in films only men and women fall in love with each other. I meet these cousins at family dinners or once in 2 years and we act like it never happened, as if we were never those people. I am single and they are all married now. We don’t have an emotional connection. I find myself admiring women’s bodies and imagining caressing their breasts. In my solitude, I was vulnerable with myself. I told myself that I might be a woman who also likes to have sex with women. What does that make me? Does it make me bisexual? Does it make me a woman who is questioning her sexuality? I dismiss labels in my head because I am scared that if I conform to it, it will stay with me. In my mind, these labels feel heavy. I feel like I might have to subscribe to a certain way of being queer. If I don’t, I won’t be accepted as a woman who is queer enough. Then I get scared and try to talk myself out of my experience of queerness. I have explained to myself that this was only a childhood experience. Children are curious by nature and they enjoy exploring. When I look at other women, it is only aspirational. I want to look like them. This is just me admiring other women. This is common and it does not mean anything. I have fantasies about women sometimes, but this only means that I am ready to fall in love with another man again. I even scold myself, “just because you have queer friends, and you share so many posts about LGBTQIA+ topics, just because you support queer students it does not mean you are queer. This is not your space. You are not a part of this community. You don’t even know how to explore your own self, let alone go down on a woman. How do you even do that? Don’t play with people’s emotions. This is the lived reality of many people.” Then this other part of me peeks out - the part of me that does not have any doubts about my sexuality. She reminds me that a few months ago when I was cuddling with a female friend watching a TV show late at night, I was so drawn to her sexually. It was like fire, consuming me, it was the same kind of attraction that I felt towards men. At that time, the feeling, the desire to make out with her was so overwhelming that I could not logically reason with myself at that moment. My desires grew stronger than my critical voice. After some time, when we all went to bed, my critical voice suppressed that desire. It informed me, “you have not been sexually active in 2 years, and that is all. Just go to bed, friend.” I did. I imagine what it would be like if I had not grown up doubting myself, my worth, and my sexual desires. I never thought my self-doubts would creep into my sexual life too. I know that I don’t need to wear masks in my present context. I am not the same person I used to be. I am scared to explore this sexual desire, but I feel excited to be on this journey with myself. But then the voice also reminds me, you are a person healing from vaginismus. Maybe you think it is too hard to ask cis+het men out? It makes you feel inadequate, so you are turning to women. This is not your space, stay out of it. Try to be a good ally. I am so confused. The two voices at war inside my head rage in other situations too. This voice that dismisses my sexual desire for women also belittles me at work. It tells me that I am not good enough, that I am not worthy of love. My therapist has helped me have a conversation with these voices. Rather than what these desires mean and allowing all kinds of questions to bubble over in my head like: “how will I even ask a woman out? I cannot ask a man out without turning into jelly. How will I explain this to my parents?” “But my kinder self tells me, your desires are real and alive. Now that you have some time and space to remove the masks of being a good girlfriend and not be a referee for my parents throughout the day, your desires can breathe.” I confided in a few friends and I also explained to them how I was suppressing them. They have been supportive. It felt like an announcement though. Even while I was sharing, I was reading the expressions on their faces. I was trying to detect their disapproval. They were accepting on the surface, but do they think I am a fraud? Wait, am I a fraud? Hiding myself and wearing masks was important and necessary once, and there was a time for it. It served its purpose, but now that I have so many physical ailments, mysterious pains, asthmatic symptoms, I am realising that my body was holding on all this pain and suffering, and now that I am not wearing most of these masks, it is reeling under the impact of the suffering that it had to endure. I don’t know if I will act on my new found desires for women. I keep telling myself that it is okay for me to take one step at a time. Just like my journey of healing from vaginismus, my journey of exploring my queerness is also not linear. When my therapist asked me what it felt like to embrace myself as a bisexual or a queer woman, I told her that I felt complete. I wait to get there. I keep walking in that direction.   Tara is an educator. She loves talking to young people and seeing them grow. Outside of work, she takes long walks, takes care of her plants, reads and admires art.

My Body, My Confusion

My idea of the feminine was intrinsic to the experience of heterosexuality.

Looking in the mirror was always challenging. When I was younger, the culprit of this shame was the fat hugging my bones tight and refusing to let go. I was not big in the way that doctors looked at me as an anomaly, neither was I told that I am obese and a waste of resources. But I was fat enough to be treated differently. Stores my thin friends shopped at did not have my size and I was never awarded the bonding experience of sharing clothing with my girlfriends when I had nothing to wear. My friends found themselves assuring me repeatedly that I was not ‘that fat’ which they said with such conviction that even they believed it for a moment. Every year I gained more weight than the last and every year my mother would pray that I returned to the weight I was the previous year. My mother was willing to try anything. She sent me to aerobics, Zumba, cycling in the morning and asked my cousins to chase me around so I’d be forced to run. My grandmothers would empty their stash of junk food when I arrived in the summer and secretly feed my parents sweets while I slept. I don’t recall ever being the weight my mother wishes I was, apart from the two times I was seriously ill. In fact, she still recalls with fond nostalgia the moment I was bed ridden for seven days and woke up looking fabulous. I am constantly attempting to escape my weight. I invest in large jackets that cover my mid-riff. I avoid skin hugging t-shirts like the plague and if anyone invites me to the pool, I create an illness. On my best days I tell myself that people can say what they want about me but no one can deny that I have a great face. I spent years investing in skills that would remain unaffected by my body. Maybe I can’t wear a crop top but distract yourself and feast on my eyeliner which remains mostly perfect. I roll my eyes at fatphobia only to go back home and skip dinner so I’d wake up with a flat stomach. While my weight continues to be a challenging journey, something else made me look away as I got older. I avoided my reflection in passing mirrors and only looked briefly at myself by compulsion. It was a dissociation stronger than anything I had felt before. I didn’t feel like the person that was staring back at me. I was questioning my femininity while attempting to master it. I wanted to and still want to be a woman more than anything but, in my heart, I knew something was changing and I tried everything I could to not give it power. Naming the problem makes it real and denying it is hard work but much easier than realizing that you are not who you want to be. My femininity demanded endless validation. I had to be a woman at every moment. At 16 I forced myself to cross my legs at all times. My thighs would ache as I spent hours forcing them together in classrooms. School desks were my greatest enemy. They’d push down on my thighs leaving bright red marks and most times wouldn’t even let me cross my legs. While most searched for the beginnings of a childhood romance under school desks I was instilling in myself womanhood. The act I was performing was conscious and demanded much research. I knew that I couldn’t be the role models others had picked out for themselves. I knew I could not be Rachel, Monica or even Phoebe. I settled for people who looked like me and still retained the right to their femininity. I held on to Adele and Queen Latifah, looking at them to do the work I did not have the courage to do. My idea of the feminine was intrinsic to the experience of heterosexuality. My idea of a woman was heteronormative. In order to be a woman, being a heterosexual was the first step. Being a girl was then synonymous with the approval of men. I didn’t have a lot to choose from or rather I had no choice. Boys that settled for me, I forced myself to fall in love with. The strongest moments of my femininity were in the arms of these men. Not so much when I was with them but when we were being watched, when we’d kiss and I’d hear girls giggling around me and in the moments after when I’d run to the girls for an analysis on what I did when I was alone with him. In that very moment, I was a girl looking at other girls and we were bonding over being girls. Moments such as these were rewarding but occurred rarely. My façade was met with rejection and humiliation more than success and I would be brought back to my reality with a blow. A boy who once told me he liked me, made it a point to scream that I was a fat elephant and that he could not imagine how he could like me when we were no longer together. I held the hand of a boy who told me I was pretty but would simultaneously insist that I work out at least once a day. I was subjected to hateful comments for no other reason than being big. It hurt more when men who I so wanted to be desired by hurt me but they gave me exactly what I was used to. They loved me the same way my mother did. They loved the thin woman inside me or the thin woman I could be. In my desperation to get male validation I forgot to ask myself if I even liked men. The answer is yes but only rarely and in fleeting moments. I realized that my heterosexuality was an act. Identifying as queer was a brief moment of relief. I had always known that I was not straight and oscillated somewhere between bisexual and pan depending on the day. Leaning into my sapphic side brought assuring waves of liberation.  Desirability for a queer person was far easier than in the world of heteronormativity. I could hide behind a risky haircut or a FabIndia shirt and could be the embodiment of queerness just like that. I felt, here was a space that I belonged in without question and without modification. I was feminine because I identified as feminine. This world, my world, did not need me to be someone else. Yet, I could not help doubting myself all the time, wondering did I take the easy way out? In my harshest moments of gender dysphoria, I wonder if I am genderqueer because it is easier to be a fat person than it is to be a fat woman. I wonder if this too is a performance. But if it is after all a performance, why would I choose one of the hardest things to be? Is my need for belonging so intense that I am willing to take oppression over it? I can’t say I don’t feel masculine but I also can’t say I don’t want to be a woman. I can’t say anything because I am so rarely sure. There are days I feel perfectly man, woman and everything in between and there are harder days when I just feel horrible. How must I decipher which amongst these is my truest self? I long for an identity that is not shaped by the internet. One that is not defined in absolutes. I wish for individuality away from the parts of the world that needs to categorize me so desperately. Throughout this journey I have realized that there is no quick fix to figuring out who you are. Emotions and feelings will arrive and change and guilt is only a hindrance to this fulfilling journey. I ride each wave of confusion as best as I can and shamelessly move on to the next. I am learning or rather trying to learn to look at myself through a lens of my own rather than one that has been handed to me. Aishwarya Sunil spends her days drinking too many coffees and binge watching all the queer content she can. She is hoping to discover who she is through her writing but until then she will introduce herself as a crazy cat lady to all.

Kabhi Alvida Kehna! How I Said Ta-Ta Bye-Bye to Gender Norms and Became Beautiful

It was not easy to dress like a girl outside; only in the secrecy of my room.

I always wanted to be a woman. The most beautiful inspiration is when you know a woman who works, sings, smiles and appears powerful. The willful essence that stays with a woman, that is her grace…I want that. Since my childhood, it was not easy to dress like a girl outside; only in the secrecy of my room. After lunch, I used to wear a towel on my head, keeping it as my long hair. Mom’s dupatta served as a fashionable dress – a gown. It was wholesome and always a thrill. It helped me imagine. And it stayed like a forever fairy tale; one with no limits. Mum and dad thought it funny and cute when boys wear “girly” stuff. They called it my “girly play” to the neighbors and the nuns. When Sister Rose came home one day and asked me, “Aye, you want to be a girl ha?”, I nodded yes to what I thought was a serious question. They laughed like I had made a good joke to keep the banter going. I never quite understood, but I learnt that boys can’t be girls. It was a threat. It was a shame and a sin. Someone being who they wanted to be, and appearing how they wished to, was inevitably a scandal. And I remained in this confusion - the state of not gulping the hot sip of tea, because I didn’t think it was fine. I remained suspended - never owning and embracing my gender and sexuality; it was too much to ask of society and the boys in my school. So I went along without questioning these beliefs, silently admiring my fourth standard Kannada teacher’s glossy hair. I imagined myself to be Preity Zinta in Kal Ho Na Ho and Dia Mirza in Zara Zara. And these stories were like a personal journal; a deep secret within me that I was not to betray. Soon after my tenth grade, I joined the seminary. By then, I shakily admitted that I had to stay a man and only the seminary could keep me away from the punishment for being a gay man. It was an escape from unknown sexism and bullying. I failed to be like the other boys, who waited outside convent school, who took the names of their girlfriends with thrill in their eyes that only they could fathom. But I enjoyed playing lagori, with my neighbour’s girls. I watched Nach Baliye and Jhalak Diklaa ja rather than the IPL matches. Cricket was a threat to me, not a game to enjoy. It was a pressure to prove my masculinity. I always prayed the ball would land in the neighbor aunty’s verandah so everyone had to waste time pleasing her with their apologies. Seminary distracted me from this toxicity, while it, perhaps, added in me other toxic beliefs, silently. After “coming out” to a priest, my ‘therapy’ was the advice to keep growing a beard to feel more manly. “The truth will set you free” the priest used to say, quoting Jesus, while skillfully making me believe that I couldn’t possibly be gay. Men with penises can’t be gay. It was a myth and just worldly desire to be identified as gay. I was convinced. But fate took a surprising turn, and Bangalore happened to me. Bangalore, the city that showed me what liberation is- that mild rush when breaking the rules and feeling the cold rain droplets on your palm. Sex became a beautiful word and the desire to talk about guys became so real. My love for clothes and fashion were somewhere evoked during these times. I changed from my plain tops to floral shirts in dressing rooms whenever I would step out of the seminary. It was finally just last year then that I decided that seminary life was not what I wanted and so I said alvida. My mum and two brothers liked having me back home. I loved staying in; relishing the suddenness of leaving the seminary, smelling the same house kitchen, finding all the rooms awkward and tiny compared to the seminary’s. People had started doing mad things on Instagram. There were no longer men in black, but men in sarees, men in makeup, men talking about mental health. Ankush Bahuguna, an influencer, applied make up and made it evident for me that, by then,  fashion had became real. Komal Pandey was the woman I started imitating, especially after I wore dad’s safari and took a lot of pictures; gold, silver and dark green- safaris in those rare colours. “Something is wrong with this boy”, was the thought visible on my elder brother’s face; he received confirmation of my madness when I ordered a salmon pink T-shirt from a Melange store and wore it to meet my friends. He gets mad at me when I tuck a t-shirt and pull my pants up to my belly. I didn’t say anything, but like Komal, I continued tucking more t-shirts in, wearing more body fitting tees, and dancing in more fields of floral shirts. Abilash and Anandu, my school buddies were now into photography. Mum had a culture shock when she saw the two with long hair, beards, and heights comparable to the villains in her Mahesh Babu films. I couldn’t compare to this. It was during this photoshoot, that I first felt I was a model. It made me the influencer I could never become in front of my bathroom mirror. I posed and made that same model face in my bedroom by spreading and locking my two stick legs. I stared at the camera as it requested me to reveal my bad ass looks. Miley Cyrus, running in the background, kept nosing in to say she’s happy for me. My room was no less than a studio as I adjusted golden lights from window to ceiling and slapped the walls with posters of FRIENDS, Carpenters, The Beatles and Queen. Each time the camera clicked, my bare shoulders knew that this would get them a new exposure; it was a journey from my bedroom to the rooms of my friends and other rooms of social media. It was a thrill as my body spoke to the flashes with the comfort I only previously found in bed sheets and lusty pillows. My mind constantly mimicked a spinning wheel to keep feeling the moment, hold it gently without fear of letting the bird escape my sweaty palms. I focused on the moment, without thinking of the consequences, knowing it would happen one day. I kept going with poses, my waist competing with Chanel models, my thighs balancing over my feet in a classical yet precise look. I grabbed my blue mug and peeped through the window to let my bare upper body absorb the sunlight as the camera absorbed me. I then gave Manu Thomas’ novel a try, gazing at it with the pretense of a critical eye for the camera. I felt like a discoverer, not knowing what I would grab next, just flowing with the rhythm of the clock ticking before it’s too late. I redefined the word ‘beautiful’– it went from being the beauty people expected to referring to something new; a man trying play with his gender. I was playing with objectives of beauty and its notions- one part of me never wanted to leave the mediocre norm and the other risked my body to experience every inch of desire to do what I wanted to with the camera. Beauty is to be myself and show what I am and want to be- that day to the camera, one day to the world. Even then, the thought of these pictures getting leaked was scary. The thought of them coming to know this private side of me which swung and remained on one side of the pendulum, made me nauseous. I still want to remain stuck on that side of the pendulum where no one enters, where I remain with my choice of being what I want to be, expressing what I want to express, and surviving what I want to survive. I wanted to own atleast what was, in a way “regular male clothing.” I decided to buy harem pants as fast as I could and ordered them before my elder brother could hand me another chapter of Chronicle from the Bible. The day it arrived, I embraced its warmth; the waist belt was as sexy as for a belly dance. Very soon I decided to pose with harems inside my room and post it on Instagram. Turns out, I somewhat resembled Harry Styles in his famous pink top and white palazzos. Days later, another friend called me “Tan France.” Uff, what else could I do other than be grateful and respond with a puppy face. I went on. With each shoot, I jumped forward towards another. This time in the outdoors, in a real dark pink lehenga, shimmering like a spring. I grabbed the lehenga from Sandra. My stomach produced growling sounds as I took this forward and kept imagining myself on the day of shoot. Soon the day came. Sandra did my makeup. Abilash’ sister gave me her jewelry which was the best thing I could ever ask for. It matched so well with my pink lehenga that we decided to put the blazer it was planned with, in the back seat. Now it was only the lehenga and my bare skin romancing the jewelry on my chest. And I posed with eagles in the sky, in the construction site, near the banyan tree, with his parrot and his aquarium. My heart fell full - of everything I wanted- the feeling of fulfillment, of getting paid for an internship. It was all that, and more. Of love and abiding support from friends who shared my work in their stories. Everything went smoothly until the day my mum and elder brother found out about my shoots. Getting caught like this made me feel like a culprit. You are surrounded by your family treating you like you ruined the Christmas cake; reasonable enough for others to complain. But you have ruined it. Not Rose-villa aunty. Not the Sisters of Charity. My stomach turned, like it was urging me to get out of this situation; like when it sees a snack it doesn’t wants to eat. How do you manage to slurp the upper floating milk skin without hesitation? I remained silent and stared at the white tiled floor like a flowerpot while the burst of family drama showered on my sleeping head. They were the confrontations that everyone faces. Everyone who gets tired of following the monotonous norm that is…so structured and so obsolete. And I still get back to my room, look at the mirror and try making a pony of my hair. I keep blushing more and more for being like this and not like some macho Bahubali. I am allowing some light weights of lavender or no weight at all, some sober clothing that came my way- a long yellow checked blazer, a grandfather’s hat, a leather printed shirt, a floral scarf, and eventful gazes from neighbors and family.   Roshan Pinto is a queer student from Bangalore, now in Hubli, who believes in the pleasure of haunting homophobes, while figuring out their life, smelling dog paws and listening to Osho Jain.

My Best Friend, My Wedding and Other Breakup Stories

Can BFF's getting coupled up throw your dosti into crisis?

I lost half my friends when I got married. It was the wedding that ended it, not my new husband or the institution of marriage or some bridal avatar I had acquired. A week before the wedding my mother fought with her sister over my wedding so my cousins didn’t come to my shaadi. Two days before my wedding, my friends and I fought and snapped and frankly, they might as well not come. Growing up I had heard that women don’t maintain their friendships after marriage. In my experience, that’s not been the case. Most straight married men I know turn their wives into a single window clearance system for all things emotional and social. Person to go to movies with, cry over dead parent with, buy new clothes with, worry about bad haircuts with. When most straight married men need someone to actually-actually discuss their wives, they don’t have anyone. Meanwhile their wives are always texting, calling and making plans with that friend who they used to go doubles to the bathroom with in kindergarten, and triples on the bike with in college. So colour me fucking astonished that within a year of getting married, that at age 30, my friends from college and my first job, people my mother considered my almost brothers and almost sisters were bye-bye from my life. They were gone. I stopped being told anything significant that was happening in their lives. I stopped being significant. My friends are largely single, out of choice.  One of them, Amrita, the only one who ever talked to me about our post-wedding estrangement, was at pains to tell me soon after the shaadi that I had annoyed her with my tiny wedding. “But don’t think it’s because I’m jealous or lonely or anything.” And she also told me that my other friends had rejected me for choosing coupledom and marriage. Why I had annoyed her she wouldn’t say. I was first taken aback and then slowly enraged. I’d have never ever assumed that she was jealous or lonely. And this assumption about an assumption I hadn’t made, made me angry for years. Amrita and I are not close any more but we have stayed in touch and somewhat fond of each other. And in the last years she has found love. And in the way it usually happens only in movies she has become soft and happy and really into PDA with her lover. A level of PDA that I would find too public and too affectionate. Which makes me giggly and also I wish there was a non-mean way of teasing her about the years of grouchiness after my wedding. Or a non-hurt way of thinking – what were her vulnerabilities about couple-dom and single-dom, that she was pre-empting with judgement and leaving me before I could leave her. Who knows. Perhaps there is no good way in this world dedicated to marriage, to deal with your friends getting married. Anu told me an astonishing story. She had an ex-boyfriend who she became just-friends with. Then, in an uncomplicated way she became friends with his new girlfriend #2. Then those two broke up. Then the ex boyfriend got married to someone else. Anu got a call from him soon after saying sorry but his wife had forbidden him from talking to Anu or girlfriend#2. Anu was shocked. Too shocked to really say anything. As promised, he never spoke to Anu or or girlfriend#2 until… the day he split from his wife. Then came a phone call. He was calling to say he had been wrong but could they become friends again. Anu being ridiculously forgiving of human foibles took him back. Years passed and the former boyfriend married again. And believe it or not there came The Call. Sorry but his wife etc. Anu said bye bye forever and her mother heaved a sigh of relief for her being rid of a useless fellow. I told my friend Moni this story and she laughed and laughed. She was laughing despite a painful slice of her history that I know of. On more than one occasion she has lost close (male) friends when they began long-term relationships. One friend disappeared overnight. On other occasions there have been the horrible slow freezing out. ‘Suddenly he keeps finding faults. Things he never brought up before. Perhaps he felt those faults before and didn’t want to confront me. It becomes an excuse to not have me in his life any more. ‘I am in a relationship how can you ask me for anything.’ ‘There is a problem with you and I can’t be your friend.’ I felt that was what he wanted to say but was not saying aloud. It was as if I had been just a placeholder, a nerd to hang out with until the cool kids found him.’ Moni also mentioned another, familiar way in which you lose your friend in a relationship. You still see your bestie but when you hang out your bestie’s lover/spouse is always present and ALL your conversation has to be addressed to the lover/spouse. Moni remembers getting a birthday present from a newly married close friend. The friend usually gave ugly presents and suddenly here was a tasteful, lovely present. And Moni recognised that gift-giving had been outsourced to the new wife. Just like his new tasteful, lovely décor. And in that moment she knew that the friendship was over. Moni had laughed uproariously when I narrated Anu’s story about Ex-In-A-Loop and laughed a little more about my newly super lovey-dovey Amrita. But when I complained again about how Amrita had behaved when I got married, Moni hesitated and then also said, ‘It’s hard to say it aloud.’ Say what aloud, I asked. “Well,” she said, “Amrita may be used to being the most important person in the your life or at least one of the most important. You have often called her the sister you never had. As you are getting married, in that moment, there is no room for her to say she is feeling that all that may be gone. If she says it aloud she might be be seen as being grouchy. Anyway, the happiness of the couple is supposed to subsume everyone else’s feelings. Or she might have worried that you would see it as some kind of accusation.” Moni then reminded me, “I have never felt it with people got married but as you know I have seen them disappear when they entered relationships. And you wouldn’t feel so bad if you didn’t have friends with whom it didn’t happen. So… it’s hard to say aloud,” said Moni and looked at me. And as she said it, I had a painful blast from the past. From the time I was 9, my school friend Tina and I walked to each other’s houses all the time. We went to each other’s obscure festivals that only family was invited for. I loved her and she loved me. The first time I went to a party in college, which is the first time I went to a party, she helped me pick out my clothes. She shaved my underarms because I didn’t know how. I knew her when she thought her problem was that she was ugly and brainy. I knew her later when she thought her problem was that she was too good-looking and too brainy. At 23, Tina fell in love. She stayed in love. Three years later, she got married. In retrospect it seems like she had a plan. Job, marginally more expensive jewellery, much more expensive hair, husband, nice house. I had no plans in life but I went to her wedding enthusiastically. A week or two after her wedding when she was back at home to sort out some of her belongings, she called me. I walked over. We had lunch and were hanging out in her room, folding clothes. Then her husband walked in. I didn’t know him well but I liked him. He was kind. He walked in and did this half-joking number of how lunch had knocked him out and he needed to lie down. I smiled and he looked expectantly at me. It took me a full minute to understand that I was supposed to get off the bed and leave because he now had first dibs on that bed. Well excuse me! I mean did you lie on that bed laughing at the yoga teacher next door saying, ‘raise your buttocks?’ at 6 am? Did you lie there after your first college party telling her that you had somehow figured out how to talk to strangers without feeling like vomiting?  Why did I have to leave? That’s what I couldn’t understand. Why couldn’t he make room for himself without throwing me out? Or nap on the sofa outside while we chatted? All this happened in a minute of rage inside my head but I left politely. Tina moved to another country and now it’s been a decade since we have been in touch. I heard that they had gotten divorced. I barely ever think of Tina now but suddenly I remembered that rage well.  Moni had created an earthquake in my head. Tina’s husband had given me rage by pushing me off the bed. Amrita had given me rage by assuming I would push her off the bed. But what were the ways in which I had pushed or allowed my friends to be pushed off the bed when I got married? I don’t know. But I assume there have been incidents. I don’t think I started prioritising my husband over my friends but I must have done something. I had not done the other horrible thing, wanting my husband to be friends with all my friends, I hope. God, I hate that. Maybe they hated my husband and my new avatar also? I liked Tina’s husband back then. That was pretty rare then and now. Mostly, I feel like my friends’ husbands and boyfriends aren’t good enough. And often I get those deadly, very deliberate vibes from them also – ‘she may take you seriously but no way I am gonna. Watch me not take you seriously.’ This year when I started watching Grey’s Anatomy for the first time I was thrilled about one thing. How Meredith Grey, the protagonist, and her best friend Christina Yang assumed that they had dibs on each other’s bed. They climb into each other’s beds and displace the men if necessary. In one episode, the boyfriend comes into Grey’s bedroom and says smilingly to both of them that he is going to take his pants off. It’s not a full-blown act of aggression against her, just a little bit. Christina leaves saying she didn’t want to see it. What I liked is that Meredith laughs and follows her, saying to Derek that she will come back and hang out later. He can take off his pants and be alone but she and her friend were going to continue their conversation. Meredith still took Christina seriously. Meredith also has no interest in Christina and Derek becoming friends. Anu says that sometimes just seeing the husbands of her women friends gives her boils on the backside. Which makes her grateful for what her oldest friend Sara in the world does. They have known each other 40 years and Sara arranges things so she has next to no contact with her husband. It’s a fairly common arrangement, a version of Meredith and Christina’s and it has worked out well for years. But this last year, Anu was extremely introspective after a serious illness. And one of the changes she made to her life was to do small things to acknowledge Sara’s husband. “I even send him birthday messages now.’  Anu luckily has not become a saint on this front. We grumbled at length about my close friend’s horrible husband (‘hopeless fellow’). But she did tell me about the realisation that had made things easier for her to cope with Sara’s husband. What was it, I asked?  “Just that as I have changed, she has changed. She is not who I knew when we were little. She married someone, things have changed. But she is still my friend.” “So you send him birthday messages,” I asked. “I send him birthday messages. It takes no effort. I don’t think it matters to him but my friend? She is so, so, so pleased. And that’s what matters to me.” And I remembered that though I lost so many friends after I got married and Amrita gave me such a hard time back then, she is still my friend and we remember each other’s birthdays.   Ashwini D wishes she could do her Ph.D on gossip.

My Mother’s Lost Friendships

How can marriage and family expectations slowly bleach friendship out of a woman's life?

I have to give the Covid-19 pandemic its due for allowing my best friend to stay in India, for 6 months longer than anticipated. Her flight to Canada had been canceled three times already. But the time had now come for her to leave for university; to a different timezone, saat samundar paar. The countdown was on my Instagram stories, my calendars, and in my eyes. Just say the word, and I would start bawling. My father was not home during the day, so he never witnessed these meltdowns. The night of her departure was his first sighting of my outburst. When I expected him to console me and tell me she would be back for Christmas, he just stared at me surprised, and a little disappointed. “It's just a friend. You didn't cry this much when your brother was leaving!” I wanted to point out that my brother had only shifted to the opposite end of the same city, to live closer to his college. We could literally meet anytime we wished to see each other; not that we did want to. But I just continued to sob, too exhausted to debate. I guess I am not much of a talker in front of my father either. My best friend and I went to the same school. We knew of the other’s existence as fellow batchmates for years, but didn’t really interact until we applied to a Summer Programme together. In the process, I came across her poems and fell in love with the way she talked about the world and her space in it. It was a space I wished to share with her. We shared our tastes in music and films, hated our School’s administration, practiced our individual forms of art, and rooted for each other through it all. A trip to Lodhi Garden two days after my 17th birthday was the first time we met outside of school, and was the start of something new. Soon, we started to do everything together - we dyed our hair, explored the majestic ruins of Delhi, and mulled over our losses. What I treasured most about her was how well she understood me in times when I could not understand myself. We had major fights a couple of times a year, but always made up. Her friendship, and friendship in general for me, has been a source of unfiltered joy, sprinkled with insecurity, jealousy and friendly banter. I depend on my friends for a judgement free, corrective space. Spending time with them is not only a way for me to unwind, but also to deconstruct my fixed ideas and breathe life into a side of me that often struggles to emerge. Friendship holds different meanings for us all. I don’t know where this difference stems from, but even my best friend and I do not conceive of friendship in the same way. But, despite being generations apart, my mother’s interpretation of friendship and mine bear a start resemblance. Unlike me, my mother has three sets of friends. First, a tight-knit group with three of her school friends. A comfort crowd, from similar social backgrounds. They meet four to five times a year and have frequent group calls where they boast about their children’s achievements and their in-laws’ antics. Second, her best friend from her college days. She was the voice of reason to my mother’s impulsive decisions. My mother, by her account, was the “It Girl” of her college days. She listened to rock music, had tons of junk jewellery, curly hair and the fashion sense of a designer, which she did end up becoming. The third, her friends of convenience and circumstance. This last category includes most of the people she talks to nowadays - neighbours or mothers of my classmates. But whatever the initial intent of this friendship, the care they now have for each other is genuine. Perhaps their shared circumstances and woes help them relate to each other; and the proximity only helps. After her marriage, my mother’s first two sets of friends provided her the space to express her Punjabi self, or maybe just her essential self, away from the conservative Brahmin household she had married into. Yet, these forty-year-old women were reserved and careful with each other despite their sociable friendliness. Marriage still created an undeniable gap in their relations; you could only cook these friendships at a low temperature. Gradually, the old friendships grew cold, and new ones never had the opportunity to grow into anything more.. All passion and intensity was reserved for the family. Post-marriage, my mother had been allotted one person on whom she was to depend in times of need. Extramarital emotions for friends had no space. The boxes and categories were clear and restrictive -- “you should talk to your husband about your personal problems'', “ghar ki baat bahar mat karo”, “you may approach your mother but not your friends for advice on marital matters.” Essentially, there should be no pati, patni aur ‘woh’, even if that ‘woh’ is a friend. A boundary was created outside of her family unit, and friendships were supposed to be kept at a safe distance to ensure no family matters spilled over to the “outside.” Now, she lives in a constant state of flux where one option might undermine the other. Going out for lunch with friends translates into her inability to pick my sister up from school. Living in a family where family takes priority over any form of social life, friendships always came second. You really can’t have it all when you’re a mother of three in an almost joint, conservative family. For my father’s side of the family, friendship had always been a foreign concept. And anything foreign to them, meant it was unreliable. Friendships are surface-level and transactional. A dinner party for a dinner party, one formality after the other. Due to the heavy censoring imposed on them by their families, friendships never gained the same importance for them that they held for my mother and me. Then, in 2016, my mother made a new friend, through another. Who knew 40-year-olds were capable of making best friends? Isn’t friendship always associated with the young? How do you get close when you can't get reckless together? But why can’t 40-year-olds be reckless, is a question I forgot to ask; the fact that my mother could be anything but my mother, was unfathomable. I watched in wonder as my mother and her friend filled their days with calls of concern and laughter. They bonded over childhood experiences and trauma. She lived in the States, but my mother almost overcame the geographical barrier with the frequent calls and overflowing emotions. Two years into the friendship, my mother made a leap and started confiding in her about her personal life. The passing of both of my mother’s parents meant one place less for her to be more than a wife and a mother - and this only made their bond stronger. But, things slowly started to shift. The friend took up a risky position when she assumed the role of my mother’s champion every time my parents had a clash.  She became my mother’s support system outside of her roles as a mother, sister, wife and daughter-in-law, and this was not well received. The point of contention now was the involvement of a stranger in our family’s affairs. My mother’s opinions and decisions became irrelevant, since they were all thought to be products of her friend’s “foreign” ideology. The friend became an easy scapegoat for the paternal side of the family, as all the toxicity surrounding my parents was attributed to this new stranger in my mother’s life. The question of family or friends emerged stronger than ever, and friendship was shown its place in our household, yet again. My mother is no longer in touch with that friend; an unspoken ultimatum ensured that. A relationship with a friend meant a state of domestic instability for us all. And since family, which means the family structure and not so much the people in it, must come first, the answer was obvious. These days, Facebook posts remind her of times she can never experience again; the friendship that was strangled by the oppressive unit created by an upper-class brahmin family’s stifling norms, especially for women. I have seen my mother’s highs in friendships and have seen the lows for much longer than I wished for her to experience them. The loneliness is gripping, and it shows. Covid only intensifies this heaviness. as her image was jammed onto that of a bahu, a biwi, in the confines of the home. She often comes to my room, moves a few things around, and sits next to me on my bed. Sometimes I respond with dry one-liners to her questions, sometimes I ask questions that she forgets to answer. There are words left unsaid, and a silence that weighs upon the both of us. I don't want to ask if she’s okay. I know she is not; I just don't want to face it. She yearns to tell me that she’s lonely, scared, and confused, but admitting it would make it real and complicate the relationship of parent and child. Maybe she should have listened to her wise best friend; would she have done better if she had? I am scared for her, and for me - for the friendships that make me, me. I ache at losing that side of her; a side of airy frivolity and fun and self, that seems bleached out of the mother I now share my space with. Sometimes, I miss her. Other times, I try to make her forget.   Runi is a rising sophomore at Ashoka University. She is a 19 year old artist and pianist based in New Delhi who hopes to occupy a tiny space at the intersection of Behavioural Economics and Art. When not watching mukbangs online, she can be found curating a list of the best tiramisu places in town.

I Have Erotic Friendships And It's Not Complicated

Aditya writes to reveal new definitions of friendship - and sex!

“Okay, but first read my letter maybe? I’m too shy to say it out loud,” Alankrita brought her hand forward, a sheet of neatly folded paper pressed between her fingers. The overcast sky roared in deep grey. Her face gave away everything that her words would proclaim later, in the sugary language of love letters. This was possibly the worst time to tell her that I was dating men, but I knew that it had now become unavoidable. So, I came out to her in haste. She snatched the paper back and tore it to pieces. I sat there, dead silent, as she recovered from her shock, until we gradually began to talk. At that time, my sexuality was a fiercely protected secret between myself and my three very close friends. Alankrita was not a part of that circle as I felt that she would break ties with me if she knew. When she finally came to know, she felt betrayed that I had deemed her unworthy of my truth; of something that I had shared with others but kept from her. It had begun to drizzle by now, and the water poured heavier as we spoke. To the passers-by, we were a boy and a girl, soggy in July rain, lodged on a green bench under a huge tree. My head was on her shoulder. For the two hours that we were there, we received sly stares, repeated glances and policing gaze, as any romantic couple would. For several weeks after, Alankrita kept saying, “I feel so foolish.” She was embarrassed because she felt she had misread the tension between us, the closeness whenever we were together. But had she been foolish? We shared the kind of trust and intimacy that she had never experienced with a straight man. We also shared a sensuousness. I liked how affectionately we touched each other.  If she were a man, such physical proximity would probably have contained sexual expectations in my mind as well. Simply because we didn’t enter a ‘relationship’, didn’t mean that all that eroticism got washed away. But my coming out forced her to put our relationship in a different box - because that’s how our social relationships are pre-sorted. At the National Institute of Technology, getting ‘proposed’ to was a rite of passage. If a boy and a girl grew close, the slightest pull of erotic tension would be followed by the obvious next step - a proposal. Relationships were noticed and speculated about, with all kinds of gossip, because that’s also how society works. Since I wasn’t out as gay, it would be assumed I was straight. I soon realized that this was only a localized version of how most of the world recognized romantic coupled relationships. They were seen as the closest companionships there could be. Friendships came after that; a side-dish, not the main course. The ‘friend-zone’ was where people imprisoned friends they did not desire, which seemed to easily mean ‘undesirable’. Eroticism was not supposed to exist within a friendship. Eroticism wasn’t a thing, unless it was followed by a conventional sexual act. Sex, even between conventional partners, was an obstacle course where people would cover ‘bases’. Everyone swore by these rules, and tried to put things back in place when they were flouted. With Alankrita, sensuality was now out-of-place in our relationship because I had rejected her desire to date me. To fit this new definition, our friendship shrunk so much that it lost its identity, and eventually ended. But by the time Alankrita and I parted ways, my head was full of questions -- Where did the act of sex begin? Why was all the focus on how far we went when we were attracted to someone? What about how fully you feel? Was desire and sensuality only about the body? Was it always supposed to lead up to something carnal - a linear progression of sex - or could it exist just by itself? Why could we not imagine serious companionship with a friend? I began to think about desire itself - the emotional and physical universe within which it existed. And as I stepped further into the complex world of friendships, the way I thought about sex, desire, and love changed. After this, whenever I grew close to a girl, I would end up telling her about my sexuality. This was not only to be candid about myself and strengthen our friendship, but also to pre-emptively control ‘other’ feelings surfacing and floating like a sexy mist in the friendship. It was a bad attempt at trying to emulate what I imagined ‘good’ (read: not clouded by sexualness) friendships looked like. Then, I met Anchal. Anchal and I met through the dramatics society, where we wrote, acted, and directed together. We began to unravel ourselves freely in our daily exchanges, on the way back to the hostel from rehearsal. We would go out on long walks, hold hands in moments of joy, reveal secrets on tense nights, hug openly in the middle of the street, make elaborate gifts for birthdays, and present each other with flirtatious compliments. I wasn’t anxious when I came out to her. Like those before her, she thought that it was going to be a proposal of sorts. But she was open in accepting what followed. “Arey Adi, ab saath mein ladkey taadengey!” The blood surged to my face when I heard her response. It felt intimate to share with her something so private, especially because we could now speak about our desires and fantasies in the company of each other. This was something I had never done with anyone earlier. I began to find more comfort in her presence because we could do all this without panicking over what our relationship was supposed to be – or not be. We were not interested in naked sex, or a sexual ‘conclusion’, for the lack of a better term. But the eroticism that was conceived during our moonlit walks stayed - we craved to be in physical proximity of each other, do things together, express attraction, and seek each other’s approval. We were often teased as a couple because that is what we were seen to be. It felt exciting to be associated with each other in that way, and we loved hearing all kinds of insinuations about us. Anchal and I did not try to morph this into a ‘sisterhood’ or delete parts of our affection-attraction to fit the gay-boy-and-straight-girl friendship stereotypes. It didn’t feel necessary. It didn’t feel accurate. Her first boyfriend would categorise us in this way. Perhaps it was denial, or perhaps it was a way to accommodate the relationship without anxiety. It was never so with the straight men I became friends with. I had to withdraw myself from these men very soon. Even when I was simply talking to them, my brain kept playing iterations of ‘mind the gap’ as I spoke. It was not that mutual eroticism was missing here. I was once preparing for an improv show with a guy friend, and most scenes we played ended up becoming close encounters between us. In the course of the rehearsal, we performed a ballroom dance without knowing how it was done, breathing over each other's necks until we were almost hugging. Then we were a newly-wed couple, or a master and servant turned lovey-dovey. The practice lasted only for a few days but we continued blushing when praised by each other on social media. It felt strange that this equation stayed only as long as my sexuality was not declared. After that, the compliments stopped, and the attraction was reduced to awkward hi-s in the college canteen where we couldn’t entirely avoid each other. When I came out to a college junior the next year, he said “You’re not into me, are you? I’m straight, okay?” My experience with straight men taught me that they had a lot of anxiety around handling the eroticism within a friendship. It was especially difficult when this attraction was not in tandem with the fact that they were ‘straight’. They feared coming to terms with their own sexuality, which is sometimes more fluid than a sexual label can hold. It was far more ambiguous, and did not follow social rules. I did not have these conversations with them because I feared homophobia. I could get punched in the face for being ‘indecent’ and giving that desire a name. That being said, there were several boys in college who I came close to. Maybe they felt towards me something similar to what I felt with Anchal? But it was difficult to grapple with, since they did not have the language for it. Perhaps they did not know that eroticism could exist without sexual intercourse and could be acknowledged instead of repressed. My bisexual friend Suyash had had different experiences though, where eroticism made his friendship with a straight man stronger. “I met Tanveer, and found him interesting in the beginning, but not attractive. He was also intimidating, like most cis-het men around,” Suyash told me. “We started hanging out a lot and then I found out that it’s okay to be myself around him. That’s how we got closer. Once that intimidation goes, attraction comes. Our friendship grew, in a pure-and-pious-friendship waala way. My desire for him also grew after that. There was a situation where I had to shift residence, but I did not want to go to his flat. He eventually made me move in with him, after emotional calls and blocking all other options. ‘Nahi jayega tu, aur kisi ke saath nahi jayega. Come live with me only,’ he would say. I came out to him. Despite him knowing that I’m attracted to him, he continued to provide comfort to me. I mean straight guys are generally scared away by that, but our friendship remained unchanged and full of love.” With LGBTQ+ friends, I found it much easier to inhabit the undefined. To not name a desire or a friendship, to let them bloom together and fill the space in between. They have created a new meaning of love for me, one without inherent expectations or pre-decided rules, each worthy of cherishing. I found a reflection of this in what another queer friend Raman, a law student at Gujarat National Law University, said to me about what bonds him and his female friends. “One of my friends, she is in a different university. We are exploring. She knows I’m gay and everything. We do every fucking thing which typical “couples” do. Like we are not in a relationship and she knows I’m not into girls and everything, but she loves exploring in bed with me and I like it too. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but it’s a different kind of sex, not fully only in the physical thing. We tell each other about our hook-ups. I ask her to tell me what satisfies her and everything, so I can. We are very close to each other and there is no shame. Just to tell you, I’m not itna comfortable with guys, even though I like them sexually. But these girls are not expecting anything from me, so that makes us comfortable about our bodies. We are so open! Somewhere I feel that girls are more accepting, they are more sensitive, so even though I like guys sexually these women are much more warm and close. I don’t like talking to straight guys because they always think I’m hitting on them and make fun like that. They are so fragile, so insecure about being around a gay man, because what if they like it? I have started identifying as queer now, because I think my affection towards her is queer. I don’t think we can set norms. that in a friendship you can not have this or you can not have that. It’s a mutual understanding.” All friendships are different, and measuring them by the same scale doesn’t help. Anamika and Kriya, two Hijra friends from Lucknow, live that reality. “Kabhi ye meri husband bann jati hain aur kabhi main inki husband bann jaati hu”, remarks Kriya, wrapping their hands around Anamika’s shoulders. They said that the few men who do want to have sexual relationships with them mostly want them as ‘the second woman’. They are never accepted as legitimate partners, and seen as less than women because they are both from the Hijra community. There is no eroticism in their sexual relationships with men. In fact, friendship is the only relation that makes the erotic possible for them. It has not only helped them navigate the world more confidently, but created new notions of love that are necessary for survival. How would the world with all its regulations and norms categorize these relationships? Are they married to each other? Or is this how friendships work? Suyash also added, “Friend-zone is such a negative term. It takes away so much from the bond I have with someone. All these terms come with their own boxes.” These boundaries give our life order, but deprive us of deeper, more complex relationships, sometimes disrespecting those bonds as less than. I have come to understand that there are all kinds of imaginations of friendship beyond its narrow definition. Queering love means that we escape (or shun) the hierarchy of relationships and live in our own realities. Why should kissing be reserved only for romance? What if our erotic relationships with friends are more than, or as important as sexual experiences with partners? What will it take to make space for different kinds of companionships, outside the compartments that are built for us; pleasures different from designated pleasures? What new worlds will greet us when we dare to name these ‘loves’?   Aditya Vikram spends mornings writing poems in a windowless room and evenings dancing on the terrace. Most of their work revolves around the aftermath of loss, negotiations of filial love, and the freedoms of queerness. They are currently pursuing a Master’s in English at Ashoka University.

I Have Erotic Friendships And It’s Not Complicated

“Okay, but first read my letter maybe? I’m too shy to say it out loud,” Alankrita brought her hand forward, a sheet of neatly folded paper pressed between her fingers. The overcast sky roared in deep grey. Her face gave away everything that her words would proclaim later, in the sugary language of love letters. This was possibly the worst time to tell her that I was dating men, but I knew that it had now become unavoidable. So, I came out to her in haste. She snatched the paper back and tore it to pieces. I sat there, dead silent, as she recovered from her shock, until we gradually began to talk. At that time, my sexuality was a fiercely protected secret between myself and my three very close friends. Alankrita was not a part of that circle as I felt that she would break ties with me if she knew. When she finally came to know, she felt betrayed that I had deemed her unworthy of my truth; of something that I had shared with others but kept from her. It had begun to drizzle by now, and the water poured heavier as we spoke. To the passers-by, we were a boy and a girl, soggy in July rain, lodged on a green bench under a huge tree. My head was on her shoulder. For the two hours that we were there, we received sly stares, repeated glances and policing gaze, as any romantic couple would.
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2021/10-October/22-Fri/Aditya-Panel-1-Final-Watermarked.jpg]]
For several weeks after, Alankrita kept saying, “I feel so foolish.” She was embarrassed because she felt she had misread the tension between us, the closeness whenever we were together. But had she been foolish? We shared the kind of trust and intimacy that she had never experienced with a straight man. We also shared a sensuousness. I liked how affectionately we touched each other.  If she were a man, such physical proximity would probably have contained sexual expectations in my mind as well. Simply because we didn’t enter a ‘relationship’, didn’t mean that all that eroticism got washed away. But my coming out forced her to put our relationship in a different box – because that’s how our social relationships are pre-sorted.

At the National Institute of Technology, getting ‘proposed’ to was a rite of passage. If a boy and a girl grew close, the slightest pull of erotic tension would be followed by the obvious next step – a proposal. Relationships were noticed and speculated about, with all kinds of gossip, because that’s also how society works. Since I wasn’t out as gay, it would be assumed I was straight. I soon realized that this was only a localized version of how most of the world recognized romantic coupled relationships. They were seen as the closest companionships there could be. Friendships came after that; a side-dish, not the main course. The ‘friend-zone’ was where people imprisoned friends they did not desire, which seemed to easily mean ‘undesirable’. Eroticism was not supposed to exist within a friendship. Eroticism wasn’t a thing, unless it was followed by a conventional sexual act. Sex, even between conventional partners, was an obstacle course where people would cover ‘bases’. Everyone swore by these rules, and tried to put things back in place when they were flouted.

With Alankrita, sensuality was now out-of-place in our relationship because I had rejected her desire to date me. To fit this new definition, our friendship shrunk so much that it lost its identity, and eventually ended. But by the time Alankrita and I parted ways, my head was full of questions — Where did the act of sex begin? Why was all the focus on how far we went when we were attracted to someone? What about how fully you feel? Was desire and sensuality only about the body? Was it always supposed to lead up to something carnal – a linear progression of sex – or could it exist just by itself? Why could we not imagine serious companionship with a friend? I began to think about desire itself – the emotional and physical universe within which it existed. And as I stepped further into the complex world of friendships, the way I thought about sex, desire, and love changed.

After this, whenever I grew close to a girl, I would end up telling her about my sexuality. This was not only to be candid about myself and strengthen our friendship, but also to pre-emptively control ‘other’ feelings surfacing and floating like a sexy mist in the friendship. It was a bad attempt at trying to emulate what I imagined ‘good’ (read: not clouded by sexualness) friendships looked like. Then, I met Anchal.

Anchal and I met through the dramatics society, where we wrote, acted, and directed together. We began to unravel ourselves freely in our daily exchanges, on the way back to the hostel from rehearsal. We would go out on long walks, hold hands in moments of joy, reveal secrets on tense nights, hug openly in the middle of the street, make elaborate gifts for birthdays, and present each other with flirtatious compliments. I wasn’t anxious when I came out to her. Like those before her, she thought that it was going to be a proposal of sorts. But she was open in accepting what followed. “Arey Adi, ab saath mein ladkey taadengey!”

The blood surged to my face when I heard her response. It felt intimate to share with her something so private, especially because we could now speak about our desires and fantasies in the company of each other. This was something I had never done with anyone earlier. I began to find more comfort in her presence because we could do all this without panicking over what our relationship was supposed to be – or not be. We were not interested in naked sex, or a sexual ‘conclusion’, for the lack of a better term. But the eroticism that was conceived during our moonlit walks stayed – we craved to be in physical proximity of each other, do things together, express attraction, and seek each other’s approval. We were often teased as a couple because that is what we were seen to be. It felt exciting to be associated with each other in that way, and we loved hearing all kinds of insinuations about us. Anchal and I did not try to morph this into a ‘sisterhood’ or delete parts of our affection-attraction to fit the gay-boy-and-straight-girl friendship stereotypes. It didn’t feel necessary. It didn’t feel accurate. Her first boyfriend would categorise us in this way. Perhaps it was denial, or perhaps it was a way to accommodate the relationship without anxiety.

It was never so with the straight men I became friends with. I had to withdraw myself from these men very soon. Even when I was simply talking to them, my brain kept playing iterations of ‘mind the gap’ as I spoke. It was not that mutual eroticism was missing here. I was once preparing for an improv show with a guy friend, and most scenes we played ended up becoming close encounters between us. In the course of the rehearsal, we performed a ballroom dance without knowing how it was done, breathing over each other’s necks until we were almost hugging. Then we were a newly-wed couple, or a master and servant turned lovey-dovey. The practice lasted only for a few days but we continued blushing when praised by each other on social media. It felt strange that this equation stayed only as long as my sexuality was not declared. After that, the compliments stopped, and the attraction was reduced to awkward hi-s in the college canteen where we couldn’t entirely avoid each other. When I came out to a college junior the next year, he said “You’re not into me, are you? I’m straight, okay?” My experience with straight men taught me that they had a lot of anxiety around handling the eroticism within a friendship. It was especially difficult when this attraction was not in tandem with the fact that they were ‘straight’. They feared coming to terms with their own sexuality, which is sometimes more fluid than a sexual label can hold. It was far more ambiguous, and did not follow social rules. I did not have these conversations with them because I feared homophobia. I could get punched in the face for being ‘indecent’ and giving that desire a name. That being said, there were several boys in college who I came close to. Maybe they felt towards me something similar to what I felt with Anchal? But it was difficult to grapple with, since they did not have the language for it. Perhaps they did not know that eroticism could exist without sexual intercourse and could be acknowledged instead of repressed

[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2021/10-October/22-Fri/Aditya-Panel-2-Final-Watermarked.jpg]]

My bisexual friend Suyash had had different experiences though, where eroticism made his friendship with a straight man stronger. “I met Tanveer, and found him interesting in the beginning, but not attractive. He was also intimidating, like most cis-het men around,” Suyash told me. “We started hanging out a lot and then I found out that it’s okay to be myself around him. That’s how we got closer. Once that intimidation goes, attraction comes. Our friendship grew, in a pure-and-pious-friendship waala way. My desire for him also grew after that. There was a situation where I had to shift residence, but I did not want to go to his flat. He eventually made me move in with him, after emotional calls and blocking all other options. ‘Nahi jayega tu, aur kisi ke saath nahi jayega. Come live with me only,’ he would say. I came out to him. Despite him knowing that I’m attracted to him, he continued to provide comfort to me. I mean straight guys are generally scared away by that, but our friendship remained unchanged and full of love.”

With LGBTQ+ friends, I found it much easier to inhabit the undefined. To not name a desire or a friendship, to let them bloom together and fill the space in between. They have created a new meaning of love for me, one without inherent expectations or pre-decided rules, each worthy of cherishing. I found a reflection of this in what another queer friend Raman, a law student at Gujarat National Law University, said to me about what bonds him and his female friends. “One of my friends, she is in a different university. We are exploring. She knows I’m gay and everything. We do every fucking thing which typical “couples” do. Like we are not in a relationship and she knows I’m not into girls and everything, but she loves exploring in bed with me and I like it too. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but it’s a different kind of sex, not fully only in the physical thing. We tell each other about our hook-ups. I ask her to tell me what satisfies her and everything, so I can. We are very close to each other and there is no shame. Just to tell you, I’m not itna comfortable with guys, even though I like them sexually. But these girls are not expecting anything from me, so that makes us comfortable about our bodies. We are so open! Somewhere I feel that girls are more accepting, they are more sensitive, so even though I like guys sexually these women are much more warm and close. I don’t like talking to straight guys because they always think I’m hitting on them and make fun like that. They are so fragile, so insecure about being around a gay man, because what if they like it? I have started identifying as queer now, because I think my affection towards her is queer. I don’t think we can set norms. that in a friendship you can not have this or you can not have that. It’s a mutual understanding.” All friendships are different, and measuring them by the same scale doesn’t help.

[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2021/10-October/22-Fri/Aditya-Panel-3-Final-Watermarked.jpg]]

Anamika and Kriya, two Hijra friends from Lucknow, live that reality. “Kabhi ye meri husband bann jati hain aur kabhi main inki husband bann jaati hu”, remarks Kriya, wrapping their hands around Anamika’s shoulders. They said that the few men who do want to have sexual relationships with them mostly want them as ‘the second woman’. They are never accepted as legitimate partners, and seen as less than women because they are both from the Hijra community. There is no eroticism in their sexual relationships with men. In fact, friendship is the only relation that makes the erotic possible for them. It has not only helped them navigate the world more confidently, but created new notions of love that are necessary for survival. How would the world with all its regulations and norms categorize these relationships? Are they married to each other? Or is this how friendships work? Suyash also added, “Friend-zone is such a negative term. It takes away so much from the bond I have with someone. All these terms come with their own boxes.” These boundaries give our life order, but deprive us of deeper, more complex relationships, sometimes disrespecting those bonds as less than.

I have come to understand that there are all kinds of imaginations of friendship beyond its narrow definition. Queering love means that we escape (or shun) the hierarchy of relationships and live in our own realities. Why should kissing be reserved only for romance? What if our erotic relationships with friends are more than, or as important as sexual experiences with partners? What will it take to make space for different kinds of companionships, outside the compartments that are built for us; pleasures different from designated pleasures? What new worlds will greet us when we dare to name these ‘loves’?

 

Aditya Vikram spends mornings writing poems in a windowless room and evenings dancing on the terrace. Most of their work revolves around the aftermath of loss, negotiations of filial love, and the freedoms of queerness. They are currently pursuing a Master’s in English at Ashoka University.

You Are My Di!

What keeps an intense friendship alive in a world that defines love & friendship separately?

At a friend’s place, two gin and tonics down, senses lulled enough to float through the space of the unsaid, the unbidden, legs stretched out on the blue couch, faintly dusted with dog and cat hair, feet being massaged by another friend as she scolds me for how tight my feet are, and into that space, that oasis of silence, she asks me, “Do you think in an alternate universe, Neha and you might have been lovers?” It comes like a comet streaking across the sky, the tail bright and beautiful – not the thought, no, I have heard this line so many times in the 21 years of knowing and loving Neha – but the idea, momentarily slicing through my sky, but not wounding, the idea of an alternate universe where perhaps love could be defined in another way; that idea was electrifying. *** I have always wondered, what does it mean to be in love? What separates the idea of love from friendship? Does it always have to be reduced to a potent concentrate of physicality and sexuality, that can then, over time, be diluted with water to taste? We are a country where it isn’t uncommon to see friends of the same sex holding hands and walking down the road, their bodies plastered to each other as they go zipping down the roads in their motorbikes and scooters – even as gay rights and acceptance continue to inhabit an uneasy space. I grew up like most people with the binaries of gender and identity, where discovering who you were was intrinsically tied to how and who we love. Anything that fell in between, that inchoate space of friendship and love, was to be quickly categorised or swiftly denied. It is the binaries that exist in hushed whispers, as if uttering them somehow wakes up the slumbering air of gossip – “You are acting like you are obsessed, Neha. You need to stop talking to her for a week, do it like a test, to see if you can.” “Who do you love more? Me or Neha? This is not feeling like a normal friendship to me.” “Look at them, they are like girlfriend and boyfriend. It’s gross.” *** I met her in college. She was one year my junior, though we are of the same age (I don’t know why I feel compelled to state this). We were both pursuing a degree in English literature. The all-women college I was a part of, after 12 years of co-ed schooling, felt oddly refreshing, liberating even, this lack of male attention. We had a newly-introduced credit system, the choice of electives to make up the credits mostly like a pond of rubber ducks, open to both first and second year students. I was stuck with rubber duck exhibit 29 – biology. Ten minutes after class began and we had all settled in, Neha walked in. Short hair, cut close to the head, black jeans, and a long, oversized checked shirt over a T-shirt underneath, making her look shorter than she was, rounder than she was, a tall guitar case slung across her shoulder, round glasses and a mole on her face. She almost looked like a boy. She sat right in front. That same afternoon, I saw her at the auditions for the Western Music Club. I was already part of the Light Music Club. In Madras, the term 'Light Music' is used to define the music from our movies. To denote that which is obviously different from the heavier classical repertoire of Carnatic/Hindustani music, the notes settling around your feet like cement, demanding your full and complete attention. Light Music, on the other hand, was a lot more generous, a lot more lenient. You could commit the sacrilege of walking away half way. I auditioned with Celine Dion’s ‘My heart will go on’, a song already scratchy from the number of times I had listened to it on my Walkman. I was not selected. Neha, though, had been selected. Somewhere between my second year and her first year, we met. Properly. “Have you heard Neha play the guitar and sing? Oh you must!” And so, led by other friends, I made my way to her music, at break time, outside the canteen area, under the big Banyan tree, that later she would teach me to climb, holding my hand, guiding my step. I discovered the warmth of her hands. I also discovered Simon and Garfunkel, CSNY, Cat Stevens, Bread, and so many others through her. Somewhere between my third year and her second year, when she became the president of the Western Music club and I was finally selected (ha!), we spent countless hours of rehearsals in her house, as a group and alone, when I learnt to play the guitar - she the tutor, me the student - when I spent nights in her house - the two of us sharing a blanket, looking at the glow worms and stars and moon stuck on her ceiling, sharing stories of family, of history, of grief, of pain and love - when I melded into the rhythm of her life, her home, her family, when we couldn’t separate time spent together and time spent apart, somewhere between then, I became her music and she mine. *** I rediscovered the art of letter-writing with Neha. We would write to each other constantly. Long letters. She still holds the record – 52 pages – front and back. But no, I did not fall asleep. I was swept into this world of antiquity and charm, of magic and make-believe, of finding letters snuck into post boxes or slipped under the door. When I left for Bombay, for my post-graduate diploma, the letters I received almost every week became my anchor against Bombay’s unforgiving harshness and the terrifying need to grow up. Amidst the thousands rushing to catch the train, I was just one more, being shoved and nudged and shoving and nudging in turn, and yet, I was different. I had Neha’s letters. In one of them she said, I am sending you a ‘musc grave’. When the letter came it had five dead mosquitoes stuck under transparent cello-tape. It was amusing then – we battle mosquitoes in Madras every monsoon, and countless mosquitoes are killed without second thought – but in retrospect it was an offering, a sacrifice of blood, seeping through the layers of devotion, of a friendship entering the nebulous space of love undefined. And so viscerally different from the other friendships in my life that, however close, never required or demanded so much of me. A year later, I would violently shun this as another intense relationship would take hold of my life – the clearly defined “lover” relationship – and I would let Neha go (she’s never even had a crush, what does she know about love?). Not gracefully, of course not. But with the anger of an avenging tribal chief – my swords were out, my armour in place, my eyes blazing, my words a rain of pins. The onslaught was brutal, I couldn’t control it. Stormy phone conversations; loud bangs of the then-landline phone; directed, deliberate and furious silences when in a group gathering, making everyone uncomfortable; and a constant need to attack. It was confusing, because I never knew what it was I was fighting – my own incapability of rising beyond definitions (who is Neha, now that I have a boyfriend?) or my inability to fully succumb to them? It felt like ancient anger, the other side of unconditional love, the depths of an almost satanic urge to see how far she would go in her love, how far would I go in my anger, and would we come out the other side? Friendship often accords that exit card; the stakes are never high enough and the platitudes many – things change, it is natural to drift apart, when life takes over, it’s hard to maintain close friendships, we picked up exactly where we left off  – unlike a lover who would demand redemption – if you love me, you will forgive me. It was like I was standing on a far-away mountain watching Neha try and build a bridge from the opposite end, somewhere deeply relieved that she was willing to cross the rapidly growing chasm, but also, unable to stop myself from burning it down each time. Years later, in between her marriage and my divorce, we would talk about this several times over, and I would ask her what made her stay, she would simply say, “because I love you.” In her forgiveness I would find myself again. *** Soon after we met in college, we went on our first Turtle Walk along the Besant Nagar beach, where turtle conservationists take a small group of people for a walk under the moonlight to save turtle nests from poachers. Neha had brought her guitar along, and on one of the rest stops along the way, she would play her music. Once we reached the hatchery, a good four hours later, we would all spread our sheets on the sand and fall asleep, waking up to a stunning sunrise marred by bums along the shore taking a shit. That morning, still heady from the salt and sand in our souls, we decided to walk back home, about six kilometres. At 6:30 am, after a quick tea from a roadside tea stall with very questionable teacups, we began walking, the roads relatively empty. Half-hour later, still nowhere close to home, the traffic surging past us, I can’t remember what it is we talked about, or even the exhaustion of the walk under Madras’ relentless sun, taking turns to carry the guitar, but I remember, as we neared my house, that we found a tree. The trunk of this tree was almost touching the ground before the branches pulled it up to meet the sky. We named this tree Lyd and the tree became, in many ways, the symbol of our friendship – we would return to it when we fought, or when we wanted to meet in between errands. But that first time, as we sat in a flushed silence, we felt that tingle of acceptance surge upward from the base of our spines, that blot of recognition spreading into an unrecognisable shape in our hearts – I see you and you see me – but we are not lovers. We did not inscribe our initials on that trunk. We did not need to. *** During the Big Year of Separation, when I went to Bombay, Neha would surprise me with a five-day visit. She would sit in the playground on campus as I finished my classes and then we would take the bus or the train together to see not the sights that Bombay had to offer, but the paths I walked every day. When Neha left, and I went to drop her to the station, and we hugged outside, lingering just a bit longer, the auto-drivers around us would hoot. Maybe we were lovers – what they saw was a physical hug, but what we felt was the comfort of all of our silences that had and would punctuate our conversations, held together by two bodies. *** On one of the many afternoons I spent at Neha’s after college, we came up with a secret world – Bob, we called it – so we could escape into it whenever we wanted to. We never gave it a definitive form then – we drew it like an amoeba – but 21 years later, I think that amoeba-shaped world managed to fit into this one, precisely because it had the ability to keep changing and growing. “Are you my sister, or my friend, or are you my ‘di’?” Neha’s daughter asks mine, in between a game they are playing. They are the same age, my daughter younger than Neha’s by two-and-a-half months. In Tamil, ‘di’ (pronounced ‘dee’)  is a colloquial suffix added to the ends of sentences between female friends, like ‘bro’, and yet, like the language itself, it carries a complexity that mothers my tongue; this word between the Hindi dosti and yaari ; between the sky that can contain the nuance of every word uttered and the sky that can be relentless in its chaos of understanding.. My daughter replies with a laugh saying ‘I am your di’, and it strikes me that perhaps that is what Neha is to me as well. My di. Two letters that straddle the sides of friendship and love, like a fearless warrior, hands on her hips and legs splayed, unwavering eyes meeting the world and absolving it of its own disdain. Two letters that become the womb of nebulous meaning shielding us from the stubborn import of definitions. Two letters that did not need an alternate universe to survive in. After all, it could, in fact, birth new ones.   Praveena Shivram is an independent writer based in Madras. You can read her work here: praveenashivram.com.

Good Friends, Bad Boys And Friendship Betrayals

Do you remember your first friendship break-up? Pranav does!

Rakshith had always been good at negotiating, so it wasn’t surprising when he told me that the auto driver before whom we stood, had agreed to drop us to the end of the street for free. The three-wheeler was the colour of a healthy bee with little birthmarks of rust on the sides. As I stood wondering if I should get in the wariness suddenly bubbled up in my head in little packets of scary stories about strangers. I warned Rakshith that only kidnappers gave “free rides” but he brushed it off, as he often did my warnings, and hopped in. I peered through the auto towards home hoping that Amma would feel some tingling in her belly and come out to rescue me, but she didn’t. My fate was sealed with a “Righyaaaa” that Rakshith announced like an enthusiastic bus conductor. I was furious at Amma for lying to me about her Mummy-Otte* that she said informed her whenever I was in trouble; I climbed in to spite her for this betrayal. My fears were confirmed when the auto passed the house at the end of our street so I flung myself out. And my head landed on a rock. You may think my actions unwarranted but, before the start of our journey, I had pointed to the house in question stating that that would be our destination and the man had nodded. So when we crossed the marker I had to jump to escape my captor (who later, to my utter surprise, turned out to be just a good-natured auto driver). When I got up, my bones held me like paperweight; I couldn’t move until my limbs came alive and carried me home. We found out the next day that I had a concussion. After that incident, the pressure to break off my friendship with Rakshith mounted. He was a bad influence on me and had no standard. I interjected every time they mentioned this to highlight that he actually had several standards, one cannot just go and sit in 6th standard without first having completed the five, but my argument was never taken into consideration. Moreover, I never saw any of that bad influence they talked about. On the contrary, it had been the most lucrative of all my friendships. He taught me necessary skills such as breaking a cycle lock with only a small stone, climbing a coconut tree, and jumping compound walls. He was such an expert climber that he would wait until the Doberman in Komati uncle’s house ran all the way from the front gate and then skiddle up the other wall at the very end. Tyson would just stand there and bark and bark and bark baring his teeth in a scary smile. I couldn’t understand why he hated this so much but I felt sad for him. There was something unsettling about seeing a dog capable of hate. During summer that year, I was introduced to Chintu and Bunty; Rakshith made us shake hands so I tolerated them. I had only ever been acquainted with their grandfather, Doctor uncle, who I passionately despised. He was a tall old man who always wore striped pyjamas and tended his garden. His voice was a vicious shrill which was uncanny coming from his body and gave the impression that maybe some mean little alien creature had possessed him. But his garden was lush and full of flowers, most of whose names I did not know. The only one I recognized was roses and the ones in his garden were so thick they could’ve been made out of clay. The place even smelled like what I imagined forests did, soily and wet, and had a cooling effect on the nostrils when you inhaled its air. One day on my way to buy milk from Nandini Milk Parlour, I noticed him engrossed in watering his plants, he stood at the edge of the lawn and held the green pipe in a fencer grip. His index finger covered most of the pipe horizontally so the water spread out to look like a giant glass leaf. It was a welcoming sight so I walked over to the gate and raised my heel until he could see my head. “Rose” I pointed to the family of red flowers and smiled. I thought he would smile back but he only slightly bent his head towards me to avoid looking through the bifocals that sat at the end of his nose. It gave the disquieting feeling that he saw more clearly this way, maybe he knew that I didn’t know any more names. As I began retreating to save face, he pointed the pipe towards me and pressed its mouth.   “Ay KATHI! KATHI! Nin Mukli mele yerad kodthin Nodu!” He yelled while spraying me with borewell water. I ran so fast that my Hawai chappal made pat pat pat sounds very loudly. For someone who avoided running as much as possible, this was fascinating, but my mind was soon pulled back to what he had said. Why had he called me a knife? And what was wrong with my Mukli? Amma says I have a beautiful round face. On my return, I eyed for the Doctor from far away and saw that he was still in his garden. So I stood behind the gulmohar tree across his white coloured house, shifting the frozen milk packet from one hand to another until he went back inside. When I narrated the incident to Amma, she laughed, then explained that he was from Hubli, where they spoke a different kind of Kannada, and said that he called me a donkey and threatened to hit me on my bum. I was disappointed that he said this to his own kind, after all, I was born in Hubli as well. So as you can imagine, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to entering that territory just because Chintu and Bunty arrived. Rakshith on the other hand loved them, which somehow made me hate them more. Chintu had sharp features and looked exactly like Hrithik Roshan right down to the green eyes. When I asked him if he was from foreign, “Yes, from Sharjah” he replied with a weird crispness very unlike his Hubli Kannada (my sister later informed me that that crispness was called an accent and Sharjah was in Dubai). Bunty, however, looked like a baby with a head full of hair; he had chubby cheeks and weak limbs. He even spoke in a totha-potha way. His eyes were quite brown unfortunately. I think this upset him although he never accepted it under questioning. I couldn’t understand why everyone was so enamoured with them but ever since they appeared, Rakshith’s bad influence was overlooked because Chintu and Bunty had standard. I didn’t try to correct them this time. Moreover, Amma had long been waiting to infiltrate the doctor’s house, so this helped. She had her moment when she got his daughter to come home with her new baby, Schmi, (her husband was reportedly a Schumacher fanatic, whatever that is). She took two steps past the threshold with Schmi on her hip and began talking about how different everything was in America. “America Dalli…” (in America…) she would begin in a musical tone. She was christened with that phrase forever: “America Dalli Aunty”. Amma wasn’t as driven to be their neighbour after that day.   I deduced that Rakshith liked to go there because of all the free stuff they gave us. We had never had such a steady supply of colour-colour foreign chocolates, movies and fascinating new gadgets like Bombay scooters. But he didn’t seem like himself when he was in their presence, that's what I didn’t like. Let me illustrate with an example, when we watched movies in their house, the brothers sat on the brown sofa while we were made to sit on the carpet even though the sofa had plenty of space left, the Rakshith I knew would’ve charmed us onto that sofa effortlessly, instead of just doing what he was told. One day, when we were watching Spider-Man, an upside-down kissing scene commenced and I proceeded to turn my head away from the screen, as I’d been trained, but everybody began laughing at me so I turned back and let the scene corrupt my soul. After the movie, we came out to the front yard to play spider-man amongst ourselves. Chintu and Bunty, feeling pumped from the movie, decided to open the front gate and ventured ahead to the dune of jelly stones a few feet beside their house. This was the first time they’d ever stepped out of that gate on their own. I was still angry at them for laughing at me so I picked up a few stones and flung them at Chintu. He dodged and then picked up stones to throw at me. The plan had backfired, the brothers were standing on an endless supply of ammunition driving me slowly away with a steady rate of fire. So I asked Rakshith for help; they demanded it. He stood there confused and I knew that he’d already made his decision, he just had to go through with it. When he climbed up on the dune I suddenly didn’t want to play anymore. His betrayal felt like a splinter, wedged inside my skin so I couldn’t rid myself of it. “Illa stop. TP! TP! TP!”   I shouted with my hand over my head until my throat hurt. They continued laughing and throwing stones at me. One of the stones hit me about an inch over my right eye and the little nick started bleeding. They ran in at once. The tears rolled out diligently and I stood there not wiping the blood. My eyebrow collected the thick liquid so it drooped a little. The gate opened again but this time their father rode out on his red scooty. He took me to a clinic nearby which smelled of Dettol. Thankfully it wasn’t a very serious injury, no stitches were needed, I was told. The doctor admonished me for not being careful, I waited for their father to correct him. He didn’t. On our way back he bought me a small Cadbury's chocolate and promised that I’d be alright, I nodded. Amma panicked when she saw my bandaged head, she was already worried that the auto incident had made me a little mental. It happened when they were playing, I think he fell, he said and assured her that she didn’t have to pay the medical expenses, it was totally fine. Amma picked me up and hugged me so tight that the rest of the tears that hid away in far corners squeezed out of me like toothpaste from an old tube. My sister was heating milk for me the next day when I heard Rakshith’s voice in faraway whispers. He was talking to Amma. I was furious, I wanted to scream at him, ask him why he had come. But when I saw him, he looked sad. “Yeng idiya kano?” He asked and I felt all the creases of rage on my face disappear. He took me out and said that he was sorry. He didn’t know what he was doing and they would’ve broken off their friendship if he had helped me. I don’t know why he was explaining himself, I had already forgiven him but I let him go on a little while longer. We were walking towards his backyard where they had many coconut trees and some twig or other was always falling making periodic tak-tak sounds as it hit the ground. I was a little afraid of that place because you never knew when a coconut would fall. I remembered the first time I’d been there. His mother called mine to tell her that a crow was attacking a family of squirrels. They had settled inside an empty coconut shell and the crow decided to act when the mother squirrel was out gathering, they always said crows were smart. We were told not to climb so we tried to shoo the crow away from below but stopped our efforts when we saw it peck and peck and peck like it had a jackhammer for a neck, stabbing a little squirrel to death. The crow then carried the dead squirrel in its talons. The cries of the mother squirrel were like a high pitched fire alarm that went on for many hours after she returned. I haven't liked crows very much since. My memory stopped playing when I heard Rakshith say something; his words fell like quiet knocks on my eardrums. “Huh? What?” I asked and he kissed me. I looked down at our lips, mushed together, and even though I knew it was wrong I didn’t feel like my soul was being corrupted, it felt like the opposite. when he stopped I saw the strings of saliva from our mouth stretch and break. We then lied down on the ground and stared at the sky without saying anything. I wasn’t scared of the coconuts falling that day. He stopped talking to me after that. I used to see him come back from school on his cycle on most days but he wouldn’t even look towards my house. Two years ago on that same cycle, I had gotten my heel stuck in the spokes, so we rode the rest of the way back with my legs akimbo; giggling with tears. I was standing at the wooden threshold on the day they were moving away. His mother beckoned me to come inside. I came to say bye aunty, I told her. She smiled and asked me to wait, she would call Rakshith. But he didn’t come no matter how many times she repeated his name. I felt as though I’d suddenly grown many years older. His mother, confused by his behaviour, went inside to call him but he just wouldn’t show. I had really just gone to say goodbye. If only he had come out he would’ve known. It seemed that the raft we had built to sail through life together broke apart at the first wave. I was tired so I ran home. Many years later I saw him on our street while playing Holi. I was much taller than him but he was the one to pat my shoulder. How are you? He asked. I was well, I told him and wished him a happy Holi. Does he want to come play with us? No, his friends were waiting for him. We both smiled and I never saw him again. I realized then that rafts were being made and unmade all the time, some stuck, some didn’t, but no matter which way you choose to go with yours, we all fall over the same edge. *** Mummy-Otte - Mother’s gut "Komati uncle" was how we referred to Mr Gopal, one of our neighbours. It was happenstance that I asked Amma his full name while writing this piece. She revealed that the name we used for him is offensive. From the guidance of my professor, I later discovered that it is a casteist slur. Totha-Potha is the lispy way in which most young children talk.

Some of us need to be understood differently: Breaking Up and Mental Illness

Rukmini writes about her relationship and break-up, and how as a person with mental-illness, she wishes it could have been done differently.

After several years of being together, my (now ex) partner, who identified as a non-binary lesbian, dropped a bomb on me when breaking up - I was emotionally abusing her throughout the relationship. This did not come as a shocker to me because I was also in two other ethical polyam- relationships with cismen, who I was sharing a living space with, and we had to navigate too much complexity right from the beginning.  I am currently in-between identities, which is both a boon and a curse, so I should say that I am, at the moment, a tired, confused cis-woman eager to understand bisexuality alongside aromanticism. How feelings, identities and mental health inform our expectations from interpersonal relationships is of great importance to our individual and community wellbeing. The grievances were of me being emotionally unavailable, the relationship having too many terms and conditions, me not giving her the space to fully belong to me and my life. Added, because of my mental health issues, she claimed she had to walk on eggshells and never truly shared with me her expectations from me. The final nail in the coffin was that she felt no romance and desire from my end, an allegation I protested vehemently.   Context is important, so let me rewind. My journey with my lesbian partner began very randomly, but it became something like an electrifying all-consuming thing. She would stare at me silently, and finally, I asked her out, right before leaving the city we were both from. For me, it was a spur of the moment decision, and I will say, I’m glad I am impulsive. Right from our first date, we connected deeply; I told her about my deepest secrets and, of course, my complicated lifestyle, living with cismen and mental illness. That time, my sexual body performed differently, so the idea of “desire” was a text book one, with sex, making out, and all of that. It was young lesbian love, something that movies should be made on. And yet, the problem with queer love is that it is sold to us queer folks as a form of therapy from all the trauma we encounter for being who we are. The isolation queer folks go through since childhood, makes finding someone who went through similar rejections and pain, a love based on solidarity of experiences. When I found her love, our corporeal bodies were just the catalyst to a more intimate politics of belonging in a world where we faced marginalisation. On top of that, my traumas were ancient, severe and deep, and the love potion she poured on it was all the healing I needed. Fast-forward to the present - I am back in my hometown, living with a parent, dealing with work resignation, and deeply devoid of any structure. My childhood trauma was real, unspeakable, and made me who I am - I am still recovering, and inside me sits a person who decides what to do, sometimes without consulting me. No matter how many times I share the experience, it does not go away, it stays and like any other part of my identity, it envelopes me. I often tried to undermine the importance of trauma, mostly by not accepting and not communicating it. I failed to tell her that my deep-seated desire to reject love comes from this trauma. My partner tried reaching out to me but was often faced with a wall of silence. Was this more profound because we were both the same gender? I believe that in a queer relationship, the importance given to open communication is a lot more than heterosexual ones. While I understood the value of this refractive quality of queer relationships, I was unprepared for its magnitude. The need to communicate about everything was driving me insane, and I still cannot get the hang of it. While theoretically, I knew that communication was the key to a healthy life, my trauma encased me and prevented me from making steady emotional engagements with people; maybe it was self-preservation. I was diagnosed with depression as a teenager, which then became bipolar, then it became ADHD and finally underscoring all this was my relationship with self-harm and suicidal ideation. However, as a high functioning ill person I managed to “cope” with regular life, managed a job, basic social life etc. Sometimes, I even forgot about my illnesses…I was that good at pretending. And thus, the people who loved me were also convinced I was a neurotypical.  When I love, I love like a maniac; when I leave, I let go too fast, and one day before the lockdown, I realised this and completely shut myself up. Lockdown was difficult for a lot of people, but for some people with existing mental illnesses, it was devastating. I cut myself off completely from my partner who was in a different city. She tried even harder to use technology to reach out to me. I swore myself off all interactions, and thus began the Great Depression of 2020. I was on medication, but I was never a fan of talk therapy, so never willingly participated in it. My mother calls that as a sign of my mental illness - that I refuse to take help outside of medicine. My other partners who lived with me somehow managed basic conversation with me, but were also getting worried about my mental health. After a sad rejection from a university, I began cutting myself off and on, without anyone knowing. Things got really intense right before I had to fly to my hometown for a friend’s wedding. My partner was going to be there, and I hadn’t spoken to her in months. I was scared and panicking, and thus refused to meet her entirely. I left my hometown in a complete frenzy, but there was a part of me which was sure I had ruined our relationship. A month and a half later, I returned to my hometown, with a new doctor, new medication, and the desire to begin a talk with my partner. And then, one day she let out all her anger at me, and stopped communication. I was caught off guard because, in my mind, we were doing alright, and the sudden outburst completely destabilized me.  I realised, that because of my mental illnesses, I never recognised that my partner was in pain and dilemma. And for the same reasons, she felt she could never reach out to me for support in difficult times.  Another significant revelation to me was that for queer folks there is no playbook to form relationships by - we have no Suhel Seth giving dating advice (thankfully). So we do what our intuition tells us to do, and I did precisely that, just did what I felt was right, which was totally wrong for her. Moreover, in multiple partner situations, if expectations are not spoken about right from the beginning then the relationship is doomed. But sometimes it is not possible to have written/oral contracts. In that case, all we can do is learn from our everyday experiences.  Loving bi-, poly-, mentally ill people who are also probably aro- and ace?…I can only imagine that it is not a cake-walk. But expectations around us state that we will one day get better, and the better is also a normal - a normal queer. To that, I protest. I am not trying to get better because the version of better that you are proposing is not something I like. There is no simple solution to a mental health crisis and talking about it is sometimes painful. I say to everyone who comments on why one should get better for the sake of their caregivers, that while as an ill person I am grateful for the support structure there, because I am privileged to have it, I am also not to be guilted by it.   My partner was part of my care network, so she was important to me. Losing an individual because of miscommunication harms me more than it might others. Getting involved with, and then leaving, a person who is mentally ill, might need a different set of ethics, a different set of expectations, a different prism. Love is healing, but it’s not a cure you are administering to us that we can dutifully respond to. The idea of being able to live in a world where heartbreaks and pain are minimal is my hope, but till we achieve that, I would like to remind people that some of us here need to be understood differently.   Rukmini Banerjee is a researcher and poet who writes about sexuality and mental illness and is interested in the management of bodies and minds.

Can Your Vulnerability Make You Mean? Mine Did.

What memories can a unexpected apology from a childhood bully bring up?

I recently received a message from one of my batch mates from school. Just an innocent “hello”, and a rather non-threatening “how have you been?” Not normally a message to make one sweat, but this scenario was different. No matter how innocent sounding the message, the voice of the person on the other end still rang clear and loud in my head, coloured with a sizeable litany of slurs and insults that had made fourteen-year-old me shiver and flush with embarrassment. The sender was none other than my old high school bully, and with his one hello, he had, just like that, managed to not only ruin my day, but also undo much of the healing and unlearning I had striven for in my adult life. I felt vulnerable, and my reflex was to be defensive. I did not respond to the message for weeks. I felt like I owed nothing to this spectre from the past who had brought me nothing but pain and trauma. The thought of engaging in conversation with him made my heart pound and the blood rush to my head in a poisonous mixture of shame and anger. I recall an incident where I was playing cricket during our school PT class. I was already a confused and uncoordinated kid, and my awkward gait and consistent inability to catch the ball properly had halted our game, much to the frustration of the other players. Ours was not a particularly progressive school, so naturally, this was a “girls team vs boys team” situation where the entire reputation of the boys’ team hinged on us winning the match. I vividly remember being in the centre of a large circle of boys who did not want me on their team, their jeering egged on by my bully who had declared me a “chakka” because of how hilariously girly I looked while running. I sat huddled in a heap on the ground, hot tears of embarrassment threatening to burst forth and confirm everyone’s suspicions. The term stuck, and I would spend the next six years of my life dreading every trip to the park for PT classes. I did not want to be in a space where I was once again vulnerable not only to the goading and the bullying, but also to the million other internalised societal biases around gender that came with being bullied in high school. That this person, who knew a version of me from the past that I no longer was, could disrupt my day and induce such panic so easily even after all these years, was scary and left me frustrated with my own inability to “move on” from the bullying.  When I eventually responded to his message months after, I was surprised to received an instant reply. It was a long-ish message, full of buzz words like “accountability” and “self-improvement” that put my back up. To be honest, I still haven’t fully read it, and I’m not sure that I ever will. Regardless of the guilt that this person felt, I did not want the onus of his apology to fall on me. I did not want to assuage his guilt, I did not want to provide him with the comfort of “it’s okay, we were kids” (even though we were), and I certainly did not want to provide him with the closure of getting a proper reply from me. I won’t deny there was a vindictive, if petty, satisfaction leaving this person hanging. In fact, I turned my read notifications on specifically so that I could drive home the point that Yes, I have seen your little Paragraph, and I Don’t Care. Let him wallow in his guilt for eternity, said I, in an imperious British accent in my head. In my school, much like in most other English medium schools in Mumbai, there was a very well established social hierarchy. This social hierarchy, among other things about one’s class and caste, was majorly fed by how well one was able to perform their assigned gender at birth. As a young person in school, I always felt an enormous amount of pressure to fit in with the rest of “the boys.” I was never the most masculine person in my class, and I instinctively knew that the more I was able to act like all the other boys, the more seriously I would be taken as a person. I would be someone everyone admired and supported, rather than being the constant butt of everybody’s jokes. As I understood it from what I saw, being a boy meant ticking specific boxes - being good at sports and gathering “laurels” for the school, being confident and brash and bantering with the class teacher, having an obsession with football and WWE, and getting into aggressive physical fights with other boys during recess. This was how that gender was meant to be performed. As I got older, I also slowly and dimly grew into the understanding that other people weren’t necessarily “performing” their genders as much as I consciously felt I had to every day. From this grew a toxic internal monologue of constantly “faking it till you make it,” a false sort of comfort that if I put in the effort to perform, eventually, it would become practiced and come naturally to me. I also remember having the awareness that as long as it didn’t come naturally to me, my performance was going to be a painfully obvious one. This also meant that as long as I couldn’t convince everyone else (and especially the boys) that I was naturally masculine, the bullying would not stop, nor the mean jokes, wherever I went. Especially if that wherever was a PT class where one’s perceived weakness is put even more starkly on display. I understood that acting like a boy meant being the opposite of soft – that proving my masculinity meant being aggressive. Since all of my bullies were boys, I thought that if I were to successfully bully someone else, I would also likely qualify as one. Obviously I couldn’t bully a girl, that would just be too easy, because girls back then were considered weaker and if the point of my bullying was to prove my masculinity, bullying someone weaker wouldn’t really accomplish much. My quandary of “whom to bully” was eventually answered in the form of a new addition to our class. This person, also assigned boy at birth, was like me, not discernibly strong or masculine. Unlike me, though, this person seemingly did not have any shame or hang ups about being “feminine”. In a better, kinder time, the two of us probably would have gotten closer and helped each other deal with our shared experiences. But school is not a kind time or place for most people. I had found the perfect target for my bullying. I was just as vicious with my words as the other bullies were to me. I used the same slurs, the same taunts, to hurt and degrade this other person and to prove to my classmates that I, finally, was one of them. I was no longer the other. I was now allowed to laugh along with everyone else at the ridiculous inability of this person to be manly, instead of being the one laughed at. When I look back I think it was almost as if all the things I was taught to be ashamed of in myself - my “girlish” voice, my softness, my reserved nature - were reflected back at me through this one person, and I found a twisted satisfaction in beating down on my own shame. To me, I might be feminine, but hey, “at least I was not that gay.” This person eventually left my school and transferred over to another one within one year. I do not want to dwell on the things that I did and the trauma that I inflicted. When I think of it sometimes, my reaction is to just shut those memories out immediately. I wonder if that is a way for me to protect myself from a different vulnerability than the one I was protecting in school – the vulnerability of feeling guilty.  In all the times that I have stayed up at night, unable to sleep, and my thoughts have strayed to the times when I was a less than ideal person, I have quickly turned away from thoughts about my time as a bully. It was easy, almost in a sort of self-effacing way, to think about my own gendered bullying, and to pat myself on the back for blossoming into the person I am today despite it. But I never really acknowledged the same cruelty that I had tried to inflict upon someone else. So, when I received the message from my own bully, I was shaken not only because of it forced me to relive my trauma, but also because it forced me to acknowledge that I too actively was the bully to someone else.  I do not know whether I feel empathy or disdain for my bully. I do not even know whether I feel both, because I do not know whether I have the capacity for such generous empathy for the source of so much trauma and pain in my life.  I do, finally, allow myself to feel guilt. I do not know what to do with this guilt, because I’m sure the person I bullied does not want to go through the same things I did when I was faced with an apology. I definitely do not want to continue feeling guilty. The feeling of guilt is difficult and agonizing and forces you to live with parts of yourself that you do not want to acknowledge or revisit. However, I also know that reaching out and conveying my apology to the person I bullied is more about me than them. I understand that it is unfair to expect the victim to forgive, just so I can feel less guilty and have closure. Guilt makes one acutely vulnerable too – because you have to see yourself for who you are or have been. It would be so easy if one could see oneself as a victim of circumstance – and we could all see ourselves as victims of masculinity. But in our hearts we also know we choose our actions and the knowledge of how our vulnerability can make us violent too is not an easy one.   Anshumaan (they/them) is a queer particle hoping to become a crazy cat lady by age 25. They do illustration, graphic design and drink a lot of chai in their free time.

The Vicious Ability of Ableism: What do you do when you're explicitly told that you're unlovable, over and over again?

What do you do when you're explicitly told that you're undesirable, and/or unlovable, over and over again? How do you differentiate between someone who's genuinely interested in you, and someone who's asking you out, out of pity? How do you identify the red flags when all your life, you've been told that you should be happy with the bare minimum...that it’s the most you deserve?  You don't differentiate. You start to believe them. You internalize their ideas. Or at least that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. Even as a person with disability, it’s hard for me to keep my internalized ableism aside and accept the fact that I can have standards when it comes to dating. That I don’t have to keep expanding my boundaries, because I’m grateful to someone for dating me. That I don’t have to accept toxic behavior. That I am allowed to have desires. After several mistakes, while slowly beginning to overcome my fear of being exploited, made fun of, lied to, or being deemed unworthy of love, I decided to give dating another try. I don't know why. So, there I was, with my new dating profile. I uploaded a picture of me in a beautiful lehenga, where I was sitting on my wheelchair and smiling, looking away from the camera (pretending to be candid). Not gonna lie, I thought I looked hot. And I started swiping.  Finding someone with similar interests isn’t as easy as they show in advertisements! I managed to match with a few people, sent them a “hey,” and fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up to a number of unpleasant messages. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t seen them coming, but I expected at least one of them to show genuine interest in me, or even flirt! But here’s how my chats looked: "Hey, curious to know is this wheelchair for real?! Even if it is, I won't mind!" I mean, even though it was obviously his loss to not have noticed me rocking that lehenga, I didn’t feel very good about it. What did he think a wheelchair was used for? What did he mean by “is this wheelchair for real?” Wasn’t it obvious? I was very particular about disclosing my disability. I have always been. If I upload a picture without my wheelchair, or if it's just a selfie, I am accused of catfishing when I tell them about my disability later in the conversation. And if I am open about it, they lose all interest in me. Weird, I know. But this is how it's always been. However, what made me want to throw my phone away, was him saying “even if it is, I won’t mind.” I might not be amazing at flirting but I’m pretty confident that this is the exact opposite of it. And, if this wasn’t enough, there were this other conversation with a guy, that went like this: "Hey, would you like to go out on a movie date with me?" "This is the first time we are talking, so I'm not sure just yet. Also, movie theaters are anyway not accessible for me, so...,”  I responded. "Oh…But how about I pick you up?" "…I don't even know you, how and why do you think I'd be comfortable with that? And no, I wouldn't want to be ‘picked up!’” "Lmao, then what's the point of dating you?" He then unmatched me, and left. Just like that. I laughed with my friends about how bizarre his messages were. I cried later that night about how bizarre his messages were.  I couldn’t believe the amount of objectification and ableism I was being subjected to by students my age, coming from prestigious colleges, probably good at the ‘woke’ talk. But that was it. I deleted the account and went on to pretend I had never made that profile. If only I could erase the hurt as easily as I had erased my profile... Most men I have come across, except for a few, have hesitated to talk to me like they would with any other girl they liked. Hesitated to flirt like they would with any other girl they liked. Oh, and not to forget, the ones who did manage to come to me, did so to get “inspired” or “motivated”. I understand when most people don’t know enough about inspiration porn (which is basically looking at me for, or as, an inspiration merely because of my disability), but expecting me to educate you ON A DATING APP makes it worse. It would have been funny, if only it weren’t so sad. It gets hard when you try to put yourself out there, time and again, hoping for it not to be the same. But all it does is make you hate the entire idea of dating. Fear it, if not hate it. I start to wonder whether I am indeed that horrible, to go out on a date with, to flirt with, to touch, to kiss, to hug...?  Why are they surprised to see me on a dating platform? Why is it okay for them to objectify me, but not okay for me to have desires? Why should I be made to hate the idea of dating? Of loving? Of being loved? Do I deserve none of it, because of their ableist mindset? I'm exhausted of being humiliated, of giving more than I should, thanks to their ableism. My internalization of it makes me feel the need to please everyone, to push my boundaries, because if I don't, I'll just be the burden that I am, and remain unworthy. Unworthy of being seen as a person with attractive qualities and quirks. Love shouldn't be this hard you know. Dating shouldn't be so complicated.  I ask you again, what do you do when you're explicitly told that you're undesirable and/or unlovable, over and over again?   Srishti, 21, is a student based in Delhi. She writes and makes cute clay figures when not overloaded with work.

If Love is A Rose, Mine is Rather Grotesque

Once bitten, twice shy – Can one learn to trust again?

I was tired of love, and love was tired of me. "Are you okay?" he asked, as he pulled away. "Another flashback. I'm sorry." I sighed. I couldn't kiss him anymore, I needed to breathe. "It's okay." He seemed disappointed. This wasn't new to me. This disappointment was a familiar voice in my head. Another empty echo locked in my memories. I knew this all too well. Casual sex didn't come with any commitment. At least that's what these sexual encounters were. They would cum, they would leave. Love, however, meant commitment. Commitment that made me conscious. I trusted someone, I loved them, but between us was a big wall of memories, of sexual abuse, and of manipulation. I know what it was, but I still couldn't call it rape, for how heavy that word feels. Did love violate me? “Dear love, am I your victim?" I'd whisper to myself, "I can't let him change me. He was good, a sweet boy. It wasn't him. It couldn't be." Another intervention and invasion of my mind. Tossing the blame around in an endless circle, endless cycle, I would struggle to locate where love was lost and replaced. "It's this abusive patriarchal society. Maybe, just maybe if this world were different…if he were different…I'd be safe. I'd be loved."   My thoughts would run all over the place, incoherently. I had to defend him, to grant myself respite. But peace never came. Love is blind, they say. So, was this love, to defend the person who raped you? Was I a fake feminist? I would never defend such a man. Another spiral of stupefying self-doubt. Did it happen to me, again? Was my trauma valid? It gets difficult to identify why it happened. It had happened before, with another boy. A boy I called my brother. Now, my flashback features a new cast. As a believer in love and its many forms, I have lost trust in my many lovers. Whether it's that cousin brother from 11 years ago, or this partner of mine from a year ago, one betrayal mixes with another. So, I turned to another lover of mine, a friend indeed, who watched me struggle and then said, "I know you're sad and things got out of hand, but it was never that bad. You fought now and then over how you're not having enough sex but that doesn't mean anything. I mean, what he did was wrong but he's been there for me. It's difficult for me to ditch a friend."  I felt betrayed, for he was ditching a friend. Me. "I feel unsafe. I can't detach you from what he did to me, if you enable him. You have to tell me who you want to be friends with. You have to make a choice" I said. “Give me a few days. He's my friend." "Me, or the man who abused me?" I asked again. "A few days." The call ended. It's been more than a few days.  I didn't mean to remember my haunting past and disappoint a stranger who couldn't care less. Fleeting intimacy, a momentary encounter, and the stranger I had simply shared a few convenient kisses with, didn't need to know how I was edging. Edging, but not sexually.  I'm afraid about when seduction will transverse its boundaries and grope me, but this shame and guilt that I carry must not be unleashed. So, I'll let this stranger leave, as his disappointed sighs become part of my void. If love is a rose, as they say, then mine is rather grotesque. No roseate petals, thorns eager to draw blood from clinging hands. Dear Rose, I'll let you go too and watch you fall onto the ground, thorns still intact. Gory, isn't it? A girl with bleeding hands. I'm not hopeful, not really the optimistic kind. However, potential love interest, if you're reading this, I think it'd be funny to tell you, "you've caught me red-handed." Yes. That’s how it goes. Sagrika is currently an undergrad student, pursuing law. She's passionate about law, poetry, literature and art. She's probably giving someone a lecture about communism right now. 

I Will Not Write About The Boy I Like

The world is imploding. I should not be writing about the boy I like, who recently told me he likes me too.

I will not write about the boy I like. The world is imploding. A virus is ripping through everything and everyone, we are breathing in the ashes of pyres lit in parking lots and pavements, and now is not the time. I should be writing that report for work, an article about the pandemic, a message to a friend asking how she's doing. I should not be writing about the boy I like, who recently told me he likes me too. The boy who wants to kiss me within three seconds of meeting me. Who framed it as a question in an age when people scoff at consent, and we thought chivalry was all but dead. He checks for consent every time he wants to flirt with me. I will not write about the boy who makes my heart sing with the beeping of a WhatsApp notification. Who, even 1157 kilometres, away feels closer than anyone around me has been. I will not write about the boy I like, but someone should definitely investigate which mysterious hand of fate or algorithm in cyberspace brought us together in the first place. Here I go again, writing rhyme for the boy I like even though I just decided I wouldn't. Is this what they call love? 'Love In The Times Of Corona', it was called. The blind dating-pandemic mating feminist virtual event we met at last year. My first-ever blind date, and I snag a keeper. Sigh. What are the odds? The odds have been next to impossible. Bombay-Calcutta. Bombay-Delhi. Delhi-Bombay. But how far is 1157 kilometres really, when we haven't even been able to meet those living 1157 steps away in this year of interminable lockdowns? I like the boy, but we've never met. This is a good reason to not write about him. After all, what would I even write? I don't know what it feels like to sit across a table from him. To hold his hand. To wait for less than three seconds before wrapping him up in a kiss delayed by a year. I can only imagine.  But I have imagined. And I want to write. About dreams soft, swirling. About waking up smiling. About how he checks up on me when I'm sad. And stressed. And sick.  But I don't really know him. I only know the side of him that texts me each day without fail. And the side that worries about the world and our place in it. And there’s also the side that debates policy with me one day and names my new octopus soft toy the next. I know the person that shows up for Zoom dates right on time, drink in hand, smile on face. The one that plays drinking games with me. "Never have I ever fallen so hard, so fast." Sip. I know his face, and the scar from the ball that just about avoided his eye that one time when he was young (thank God), and the way he likes his hair to fall. But I don't know him well enough to write about him. Not really.  And so I will not write about the boy I like.  Instead, I will write a list of reasons to not write about him. That doesn't count, does it? Reason one. He may not like it. But then, writers in love write for ourselves, not for others. Did Sidney write sonnets for his Stella or for himself? Did Maud care that Yeats churned out endless love poems for her as she rejected his proposal, then another, then a third? "I have spread my dreams under your feet" I send him. A beat later, he sends me, "I am not the first person you loved." We watch Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye tell us how it feels when love arrives.  But words are not enough. Humans have always searched for words to describe love and lust and liking, and sometimes even for the girls and boys we adore, but I don't have the words for this one specific boy I like. How does one use words to paint a picture of a cherished smile, kind eyes, an ever-so-slightly accented voice, and the giggles and blushes that arise? What words can describe the bafflement and delight of finding something this good when the world is collapsing? I don't quite have the words. So better not to write about him. And while I try my hardest not to write, the world spins on and the stars collide. Another Covid death, another lovely date. Another sealing of our fates. Where is the poetry coming from?  Change tracks. Let's think more sobering thoughts. About how difficult this has got. About the obstacles. The ex in the building. The ex who is always texting. Girls on dating apps mighty interested in him. But he says I'm miles ahead of them. And somehow I believe him.  I will not write about the boy I like because he doesn't yet know how I feel about him. He can't. If he did, he would be as torn as I am, and the world only has space for this much yearning. So I will not write about him, or tell him all that I like about him. Instead, I will take refuge from my own feelings in the Spotify playlist we made of our favourite love songs. How does that song he added go? “This year’s love had better last…” It really better.  But then again. Is this really love? Will it even last? Who knows?  Who can even know? On the tough days 1157 kilometres can seem so far away.  Let’s face it. Writing is about control. You have to know where the story is going to go. And I have no control. Over this pandemic, over him, over myself, even. I drift from dream to despair, sometimes in a matter of moments. My friends smile and gently say, live in the present. The present, when the boy I like is just that: a boy I like. No more, no less.  On most days, that’s enough.  But I don’t know where this is headed. Or how our story ends. I just have the skeleton I envision. And only time will tell. So until then, I will not write about the boy I like.   Tanvi is a writer from Calcutta.

Of Desire, Sex and Size

“Oh, are you wearing a sleeveless top? Have you looked at your size?”

CW: Body Shaming

“Oh, are you wearing a sleeveless top? Have you looked at your size?” It began when I was around 10 years old, in class 4, and wearing a sleeveless top. This is when I learnt that my weight is something I should feel ashamed of, that my body should be hidden. In our society, no one thinks twice before fat shaming. If you’re not a certain size, then it’s an unsaid and unspoken social contract that you will be called “Motu”, be made the butt of jokes about eating and be given unsolicited advice on losing weight. This was my childhood.  It did not help that I grew up in a small town where readymade clothes of my size were not easily available. The refrain was, “Sorry! Hum 2XXL, 3XXXL size nahi rakhte!” (It remains a challenge to find my size in off-the-rack clothing.) When I was an NCC cadet in school, the shirt and pants of the uniform were not available in my size. To my utter humiliation, my uniform had to be ordered from the men’s section. I was jealous of girls who could choose from a range of clothes that the shopkeeper laid out before them. For me, it was whatever fits, whether I liked it or not. The most important consideration was that it should cover and hide my body. After that incident with the sleeveless top, I began wearing loose salwar kameez and dupatta (stitched by local tailors) so that my stomach, my thighs, were not visible. My ‘extra’ weight was kept under wraps. It would be 10 years before I’d wear a pair of jeans. I didn’t realise it then, but the shame I was taught to feel about my body impacted my self-esteem and my adolescent discovery of sexual desire. With the onset of puberty, my body started to change, but I turned a blind eye to it because I had a deep-seated belief that my body was ugly. The only change I wanted in my body was for it to not be fat. Other girls my age would talk to boys and have boyfriends. I would pretend to be above all this. “I am not like the girls who make boyfriends,” I told myself even though I longed to have a boyfriend. The truth was that I didn’t believe a fat girl like me could feel sexual desire or inspire it in someone else. Seeing other girls and the secret dates they went on, I also wanted someone with whom I could go up to Fort Road; someone who would wait for me outside school with his cycle; someone who would smuggle chits with messages to me in my all-girls’ school. But I couldn’t admit this to myself. I pretended the girls who behaved like this were not ‘good’, adding a burden of guilt to my shame. When I was in class 11, someone made vulgar gestures at me. It was an act of sexual harassment and I was disgusted — but there was a part of me that also felt relief because someone had seen me as an object of desire. That my body was “worthy” of being harassed. (It took years for me to realise how damaging this way of thinking was.) As I grew older, my sense of shame and the negative narrative surrounding my body led me to high-risk behavior — sometimes physical and sometimes digital — that on occasion risked my safety. I left the small town I’d grown up in when I went to college in a slightly-bigger city. For the first time, I was away from family and there were more avenues and freedom to do things like talk with boys and roam around the new city. My insecurity and self-loathing kept me from exploring those opportunities in my first year. For example, I skipped the freshers’ party because I didn’t think anyone would want to go to a party with a fat girl like me. I didn’t wear dresses because I didn’t think I was thin enough to carry them off. But things changed as I made friends who encouraged me to explore college life with them. With supportive friends around me, I found the confidence to wear jeans. My friends didn’t know how I struggled with my body or how much I hated it. They had no idea how much strength I drew from the casual words of encouragement that they said to me while convincing me to join them for events and happenings in college. Things had not changed completely. Well-wishers were still giving me tips on how to hide my body. “Don’t wear colours. Wear black. That will hide your body type.” “Do not wear cut sleeves, wear ¾ length kurtas. That will hide your arms.” I was still subject of body-shaming jokes and mean comments. In my second year of college, I wore a dress for the first time and it got me a compliment from a guy who was my secret crush. It was the first time that my body and my looks had been genuinely appreciated by someone I was attracted to. Until then, all I had got were mean comments. Like when a boy I liked in class 10 had snidely told me to look at myself in the mirror when he found out I had a crush on him. But now here I was, a second-year student, receiving a compliment from my college crush. For the first time, I saw myself through the eyes of a man who thought I was pretty and hot. The fear of being judged and rejected remained, but it felt a little less overwhelming than before. A boy I knew in college once told me, “You would look beautiful, if you lost some weight.” I didn’t tell him he was being rude or insensitive because I thought being fat meant people were justified in doling out rude comments to me. I used to think a man was doing me a favour if he was with me. In my head, that he had chosen to be with me despite my weight gave him the allowance to mistreat me. One of my earliest romantic involvements was around the time I entered the third year of college. My partner cheated on me, lied to me and manipulated me for sexting. I defended his behavior and continued to remain with him because I was so relieved that he was attracted to me. He was one of the many men with whom I’d hook up only because I could turn them on and make them come. I wasn’t attracted to them at all and I got neither sexual pleasure nor emotional comfort from these encounters. I was not even thinking about myself or my pleasure. But the fact that they were attracted to me numbed by self-loathing and gave me a certain kind of assurance — assurance that my body was worthy, that it could turn a man on, that I could be a sexual being. I behaved rashly in many of these hook-ups just because being seen as desirable by a man made me feel worthy. “I am not saying about your weight, but you should take care of your health.” My last partner said these words to me.  Even though my relationship with my body isn’t as negative as it was when I was an adolescent, there are traces of the old shame that linger. I still tolerate body shaming in the name of health advisory, like in that statement by my ex-partner. I still fear wearing colours that might show off my body instead of hiding it. I’m a lot more confident about my body today, but there hasn’t been a single “eureka!” moment. It has been a long and persistent process of breaking old patterns and not looking for affirmation from men. Until two years ago, I thought it was normal for non-‘regular’ bodies to be shamed and mocked. It took another woman being subjected to similar judgement for me to understand how wrong the norm was. A friend of mine, who happens to be straight-out-of-stories beautiful, shared with me how she’s been shamed and it made me realise my experience was part of a patriarchal pattern.  I wouldn’t say I’m completely comfortable with myself and that I never feel insecure, but the risks I take with my body are no longer the unhealthy kind. Now, I take the good kind of risk, like when I decided to be a nude model for a photographer who was doing a series on change and bodies. I wanted to see how the parts that I’d been taught to hate — like my back, with its “extra fat” — looked. I wanted to see my boobs on camera. It was a revelation how spontaneous the shoot felt and I loved every moment of it. I felt part of the process as we kept clicking pictures and checking how they looked before taking more shots. The shoot gave me a sense of control over how I was seen by the camera and inspired a certain confidence in me. If it wasn’t for the fear of family and being judged by my professional peers, I would do a lot more shoots like that one. I am still scared of sexual positions that involve me being on top because I fear being judged by my partner. But I have enjoyed the most earth-shattering sex as well as had the most boring-barely-turned-on sex — which is why I now know that neither had anything to with my size. The things we are taught and told as adolescents cast a long shadow and it’s taken years for me to truly accept that sexual attraction and pleasure are not decided by body type or shape. Love, lust, sex — they come in all sizes. My body is one of many things about me. It is neither the whole of me nor something to be ashamed of. I’m still learning different things about it. During lockdown, I experimented with photographing myself in the nude, in the privacy of my tiny room. I’ve discovered that I love my boobs (with and without bra), that my tattoos are hot and my earrings are pretty sexy.  It has been a long journey for the child who was convinced her body needed to be hid and the teenager who confused affirmation with harassment, and I am proud of it. Today, if I could tell one thing to my adolescent self, it would be this: “You are sexy and you should know it!” S is a researcher but her alternate career choice is becoming a model and doing naked photoshoots. While not researching or writing, she spends her time decorating imaginary houses in her head and putting musical Instagram stories.

Of Simps, Sluts and Societal Pressure - My Time in a 'Boys Club'

Nayana talks about conditioning, internalized misogyny and self-hate through her experiences in a “boys club” in school.  

I spent the two worst years of my life in a “boys club”. While correlation doesn't equal causation, which is to say that the boys club wasn't necessarily the reason my life sucked, it seemed to symbolise all that sucked about it. I had a hard time making friends throughout my school-life. My parents and teachers said I shouldn't be so picky and I'd be lucky if people decided to accept me. It made me feel like I was a bad person who didn't deserve friends. This belief primed me for the conditioning, manipulation and internalized hate that I was about to be a part of. Since I couldn't crack any of the all-girls social circles in high school, I asked my desk partner if I could sit with his group for lunch. He shrugged and said it was okay. He didn't check with any of his friends, didn't make a big deal about me being the only girl, and made me feel like I fit in, for the first time, just because they accepted, or should I say, tolerated me. I knew nothing about rappers or fast cars or cricket but it didn't matter. I was just happy to be included because it was a feeling I had never felt in the past 14 years. The boys were also fascinated that I was not a "girly girl" (whatever that meant), and they praised me for it. I got a kick out of their saying "she's a tomboy, woh doosre ladkiyon ke jaise nahi hai". I then associated all things girly with lameness or weakness. I rolled my eyes at those who left their long tresses open and wore Forever21 clothes. I gagged at girls who loved romantic comedies because, to quote Kartik Aaryan from Pyaar ka Punchnama, "saari ladkiya ek jaise hi hoti hai, bro". And I did not want to be “saari ladkiyan”. I remember going out for dinner with this group, and one of the boys didn't really want me to come. My friend then said "chill, she's not like other girls. She's a cool girl, no?" he turned, asking me the last part, smiling warmly. I blushed in happiness and modesty regardless of the cringe factor of this sentence. I thought he meant I was cool for being myself, but I didn't see that he and the other boys thought I was 'cool' because I was different from the 'girly girls' in our school. There was an implicit binary here - as a girl, if you were not a 'girly girl' you were immediately classified as someone who is 'like a boy', so you were respected by the boys. That basically meant 'feminine' equaled being walked all over (and objectified) and 'masculine' meant worthy of respect. The question of why this equation existed arose in my mind. Who decided who was worthy of respect and who wasn't? What did that say about ‘respect’ and who deserved it? The boys in my group spent a sizable chunk of lunch break making sexual jokes or objectifying and commenting on other girls' appearances. And their standards were HARSH. I remember them drooling over a girl who they thought was an absolute goddess just because she looked Caucasian (white skin, light brown hair, and hazel eyes) and was extremely underweight. Their language was full of words like “simp” and “slut”. Simp is a derogatory word used mainly for men who fawn over women and/or are submissive to women. Oh, the irony. I didn't know how to process the locker room talk happening in front of me because of how conscious it made me about my own looks - I was by no means skinny, I had dark brown skin, frizzy hair, and thick-rimmed glasses. I began wondering how I would rank on their system of judgement. Thoughts like “I have a nice ass, maybe I'm a 6 if I'm lucky,” or “my skin is too tan today, would they even want me there?” were running through my mind. I knew in the back of my mind that their comments were inappropriate but I didn't want to be a 'nag' and I thought their behavior was just them “being boys”. Now I think what’s the definition of being a boy, every time we say boys will be boys? If this were a movie, they would be good friends who would accept and love me regardless. But in real life, they'd rub salt in my wounds every time. I would get comments like "abey dark chocolate!" and "did you roll in mud today?" when I walked in after PT. I was reminded over and over again that I was undateable, ugly, and would likely die a virgin - both, through objectifying other girls and through constant comments about my skin color. Being a 'cool tomboy' had an unwritten rule - I had to grin through their jokes even if I was hurt, or I would lose my status as a 'cool girl' and be lumped with the 'dumb, girly girls'. Their stupid standard became the one I judged myself and other girls on. Consequently, I found myself judging my female peers and even adult women by the same standards. I looked at the women around me and would constantly, compulsively judge and rate their looks while feeling bad about myself. And the one time I said I agreed when these boys commented that a girl was hot, they started calling me a "dyke" and a "fag"! And OH MY GOD, the Alpha-Male aspiration. It was always "protein-protein-protein" and "quads-forearms-delts". Statements about how women were “hoes” or “thirsty gold-diggers” made me feel guilty to even be a woman. They'd make the dumbest comments on masturbation too - they thought that No Nut November would transform them into hyper-masculine Greek Gods. Each conversation made me feel guiltier, weaker, sadder, and worse about myself on the whole and yet, I stuck on. While I considered myself a feminist, I don't think I understood its nuances or thought of patriarchy as a power structure that did more than just oppress women. In hindsight I also see that they were so anxious to be looked at as 'real men' in front of their male friends that making such comments made them feel more secure. They probably also felt like their wealth defined them as men (even though they were still in school), which explains why they thought girls would only be attracted to them if they were rich. I didn't understand that patriarchy condoned a culture that encouraged boys to hypocritically judge and objectify women while making men feel inadequate without money or muscles. Looking back, I'm sure my desire to be included and loved overrode not only my principles but also my instincts of self-preservation. I'm lucky that things got better and our group evolved into a more courteous one, so as to accommodate future girlfriends. Soon enough, I befriended my alpha-male friend's girlfriend, Deepti (who didn't fit any of his "standards'' either) and realized his behavior in front of other guys was a facade for him to feel secure. He behaved differently when surrounded by mostly boys because he was so anxious to perform masculine roles. He brought Deepti over to eat lunch with us one day, and everyone was super sweet, kind and respectful of her in a way they never were with me or girls outside the group. It's interesting to note that he never acted this way with only the boys. In the process, I was also spared from their bullying and could laugh with them instead of being laughed at.     Deepti and I found out that we both liked to swim in our free time, and started to go on swim dates together. I would always feel insecure about wearing the skin-tight, sleeveless hip-length swimsuits because I did not like the idea of boys at the pool seeing how (in my words) 'pear-shaped' my body was, so I wore knee-length, loose swimsuits. When Deepti got out of the locker room, I saw her in exactly the kind of swimsuit I'd be afraid to wear at a public pool. She was far from thin. In fact, she was more 'pear-shaped' than I thought I was, and she nonchalantly, comfortably carried it. She didn't appear to be hunching her shoulders or sucking her waist in, like I would usually do when I thought I looked fat in my clothes. Inspired by her, I began wearing the tight, backless black swimsuits that I was saving for "when I get thinner". That was when I saw that no one really seemed to care or notice how fat I was looking. In fact, I liked how it flattered my silhouette. I enjoyed our races to the deep end even more now that my swimsuit streamlined my posture. We even gossiped about and laughed at the boys in our group. Like me, she also thought that Ashwin was an a-hole, Arhan's life seemed to only revolve around food and porn, and Dev was a whiny brat. She scoffed at (and looked past) her boyfriend's machismo and hinted at him having a sweet, funny and charming interior, which was nice to hear after I had worried about how my generation of men would turn out. When I realized this possibility, I paid more attention to the times his soft interior shone through, and noticed that it happened more often than I thought. This opened my mind to the possibility of forming a deeper bond with him. Maybe I could be his 'girl best friend (yes, the cringe is strong with this one)!' We did end up forming a more real, deep connection where he made me feel good about myself and we ended up bonding over art and memes. Who would've imagined? When I turned 16, I changed schools. In the new school, I got to know a boy who seemed alpha-male-ish at first glance, but openly cried, watched rom-coms and questioned his conditioning (and is the coolest guy I know). I understood how fluid these things are, and how magical it can be to escape the stereotypes and assumptions about who we can be. I also saw that not all boys are by nature (or aspire to be) alpha-males. In conversations about new concepts we were learning, he was interested in the history of what is considered abnormal and normal. Sometimes, when talking about something that was sexist I would brace myself for a rant on how feminists are actually 'misandrists' (God, how I hate that word) but in fact that never happened and we had some really stimulating conversations! Around the same time, I watched a few videos on the "not like other girls" phenomenon and realized it was happening to me. The pieces were falling into place. He struck me as laid-back yet very absorbed in conversation and extroverted but not overwhelmingly so. He radiated a subtle strength - not as in-your-face as my old friends but present enough to let you know he was secure and powerful enough in his space to not encroach upon others' boundaries. I saw that it's possible to wear your feelings on your sleeve and make people laugh while liking stereotypically 'male' things like soccer and sports cars. I finally understood what it meant to be secure in my femininity and well, in my own self, and I am still exploring it by forming stronger female friendships and practicing complimenting my fellow women rather than bringing them down. Now after a year of practicing this, I finally feel more like my real self.   Nayana is a 16 year old IB student who loves to draw and write. She is a self-confessed daydreamer and Highly Sensitive Person, and a sucker for all things whimsical and fantastical. You can find her podcast - Project High School - on Spotify and Podbean.

This Was My Adolescence! 7 People Tell Us How Their Youth Shaped their Adult Lives

Mul Singh, 48, From Bikaner When I was 12, my mother died. A month later my father left the village and never returned. He also passed away. Our circumstances were such that I could not study further. I was the fourth of five brothers. I used to do the housework, but some relatives told me “What will you do now? You’re not studying, you might as well start working.” I started working in a cycle repair shop. With whatever extra money we had, we’d watch movies. After watching a movie 10-12 times, I’d be able to memorise the songs.  When I was 17, I had a few friends who said “We are going to Bambai. Will you come too?”  I said yes, and tagged along because I loved the movies and wanted to see Amitabh Bachchan. Once I reached Mumbai, I wondered what to do and started looking for work. I laboured during the day and slept on the footpath with my three friends at night. Whatever work came my way, I did it. I worked as a caterer, I worked in a hotel, as a watchman, learnt to drive so I could get a license and worked as a driver. When I was working with a catering company, I met and even shook hands with Amitabh Bachchan! It was a party for Kalyanji Anandji’s 25th anniversary. At the party, they said anyone who wants to sing can go on stage and perform. So I sang a song from Muqaddar ka Sikandar, “Rote hue aate hai sab, hasta hua jo jayega, woh muqaddar ka sikandar, jaan-e-man kehlayega!” I sang this in front of Kalyanji Anandji and all his guests. They [Kalyanji Anandji] were so happy they gave me a gift and told me to keep singing and be happy in life.   Lovely, 23, From Darbhanga, Bihar I was one of the last girls in Class 7 to get married. I was 13. My husband was 20 years old. He came to see me and liked me immediately! He confirmed the marriage right then and there, and I was really happy because he was from a family my parents liked. He was not old either. We got married in a week…  Romance for me was when my husband supported me when my saas scolded me. Waise toh she looked at me just like her own daughter, but since I was not very good at cooking, I used to get scolded. Those were strange days. Things I felt bad about back then, I would just laugh at now. Like, my saas scolds everyone, not just me — I used to take it personally that time and cry in the fields. To make me stop crying, my husband as a joke would come with the jhadu and pretend I was his saas.  We had our first son when I was 16. I was very happy. We would even do thoda hasee-mazaak after our son fell asleep.  My husband was also one of the few husbands in the village to be helpful around the house. My friends’ husbands would scold them if they were asked to go to the shop for groceries, but mera aadmi never told me anything…he would go all the way and buy me sirf ek haldi ka stick also if needed.   Jolly Saikia, 26, From Mariani, Assam I hit puberty back in 2006. My grandmother, whom I shared a room with, was the first person I told that I’d started menstruating. I woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her. Menstruation is celebrated like a big festival in my town. It’s called Hanti Biyan. The date and duration of this ritual are decided by the local priest. The duration also varies with different people. For the first 3 days, you are not allowed to see any male or anyone in your family, you have to use a separate washroom and are only given dry fruits to eat. Then on the 4th day, women in your family will come and bathe you. You are then allowed to have only one meal per day which should be cooked separately from the family meal. My grandmother was happy to know that I had finally begun menstruating, as I was the last girl child. So she went to our home village to thank the gods. And taking advantage of her absence, my father broke the ritual a bit and gave me two meals a day. While chips and chocolates were not allowed to be eaten during periods, my siblings sneaked in these stuff for me whenever they could. I also got a lot of gifts, lots of cash and gold, and had lots of fun.  When I began to develop breasts, I started pestering my mother to buy me bras. When she ignored me, I started trying my sister’s or mother’s big bras, pretending and laughing, “Oh! I got big boobs!” That’s when my mother finally agreed I really need my own bra. I was just happy to be wearing a bra! I couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.  After I hit puberty, so did two of my close friends. We would constantly talk about it. There are many code phrases for puberty like in Assamese — like hanti holo or murheitu hoi gol or mahekya hol. I still remember how one of my friends started freaking out when she got her first period in school and I, to calm her down, said, “Arre kuch nahi hai! Katrina Kaif ka bhi hua hai!” Everyone started laughing. I was 14 when I first started dating, the guy was 6 years older than me. We used to send letters. I had no idea of a romantic relationship. I was just craving any love I could get. I dated on and off till class 12. I kept chasing one relationship after another. Growing up, I had no idea that gender and sex were different. I only knew the idea of being binary and gay. I knew that I was not homosexual but I also wasn’t binary. I just knew I had behavioural traits that are feminine and those that were masculine. I had no queer friends growing up. It was only when I was studying for my Masters that I met queer people and some of them would become family-like for life! It wasn’t until a dear friend, R, said to me one day, “Maybe you are bigender?” that something in my head just made sense! Years and years of wondering and not having any clarity just felt lighter!   Anju Rai, 79, From Lucknow When I was 16, my mother was in a critical situation and when I was 18, she passed away. That’s why at the age of 16, when a lot of those things happen, all that never happened to me because I stayed at home most of the time. Boys had tried to line-maro me during Saraswati Puja (they’d get an opportunity because we’d be singing in a chorus), but nothing more than that. At 19, I got married. In those three years, from when I was 16 and 19, so many things happened that my teens just flew by. So I didn’t have that typical teenager or post-teenager experience. My Baba was very conservative. He didn’t allow us to wear salwar kameez and we started wearing sarees in 8th grade. On Sports Day, I used to take my clothes to my friends house and there phatafat I used to wear my salwar kameez. Even when my music tutor came, Baba — who was very fond of music — used to sit in and listen. A few days before my music exam, the tabla-wala would come to practice with me. Bechara tabaliya! The entire time that he was there, my old and practically-blind father sat behind him.  Because of the Chinese War going on, my husband’s family was in a rush to get him married. Our wedding got fixed, but he had no idea. After a week or two, a letter went in his name, saying “This is to inform you that your engagement ceremony has been fixed with Kumari Anju Rai” My husband initially was very angry that he was the last to know he was getting married. He would joke and say that he only went through with the wedding because of the photos he was sent of me — “I saw the photos and said, theek acche, cholte paarey (ok, this works for me).” If I could change one thing about my adolescence, I wish I could have stayed with my mother for longer.    Mo, 24, From Bangalore Adolescence for me is like a blank canvas that I am slowly figuring out the details of. I seem to have repressed most of it because my memories of it are quite traumatic. I was always the shy and quiet kid who spent their time in the library rather than playing around with the other boys in PT (physical education) classes.  The day I sprouted my first strand of body hair I went screaming to my mumma feeling horrified that I was about to die. I also found myself getting more and more confused and distanced from my classmates who were boys when the rest of them had fully sprouted beards and cracked voices and I was in 12 th standard, still looking like “a kid”.  Growing up in Saudi, the chapters in our textbooks on reproduction (and anything scandalous, really) were heavily censored and I did not know this was supposed to be a “normal” occurrence. Our textbooks did very laterally mention intersex bodies, but those were always talked about as an “abnormal” thing or a “disorder”. When I read about intersex bodies, I somehow identified with it internally, even though I did not admit it to myself immediately. Even though I was not exactly bullied, there was always a certain distance I felt between me and the others in my class. I remember reading about reproduction in our NCERT textbooks, reading about how by a certain age, “boys should look like this” and “girls should look like that”. I remember looking at the textbook and distinctly feeling ki these are not the bodies for me. I do recognize and appreciate my body now, although I wish I had the resources and encouragement to do so back then.   Sappho, 23, From Chennai  Around the age of sixteen, I moved with my parents to a very small town, which was very strange for me. I did not have access to the internet a lot, so thinking about “my identity” was not something I was doing very much. I think because of that, my first experience of my own transness was very much internal, without any sort of reference for what words or experiences I could compare myself to.  Once I got a little bit older though, I was able to figure out how to be a bit badass and smuggle a flash drive into school, which I would then use to download and store stuff from the internet that I found interesting.  I then became part of a lot of online spaces that really served as community for me and also were very useful resources for me to be able to talk about and describe my identity. I was very active on queer spaces on Tumblr, Discord, Reddit and the like that also introduced me to a lot of queer literature and history. I am now a fully crystallized trans Sappho.    Sanjay Sharma, 34, From Delhi When I was a kid, I didn’t know much about puberty. I grew up in a joint family where no one had the time to think about all this. And my parents – they never told us when the sun is going to rise down there. NGOs and school teachers were the only sources for such information and that was also very conflicting. NGOs were like, “It’s normal to have an erection at this age”, and teachers were like, “Treat girls like your sisters. Boners and masturbation will make your brain weak.” So it was kind of confusing back then. I found out about puberty when I was in class 6 or 7. Some of the boys in class used to masturbate. I remember once, I saw some boys masturbating openly while sitting in the front row. I was sitting behind them and I didn’t know exactly what they were doing. One day when I was taking a bath — we had a common bathroom in our house — and I felt something. My erect penis. I wrapped my towel around me and whooshed straight to my room. I thought it had happened because I’d rubbed myself too much. I had a homework buddy in class 8 and one day, I went to his house wearing this pathani kurta that was very well-fitted to my skinny body. You know how these guys drool over skinny girls! So, as we were doing our homework on his terrace, all of a sudden he took me to his room, removed my pajamas and started touching me down there. I followed his lead and both of us were lost exploring each other’s bodies. He was so damn cute! We used to look for excuses just to do that again and again. But one day he was gone because he’d changed schools. My first, unfulfilled love. In my class, there was this tall guy, he was 6’2’’! He wanted to join Delhi Police. I flirted with him so much that it finally melted him and we were on fire! We would sneak out to the forest behind our school and have all kinds of … adventures (you know what kind!). But we never went too far. Now I wish we had. Growing up, I had never thought of myself as being different and these experiences didn’t feel strange. I mean, all these boys were just crazy about me, they used to flirt with me. For me, it was normal. It was only after graduation that I understood I’m gay.

Oh Boy! That's a Sex Toy (For Penis Owners)

Toys to please your P's - Penis and Prostate!

One of my most remarkable and somewhat surprising encounters with the world of sex toys happened on a beautiful summer morning in Washington state in the US. I was at my friend Bart’s house, we had already thrown some beers into the back of his pickup truck, and were getting ready to head out to the lake to watch the Blue Angels air show. Bart suddenly said “Dude, do you want to meet my girls Lolita and Letitia, who live with me? I tell you man, they are both 5 ft. tall and sexy as hell.”  I was taken aback to say the least. Bart, as far as I knew, lived alone while his girlfriend Cindy lived across the state border. So what was he talking about? I nodded tentatively and Bart disappeared into the basement. When he came back, lo and behold, there were his 5 ft twins —  Lolita, an exquisitely-crafted blown glass bong and Letitia, a stunningly pretty brunette of voluptuous proportions. That morning we were rather delayed for our trip to the lake because Bart and I partook of the pleasures of Lolita with some incredible native Alaskan Northern Lights weed. While Letitia was definitely reserved for Bart’s pleasures, I got to experience first-hand her supple silicone body, her pouty lips and sensuous mouth; how her black, lacy lingerie dropped to the floor with one flick of the finger, exposing her magnificent breasts, realistic vulva and anus.. and the mannequin’s extreme pose-ability for impossible sex positions. Later that day, as we chilled out with our beers, Bart told me about his quasi-emotional attachment to Letitia and how his partner Cindy accepted this as an addition to their happy sex life, rather than holding Bart as a sexual deviant. I did not consider myself a prude even then, but, born and brought up in India, I remember having felt somewhat guilty for being aroused by a sex doll. It took me a fair bit of reflection and looking inwards to understand the source of my guilt and eventually overcome it.  I realized that both as an Indian and as a man, forget about using sex-toys to enhance experience, I was actually influenced by a misguided notion that a good thing should be left alone, shoving human sexuality and its pleasures squarely under the carpet. Somewhere I thought that somehow a more vivid and intense orgasm, unassisted by human body parts, was somehow a negative indicator of my sexual prowess. How could I admit that an inanimate object is able to take an already delightful experience to newer heights, thereby lessening my stature as an advanced sex-god who is bringing pleasure to others? Well, I was lucky. Once those hollow thoughts stopped reverberating in the caverns of my mind, I could finally see some light and admit to myself that adult sex toys only demonstrate that there will always be room for improvement and through their creative use, my partner and I can reach experiences that we will not be able to reach otherwise, no matter how advanced our Tantric practices might be. Once I realized this, my world opened up irrevocably to the myriad possibilities of manly dildos and bionic bullets, and beautiful pleasures from which I have never looked back. So, from my particular experience, here are some popular toys to try if you are just starting out in the world of kink and exploratory pleasures. 
  • Let’s start with an innocuous one: lubricants. They’re not only for penises, but essential for same or cross-gender play. My advice: don’t just go ahead and buy fancy ones. Simple surgical lubes from standard medical stores might be quite enough. I also say this because some lubes are incompatible (especially oil-based ones) with rubber toys and condoms, so if skin-on-skin play is your thing, stick with water-based, or if you go the ‘less is more’ route, go for silicone-based formulas. They are pricey but well worth it (as they repel water, they are also great for the occasional shower-shag). The rule of thumb is, “there is no such thing as too much lube”, so don’t hold back, use generously!
 
  • Another popular toy is the cock ring. It’s a ring-shaped sex toy that goes around the penis and helps erections last longer.  If you decide to spend some money on it, do buy a vibrating one because they are great fun to play with. Also check for size (I'm not pornstar sized and unless you are, some of them will flatter-to-deceive) and buy a rechargeable one. Before shelling out cash on your joytoy, estimate if the bulbous head is going to actually touch your partner's privates or not. Also, I don’t want to scare you, but you should know that cock rings can be quite dangerous in case of a persistent erection.  A doctor friend recently told me of a patient with that very unusual syndrome and his cock ring had to be cut through in a very delicate operation. So, if you have that particular issue, be careful.
 
  • Prostate massager:  If stimulating the P-spot does it for you, a good prostate massager might be just the thing. And why not? Word is that P-spot orgasms can be approximately 33% stronger than penile orgasms. So go and explore. But a word of caution —  the technique calls for some knack and experience, otherwise it can be awkward and distracting. So, my advice is to trawl the blogs and YouTube before forking out moolah for the forqan.
 
  • Fleshlights are revolutionary, especially if you believe, “practice makes perfect” in the bedroom as elsewhere. If you are single, consider buying a shower mount with a suction base to increase your dominion. (More pleasure to you!) The blurbs say, it increases stamina and improves performance, but well, check that out for yourself. And who’s complaining if you find net practice to be as pleasurable as a real match?
  • Blowjob simulator: Although they are similar to pocket pussies or fleshlights in construction, these miraculous devices simulate oral sex. They’re especially handy in case your loved one finds tickling their tonsils a bit gag-reflex-inducing or simply isn’t into fellation. If you have extra cash lying in the drawer, spend it on the one that says “based on 6,000 hours of blowjob research and controlled by advanced AI algo” and if that’s not cutting edge enough for you, pair the experience with some VR porn. Just kidding, who do you think you are, C3PO?
Speaking of technology assist, one can take things to a different level these days with remote-controlled prostate massagers, IoT-based vibrators that can be precisely controlled over a Zoom call, AI-assisted auto-blowjobs that promise to make every blowjob a different experience, or simply apps that are not technically sex toys, but provide great work out for pelvic floor muscles to ultimately have better sex.  My list is in no way comprehensive and I didn't cover a lot of fairly standard stuff, like penis pumps, urethral sounders, vibrators, dildos for men, ball separators, cock and ball assemblies, bionic bullets etc. If you ask me, keep things simple. Other than a few favorite contraptions, I prefer to keep my privates away from things that have on-off switches. Honestly, that doesn’t take much away, especially if you are willing to use your imagination to aid your kink.  I’ll give you an example — if you really are into sensation-play, Google ‘figging’. It is practically free and can be whacky erotic fun with the right partner. After all, you can’t really beat the Victorians in kinkiness, can you?  But my list is only a portal to a universe of play and pleasure in which you can chart your own journey. There’s a lot to discover, my dear explorer, so keep your mind (or any other orifice) open, and your rudder (you know what I mean) pointed in the right direction. Just one word of advice. As Letitia taught me, don’t take emotional attachment to sex toys lightly. You might just surprise yourself someday by writing a passionate love poem aimed at a six-inch alien object or if that’s how it goes, get into a marriage-divorce-marriage loop with a silicone brunette (and I am not talking about mere augmentations).  If you don’t believe me, check out this story. Love is a many splendoured thing! Have fun guys! KAUSHIK’S FAVOURITE FIVE SEX TOYS
Name Description Buy Link
Lubricants A fluid used during sexual acts to reduce friction and ease penetration. It can be used for vagina, penis, or on sex toys. Lubes are water-based, gel-based, or silicone-based. IMBesharamAmazonDurex (Rs. 200 – Rs. 500)
Cock Ring Also known as a penis ring, constriction band, or tension ring. It’s ring-shaped and goes around the penis and/or scrotum, slowing blood flow and  can help erections stay hard for longer. IMBesharam, Snapdeal (Rs. 1,500 – Rs. 4,000)
Prostate massagers Also called prostate vibrators, it is a sex toy for people with a penis to massage or stimulate the prostate. The massager comes in different sizes and multiple speeds and pulses to achieve better orgasms. IMBesharam, Snapdeal (Rs. 5,000 – Rs. 15,000)
Fleshlight masturbators An artificial vagina that can be used by inserting the penis into its opening. The erect penis goes into one end and you stroke the penis inside of the sleeve. Should be used with water-based lubricant. IMBesharam, Snapdeal (Rs. 3,000 – Rs. 4,000)
Blowjob simulator An alternative to the fleshlight, the sex toy simulates oral sex for people with penises IMBesharam, Snapdeal (Rs. 3,000 – Rs. 30,000)
Wildly sexy Kaushik encourages men to plunge into the vast possibilities of assisted climaxes while protecting his precious six packs under a layer of deceptive belly fat!

Love Was Not A Cure For My Masculine Anxieties

“Pyaar ka sitam means love comes to us with great promise, to fill our lives, but the truth is it can only fill very little of us,” says Anand Yadav, battling with the pressure that the idea of ‘love’ brings with it.

A few weeks back, I was on my terrace, enjoying a sunny winter afternoon, when my 5-year-old neighbour Kanak came to me. He was lonely and wanted company. I asked him to go out and play with the girls who were also on the terrace. “After all, they all are in your age group, not me,” I pointed out. “No, my mother says not to talk or play with girls,” he replied. “But that's the only option you have now.” As cruel as it sounds, I refused to play with him that day. He waited there, lonely, and finally went down when his mother called. I wondered whether Kanak would forget his mother’s ‘lessons' when he grew up. Or, would he stick to them like he did today? I wondered how his relationship with women would be…how would his relationship with his girlfriend or wife would be -- would he be able to build happy, fulfilling relationships? I grew up in several small towns of eastern India in a lower-middle-class family which, for all practical purposes, resided in proper township colonies but, at heart, lived in the village. Most of the people, like my father, were only the first or the second generation in the family to step out of their hometowns. I too received very similar 'lessons' as Kanak. Segregation in classroom seating, assembly lines, and playgrounds were common. A girl could only be didi, behan, or classmate…never a friend. It was in class 6 that I remember having my first sexual fantasy. It was also the time when the badmaash backbencher types started bragging about how they touched that girl, or how they ‘made’ a girlfriend, or started discussing the storyline of some random blue film. Sometimes it felt embarrassing, other times, I would listen to their discussions and then think to myself, bahut gande ladke hai. This internalized sense of good and bad was quite clear; first, because of the constant reminders to stay away from them, and second because I knew I wasn’t one of them. I felt disgusted listening to them because I could understand the extra share of problems girls of my age had to face. Yup, I was very sensitive and empathetic as a kid, and when boys talked about any girl in a lewd way, it felt hurtful. For instance, when I was in class 7, I had gone to meet a female classmate at her home, but we could talk only for a short while. Her face showed her hesitation in inviting me into her home, and talking to her outside her house for more than few minutes meant inviting scrutiny of character. I guess I can take pride that I was smarter than most kids my age back then, haha. But when I started feeling sexual attraction, there was no one I could turn to. It felt frightening, confusing, and stupid. Those were the days of 2G and forget internet, having a mobile phone itself was a luxury. Once, I got my hand on a colourful magazine advertisement, where a semi-clad model was showing off her beautiful legs, and I couldn’t resist the temptation. I was looking at it intently, when my friend noticed and threatened to tell my mother. I was terrified. I actually felt like a criminal. By my final years of school, expectations of love, sex, relationships had been shaped to a great extent, though almost none of us had actually experienced anything. A girl’s worth was equal to her beauty and a boy’s worth was equal to how many such “worthy” girls liked him. You could earn claps for excelling in academics, but if girls weren’t crazy about you, you would still be made to feel like a loser. When I entered university for my bachelor’s, this only further intensified. Life, with its inequalities, insensitivity, ruthlessness, and competition, doesn’t help. For men, it is hard for various reasons. There are more men wherever you go – universities, workplaces, or dating websites. The regressive patriarchy, while it helps men, celebrates only those who have been successful in creating their worth by these heteronormative standards. I myself started feeling like a loser because the girl I loved didn’t love me back. So much so that it felt more painful to get rejected by a girl, than it did to watch my grades sink. But the rays of maturity do not dawn so easily on men. They can't. Why? Because women, too, grow up believing similar, if not the same, theories. And so, the provider mentality is very real and many women, though educated, consciously and subconsciously keep validating those same regressive cues and notions. Add to this the complications of low self-esteem that I have, and boom, I had a recipe for disaster. What all this did was create a lot of anxiety and internal pressure. While perhaps I had always been a shy, introverted, nerdy kind of person, who spent summer vacations reading old textbooks and comics rather than playing cricket, my problem with low self-esteem started as I entered late adolescence. If I felt attracted to someone, I almost always felt an urgent pressure to impress them. I believed that if I had a girlfriend, it would mean I was attractive too. The fear of losing out and being left out was a key element in my thoughts. This doesn't mean I didn’t have any genuine platonic friendships with women - I have and continue to. But my mind was often on a chase mode, desperate to feel validated, desired, victorious and this didn’t stop even when I had by my side a very pretty, very wise girlfriend, who I loved…who was also my best friend! After I moved to Delhi, I would often feel the urge to approach upper-class Delhi girls to check my ‘worth’. Yes, my low self-esteem, and a desire to belong to this city and feel accepted by the people I somewhat envied, almost always turned a thing as simple as meeting new people, exploring a new city, approaching girls, into a battle I needed to win. I was neither able to act on these impulses, nor call this stupid and get over it. On one such night, I texted an ex-girlfriend, with whom I had been in a relationship for a month, and told her I still liked her and would want to kiss and make out if we met. I was in a relationship where I was happy and yet I sent these messages. Why? Because we were talking after so many months and I started feeling anxious and inferior. Here was a girl I once loved, with whom I had been in a relationship, who had yet never expressed desire for me. This had kept hurting me. A year later, I was admitted into a prestigious institute for MA where I got to meet some wonderful people. I liked some female classmates, thought of talking to them, making friends, to see if I liked anyone. Again, I started to feel the same anxiety and pressure. I would, at times, pose as a little too funny, too witty, or too intellectual to make a good impression. Although I wasn’t faking it, I would push myself to present a desirable, cool, confident side even when, at times, I felt neither the energy nor the inclination to do so. This went a little far and in the process of so doing, I assumed things like online communication was the same as offline. I overlooked other things like not all people liked or appreciated ‘adult’ jokes, or that people needed to have a level of comfort with you before you could start sending them flirtatious messages. The result was that some girls I talked to felt uncomfortable and, perhaps, offended. I felt guilty because that wasn’t my intention but I knew I was responsible too. After these experiences, I started distrusting myself. A person, who as a kid was sensitive enough to never hurt anyone, had become a person who was hurting people so frequently! Most of all, I hurt my girlfriend who sincerely loved me. While she understood my low self-esteem, she expected that I would, at the least, be honest with her. But for the fear of losing her, I compromised honesty, only to completely lose her; she never returned. It’s not that the anxiety and inferiority complex that comes with pressure of being a desirable 'worthy' man always affects you dramatically. Often, it’s very subtle. I had a girlfriend and we had a beautiful relationship…the kind where you first become friends, then best friends, and then partners. I was in Delhi and she was studying in Varanasi. We shared a strong connection, and spent nights just talking, ignoring the fact that we had to go to office and college the next day. We shared memories that we had never shared with even our best friends and siblings. We would try to sense each other’s mood and help each other through periods of lows. We would act like kids at times, hehe. But sometimes, when I was tired or my mind was caught up in other things, I would not be able to tell her that. Sometimes, when I felt hurt because of something she did, I would fear telling her that. I was caught up in the feeling that I would do something wrong and she would leave me. This thought kept running in loops. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have listened and understood, but my courage faltered. So even when I had a great girl, I was still not entirely happy. Having love in my life neither gave me lasting confidence, nor better self-esteem. My anxiety remained as it was, and I would get frustrated and dissatisfied with the long-distance part of the relationship, not realising that it was not going to remain so for eternity. Now when I look back, I have begun to make sense of it. You see, good love, the kind that gets etched in our subconscious, is like a good orgasm. You might never have tasted it, and yet you knew you wanted it. You yearn for it; and if it comes, you are thrilled. You love it, you want it to stay forever, it doesn't. It leaves, and you are left pining for it. You go mad; you start pushing yourself to go for it, but  it starts evading you. The night sky is filled with darkness all around with a few stars here and there, but stars get all the attention; just like that, love gets to get all the attention. Those few seconds of bliss, those few moments of absolute relief, touch us to a depth we never knew we had. Remember the way Shah Rukh, in the movie Om Shanti Om, was mesmerised by a glimpse of Deepika.... That's what I call the tyranny of love, or pyaar ka sitam. Isn't it interesting that while both mean the same thing, the former sounds like I am planning a revolution against it, and the latter makes me sound like a 60s Bollywood shaayar, about to write a touching classic? Anyway, pyaar ka sitam means love comes to us with great promise, to fill our lives, but the truth is, and always was, that no matter how sweet and crazy it is, it can only fill very little of us. We are not Shah Rukh from Om Shanti Om; once Deepika turns around and goes inside, you have to wake up to the realisation that you are just a fanboy, standing on the red carpet, being dragged by bodyguards, and it is the crowd's noise and not the melodious voice of KK that was there all the while. Ironically, realising this has begun to make me calmer. It didn’t come easily nor did it come suddenly. To be honest, I am being able to write this piece only one and a half years after the day I honestly acknowledged that I needed to work on myself. See, I wanted to feel wanted, desired. As a teenager and young adult, I kept shuttling between yielding to these thoughts and resisting them. At one point, I would live like a carefree soul; at other times, I would feel terribly unattractive and desperate. I used to think once I had a relationship where I truly loved, and was loved by, my partner, I would feel good about myself. It felt like a goal to be accomplished to prove my worth. But even when I was in such a relationship, it was the same ordinary, mundane, dark life despite everything. If anything, it was only after I started reflecting and putting effort to understand my conditioning and psychology that I started to feel better about myself…more confident. I still desire to feel wanted, but now I have stopped chasing it like I did. I do feel pressure like before, but I don’t feel trapped anymore. In my journey, I have found a few things that work – reflecting critically, writing it down, talking about it, taking counselling, reading good self-help books and articles, meeting new people, and not hesitating to share weaknesses or past mistakes. You might lose your strong masculine appeal in the process but at least that anxiety won’t have power over you anymore. If the girl still likes you then, my Shah Rukh Khan, you have your Kajol. Uske papa Amrish Puri bhi ho toh you know what to do!   Anand listens to songs on loop, but ends up forgetting the name and then crying for not having saved it. He tries to be a wise, caring person and hopes to become one, before he dies.

“Rubbing, rubbing, nothing is happening!”

What can a quest to find out about the mythical ‘orgasm’ look like?

What can a quest to find out about the mythical ‘orgasm’ look like? Does Orgasming Hermione manage to find out, or does she make peace with the feeling of pleasure and stop hunting for the “Big” O? Perhaps a bit of both…    I’ve always been lucky with my friends. Whether it was in school or in college, I’ve had a circle that I could turn to for comfort, advice and confessions. Our conversations have ranged across it all — “I can’t get myself to orgasm when I masturbate, but when he fingers me, I always do”, “duuuude, you cannot possibly not know when it happens”, “try putting the rear-end of a hairbrush inside and rubbing your clit at the same time”, and “watch your toes—when it curls, it means you are orgasming…I read it in an article”. We were in Class 11, discussing masturbating and our first orgasms… not for the first time.  I listened quietly, laughing at the funny anecdotes and chipping in with quips, glancing on and off at my best friend S, who I knew was in the same boat as me. Neither of us was sure whether we’d ever reached orgasm. I knew what made me feel good, but I didn’t remember feeling the explosive moment or a culmination that everyone talked about. That night, I turned to my trusted advisor, Google, with my question: “How do you know if you have orgasmed?” Google told me that when you had an orgasm, you would know. I believed Google, but still didn’t know.  Most of what I knew at the time about sex, masturbation and the elusive orgasm was from my more ‘experienced’ friends. We did the whole talking-about-every-single-thing-that-happened and loved to discuss in great detail everyone’s first romantic and sexual encounters. One of gyaanis was M, who had studied in America for some time and so had received some sex-ed, which she imparted to us noobs with pleasure. We lapped up all the information that was shared in the group, from each other’s intense masturbation stories to the romantic escapade that one of us had and the rest of us experienced vicariously through their retelling. Sometimes, we even enacted the moments that led up to the ‘first move’. While I may not have had an orgasm myself, after all the conversations we had about climaxing, I felt I definitely knew how one should feel.    So why didn’t I feel that intense pleasure or desire that my friends and Google described, when I masturbated? Why could I not state it, in these terms, to them either? As close as we all were, I couldn’t bring myself to tell my friends about my orgasm confusion. Instead, I tried to work out what I needed to do on my own. I watched porn, trying to imagine what sex and orgasms would feel like. I remember trying to find the spot that made me feel best — my friends said the clit always did the trick —while also trying to put my fingers in and feel around… I felt good, but not good enough to moan and yell. I didn’t feel an urgent need to stuff something up my vagina like the unnamed girl from our school who had stolen a test tube from the chemistry lab and used it to masturbate in the girls’ toilet. The story was that the test tube was not equal to her passion and had broken in the process, causing her to pass out and subsequently get suspended. Sadly, I later found out that this salacious use of lab equipment was a rumour that circulated in many schools.  While keeping a safe distance from test tubes and smelly public toilets, I kept hunting for that moment of desperate yearning in my own sexual escapades. My ever-helpful friends had a bhandaar of suggestions, which I now know now is technically correct, but none of their tips seemed to work.  So I turned to S. In my circle of friends, S was not as open with everyone. She tended to keep a lot to herself and often, she would tell us things long after they had happened. However, S was my best friend and she was dating a girl, which to me meant double the chance of getting answers to my question. To benefit from their combined gyan, I asked S about her experiences with her girlfriend, A. “Have you ever been close to orgasming when A was touching you?” “When do you stop?” Much to my surprise, S was as confused as I was. She said A and her stopped when they got tired or when they just had enough... . It seemed they too were yet to discover the explosive orgasm.  If Google had led me astray earlier, it was Google scholar that threw a curveball in our direction. In a sexuality manual we chanced upon on Google Scholar, we read that many women go their entire lives without an orgasm. It wasn’t really that big a deal, the manual assured us and left us with a new question — maybe we were anorgasmic? It was around this time that I found my first boyfriend. We’d make out and it was exciting to be touched, but I was also never quite into it. I would watch with curiosity and envy as I used my hands and he reached orgasm, every time wondering why I didn’t experience the feelings he did. He tried his best, to be fair. He’d go on patiently, watching my face for reactions, and sometimes I’d fake it because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t as into it as he was. I was having fun, but I just never reached that point of ecstasy that he did. I was hunting for a perfect feeling, trying to see if there was something his touch would do to me that my own didn’t do. That’s the story we’re so often told in everything from fairy tales to smutty romances — there is someone else who will wake up our sensuality. But truth be told, I preferred my own touch and I wasn’t alone. A lot of my friends felt the same way. We broke up a few months later, ostensibly because I was moving cities to go to college but the truth was that I’d lost interest in the relationship. Before we actually broke up, I’d started to avoid getting physical with him. When we did end it, I found myself not telling my friends about the break up. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want them to know — it’s not like they’d have said or done anything unkind — and I wasn’t entirely sure how I could explain what I was feeling. I was fine, but there was something I didn’t want to think or talk about. I didn’t want their sympathy and I didn’t want to pretend I was more sorted than I actually was. So I kept the break-up to myself and went off to college.  By this time, my orgasm confusion had brought me the conclusion that either I was asexual or the orgasm was a myth. My friend S agreed with me and we talked about how likely it was that the rest of our friends were pretending to feel something that they didn’t. In college, I found another wonderful circle of friends and during a slightly-drunk night in the comfort of our dorm room, I broached the subject of the not-so-big O with my four college besties. That night, we’d all congregated because V had just had intercourse for the first time, which made her the Oracle of the Orgasm for the rest of us. She, on the other hand, was much more of a realist. It had been fun, V said, but since it was the first time for both her and her partner, they weren’t sure if they had really “done it right.” R and N piped up saying this was common and that their friends had said sex was an acquired taste, like beer. Also like beer, it didn’t feel good the first time.  “Isn’t that basically the same as masturbating, then?” I asked tentatively.  “What do you mean?”  “Well…I don’t think I’ve ever really orgasmed. I know I should just know if I have, but I genuinely don’t.”  It wasn’t a bombshell. In fact, two of my friends nodded in agreement and said they hadn’t either. “Rubbing rubbing nothing happens only!”  We all burst out laughing.     When our hysterical laughter had settled, our sex guru V said the same thing had happened to her and that orgasms were not necessarily That Big Moment. She said she had wondered for years whether she had orgasmed and had realized only recently that what she’d been feeling was that mythical orgasm. “Just shut up and do whatever feels good na! Itna research why do you need to do?” V said, before suggesting we all stop doing so much R & D on the subject of the orgasm.  That thought stayed with me. Why did I need to do itna research on this?  The subject of orgasms didn’t come up in conversation for a while after that night. Six months later, we were back in college after a summer break. One night, we gathered in Si’s room, one sasta bottle of Magic Moments, split five ways.  “V, you were right,” I said, out of the blue.  “I usually am, but about what?” V asked.  I grinned. “Rubbing rubbing, something’s been happening!”  I’d finally done it — without tracking masturbation milestones or looking up manuals, I’d just gone with the flow. I did what felt good and forgot everything else…and something happened. Later, it struck me that it had probably happened before as well, but I just hadn’t realized that this was my orgasm. I hadn’t recognised it because I was looking for my responses to match a mental picture of orgasm that I had inherited from the world around me. That marked a turning point in my relationship with my sexual self. My first identified orgasm helped me understand my body and how it responds, rather than the way I thought it was supposed to respond. It took me all this time to stop telling my body how to react and instead listen to my body when it reacted. When I listened to it, something happened. I still feel confused when I think back to that time. Was my sexual awakening between the ages of 18-19, and not at 13-14 years like most of my peers? It felt as though I had spent all my life pursuing the orgasm the way Hermione Granger tackled the challenges at Hogwarts — through research and (too many?) conversations. Knowledge might be power, but is it enough for pleasure? Information is good, but how powerful it will be depends on self-knowledge — and that requires introspection, exploration and privacy.      My first real orgasm was probably the first time I was truly alone with myself in my room. Neither friends nor outside thoughts encroached upon my space. And that privacy helped. I wasn’t eagerly waiting for something external, like my mental list of orgasm indicators or thinking about my friends’ experiences. Instead, I listened and spoke to my own self.  From that moment, pleasure became something a little more intimate than it had been before and I realised that some experiences don’t become easier to understand or process by sharing. Instead, you need to spend time understanding them for yourself before you present it to those around you, no matter how close or dear those people may be. I understood why my first break-up had been something I’d kept to myself — I didn’t have the vocabulary for it and I didn’t want it to be translated through my friends’ personal experiences and their expectations of me. usually expected of me. There’s a lot of comfort in sharing confidences, but often, when I share experiences with friends, something of the intimacy and intensity of feelings can get condensed and reduced. Perhaps it’s an effect of us needing to seem more in control and ‘sorted’. The parts are that bring the most pleasure, are the most emotional — they are parts that cannot and should not be condensed or reduced. They are parts that are truly my own...something no one else will be able to truly understand.   I still love to talk and share with my friends. We discuss our likes and dislikes in bed, we regale each other with funny incidents, we share details about our partner(s)… but there is something that I make sure I leave out. A little something, saved just for me. It’s a part of my experiences that have connected most deeply with me — a part I may not always be able to share with another person, a part that I want to keep as my own. Being able to speak about everything openly is an important part of liberation, but by the same token, being open should be an informed choice, rather than a performance. Sometimes, there are things we choose to not be open about because they speak to a relationship with our innermost feelings, and that is too delicate and intangible to be forced into words and put on display. The thrill of this knowledge — of my own pleasures, of knowing my body in a way that no one else quite does, and being able to identify my own emotions and experiences when I feel them instead of waiting for my friends to help me do so — it’s all helped me arrive at that unspoken destination. Still, there’s a lot to be said about sharing frustrations. If  I hadn’t, my friends wouldn’t have our own little inside joke of “Rubbing rubbing, nothing is happening”. It turns out, even if it seems like nothing, something is happening.    Orgasming Hermione is a 23 year old lover of books, films, bad humour and knee casts. She can always be spotted with a mug of tea, coffee, or sometimes even a blend of the two, in hand.   

Platonic Pyaar in the Time of Corona

Two days ago, and of course, during a pandemic, yet another friend of mine got married. Continents apart, I watched the wedding unfold, hunched over my laptop, a glass of wine in my hand. I not-so-secretly judged the haldi-full but severely mask-less faces, but I also secretly envied the overwhelming sense of busy-ness and togetherness that a wedding, fleetingly, entails. I never thought I would envy the company of a crowd, really, but over the past eight months, the pin-drop silence in my one-bedroom in wintry Chicago has become too unbearable even for someone who genuinely loves living alone. No amount of blasting Kumar Sanu’s hits on my new speakers can paper over this kind of a painfully unremarkable solitude. My own home – the only silent spectator to my unfolding and involuntary cocooning – seems bored of my morose presence. Don’t get me wrong. My life has been anything but uneventful. In the midst of this swirling shitshow since March 2020 – and, to some extent, because of it – a lot has happened: I (finally) defended my doctoral dissertation; a close friendship soured beyond redemption; a toxic ex-boyfriend resurfaced, was tolerated for a while and then blocked (again); I learned how to make Dutch Baby pancakes; I began hosting a podcast; and I even managed to have a huge crush on someone I met in the digital world. Still, I am an impressionable woman and I love to wistfully stroll on the slippery slope of self-pity: people had found someone willing to marry them in the midst of a pandemic, and here I was, drinking cheap Malbec all by myself and, even worse, feeling sorry for myself. How is it that despite so much happening, that despite considerable personal growth, that despite a degree I had spent no less than six years chasing, I feel so hollow inside? How is it that, at the end of the day, it all feels pointless – even if I know it isn’t – in the face of heteronormative seductions? I am beyond the stage in my life where I chide myself for being a “bad feminist” – it seems like yet another insidious way in which women judge each other – but I felt real shame at being so pitifully susceptible to the dubious allure of socially-sanctioned desires, even knowing the reality that lies on the other side of that shiny line. A compulsive texter, I immediately messaged a friend, “I don’t even want to get married, but I would like that to at least be an option?!” As always, she left me on read. My self-pity deepened: my friends don’t even reply to me, and people are finding life partners? Okay then. When I woke up the next morning in the haze of a hangover, and checked my phone, I had three voice notes. From her. I played them with the kind of zeal I reserved for 90s Bollywood songs. As her husky, sexy voice filled my ears, I realized that I had actually found love in the time of Corona – one that is often harder, or as hard, to come by, as romantic love. I had found platonic pyaar. At an age when I am told it is hard to make new friends, I have not just made a new friend, but a close one. And, here is the kicker: I have never met her or hung out with her in person. Like the several people in my life who have found a romantic partner in their Instagram DMs, I found the newest member of my ‘inner circle’ in my Instagram DMs. Indeed, she slid into my DMs with an almost Maine Pyaar Kiya-esque enthusiasm for friendship (that she has watched this film around twenty times, is no coincidence). I fell in love; and, as I write this, I am still in love with my friend. And, like with any paisa vasool desi love story, Bollywood had a huge role to play in this one. **** It was sometime towards the end of 2019 that I first heard of SD through some mutual friends who encouraged me to reach out to her. SD was an incoming PhD student at a local university and I, a seasoned PhD student at the other end of the hill, would surely have some sage advice to offer. I didn’t have any, and I never reached out. But every romance has a ‘meet cute’ moment and ours was when we ran into each other at a Stand With Kashmir protest (the good diasporic anti-nationals that we are), and she promptly followed me on Instagram later that day. I followed her back. A few weeks later, I attended a concert by a singer I have written off as “mumblebore”: Prateek Kuhad. I sang Kumar Sanu songs under my breath in silent protest of the nasal, mumbling nonsense that I snobbishly refer to as “youth music”. But when I looked up, I saw SD, standing on her toes, coo-ing, swooning, swaying to Kuhad’s crooning. When we ran into each other at a bar outside the concert hall, of course I made it a point to make fun of her. I said Kumar Sanu was a far better singer. She thought I was being sarcastic. Despite our suspicion of each other’s musical tastes – the kind of thing which becomes a shallow deal-breaker in the dating world at times – we made vague “let’s hang out sometime” plans over Instagram, both of us at a stage in our lives when making new friends was more daunting than being on an online dating app. But then the pandemic began, and alongside the growing sense of dread and doom, grew the wonderful world of Instagram challenges. Someone posted a 30-day song challenge. An enthu-cutlet par excellence, I took to it with a seriousness I often wish I reserved for my academic research. Each day, I would share a Bollywood song as per the whims of the “prompt”. SD, too, started the song challenge and soon we were exchanging long notes about each song. The 30-day song challenge ended, but we wanted to keep it going and, so, decided to give each other a prompt every day and share songs in response to the prompts. We did this for 4 months, digitally singing to each other. Every day, a playlist. Every day, a bucket of Bollywood nostalgia (and, well, discussions on the ethics of liking songs with problematic lyrics). Every day, a lot of laughter. Every day, lots of messages and voice notes. Every day, a gnawing realization that I had never felt this comfortable with any straight man. Ever. Soon, we began to talk about our pasts and presents. The Ghosts of Boyfriends Past and Crushes Present haunted our conversations and we discovered each other over long, simmering conversations. It felt like I was falling in love, except that it was easy: the way love is (supposed to be). Even today, our guards are always down; our disagreements are always interesting; our commitment to banter is meritorious, I think; and our love for a random “I love you!” in the middle of a long and difficult week is a hug in the form of a phrase. There is all the pleasure and none of the pressure that comes with the word love. When I see SD’s name flash on my screen – a message or, more often, a voice note – I smile instinctively. Is there a more robust sign of being in love? We both have many/other close friends, other platonic pyaars, who we have spent much more time with, who have seen us through the ages, who know us differently than we know one another. But SD and I found each other when the world felt apocalyptic, when hope felt hopeless, and when the idea of a future evaded the world. We found each other in the present. They say love happens when you are least expecting it. I often think about how SD and I have this ease in being in each other’s lives despite never really having spent “real” time with each other. We often squeal in unison, “we have never hung out in person but it feels like we have known each other forever!” SD does not privilege the real over the virtual. Neither do I. It does not feel necessary – particularly in a socially distant, technologically-mediated world. In a sense, throughout my adult life, I have been in very serious and very long (often long-distanced) platonic friendships but the constant need of physical, sexual, and several reassurances that heterosexual love almost inevitably requires (on both sides) makes it a difficult burden to bear. I think about this especially since many a heterosexual romance in my life has fizzled out either because of these nagging doubts about the veracity of a connection over screens and endless distances, or over whether “we” will make it if our musical tastes don’t align; if we don’t meet at least once a week; if we don’t text often enough; if we don’t, if we don’t, if we don’t…until the “if we don’t” becomes an “I can’t anymore”. Since SD and I have never hung out in real life, we have never bonded over boozy brunches. We have never gone shopping together. We have never gotten a quick drink, attended a lecture, or gone out dancing. We have never even watched a Bollywood film together (although I do know that if we were to watch a film together, she would insist on us watching Mr. India). We have never spent hours talking on the phone. We don’t text all day, and sometimes we don’t text for days together. And, yet, not for a moment have I wondered if we have been “doing friendship wrong” or have wondered about the authenticity of our platonic pyaar. I cannot claim that I have always felt as secure in all my friendships, but I have always felt more secure in friendships, than in sexual relationships. Perhaps sexual love comes with too much of a script. Or, perhaps, sexual love comes with this in-built, competitive compulsiveness to ‘find The One’ – making it very hard to accept intimacies as and when they come to us. Whenever we fall in sexual love, our platonic relationships become supporting actors while sexual occupies center-stage – under the spotlight, forever needing validation. In sexual relationships, we tend to feel anxious when things don’t progress as they are supposed to, almost always looking at other people’s relationships as points of reference. It always seems like there is so much at stake (most crucially, our self-worth) and there is so much to gain (although what that is remains a bit unclear to me). What is clear to me is that platonic pyaar has much to teach us here: to value the lack of a roadmap; to let go of milestones, of this obsessive need to keep evaluating the relationship; to stop comparing our relationship to some imagined ideal; to suspend this idea of The One; to let the relationship take its own course across oceans, seas, or rivers; or, to go nowhere in particular. Platonic pyaar is freeing precisely because it has no strict script. It is improvisational. And no one is watching. Perhaps it is time we were taught to love platonic pyaar. The fact that SD and my platonic pyaar did not feature in the “list of events” I compiled at the beginning of this essay, is not all that surprising even to me: when the menacing waves of heteronormative intimacies come crashing down on us, it is sometimes hard to remember that we have learned to swim. At a time when relationships have borne the brunt of distance, doubt, and even death, pushing back against a world that values heteronormative relationships, marriages, or even sexual romance as the only worthwhile intimacy, feels liberating. If not now, then when? Do I sound a bit silly about finding a new friend? Of course! But why ever not? Why can I not celebrating falling in (a very emotionally abundant) platonic pyaar in the way that I have celebrated falling for (yet another emotionally unavailable) man? Why must I feel the need to celebrate my professional achievements in response to people getting married? Why must I feel any less giddy about finding a friend online, my new-age pen pal? Why should I – or anyone else – wonder if there is “something more” to this friendship? The friendship is the something more.   Sneha Annavarapu, all of 29 years of age, teaches (regularly), writes (occasionally), sings in the shower (compulsively) and Instagrams (joyfully).

What Does Queerness Care About Productivity? A Poem

The mind was kept busy while the body craved attention. The more it craved, the more I got busy. 


   

All my adult life was invested in being productive

For a cause I had made up

At the time when I was told to be productive.

 

Productive body and mind are valued body and mind. 

What I want 'to become' and what I want 'to accomplish'

were decided in order to be productive

in a body that does not care for productivity

but only desire and love.

 

The mind was kept busy 

while the body craved attention.

The more it craved, the more I got busy.

 

The body sent signs to the mind 

That I deleted at times and again

To focus on the pile of work I was rebuilding.

Productivity is what I learnt to live with 

not desire and love.

 

Along with this, only heterosexuality could fit

Like an easy jigsaw puzzle to ease the mind

And keep it happy and satisfied.

 

The idea of me in the arms of a man

Is one I have in the spare minutes of free time 

I curse myself for having it--the free time, not the idea.

Free time begs to be filled with socially accepted 

Heterosexual desire and love.

 

I had my moments of fantasy with men.

Oh, it is like knowing how to eat when hungry—

It does not slow you down

 

Unlike hurriedly replaced guilty pleasures 

Of fleeting images of a woman's bare body. 

Funny how I even felt guilty going back to examine 

The (queer) thoughts of what I did not want to label

Desire and/or love and/or anything else.

 

She's my friend

I will only upset and repulse her

I told an upset and repulsed me

 

And went back to work 

and my long hours of productivity. 

Capitalist production kills the queer, they say.

As in my case, it took up all space and left none 

For desire and love. 

 

The mind is still not guilt-free today.

It is a process, queerness, not necessarily time-taking.

Even if it is, I am free now.

 

POETRY / QUEERNESS

 

Strange that you ask for evidence

Even though it exists 

In the deepest of my desires.

The more you dig, the more it settles in

 

Subconsciously and comfortably. 

I wear the identity, a name to call it by, 

Consciously and uncomfortably

I wish it had no name.

 

Am I 'bi' only because 

I cling also to heteronormative desire

Like you cling to a toxic relationship?

Or am I 'pan' – because desire must be standardized?

 

I say, desire, love and queerness 

Can't be named or tamed 

Much like poetry

which I like to leave unnamed,

 

Or call whatever I like:

 

Thighs that speak of the places they've sat, 

Or the smell of a long day on someone's shoulders 

Or the curve of someone's back and the way they rest on it,

Or fingers that age with the kindness they share.

 

These are are the only ways I can describe

 

And make sense of.

Better than a label or a name

To what and who I desire and wish to tame.

 

Only if desiring and talking about desire would 

Be given credit without affidavit. 

Yes, a queer life is as poetic 

As words can be queer.

 

Twisted and put together 

The way I want, not the way you want them to sound.

So, I would like to live 

The way I want, not the way you want me to be bound.

 

If my poetry can escape your meaning,

Be raveled and named other things, 

So can my queerness 

Be unraveled, unnamed and named many-a-things,

 

Whether you like my poetry/queerness or not.

 

Geetanjali Gurlhosur is a freelance writer, researcher and storyteller. At times, she writes poetry for her own selfish purposes. She is keen on writing about culture, sexuality, gender and justice.

Uncle’s Fault : What I Understand Now About Grooming

How do cultural norms rooted in respect for seniority enable grooming

An attractive 26-year-old man approaches a 16-year-old girl. Sparks fly. That these sparks will later burn her up to her very soul, is unknown to the girl. Right then, she only feels joy. She revels in the confidence that she is a mature young lady, attractive enough to win the affection and attention of a mature man.  Ignoring her gut, looking past the nights spent crying and hoping that the man would respond to her texts and treat her better, she will try everything possible to make things work. They had to work. He was the only one who really loved her. After all, he said so himself.  She would carry this heavy weight until college, proudly referring to it as her ‘long distance relationship.’ He would cheat first. With another 17-year-old girl. Slowly, in the process of discovering herself in college, and not being allowed to break up with him despite wanting to, she would cheat on him too. It was also the only way to get out of an immensely toxic relationship.  “One wrong to set many other wrongs right,” as I would later be told by someone… *** The first night, when I told ‘uncle’ that I had ‘cheated’ on him, he pulled my hair and held my neck. Uncle slapped himself over and over. We both cried.  On the second night, we sat silently, with me occasionally whimpering “sorry” between my tears, and him smoking cigarette after cigarette, listing all the places he would have taken me to, and the gifts he would have bought for my upcoming birthday, had I been more sensible. Had I not done this to him. On the third night, I pointed out to him that he had cheated on me too. He pushed my face aggressively with his finger, and then slapped me…once, twice, thrice, after which I stopped counting. And that is the story of how I came to hate big rings. The scars they caused on my face meant I wouldn’t be meeting any of my friends the next week. Thankfully, I only had a few, because the others had been cut off when my relationship with uncle had begun.  On the fourth night, my apologies would break through. Perhaps the scarred face was an added effect? Or sex was a basic need? Or, he believed I had been punished enough to have learnt my lesson. He set me on the table, to undo my dress. He threatened to penetrate me without a condom, just to hear me say no. To listen to my scared and trembling voice, to regain a sense of control over my body, which he had lost the night I had ‘cheated.’  Two fingers, one with a big black stone ring and one without, were put in. A declaration was made - it was not tight anymore. I was not a virgin anymore. And of course, virginity was important for an uncle who wished to marry me. I had not passed his slyly conducted Two Finger Test.  It took me a long time to realise that drunk 17-year-olds do not cheat, especially if they’ve never had sex before. It took me more than a year to realise that I had been raped, by yet another older man. I was 17 years old and traumatized.  *** He asked me to pack a sari that day. We were going to an OYO room, somewhere far away, because he wanted to run away from his problems. He took me along for comfort and coddling. Another time, a lehenga was the requested attire. He was 28 years old after all. Wedding fantasies were bound to be there. I was his 18 year old almost-wife.  An almost-wife is like a wife. They perform basic tasks for the almost-husband—wash clothes, stitch torn clothes, look pretty. But one must wait for her to become socially appropriate before placing marriage demands, i.e., she must turn almost twenty-one or twenty-two.  After a night of one-sided pleasure, I lay on his chest, watching our fingers dance together in the dark. “Today I overheard some boys from college. They were talking about you, pairing themselves with you.”  My fingers stopped dancing. “What? Who? What do you mean, ‘pairing themselves with me?" “I mean they were deciding who would be a good match with you. Saying “you take her,” “no, you take her,” and all…” A young girl, fresh out of high school, in her first year of college, was being traded off--hypothetically--on the tables of a chai shop. I felt vulnerable, insecure. I wanted to disappear into his arms. It was horrible. What was happening? “What do I do? Do you know who they are?” I whispered into the ears of my wise protector.  “No, but I think from now on you should be careful about how you walk and talk in college. Just don’t be so friendly. After all, you are my girl na?”  A thousand protests erupted in my mind. Why should I change myself? Why should I care? Why are those boys not being shouted at?  But all I whimpered was a sad “okay…” His fingers continued dancing.  How small my hands looked next to his. *** When a much older person establishes contact with a younger person by gaining their trust, usually by taking on the role of a mentor, a boyfriend, or a dependable adult, it is called grooming. It is often done to exploit the younger person for sexual pleasure.  Dating an older guy is a kink for many. As a young person figuring out the world, it is very hard to navigate and identify red flags, especially for children from broken homes. I had been groomed by two different men in two different cities. That it happened twice, still eats at me. It took me a long time to accept that whatever had happened was not my fault.  Almost two years later, I remain with random memories that catch me unexpectedly on some nasty days, only to choke me, and render me completely incapable of functioning.   Every time I think of the way they touched me, I feel dirty, experiencing feelings that make my gut churn…like someone has put the fan, slicing the air above my head, in my stomach. I remember countless nights of lying in bed, screaming into my pillow until my throat gave out. Jokes didn’t seem funny anymore. Blades would inch closer to my skin on cold nights, only to shy away at the last minute. I remember tears alternating with every breath. I remember it all, until the day I froze outside the very same tea shop where I was being – hypothetically – traded. I cannot recollect what had happened to me after that moment of freezing. The six months that followed have merged into one big, black blur.  *** Today, at the slightly more mature age of 20, as I work to make myself freer, happier, stronger, I want to hold a systemic practice accountable—that deeply embedded aspect of our Indian culture to “respect elders.” From a young age, we beat a few terms and conditions down on children - uncle is older, uncle has more experience, uncle knows all, you cannot correct uncle. Children swallow this and begin to depend on any and all uncles who approach them without thinking twice. They don’t know that a relationship is meant to be a two-way street, filled with open conversation and mutual respect. Instead, relationships become authoritative. Uncle will tell you something, and you must heed to it, or else uncle will get angry.  Most women don’t even realise they are being groomed because of the indoctrination that men, especially older men, know everything, and must not be questioned. We have convinced ourselves that relationships are best only if the man is older than the woman. Grooming is simply the end result of such false ‘romantic’ ideals. These relationships rely on an imbalance of power.  Groomers have a way of weaseling their way in, promising you that you are ‘different’ from others. He will convince you that he is not like your parent, but is your ‘special’ older friend. That the two of you share a unique relationship which your parents cannot comprehend, and so you should not bother to try and share it with them. Before you know it, they are dictating everything you do in life, worse than the way your parents would. You cannot go to certain places, mingle with certain people, because they have done it, they know how ‘bad’ it is, and they are being kind enough by looking out for you You are suddenly restricted from important, life-changing experiences. Restricted from becoming an independent, blooming individual with a life of vividly colourful teaching moments. Simply because that does not suit uncle. If you become independent, who will rely on him? What if you become better than him?  Yes, he wants to see you grow, but not grow past the need for him.  If you have found yourself in this situation before, or are in one now, please remember – “He knows better”? “He is older”? “He has more experience”? Okay. Then he should also know better than to mess around with women who are much, much younger than he is. Women who are still trying to figure out the world.  It is uncle’s fault. It will always be uncle's fault.   Anika Eliz Baby is a student of St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bangalore. When not making memes, she is cracking awkward jokes and fangirling over anybody who is not her. Read more of her writings here.  

The Story of My “Diagnosis”: What if Nothing is Wrong With Me?

How is absence of shaadi or coupledom an 'abnormality' for the society and for oneself?

An abandoned school playground. By a lake, under a starlit sky. A stranger in a bar. A much older client. A younger cousin brother. In the restroom of a restaurant. In the office. In my mother’s bedroom. On the bed he shared with his wife. A guy at a party. In a car. On a flight. In hotel rooms. Behind my fiancé’s back. Colleagues. Friends. Strangers. Hot kisses, make out sessions and sex. With protection, without. Two abortions, one broken engagement, no marriages, no children. High on alcohol, sometimes weed, and intoxicated on the fantasy of the perfect romance.  I am a recovering alcoholic, a “love addict,” and now at 43, have been diagnosed with ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I assure you, these labels were not part of my plan.  Growing up, I didn’t feel all that different. Like my mother, my aunts, my cousins, like every other girl in my class, every Bollywood heroine, and every woman in every romance novel I read back then, I thought my life would be about marriage, kids, a dog, and in the case of my generation, the additional responsibility of a career. I was shy and introverted, but a life of moving every two years, courtesy a father with a transferable job, makes you develop traits of resilience, adaptability and enough charm to woo the world. But wait a second… “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you keep a relationship?” “Why does no man love you enough to marry you? Everyone else seems to have found someone, except you.” “You are smart, beautiful, successful, funny. You have everything going for you, except for your choice in men.” “Why are you so attracted to married men?” “Why are you creating more negative karma? You exude black widow energy.”  The myriad voices of friends, family, ex-lovers, boyfriends, grew louder as I grew into an adult. But the loudest voice of all was my own.  As I moved from one broken relationship to another, I often wondered—what was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just do what everyone else around me seemed to be doing with such ease? And most importantly, why wasn't I learning the lessons that I was supposed to have been learning through all this? Why wasn't any relationship of mine converting into a stable, long term marriage? There was obviously something wrong with me! I had started young. My first crush was at the age of 5 – I don’t remember his name now. We were both class monitors. We chased each other around in class and I remember that first heady “being in love” feeling —warm and cozy, with just a hint of a thrill that made my brain perk up – though I didn’t have a name for it back then. Having a crush soon became my most favourite feeling in the world. It made me feel alive in a way that very few things did. School was, thus, spent moving from one crush to another; unspoken, unexpressed to the outer world, most certainly never to the subject in question, but all the while filling my inner world with unparalleled joy. As I grew older, all I wanted to do was to share this joy, and express all these feelings of love inside of me. My first kiss was in a bar. It was also the first time I got drunk. I was 18; he was 21, handsome, and he looked at me with desire in his eyes. Drinking together, we discovered our fathers died on the same day, the same year. He shared his birthday with my mother, and his sister and I shared the same name. This had to be a gift from God. I had met my soulmate! I don’t remember much of that kiss (I puked in the toilet later; because of the beer, not the kiss), and it eventually turned out that he already had a girlfriend. But I was busy feeling a new feeling--of connection with another human being, of being desired, and the comfort and thrill of being touched sensually. That feeling and I have been doing the disco, the bhangra, and the tango, ever since. That feeling and I have no qualms with each other. It was all well, until I entered the world of relationships. Yikes!  My first “proper” relationship lasted a year. It was the first time I had sex, and I absolutely loved the way it made me feel—the quest for connection fulfilled a notch further. When we broke up, I remember him telling me that the relationship wasn't really going deeper. The minute he wanted to get closer to me, or asked me the dreaded question—how was I feeling—I would recoil and say something glib like “I love you.” The truth is that I hadn't even asked myself this question, so to articulate it to anyone else was near impossible at the time.  After that first relationship, began a series of quarter, half and 3/4th relationships. I did come close to getting married once, but it was as if something inside me was hell bent on not letting that happen. I would walk away just when it was getting serious, or in that one close case, just before walking down the aisle. And there was always someone around the corner who I could distract myself with.  Don’t get me wrong, all these distractions worked at the time. They were all useful allies. They fulfilled a deep need to connect, to belong, even if it was for just a short while. It was also very validating to have a man be attracted me, a high in itself. But it took me a long time to realize that the key word here was ‘distraction’. What exactly was I distracting myself from? What would happen once I stopped distracting myself? I was about to get answers to all these questions, but the distractions had to first stop working. And they did. The first thing that stopped working was the alcohol. The hangovers, and the consequences, were getting worse, and people around me had begun to notice. A friend said to me, “You are too heartbreaking to watch.” I was. Eventually, it got worse; I sought the help I needed, and today, I am nearly 8 years sober from alcohol. But I still felt restless. It got harder sober because I no longer had the alcohol to numb the feelings I was trying to avoid. And so I took to therapists, self-help books, astrology, numerology, inner-child healing, reiki chakras, hypnotherapy, past life regression, current life journaling, new exercise regimes, new diets, new forms of meditation…you get the gist. I was sober from alcohol, but it still felt like I was running away from God knows what. When I stopped drinking, the overwhelming feeling that I remember was shame. A sense of failure at not being able to become what the world expected me to be—married, stable, with children, with a successful career. It took me some time to realize that the feelings of shame were not my own. I mean, I felt the shame, but there was always this nagging thought that there was something beyond this shame that I needed to get to. My last relationship was a few months ago, with someone I met on an online dating app. The first ‘single guy’ I dated in over a decade. Our first chat lasted five hours, the second six. The chemistry was through the roof; we kissed passionately on our first date and tumbled into bed like long lost lovers on our second. High passion…high intensity…high. About a month after we met, and after a long evening of conversation, driving around, and a passionate session of sex, we were “chilling” in bed. Except, I couldn't just “chill”. It’s as if my brain needed even more intensity, and I found myself saying, “so, what about being exclusive?” He looked taken aback. I instantly felt a rush of fear—of being rejected, of being alone, of not being good enough. He said he needed more time, said a sweet goodbye, and we haven’t seen each other since. But here is what came out of that. I spoke to a psychiatrist, took a diagnosis test for ADHD, and am now on medication. Turns out, my brain doesn't function like a “normal” brain. While the jury on the exact neurochemistry of ADHD is still out, suffice to say that there are challenges, and the medication helps to mitigate them. A wandering mind, challenges with memory, and increased impulsivity, are only some of the hallmarks of an ADHD brain. The alcohol, all that romance, the heady high of the first kiss, the passionate sex, the delicious naughtiness of secret relationships, and the never-ending drama of chasing and being chased, were ways to soothe myself and my brain. Now that I am armed with more awareness, I can, hopefully, begin to make my own choices, rather than feeling like a slave to my impulses. And yet, I don’t say this to say ‘problem solved’. I see it as the beginning of a journey of me, trying to be myself – not responding to the voices in my head, mine included, telling me to be the straight-A student of life. All I ever wanted was to fit in, to belong, to connect. Every message that I ever heard around me put such a premium on the importance of fitting in. And if one didn't, they were deemed a pariah. I don't know when exactly I internalized that message, but that fear of being different ran so deep that I did everything in my power to try and be a-part-of, rather than apart from, because to stand alone felt too scary. There always seemed to be mini wars raging inside me—the feminist who wanted to be free, but kept jostling with the idea that a woman is only complete when she is a wife and has mothered kids. The individual who wanted to be authentic to herself, but kept running up against another’s idea of belonging. The woman who wanted to explore relationships without any definition, but the little girl who kept wanting to draw safe boundaries. That war had to stop. And it had to begin with me asking myself—what if nothing is wrong with me? The feelings of shame were because I thought I had to fit into a box that I didn't even want to fit into. I didn't want to make the same choices that I saw people around me making—choosing stability and safety, sometimes over authenticity and freedom. There is nothing wrong with those choices per se; they were just not what I wanted for myself. Maybe I am naturally more inclined to short, clandestine relationships that offer me brief companionship, but don’t impinge on my freedom. Maybe I don't find the idea of being tied to one person for the rest of my life too appealing. Maybe I want to experience relationships without the burden of expectations. Maybe I want to be seen as a full human being without a label—that of a potential wife, girlfriend or lover. If it were a less normative world, it would hold space for those who are atypical in various ways – such as those who have ADHD – rather than making us all struggle to fit into a world of narrowly defined ‘normalcy’. Maybe, in such a world, my relationships would have been just another kind of intimate life people have, leaving me with a sense of beauty, more than self-doubt and shame. Maybe, maybe, maybe… There is no doubt that life is much better without the cloudiness of alcohol. I am more awake, more conscious, and more present to life as it is happening. I can see now that I was merely using it to quieten my inner, more authentic, voices. I know that I want to be present here and now. I want to pay attention to a person, a relationship, an experience without it having to meet some pre-destined goal, be judged against some standard of ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’. I want to allow for things to unfold naturally. It is scary, unfamiliar and more me than I have ever been.   Purnima Raghawan. 43, Female. Aspiring writer and storyteller, design enthusiast, amateur iphone photographer, and keeper of memories.

WHY MEN DON'T TALK ABOUT MASTURBATORS - AND OTHER QUESTIONS YOU NEVER THOUGHT TO ASK

How restricting sex to peno-vaginal intercourse hinders possibilities of self-pleasure

At a work-related meeting, I opened my phone to check something, and an advertisement flashed on my phone – for a fleshlight, a male masturbator. In sheer panic, I pressed the phone so hard that it turned off. It was no surprise really, that it appeared. I had been googling fleshlights all night, trapped between deciding whether to invest three thousand rupees on a masturbator, or to rely on my good old hands to do the deed. Moreover, buying a cheap masturbator that was definitely Chinese duplicate maal might have been the start of a hilarious tragedy. I have never heard men around me talk about masturbators. I asked some of my single male friends if they would give it a try, and they looked at me as if I had assaulted their masculinity. There is hardly anything more fragile than the Indian male ego. Especially when talking about sex. Most straight men, in the heteronormative set-up, feel they are entitled to sex. And by extension, women. My own positionality as a disabled, chronically-ill person, forces me to raise these uncomfortable questions because I know I am not entitled to anything. Except maybe love and kindness. It also makes me search for new ways of finding pleasure through my body. The idea of sex within our hetero outlook is so rigid, that anything other than peno-vaginal missionary is considered out of syllabus. This orthodoxy has led to many of my possible relationships ending even before they begin. This one time, I had a urinary tract infection (my Achilles heel) in the middle of a short (and rare) affair that I was involved in. For an able-bodied man, this would have been no big deal. But because of my chronic illness, everything stops working when I am ill. Complete chakka jam. I searched for ways to make it work. A penis extender for three grand; would it work? How should I talk about it? Unfortunately, I couldn't make that decision on time and that affair had to end, somewhat prematurely. Explaining my body before getting into any sort of relationship, long or short, can be embarrassing. It shouldn't be, ideally, but it is. It turns into a booklet of things I can't do. And before I have finished reading out the booklet, my potential partner has moved on. My claims to being a man is often judged by the standards of how an able-bodied straight man is supposed to be, in body and behaviour. No matter what most folks claim, men and women in heteronormative settings are still attracted to typical (sometimes caricature-ish) masculine and feminine traits. When you are disabled, expressing yourself sexually can be difficult. A friend of mine who is quadriplegic, told me of his struggles with pleasuring himself. I was stumped. I hadn't even thought about it before. Giving yourself pleasure suddenly seemed like a privilege. It shouldn't be. There needs to be an apparatus to help severely disabled individuals. We need sex therapists. We need counselling. There is so much to do, and yet, I don't see activists talking about it. It's not easy for most disabled people to tell these stories. Most of them live with their families, who are their primary caretakers. Talking about sex can be a process full of shame and embarrassment. Disability is supposed to be about survival, not desire, apparently. All of this takes me back to one thing -- the idea of male self-pleasure. Why aren't we talking about it? Is it because of the inherent nature of patriarchy where men are always entitled to sex? Or is it the dominant idea of masculinity which sees men in a certain way – ‘everything is working, right?’. It might be a combination of both these factors. It's no surprise that even for able-bodied men, going to a sexologist is taboo. It's on such taboos that most quacks run their businesses, by spray painting men's problems on city walls: "Reach out to your nearest baba or dawakhana." We live in a society where the idea of women pleasuring themselves has been sexualized. It is used as titillating imagery – fine when men talk about it, but when women actually do it, everyone gets jittery. As for men, they can joke about sex and masturbation, but can’t actually talk about it, about doing it, about enjoying it. The heteronormative sexism embedded at the core of what is considered ‘masculine’ sexuality, dictates what kind of pleasure is acceptable and what isn't. In such a setting, finding pleasure, or even talking about it, is regimented by the rules of society. It's not just about disability. Self-pleasure is an inherent aspect of one's sexuality. Something that needs to be spoken about and encouraged. It can help in developing different perspectives about pleasure amongst men – as beings who experience pleasure, and not simply take it from others to prove their masculinity. These conversations can contribute to awareness about diverse bodies—something that is the need of the hour. Instead of teaching men to draw maps of conquest, men should be taught to openly embrace their bodies. This will surely help them learn to embrace other bodies, boost their own emotional and psychological well-being, ease the shame and violence around sex, make consent understandable, even automatic, and make this world a better place. The so-called ‘normal’ that heteronormativity loves to categorise people as, disables everyone sexually in some way, and those with disability, even more. Personally, I feel a conversation about self-pleasure could do wonders for men with disabilities. In a world where marriage is the primary gateway to sexual fulfillment and life is full of rejection and unrequited love, finding ways to love themselves, and their bodies, will definitely improve self-image and bring them confidence to be successful in future relationships – and life. Plus, we will have hilarious stories of men's junk getting stuck in Chinese-made masturbators. ROFL.   Abhishek Anicca is a writer, poet and researcher. He identifies as a person with disability and chronic illness, which shapes his creative and academic endeavors.

To Think Of All the Bisexual Love I’ve Missed!

I’m 28 and I recently realized I’m bisexual.

I’m 28 and I recently realized I’m bisexual. Yes. Up until a month ago, I thought of myself to be a heterosexual. I have lived thinking of myself as that ever since I’ve felt what attraction or love is. For 5 years now, I have also been in a long-term relationship with a cis man and it continues, alongside the realization. So, what changed?  I’m not really a fan of social media algorithms, but this time, I’m really thankful to Instagram for suggesting the page of an amazing content creator. And well yes, no prizes for guessing, she is a woman. I know this is all sounding very juvenile. But remember the way we would drool over Salman Khan in O O Jaane Jaana? Or how Milind Soman has served to awaken sexual feelings in women over many generations? I felt the same heady feeling rise inside me when I was watching the said content creator on Instagram and I realised I could have sexual feelings for women. It took me days to come to terms with it. At first, I said to myself, it was because she danced really well. Then, I blamed her song selection for the videos she put up, all the classic growing-up hits which could make anyone super-nostalgic and get them hooked. But I gave in and accepted that, despite everything, what really drew me to her was her alone – her smile, her expressions, her energy and the persona she projects. I slowly started daydreaming about being with her, going on dates, cooking for her, and other such usual stuff I imagine whenever I’m attracted to someone. These thoughts became so involuntary that I had no choice but to accept what I was feeling. And in the hope that the woman I’m crushing over does read this, just to clarify, I request you to please consider all of this as a compliment, and just, mere pyaar ka izhar, if you will.  Yet, this isn’t the first time I have felt attracted to women.. I’ve had momentary crushes, both for fictional characters and real women. I’d also liked a woman seriously about 2 years ago. But, since it was the first time, I found all kinds of excuses to not accept that I also like women. Afterall, she was the first and only woman I’d liked and it is really easy to rationalise one’s queer feelings as ephemeral , when one has lived with heterosexual feelings for close to a decade. Also, as women, we have so many easy intimacies. We often appreciate each other, contrary to the popular belief that women are jealous of each other. And even though I could see I appreciated her differently (read romantically), I wasn’t quite convinced nor was I ready to redefine and relabel my sexuality. I mean, look, I grew up in Dombivli, near Bombay. It creates a misconception of growing up in a metropolitan culture. Dombivli is pretty conservative, as is my family. My sister and I pretended, in our initial libido-fueled years, that we in fact have no libido. This is not unique, as most people have experienced or continue to experience this in our country. So, yes, family, community, society, culture, religion, state and all other such institutions conspire to stunt our relationship with our sexual feelings.  Later, these feelings are given ‘appropriate form’ – marriage, and a heterosexual one, even if a ‘love marriage’ is accepted. Bollywood love stories have been the only respite for me in learning about and imagining love and the love they center and romanticize, is heterosexual love. I can’t help but blame Hindi cinema because even though everything that I’ve learnt about love and romance has been from there. So yes, it taught me to have love-feelings, but mirrored them most, when they were heterosexual feelings. I’m one of the privileged to have had English-medium education since primary school. I also studied gender, feminism and related themes for 2 years in college. I remember reading an essay by Adrienne Rich, where she speaks of how lesbian existence is rather more natural than heterosexuality. Reading Adrienne Rich and others, although unsettling, fascinated me, and changed my view of sexuality fundamentally. However, it is one thing to read about something and accept it in theory, and a whole other thing to feel it in your heart. I think that with my current state of being, with my overflowing love and feelings, I think I’ve finally understood what Rich was pointing at. But here is what I did not have – sex education of any kind or in fact, any conversation at all about sex and sexuality until much later in my life. I was very shy and quiet in school, and could never open up enough to talk about sex or attraction with anyone. I wasn’t part of any giggly conversations about sex among friends, and rather plunged straight into engaging with it academically later in college. Thus for me, projecting my desires into daydreams has been an important gateway. And both daydreaming as well as learning about gender during college have been extremely liberating, but again my feelings were limited to heterosexual love and attraction and the journey to opening out has taken longer than it might have, if many of the things I mention above had been a natural part of our surroundings – more queer love stories, more sex education. When I initially started accepting my bisexual feelings, I was gravely riddled with a feeling of loss of an alternative life I could have had.  I don’t know why, on the day I accepted that okay, this is me who also likes women, I spent two hours crying. I was angry, upset and annoyed with myself for not knowing this earlier. I’m lucky to be with a partner with whom I can communicate these thoughts. I also have a caring friend and a sister who are both supportive. I wonder what my life would have been had I realized I’m bisexual at 14. I know for a fact that it’d been harder for me to accept my feelings. I would’ve been completely stressed and alone to feel all that I’m feeling today, and maybe would’ve even tried to suppress it as the 14-year old me would’ve definitely thought of it to be wrong. But, maybe, I’d have also eventually come to date women? Maybe I’d have had my first kiss with a woman? Maybe I’d have had loving relationships with women? Was there a whole sexual life I never had, because I thought having a sexual life meant conforming to certain norms? And so, the lingering feeling of loss remains, It is true that I’ve become somewhat sexually aware of women around me, but at the same time, my affection for my partner isn’t affected by the change I feel in my sexuality. There are times this dichotomy confuses me. Then again, there is comfort and liberation in learning, connecting and accepting who I am and how I feel. So, perhaps, as of now, I’ll take each day as it comes and continue to daydream though, only this time the dreams will certainly be more colourful. So, gratitude to those, who were not held back by everything that could hold you back in the world, from finding your own sexual self – the bold, confident, queer women icons who can inspire us to be unapologetically ourselves, or maybe (as happened with me) even trigger queer love in us and change the world’s definition of love and our idea of ourselves. I am extremely happy and lucky to have found such an icon today (yes, I think she is pretty iconic). Like Fleabag says, albeit in a totally different context, (please pardon my exaggerated reference) I think sometimes: ‘All the love that I have for her, I don’t know where to put it now.’ And as a master of daydreaming, I do occasionally picture my crush coming up to me and saying, ‘I’ll take it. It sounds lovely.’     Pragati Kulkarni currently works for an NGO in Madhya Pradesh. She dreams of a day when she can grow her own food, learn to stitch her own clothes and read all the books she has collected.

How to Muse a Man 

Why are always men finding muse in women in books and films?

 
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  The first time I read Kamala Das’s The Looking Glass in my empty college library I knew someday I wanted a muse; someone on whom I could shamelessly project my desires despite knowing its futility. That was the first year of my graduation. Kamala Das’s slim book of poetry made me realize that a muse can certainly unlock a person’s creativity. I kept Das’s poetry carefully written on a piece of handmade paper for years with me. “…Admit your Admiration. Notice the perfection Of his limbs, his eyes reddening under The shower, the shy walk across the bathroom floor, Dropping towels, and the jerky way he Urinates. All the fond details that make Him male and your only man…” Das’s lines had opened a new way of viewing men for me. Perhaps a softer one. In my final year of graduation I read Rosallyn D’mello’s A Handbook for my Lover. It was a memoir of a decade long love affair with a man. This time again it taught me something. It taught me how to own the dissection of your muse.  At 21 I was questioning the institution of marriage and what happens to the lover as muse when he becomes your husband. Around the same time I came across Anne Carson’s work “The Beauty of a Husband in 29 Tangos”. The poet here muses her husband in a rare and brutal manner. “Loyal to nothing my husband. So why did I love him  from early girlhood to late middle age and the divorce decree came in the mail? Beauty. No great secret. Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty. As I would again if he came near. Beauty convinces.  You if anyone grasp this-hush, let’s pass to natural situations.”   Two years later I came across Chris Kraus’s 1997 part fiction part auto-biographical novel ‘I love Dick’. For me, it was a most pioneering work that had so unapologetically crafted the idea of musing a man. Dick, in the novel, is a character through which the protagonist, Chris’s desires are portrayed. I Love Dick taught me the possible extents of obsession--for a woman. The writer of its television adaptation, Sarah Gubbins says in one of her interviews with Vanity Fair (May, 2017) “I don’t know why you would get up in the morning if you didn’t have a Dick.”  Dick, the character in the book is based on a cultural critic and theorist - Dick Hebdige. But Dick, for us readers is a metaphor of the ever so unattainable and hence enigmatic objet de désir on whom we project our obsessions and fantasies upon.  But before we move ahead, we keep in mind that the muse is essentially a fantastical creature. The muse’s personal story, his/her childhood days, his/her affair, education, qualification none of it matters. A muse is essentially a blank canvas for you to imagine what you want them to be.  In fact, the lesser you know about know them, the better. You need the blindness with a tincture of delusion. It’s not really about the muse, but about you, your swirling desires. So can I, as a woman, project my fantasies on any man without being rebuked by society? Although, if you ask men, they might say “Oh! I would love to be a muse.” However, every time the same is done, neither does the audience feel a part of it nor does it end up being the show-stopper. Take for example the 2012 Bollywood movie ‘Aiyaa’. It was not well received by the audience. Why? Probably the protagonists’ actions such as following the man to his home, identifying him by his scent as passed on a street or a hallway, stealing his shirt were all too appalling for the viewers. For me, the film was an unfiltered portrayal of desire; a creative product of instinct. The actions of the heroine, the memory of scent, the utter tangibility of wearing the beloved soiled clothing feels urgent and essential to me. There are countless contemporary films with similar narratives; only with the gender roles reversed.  The scene from Italian film ‘Malena’ where the young boy steals the protagonist’s underwear never received much critique. The scene is passed off as teenage fetish and the sexual exploration, perhaps only muffled by the audience’s laughter.  For years I kept mental notes for every man who walked into my life and felt like a muse. I kept track of each of their twitches and birthmarks.  I could recognise their gait in a crowd. Sometimes the exact shade of hair or sometimes a stray grey beard giving away their age. You see chronology of events play an important part in memory and sometimes these carefully noted features of each muse merge into one, creating a mythical one rather. But the more I kept my fantasies alive, the more power they had over me; until they revealed themselves too much. The next question that arises is- Are men comfortable with such passivity and ornamental adoration that is used in the artist-muse story?  In I love Dick we eventually come to terms with Dick feeling humiliated with the protagonists’ gestures--“exposed” is what he feels rather than celebrated. Take another example. In a more recent Netflix series Easy, the series on a graphic novelist named Jacob who has built a career around autobiographical novels based upon details of his relationships with women in his life. His character, throughout, is shown to pay least attention to his ex-wife’s feelings being hurt by his creative process. Although later in the story, we see the roles reversed as he feels equally helpless after seeing photos of himself in an exhibition, which were taken without his permission after a one night stand. The point of the argument being- a muse is made to feel powerless and limp and men, unlike women, could never happily gulped down their mis-portrayals by their women counterparts, no matter how automatically they do it with women. I think they overreact and cannot take it as a compliment like we do. Or, well, like we are supposed to.
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The tables have been turned at times and someone has periodically recorded all the quirks of a man, counted his reflexes, his qualms, the body part where it aches the most and laid it out to the world. But female desire or obsession is still mocked. How can a woman put herself through such debasement? A female writer is made to doubt her desire and questioned on why she centred a creative piece on a man. Aren’t these too-intimate details of your life? Why would you want to share them with the world? Why would we want to read about them? Why such obsession? Women have had muses since long; only without record for the most part. Rosalyn D’mello writes in her book, “…Yes, men made for good muses. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if my writing depended on adventure, or if the adventure was incumbent in order for me to write.” Three years back, when I wrote a piece on paradox of choice in modern love based on a conversation I had with a man-friend, he read the piece within ten minutes of its publication and wanted to me to meet him for a coffee the same evening. Over coffee, he said he felt misunderstood and offered further notes on what he actually felt on the same. This time I didn’t keep a mental note of words but rather of his heightened emotional/intellectual reaction. The question isn’t whether a man is the ideal object of female fantasy. The more appropriate question is when will we start reading and watching more of female fantasy? Female desire expressed in any form of artistic expression gets categorized under feminist culture whereas male desire forms the mass culture. When we categorize a work of fiction strictly under feminist literature, we are already channelling our fear and burdening it under the weight of gender politics, not the wild and untamed land of popular culture.  The truth is I am still waiting to write about my museThe jittery prance in the kitchen when he cooks for you the first time, the nervous confessions of familial burdens, the ashen face when faced flooded by unknown emotions, the peeling away of masculinity. Why haven’t I already written it you ask when I’m putting these fragments before you? I’m still waiting, to abandon guilt, to find a man that I can make my muse     Jahnabi Mitra is a psychologist and an independent researcher, currently residing in Guwahati, Assam. She is currently working as a faculty member of the Department of Psychology, Royal Global University. 

The Curious Case of Absent Serenading Heroines in My Life

Where to find those Bollywood heroines who serenade the hero?

Meet X. X had something awful happen to her in her twenties. X fell in love. Need-to-wrench-thoughts-away-from-him-to-be-able-to-perform-simple-everyday-tasks kind of love. He-doesn’t-only-walk-in-sunshine-but-positively-radiates-it-along-with-goodness-kindness-nobility-and-unfair-amounts-of-talent sort of love. Confession seemed out of the question. It would have meant jumping over the hurdles of insecurity and crippling self-consciousness, overcoming bone-deep cowardice, and destroying the demon of cynicism. It would have been like leading the lamb to the slaughter, or offering up a noose along with one’s neck to the hangman (X is dramatic when emotionally overwrought). But there was another problem, one that X had never considered before: Where were the words? Since X fell in love not with the nuance of a European indie film but with full Bollywood bombast, that is what she turned to; specifically, the intersection of poetry and rhythm that was Bollywood’s gift to us: the songs. Reena Dubey, an academic who has worked on the Hindi film song as an instrument of seduction, says that they  operate “as a collective, social imaginary as well as personal fantasy.” They structure, therefore, even something as personal and idiosyncratic as desire. X can relate. X, like most of northern India, grew up in a household that echoed with the Hindi songs of her parent’s youth. Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Jagjit Singh, Mukesh & co reigned supreme as these adults went about the business of daily life, perhaps reliving memories in the lonely, unknowable centre of the self. X’s childhood experience of these songs was formative, even though divorced from the messy realities of the sentiments behind them. The longing, ache, wonder, want, aggression, pleading, cajoling, and adoration expressed in these songs registered in a dim way in X’s subconscious; festering in the dark along with other cultural influences over the years, ready to be catalysed, once puberty had set in, by chance/fate ordained event. What did register forcefully even then, and set the course for how X would come to understand the rituals of love, was that the active agents, the ones making the first move in most cases, were the men. These bards were everywhere: serenading chiffon-clad beauties onscreen, crooning sweet nothings from behind impersonal speakers, played for hours on end during family road trips to nani’s village. The songs, hundreds of them, seemed to meld into a grand narrative in the service of a master, Love; the priest in this temple the Lover-Poet, who assumed different forms and different voices to sing of his love across genre, across time. This male lover pyaar-hua-ikraar-hua-hai-ed from under a black umbrella, the declaration of his feelings as relentless as the wind and rain from which the heroine seeks cover. He promised his love that she lived pal-pal-dil-ke-paas and asked her for a dua for his dil-ka-chain. All sapno-ki-rani were breathlessly admired for their gulabi-aankhen and badan-pe-sitaare. Main-shaayar-toh-nahi, he claimed, his newfound poetry a product of meeting this haseena that holds him in thrall now. He dhoondhta-fir-raha his jaaneja all this time, he said, and couldn’t imagine a life before, or without her. In fact, his dil is convinced sometimes that she was zameen-par-utara-ed just for his adoration and that she could, in the face of it, bhula-na-paayo him either, his geet a perennial reminder of his love. A new age gave him a new idiom, though the essential sentiments proved timeless. Pehla-nasha for this khilta-gulab, and shaayar-ka-khwaab, and ujli-kiran was still disorienting, exhilarating. Geet was still his preferred medium to aarzoo-jagao in the beloved. Pyaar-hota-hai-deewana-sanam, he threw in the face of a too-rational, rule-bound world, challenging them to ishq-kijiye-phir-samajhiye. Consumed by laal-ishq, he haunted her galliyan, since she was dard-bhi-chain-bhi. He got frustrated sometimes, because alfaaz seemed to destroy jo-bhi he wanted to say, but words and music remained his best bet because the alternative – unreturned love – was ae-dil-hai-mushkil. Hindi cinema is often derided for what the rest of the world sees as overblown song-and-dance routines, that imbecilic running-around-trees, but X always thought of them as love poetry for the masses; no less influential, no less stunning, no less will-reach-into-your-ribcage-and-pool-in-your-stomach-and-echo-in-your-dreams for it. The bards’ love and promises were made irresistible by the sheer scale and intensity of them. X bathed in this light for many years, her soul warmed by the universes they pledged. Later, a liberal arts education made a lot of these songs problematic. Some of them reinforced sexist biases, some didn’t understand consent, others assumed heteronormativity and even promoted stalking. But this studied critique could never quite puncture that first, almost primal connection which was made all those year ago. The damage had been done. Imagine X’s shock then, when decades of second-hand serenade collided with urgent, real-life emotional upheavals. Denial put up a valiant fight to preserve sanity but eventually had to admit defeat in the face of overwhelming evidence. X found that much of her vocabulary for these new feelings derived from the same songs she had grown up listening to. Imaginative empathy leapt over the boundaries of fiction and gender when it came to yearning. Yearning. It seemed an active enough thing at first; the mad rush of blood within, a traitorous pulse rate, the relentless but futile battle with daydreaming. But this kaleidoscope of symptoms disguised the essential safety of yearning. One ventured nowhere, risked nothing. This is the point where a wall appeared that imagination failed to climb over. You see, this is the point where yearning, on celluloid at least, makes what seems like a natural progression and a declaration of love comes pouring forth in verse. But these brave declarers, almost invariably confident of acceptance, were overwhelmingly male. The adventurers, the conquerors, the poets, the singers, the wooers, all of them men. Sure, there has been wonderful, lovely, mesmerising music that pays tribute to female desire. Ajeeb daastan hai yeh from Dil Apna aur Peer Parai (1960), Aap ki nazron ne samjha from Anpadh (1962), Chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko from Yaadon Ki Baarat (1973), Buhat pyaar karte hain from Saajan (1991), Dilbar Dilbar from Sirf Tum (1999), Ang laga de from Ram-Leela (2013) are a few examples that come to mind; in fact, Sushmita Sen putting on the moves for Sanjay Kapoor in Dilbar Dilbar was an early inkling for X that sexuality might just be a spectrum and not a binary, after all. There were the vamps of 60s and 70s cinema, of course, embodying provocation and singing their desire out loud in clubs and mehfils. Helen, epitomised this filmic figure; crooning Matwali Ankhowale to Mehmood as Sophie in Chhote Nawab (1961), sparring with Shammi Kapoor in O Hasina Zulonwali as Ruby in Teesri Manzil (1966) even as he makes eyes at Asha Parekh, and mesmerising a room full of men in O Suno To Jaani as Neelam in Aansoon Ban Gaye Phool (1969) or Kamini in Don (1978). Sameera Mehta, writing about Helen’s roles in these films notes that “the crooning vamp was often cast as an “adversarial” figure to the demure leading lady to “strongly demarcate the boundaries of filmic femininity.” In other words, within the somewhat simplistic moral universe of these films, a sexually self-assured, boldly articulate woman is invariably a vamp. The vamp, for her troubles is in the end either killed off, chastised and appropriated into respectability, or simply made to disappear. Notably, she never gets the man. As a romantic model, therefore, she failed to fit the bill for X. As Hindi films changed and the strict binary collapsed,  the heroine was allowed to express sexual desire without being vilified for it. The sheer sexiness of the female come-on, however, whether Raveena Tandon in Tip Tip Barsa Paani or Madhuri Dixit in Dhak Dhak Kar ne Laga or Deepika Padukone in Ang Laga De, was intimidating to X’s fledgling sense of sexual agency; attractive in an aspirational way but also light years away in terms of attainability. Romantic duets presupposed mutuality, so they were out too. At the risk of generalising, relatable romantic songs sung exclusively by women are like distant points of light on the road of time, as opposed to the male tradition where the torch has passed neatly from one group of troubadours to another in a continuum. Men in love have had a varied but consistent history of expression to pick and choose from. This, coupled with the cultural construction of gender roles, pretty much ensures that men need not lack for words when it comes to shouting their love from rooftops, or water tankis like Sholay’s Veeru – or at least putting it down in grafitti. This is how X rationalises her own act of cowardice to herself, anyway. X was surprised, as a card-carrying feminist, to find herself falling back upon these stereotypes when confronted by her own feelings. If she truly believed that gender is a performance, why not just model herself on the hero? If she didn’t subscribe to the Madonna/Whore paradigm, why not take the vamp as a model? The answer, X supposed, has to do with the murkiness and messiness of the human heart which repeatedly strays from the party line. She was a feminist, yes, but she was also enamoured with the Shah Rukh Khan films of her youth; the desire to be wooed in a lush mustard field by someone who puts it all on the line for you is a hard fantasy to give up. Anyway. She isn’t sure she would have fessed up in any circumstance whatsoever, but having the words of a whole unbroken line of fictional women behind her sure wouldn’t have hurt.   Neha Yadav is a doctoral candidate based in Goa. When not engaged in research or reading, she takes guilty pleasure in rewatching Shah Rukh’s older films.    

How the Internet Changed the Way We Make Friends

What does it mean to form bonds in the world of digital connections?

Illustrations by Nandini Moitra

 

Remember the days of Orkut and the excitement that came with uploading your first picture? Or your pehla virtual chat-room experience? A space of anonymity, play, new conversations and perspectives, and above all, new friendships – social media was the jagah for all of this, and more. It helped so many of us find companions, build communities and establish connections across the globe and navigate the criss-cross of digital and physical, yaniki phygital! Some of these communities exist even today, while others have changed – and the internet certainly has! But, Agents, we hope these stories remind you of the pros of phygital relationships, in a world where the cons tend to take over, and perhaps also help us think of what kind of digital world we really want…

 

“In a sense, we’d known each other much longer” 

– YSK, 25, They/Them 

I was 18, I came from a small town, I’d moved cities and left my family for the first time to start college. It was a very ‘straight’ world for me; 7 years ago, people around me weren’t talking about polyamory, caste or desire in college. These weren’t conversations my batchmates or friends were having, and I could not possibly have articulated my body as queer, or a body that perhaps needs to have conversations about mental health. These were concepts the Internet introduced to me. 

It wasn’t a community that was named. I knew these conversations were happening because they were coming on my Facebook feed, and somehow from one conversation to another – I was in it. At that time, they helped in acknowledging and articulating what was happening with my body. It made me feel like it was okay for me to think about these things, and introduced me to perspectives that were otherwise lacking around me. 

What I experienced was the early internet. Social media was new for a lot of people my age, many of us were being vulnerable online. Now there are therapists and trained people talking about mental health online. But back then, it was just independent, personal voices. The internet didn’t have so much morality in it. It was vulnerable. It allowed more room to explore identities, rather than fixing them into set templates and tropes. I wasn’t pointedly reaching out to somebody to discuss queerness or mental health, but it was always there…in undertones and implied. I didn’t know we were making a community when it was getting formed. 

I can’t really tell if I made friends or am I still friends with somebody, because these are people in the last 6-7 years I’ve known of, lost touch with, seen elsewhere, then met them again, only to forget once more. So many people that I knew digitally, would happen to meet in person because of somebody else. But in a sense, we’d known each other longer. It’s a process – this feeling of belongingness. But I think this kind of a digital community builds you. These people were the building blocks for who I became and am now. Maybe they don’t know of me and I don’t know of them, but it was and is still a community because we shared something meaningful together and there was care and labour involved. 

 

“It didn’t matter if we met or not. We were all going through that same emo phase and wanted to express ourselves” – Artemisia D, 29, She/Her

I was in 11th/12th grade when I started my Blogspot journey. The blogs had very funny emo- names like The Crimson Orchid, Hyperventilating What What, My Thoughts, My Feelings, etc etc. Initially everyone was only writing daily journals. Then people started doing image based posts, like this is what I wore today, this is the song I’m listening to, short stories, fashion/food reviews, and such. It was a bit weird that people were reading everything about you and you about them. And the next day, you’d see them in school. It was the first time that an online offline clash was happening. But because everyone was on it, it was all accepted.

 That was the time that online relationships and making friends in different cities was common. It was a mixed bag community with no way to formalize it, because on Blogspot, you can’t chat. You could only engage through the comments. If you wanted to talk to them, you had to add them as a friend on Facebook. If someone was in the same city as you and got along with you, you could meet them. Everyone had online friends, and so did I.

There was a girl from the North East living by herself in Bombay. I was interested in her writing and lifestyle. I lost touch with her but I know she got into fashion and events as a career. Even back then, she had a peculiar sense of style and a passion for it, which she wrote about. One blogger, she was younger than me and was writing poetry. Right now she lives in New York and is working as a writer. Another girl used to write a blog which was very pop and Bollywood, and now she writes film reviews and reviews of bollywood movies on big entertainment portals. Over the years, you could see the direction they were heading towards. I guess blogging helped us understand what our passions were and we supported each other’s work, in a way, in those comments sections.

It didn’t matter if we met or not. We were all going through that emo phase; we were at that age where we really wanted to express ourselves. Some cool guys from school had given me their sneakers to paint, and I had put it up on the blog to see people’s reactions. Now when I see it, I know where my illustration style started from. 

I was getting better and better at blogging and at the peak, my sister and mother found the blog, which made me get off it. Suddenly I was very conscious that I was putting out something that was so personal. I just went private, and after a while stopped completely because no one read it much anymore. And without any validation, you just stop doing things.

 

“We would talk everyday, so maybe it was that. There was never a minute you felt like you were on your own” – Aylis Emek (23, She/Her, Harlow – UK) and Demi Hudson (25, She/Her, Hull – UK)

The online world is great for friendships. We’re a generation full of anxiety and mental health conditions so there’s a good majority of us that are introverts. It doesn’t take the effort of getting ready and going out, it’s easier to open up about stuff with someone that way because I already feel like I know them. It meant I could get comfortable chatting to people before meeting them in person.

It happened when we first joined the FB page for Potterheads. I was in college, just started…it was a nervous time. My health wasn’t great, and I needed that group of friends I didn’t have. The admins and the friends I still have today were my lifeline. We joined the group thinking it would be fun to host quizzes and stuff, post about things we were anyway reading on…and it was. Sharing this part of our lives with each other, on this FB community–a part we didn’t  get to share with others, started off the bond. We could talk about what we loved.

The online platform I think made everyone comfortable with opening up. Noone was shy to talk about anything. There was no line really, haha. And I really liked that. It made it a safe space, and I needed that in my life at that time. Everybody on the group would talk everyday, so perhaps it was that. There was always something being discussed. Always a conversation to jump in on. And whenever anyone was bored, there was a game or something started. So it was a space we started to turn to and count on. There was never a minute you felt like you were on your own. 

We started talking about everything, boys, life, and I even introduced Demi to someone I was then talking to. It was a massive step for me. She would always be the first person to go to. We also started a tradition of calling each other every Christmas morning, and opening presents together. These are just fond memories of my teenage years, some of the only ones I have. We just got it, we got each other. 

Basically, it was one of the best experiences of my life. I have found friends for life and I know that I can come to any one of them for anything and Aylis has been a massive part of my life, and part of me. There have been bonds made on that group that would be really really hard to break. I have gone through a lot in the past 7 years and Aylis has been a part of that every single step of the way. Every single part of it. Every high, every low. 

 

“I learnt quite early-on how to be a dil-fek fool in love no matter how ‘out of my league’ my interests seemed”

– Hamsi, 28, She/Her, Ichalkaranji – Maharashtra

At 14, I was getting really good at badminton, turning into a sports buff, and getting the hang of Orkut. At the time Saina Nehwal was known only to devoted badminton players – and I created a ‘community’ (Orkut equivalent of a facebook group) for Saina Nehwal fans.. It garnered a lot of members – badminton players, coaches, fans like me, whom I befriended and in whose company I started taking the sport more seriously (and through that, I now realise, taking myself more seriously). One of them trained in close quarters with Saina Nehwal and claimed to have access to her phone number. Our friendship grew over time and after a lot of insistence, on perhaps my 15th birthday, he finally shared with me her phone number! The number was legit and I got to have a conversation about making it big professionally at badminton with Saina Nehwal before she became the Saina Nehwal!

It was also around the same time that I came to know of a ‘butterfly’ swimmer from Kolhapur, not very far from my town, who had qualified for the Olympics at baali umar of 16! It was Virdhwal Khade, for those curious to know. So of course I created a community for his fans too, the first and only on Orkut. And just the next day, guess what happened? Virdhawal Khade himself discovered it and joined in! Dil toh went full dhak dhak at this. I got talking to him and a few of his friends, who had nothing short of press mentions of their own talents at different strokes (ahem- at swimming). And so began my first ever stint at flirting with teenage celeb boys with hot jaw-lines and tan mid-riffs! From falling asleep to text-exchanges under the blanket risked on a mobile-phone borrowed from mum, to graduating to phone calls, to concocting how to actually meet without small-town eyes taking too much notice, to eventually being dumped quite arrogantly for being a non-celeb, I learnt quite early-on how to be a dil-fek fool in love no matter how ‘out of my league’ my interests seemed.

With all this knowledge of professional training for swimmers and badminton players from these communities, I found a badminton center away from home to enroll myself into. That was the first time I stepped away to a big city from my hometown. I got a taste of having uncommon ambitions and grew more fond of dreaming big without thinking of ‘big’ as success and money. I never made it as a badminton professional either, but boy, did I learn to flirt under the pretext of sports!

 

Boudoir art helped me feel safe about myself

– Abel, 20, Bisexual, She/Her

I have body image issues which led me to share boudoir pictures on my anonymous social media accounts. The fact that it’s taboo gave me the kick to do it more and more.  Being anonymous meant I didn’t have to worry about who might know my real identity and reveal it to my family, friends etc. I coud segregate this part of my life completely from my personal one. Some people did suspect I was into this field, but did not have any evidence; others didn’t know at all. The anonymity of the digital world gives me this power over people because they are not aware of who I am–this makes me mysterious. 

I have always wanted to explore different things and art forms, boudoir was just a part of it. I have severe anxiety, but somewhere, the appreciation, criticism and validation of boudoir photography gave me confidence. I started taking self portraits in 2019 and began working on my boudoir art with an amazing photographer  in 2020. He helped me find other photographers, through his instagram networks, who are safe and respectful towards individuals in this art field. This changed my life completely. My thinking regarding nudity changed and it helped me grow as a person, because nudity is not something to be sexualised or objectified. It is about exploring, trusting yourself and as I am growing from within, it has only made me feel more powerful, safe and close to myself.  

I felt like I finally had power over myself, my decisions and the ability to do what I want. I wanted to explore myself via this art form and it did excite me because I was the youngest individual in the community to grow so fast. People noticed me, my vulnerability; they appreciated me, and criticised me, but that only made me feel important and determined to become better. The excitement is still there and it will never fade away. 

I build a lot of friendships and connections due to this field. I have met with people who give me positive criticism, encourage me and love my art. I have friends who support me, give me advice and help me grow in this field, and I am so thankful to the digital medium due to which I could connect to them. I have learned how I can improve myself and see different worlds to learn more. It has been an amazing journey to know them, learn more about their perceptions and build connections which make me feel safe about myself and my art. 

“It gave people a way to be together in a more open-ended way”

– Sumit Kumar, gay man (he/him), 29, Co-founder The QKnit

My queer connections started offline actually, because there weren’t any phone apps when I was really young. Without apps, I met other queer men through cruising points. You’d hear of Maheshwari Udyan and you’d go and connect with someone. You’d talk and they might connect you to others, or tell you that Andheri MacDonald’s is also a meeting point, for example. And through these encounters, I also began to go for queer community events and meetups.

For me, those conversations felt more ‘real’; you could sense feelings, emotions and intentions. Because you know, even if someone is faking it, they are in front of you and you can make your own understanding. Even a simple world like ‘hi’ carries unspoken meaning. You see the whole person.

Connecting purely  in online spaces changed things. I feel that online, there is a lot more ego, a lot more assumptions about a person based on looks, or English, or class, etc. People are impatient – they feel if it’s not an instant match, they’d rather move on to another choice. You don’t wait to understand anything about a person. It’s thak – you don’t fit my categories, so blocked.  So rejection has become a big and painful experience, among many  young queer people I know.  Of course each of us has a preference of whom we are attracted to, but online it becomes very hard and categorical and the environment is very derogatory and can make you feel bad. People say things like ‘no pansies’, ‘no sissies’, ‘ no fat’. Rejection feels very  personal and harsh, like there is nothing else to you. So that creates a lot of violent feeling. People feel hurt then they feel vengeful.  People fake your profiles using your photos, creating negative impressions of you, blackmailing you with your nudes. 

There was a time when Facebook groups were a warm place where we could talk openly. But in many queer online spaces it started to become increasingly polarized, with political views discussed divisively. And you could see all kinds of prejudice; biphobia, especially, was very prevalent. So it is supposed to be a way to connect but sometimes it rather feels very hostile and unwelcoming also.

In 2015, we started the QKnit to just create greater awareness about LGBT issues. It was supposed to be a YouTube channel about queer events. It was difficult to sustain so we started doing other events which were more ‘ordinary’ or regular – just casual where you could come and talk, not a big scene where everyone has to dress up well and be cool. But then we began to feel, we also want to be having the conversation with other people, with allies – addressing the LGBT community was not feeling enough at that point  — like we want to be part of the whole of society, from our perspective, right? 

We started to do other types of activities – like beach clean up, or sports. So we were meeting to do something together, and feel connected in a different way, not just through sexuality. It was organised by LGBT people but it was open to others as well and some straight people would also come with their friends.

Then we began to hold public events – like a discussion in a public space – which we called Queer Katta. LIke talking about HIV or gender, the elections and important issues in that, or sometimes just talking about our past relationships and what they meant for us. We would do it in say a public space like Bandstand. Once some older ladies who were passing by came and sat with us, and they also got involved in the discussion. So that way, many times, in that public space, people who we may not connect with online, would become curious and join in for some time and you felt you are not just in your own world and here, interacting, we are accepting each other.

In a discussion, face to face, you might argue, but it’s not a straight negation, like online. Rather, it was more open-ended. 

That’s how the idea of a physical space grew in our minds, which is created by LGBTQ people, giving a space that is friendly for them, but which also is open and inclusive to everyone. So we found a space in Mira Road, and started Cafe Gugtagu.It had books and games and we did talks and events. 

But soon after we started, the lockdown happened. We didn’t want the space to fizzle out. Meanwhile we realised that there were many people in the area that were not getting food, like other schemes and help were not reaching them.We decided then that we will convert the cafe into a community kitchen. That felt good. We were connecting together to do something that would help people around us but which was also keeping the Guftagu space alive.  

The online space is a good space to communicate, to connect and network. But for me, for us, creation of community has really been more meaningful offline. And in that, the relationships in the community and of the community with society keeps growing in different ways. You could say it is more fluid!

Looking For Love on a Dating App…And What It Taught Me

How experiences of dishonesty sour dating in the digital world

I am 31 now. Girls are often married by this age. My situation was different. There were problems at home, and so, I was busy focusing on my career. I had no time to seriously consider marriage. Although, that wasn’t the only reason. Truth is, I believe that unless you find someone who loves you and accepts you with all your shortcomings, it makes no sense to get married. There is no point doing it just to conform to societal pressures. I have many friends, girls and boys.These friends are there for me, anytime I need them. But for about two years now, I have started to feel like I need a partner. Someone with whom I could spend the rest of my life. Looking for this someone has not been easy! I wanted someone from another region. Someone who was not a part of my own circle. I wanted to start afresh, and have a completely different set of conversations with that person. A few of my friends have taken the help of dating apps to find a partner, and they suggested that I try the same. So, I bravely made my profile on a dating app. The app gives you several options to express precisely what it is that you are looking for. Did I want short term dating, long term dating, a hook up or simply a new friend? I selected the long-term dating option. And to make it even clearer, added that I was looking for someone to marry. I met different types of boys on the app. Some had landed there just after a breakup, , some because they were keen to talk to a girl without any desire for longer commitment, some wanted a girl who could be their friend, some were looking for a sex chat. Others were even married, but unhappy with their wives and just wanted to feel the thrill of talking to a girl on the sly. I had zero interest in this last type. I was quite clear about what I wanted.  But even after having used the dating app for a few months, I hadn’t found my kind of person. In fact, most of them didn't even know how to talk to a woman. Then, one day, I got a message from a boy. He had answered all the questions on his profile in detail. I started talking to him, and thought maybe he was my Mr. Right. He could make me laugh during serious moments. I liked his way of looking at social issues. And so, I shared my number and we began having regular conversations. We would talk through messaging, audio and video calls.  Slowly, I began to feel emotionally invested. I asked him if he felt the same…did he like me too?  He’d always say ‘yes’, but if I mentioned marriage, he’d have a muddy answer. In fact, whenever I’d ask to meet-up, he would say, "hey, we see each other on video call, do we really need to meet up? " I would keep trying to renew my trust in him. It was only after three-four months, that I finally asked him to tell me what exactly he had in mind for us. He blurted out that he had no plans to marry me. When I asked him why, he couldn’t give me a reason. I asked him if he had known all along that he would not marry me. He said yes. He also said that he had swiped right on the app without any prior thought, and just started to talk to me. I was hurt. He’d kept me in the dark. He’d never said he was not looking for a long-term relationship. And the most hurtful thing he did was to suggest to me that I should try taking the arranged-marriage route, like ‘regular girls’. I was furious. I snapped and told him that men did not have exclusive rights to dating apps.     His behaviour left a deep sadness. I felt emotionally unstable and it took me a long, hard time to recover from this feeling. A few months later, I worked at pulling myself together and convinced myself to make a profile again, on the same dating app. I received a message just a few days later. This boy had written to say that if I really wanted a serious relationship, we could talk. I said yes, and we started talking. I wanted to play safe this time and so did not share my number with him. We chatted and called each other through a free app. The first month went quite well. Like me, he too was inclined towards literature. We shared similar views on several issues. He once told me that if he liked me, he would like to get married. I told him then how I too was looking for someone to marry and settle down with. And then, one day, I said that I felt quite positive about our relationship, and that if he liked me, we could talk to our families. He said I should get to know him better, before moving forward. I suggested we have more video calls, thinking that might help him know me better. He’d keep postponing, to a  tomorrow that never came. He messaged me one day to say he really liked me. Two days later, he disappeared. I got anxious. I did not know where to look for him. I was worried that he might have fallen ill, or met with an accident.  He had never shared his number or Facebook profile.     The day I acknowledged to myself that I liked him, I’d deleted my profile from the dating app as a kind of commitment to our conversation. I’d shared this with him. In fact, I had also asked him once what he would do if he found a girl better than me. He replied, "when I am talking to you, why would I look for any other girl?"  He told me that he too would delete his profile. When I heard no word from him for almost a week, I created a fake profile on the same dating app and started searching for him. It took some work, but I finally found his profile. I messaged him as someone he did not know…an unknown girl looking for a serious relationship. I asked if he was interested, and said that then, we could talk. He replied with a yes. I further asked if he had ever found a suitable girl on the app. He said that he had spoken to a few girls, but things hadn’t worked out.  I understood, then, that he’d played me. He’d told me he had found me and so would not look for any other girl, but, in fact, he had never stopped looking. He was never serious about me. Both of these experiences have affected me emotionally. It seems to me that if I ever find a good person now, I will hesitate to trust him. Yes, I agree that everyone should have the right to like or dislike a person. But if you are in a dilemma, or if you are looking for something else, then to continue with someone who is hopeful is just wrong. So if someone is looking for a serious relationship, and you are on that app with a more casual interest, you should not talk to that person or lie about your intentions. I believe that the two boys I have written about here actually betrayed me. If you are not honest about your intentions, and knowingly let the other person connect with you emotionally, you are doing wrong. You are deceiving that person. I think I would like to end with this…the people you find on dating apps are complete strangers. It is important to think rationally before moving ahead. Before connecting emotionally, it is necessary to see that you do not get hurt. And if you are thinking about marriage, it is better to meet the person several times before taking such big decisions. Yes, the truth is that if someone has to cheat, they will even if you don’t meet them on an app and no matter how cautious you are. Maybe what we can do is try to never deceive someone intentionally. Acknowledge that deliberately hurting someone is to be avoided, and is also a kind of crime!    

The One My Mother Warned Me About AKA Chais With Guys

Can breaking rules make our own choices and chai sweeter?

My mother always had a stringent no chai rule in the house. She always maintained that young children, and especially girls, should restrain from having too much chai. It has nicotine, it's bad for the digestive system, and if you let it simmer for long, it produces the worst acid in the body. While growing up, we were allowed milk, Rooh-afza and the occasional Frooti but chai was the son of the devil. I did not encounter any significant problem in adhering to the no chai rule. I didn't give it much thought and went about adolescence and young adulthood doing my own things like reading, hanging out with friends and dreaming of the future. After I finished school, I wanted to read more books and study them in detail. My mother approved of my aspirations and gave me her blessings to leave my hometown and get enrolled in Delhi University for an Honors in Literature, of course, as long as I was a good girl and stuck to milk, Rooh-afza and Frooti. I was 18 when I left home, innocent, young and never having tasted chai. Hoping that college would be everything I had dreamed it to be. Six months into my first year, a guy I had a crush on, asked me if I would like to go for a cup of coffee. He was tall, muscular and had little mind of his own which made him perfect for an 18-year-old starry-eyed novice.  I thought long and hard about his offer. I realized I was warned enough about chai, but there were no instructions on how to approach coffee. Since no information was available, I thought it was okay to go ahead and have that cup of coffee. We met, he was handsome, I was young. We hit it off, and lots more cups of coffee followed. After dating for two years, I realized the limitations of muscular and handsome. Little did I know that first boyfriends are only the trial run and one should give them up in time. Whoever invented high school sweethearts, was probably drinking copious amounts of chai, empty stomach. After a very dramatic and sad breakup, we said our goodbyes, and he left to try his luck in the film industry. But damn him, I was hooked on coffee. After my graduation, I was still not done with my fascination with literature and all that it had to offer. I retook my mothers' blessings and enrolled in masters. After assuring her that I was still not having any chai and sticking to our rules of milk, rooh-afza and Frooti. I realized since there were still no instructions about coffee, I was good to go. Time went by as I was trying to keep pace with all that living an adult life entailed. In my second year of masters, I met my second man. A literature enthusiast himself, he knew what mattered. He was adorable, soft-spoken and talked like he had read about a lot of things that I hadn't. I liked him instantly. He asked if I would like to go for some chai. My world came crashing down, I was nervous and panic-stricken. With a small voice, I told him, I have never had chai. He looked bewildered. It was not the answer he had expected. I told him; I never gave it much thought. He was not convinced. He sang praises after praises of chai. Like it was the elixir keeping adults on their toes. It was not something we chose, but it chose us. He wanted me to come along with him and have special chai made by his very hands. We ended up going to his place. It was small and charming with a little window looking out into the neighbourhood. I looked at his books, as he went into the kitchen to make the hot beverage I was cautioned against. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the kitchen with a small tray on which sat two innocent-looking cups and a small bowl of sugar. He mixed the required amount of sweetness in it and passed me the cup. I stared at the steaming vortex of liquid poison in my hand. Unsure and petrified, I took a sip. When I looked up from the cup, I saw his smiling kind face prodding me on with its beautiful warmth. I drank the whole thing. We talked through the night, as I consumed more and more chai. By dawn, I was in love or under the heavy influence of chai. As I reached home, a pang of slight guilt crept up on me. A small nudging in my head, whispering in my ear that chai was the drink of loose women and the acid reflux will hit me soon, giving me exactly what I deserve. However, that guilt was quickly overpowered by the amazing man I was with. In a few months, we moved in together, and each morning started with a hot steaming cup of chai. I was delirious with happiness, looking up different mugs online, secretly ordering tea leaves off shady websites. Every day, I strayed more and more away from the young girl who feared her mother and the drink of the devil. Mothers had no power here, it was the young kitchen of two youthful lovers. As years passed, my drinking habits were exposed. Every time I visited my mother and home, I could not overcome the urge to drink chai. My head felt heavy, I was irritated and finally, one morning when I was 25, I went into the family kitchen and made myself one simmered sweet cup of chai. I was not prepared for what followed. My mother and I had a big showdown. I had flouted her teachings; I was weak and disobedient. She was still my mother, but I was not the daughter she had hoped to raise. Disheartened and broken, I packed my bags, stored some chai in a flask for the road, picked up my baggage and left my house and mother. Back in Delhi, with the man who introduced me to chai, life felt on track again. Six years had passed since the golden liquid had first touched my lips. Six years of books, exchanging recipes of hot beverages and living an enviable life filled with love and support. Sadly, like all good things, it seemed like those days also had to come to an end. It was like curtains down on a famous play or an excellent manuscript, not being able to find a publisher. He was the first man who made chai for me, but it was time to go our separate ways. He had taught me so much that ginger gives a zing to tea. There is honey and lemon for times when you don't want to add milk or a bit of jaggery in winters works wonders for a creamy sweetness. It was hard, the most challenging thing I had to do. Not knowing, where to turn or who to talk to, my ravished heart remembered my mother. I went back home, struggling and trembling. My feet not being able to find the right way back into the house I had forsaken. Nonetheless, my mother took me in. I was suffering from anxiety and depression. I was taken to a doctor, and he was promptly informed that I have a terrible habit of drinking strong chai that has been left to simmer. Sometimes, even on an empty stomach. The doctor furrowed his brows, looked disappointed, scratched off something from the prescription and added new medicines. For a month, I stayed home, getting only one small cup of chai in the evenings and much information on other non-threatening, warm beverages. By now, I was a PhD student, a woman entering my thirties, and Delhi was calling me back. I packed my bags once again, swearing to my mother, I will be a good girl and stick to milk, rooh-afza and frooti. I was done with chai. Coffee would never betray me like this. I resolved to give myself time to heal. The thesis needed my attention, and that's what I did while a year passed. One late evening, I was sitting with some friends in a small roundabout in a market, right across from a tea stall. As the smell of strongly brewed tea wafted through the air, I maintained my control. I looked across and saw a man smiling at me. His eyes twinkled as he sipped chai from a small cup. His face glowed as the sun dipped in the evening sky. I smiled back at him, and he approached my friends and me. Shy and silent, he mumbled if I would like to have some chai. It was not a difficult choice to make the second time around. I knew what I had to do. The tea stall from across the small roundabout in a humble Delhi market,  was where I met the third and last man I was destined to drink chai with for the rest of my life. My mother is still not very thrilled with the unfolding of events and she still maintains her strict standards when it comes to chai . However, I have hope that with time she will eventually understand that a large part of growing up is finding that one hot beverage that is just perfect for you.     Sevali is a research scholar who has a penchant for the dramatic, dances to Punjabi songs and can never say no to potatoes or chai.

Self-love, And Other Jarring Tasks I Am Forced To Perform During Lockdown

What if lockdown loneliness found you new love?

It has been many days since the lockdown and many more since I touched someone. In the beginning of the lockdown there was some comfort in knowing that everyone in the world was in it together. No room for FOMO and its resulting anxiety, since everyone was online, and accessible. But soon, there were too many Insta lives and Zoom conferences for you to miss out on. Even in the pandemic, the ex-lover I touched just days ago, exercised their pre-pandemic apathy instead of care, and became inaccessible. “Make the most of the pandemic,” “write that novel you wanted to,” “pick up that instrument,” “learn a new language!” Even in a pandemic, the world wants you to prove your worth with things you produce. People who never entered their kitchen were now chefs sharing their family recipes. Others picked up instruments they had given up on and turned into musicians–and I was in the same spot again. The world seemed to have moved on as I stood still, trying to muster the energy to leave my bed and move past the memories of lost love. I spent the first 35 days of solitude in self-loathing, denying myself meals or activities that usually help me fight the depression. Judged myself for grieving over a love that was not reciprocated. Pitied myself for not being visible to that ex-lover even during a pandemic. After 35 wholesome days of hatred, I was tired. I wanted to love, and I was the only one in the apartment to be loved. So, I began with cooking a simple meal and regular showers. Treated myself to some music, and planned movie dates. Read passages from books I loved, out loud. I made videos of myself dancing, singing and even just rambling, some of which went up on social media and some just for the joy of it. It was a strange feeling because even though I had cooked or cleaned in the past, it was always for others—often romantic partners. Oh no, was I finally…on trend? Was this what my therapist meant by practising acceptance of all types of self? In all of 24 years that I spent fearing loneliness, I never had the chance to explore being alone for so long. I have cried about not being loved in the way I wanted to be without knowing what I meant by it. Schooled to rely on external validation, I mistook praise for love, and anything else to be less than, or worse, the opposite of love. It becomes exhausting, after a point, to constantly navigate through someone else’s mind, so as to not be rejected because anything, even the smallest of disagreements, seemed like a rejection of my entire being. Being loved felt like being picked from a lineup as a child, to play a game you don’t know the rules to. It is exciting until the person that picked you is so lost in the game that they forget why we were playing in the first place – for fun. The game becomes about score keeping, and you pay for the slightest of misses. Instead of fun, the game becomes a fog of anxiety. And somehow, the person who picked you is off the court, screaming at you for messing up from the benches. More anxiety. The last few days I learned some ways of loving myself. I haven’t aced self-care or self-love, but I have made friends with myself during this lockdown. For years, I sought acceptance from others but in isolation, I was forced to seek self-acceptance. Self-love or care don’t erase the desire to be loved by someone else–nothing beats being picked to play in a team– or make you immune to grief and disappointment, but with self-acceptance, it becomes easier to go through all of it as you change from being your own opponent, to your cheerleader. Being on my own has built me some muscles which I think will make playing fun.   Maithilee Sagara,  loves binging, be it food, movies, series or anime. (Especially anime). One day she hopes to decode love and write the ultimate guide to it. But most days she just settles for a good nap.

PROSTATE AND PATRIARCHY

Why does prostate pleasure scare conventional masculinity?

The small p challenges the bigger P, and pleasure is not just about the pepe. One would have come across it in biology class in ‘that’ barely taught chapter, on the human reproductive system. My teacher would thrust past all the sensual details with a poker face scanning all ours, which were often either explicitly grinning, or trying hard not to. The prostate gland’s function is to produce the seminal fluid that mixes with sperms to create semen. This English teacher of mine from high school once went to an interview with an MNC. This English teacher of mine from high school once went to an interview with an MNC. He claimed he was rejected because he pronounced it ‘Siemens’ wrongly. In retrospect, I think that joke was his way of connecting with his new students. Cum, milkshake, curd, paal, kanji, etc., semen is known by so many names in various languages, I could easily write a story on it. The prostate is also the one responsible for shooting semen across body, tissue, toilet, bed, undies, panties,…wherever. Tenth grade was also the time I first heard the term erogenous zones; but, if my memory serves me right, the prostate found no mention. Paavam prostate, even it is oppressed. I learnt that it is ‘The Male G Spot!’ through articles with similar titles about two years later. It was fascinating, but also in a fairly difficult spot. The only way to access it is via the anus. I did nothing with the fascination for a while, just like many other cis hetero men. A few years ago I started exploring my queerness on a dating app that I was on (Kik, if you must know). Some men there would ask me to finger my anus on a video call or recording. I would refuse, often out of disgust. The word douching flashed across my screen much later than the dicks. On rare occasions, if I was desperate enough to not lose the other person’s attention, I would do it. It wouldn’t go in much—it was like drilling through a mountain with primitive tools. Takes a lot of patience, openness and precaution to open it up for exploration and experimentation. Haven’t reached that state yet…it hurts. The chronic anal fissure doesn’t help the cause either. If only the prostate was easier to access for exploitation--like the mines of the so-called Third World. I have only hit it a couple of times, and it feels, mhmmm, quite nice. It feels as good as the glans being stimulated. The perineum, the region between the anus and penis, is also something one could stimulate. There are many such sweet spots. A few cis men, some hetero and others bi/pan-curious have approached me for ways to quench their curiosity about stimulating their prostate. Sometimes even queer folk ask me. I’m glad men are at least open to the idea and/or talking about it. There are some men who are afraid to let their finger/s wander down there, even if it is just to wash the ass. Others are afraid—“What if I like it?” I am not sure if I felt that way when I first thought about it, or even when I first tried it. I vaguely recall one of the guys saying something along the lines of, “Bro keep this a secret...just wanna try it once” The idea of being the penetrated, and not the penetrator, goes against society’s conception of masculinity. I can imagine some Victorian writer saying, “Although it feels heavenly, O Lord, wash me of my sins!” Maybe God wanted males to have some fun too, who knows? The prostate must exist for a reason, no? But why is it tucked away? Is God also repressing and sublimating like a lot of us humans, because God doesn’t want PR diarrhea? There are cases of males walking into the ER with vegetables, and God knows what else, up their asses. Guys, it’s okay to give yourself pleasure in unconventional ways. Some women like playing with the prostate too, if their partner/s also want to. It is your body after all. Not that I am some free Dr. Mahinder Watsa. But, pleasures can and do exist outside of the norms, rules and power structures that are pushed down upon us. Sex can be like cooking, you can always spice it up, however you want, and come up with new recipes.   Vijay is a Dalit Queer student from Bengaluru whose existential crisis is incessant. He writes because he likes to, although he  is insecure about it.   For some more fundas and reviews of anal sex, this primer has a 'butt-load' of useful information!

Kahin pe Nishana, Kahin Pe Nigahein

A party, flirtation, class, and a romantic twist.

Abhishek wasn’t too happy when the doorbell rang. It was only seven, and he had his hands full, getting things ready for the party. He hated early guests; they spoilt the mood, they flapped around while you made last-minute preparations, they poked their noses into what didn’t concern them. Chetan stood at the door — in full uniform. "I'm here to help," he said with a smile, saluting dramatically. “Can’t leave you alone to cope”. Abhishek hadn’t always been solitary. Chetan must know that, he felt. He was the first to get a girlfriend in school, at a time when Chetan got excited just sitting next to a girl. Girls defined success — and Abhishek had been successful. He was quick, witty, outgoing. Jobs arrived, or work as it was called these days. Both qualified as chemical engineers, or unwilling engineers, as all engineers are wont to be in the country. Their first assignment meant interaction with ‘labour’. Anyone out of their social strata necessitated placing themselves above or below. So did the factory hierarchy: as shift engineers they had to shout at workers to get a move on so production targets got met. “This is unclassy. We will never make an impact on society,” Chetan had said in dismay on the factory floor. “I wasn’t born to make Bournvita.” Abhishek didn’t see anything wrong with making something. But “making an impact” sounded cooler. He and Chetan weren’t average engineers any more. Abhishek was a journalist; Chetan had been one. He soon got disenchanted with waiting in leaky and creaky antechambers of powerful people — for that one quote, one newsbreak. “I want to be powerful myself,” he declared.  “How many times will you keep changing professions?” Abhishek had asked peevishly. Chetan had his wish. Abhishek couldn’t even request Chetan to lay food out on the table, he would smile condescendingly and say “Of course. I do everything ordinary people do”, and then proceed smoothly to ask his general factotum — how long would common people of India subsidize these Maharajah lifestyles — to “do everything.” Had he begun to dislike his friend? The thought surprised Abhishek. An emotion, not quite dislike, unnamed, unrecognized, had festered in him, he realized.  He glanced at the single red rose Chetan had deposited after filling out a jug with water.  It looked silly. A familiar tread on the stairs, a knock. Abhishek opened the door to Yayati. She filled the room, as usual. She was looking good, as usual. She ignored her impact on Abhishek, as usual. Yayati was encountering Chetan-in-uniform for the first time. He had lost weight during training and acquired an unheard-of leanness. “OMG,” she said. Chetan blushed; Abhishek grimaced. Blush and grimace met each other in the middle of the room, avoided eye contact and continued pretending to like each other. It had taken Abhishek time to figure out Yayati. “I know I am beautiful, it is impossible not to know. I do have mirrors at home. But I am impatient with my impact on men, or women for that matter. The pleasure or pain when they see me is weird! There is a complicated person beneath this face. How many will care for that?” Yayati said after they first met, hanging out at an ‘offsite’ of their company. Except for Yayati, the offsite had been boring as hell. She had evaded being the sexual conquest of Abhishek and Chetan, who each tried their wares. “Engineers, not my cup of tea,” she explained politely. Abhishek and Chetan didn’t become Yayati’s cups of tea as journalists either. She remained their cup of coffee even as she branched off, launched a start-up, become successful, got cheated by her partners, and re-joined the original company all three had worked in. Abhishek never really got the juicy dirt on her start-up journey cut short. Now would not be a good time to ask. “Where are the starters?” asked Chetan. “C’mon, host, do your hosting.” “I didn’t order starters. I thought we will move straight to dinner,” said Abhishek, getting flustered. It was the first party he had arranged; he thought he had taken care of a lot of details. Chetan sighed. “Let my man get a few things,” he said. “There is beer in the fridge,” said a now petulant Abhishek. Yayati peeked into the refrigerator and counted aloud a total of eight beer bottles. “How many guests?” she asked.  “Two couples...so four...three more from my office. Two friends of theirs. I don’t know exactly,” said Abhishek. “Oh fuck it, Abhi,” Yayati smiled, her face alight. “Should have just got a crate.”  “Let me,” said Chetan. He dialed a number and gave out instructions: chicken szechwan, chicken lollipops, chili chicken, chili paneer, dahi kebabs, shish kebabs, crates of beer. So. Much. Food. Abhishek realized he sucked as a host. He had flashback images of himself tucking in starters, guzzling wine and beer at other people’s parties. He had actually passed out at Yayati’s once after throwing up on her sofa. Saint Chetan, who had arrived late because he was studying, and their journalist friends, cleaned the sofa and carried Abhishek to an Uber.  Yayati and her women friends had run into the kitchen, pretending to be busy, making it clear this was not “their mess” to clean up. Indian women had become strange of late. The couples arrived. His office pals were suddenly here. Abhishek finally felt like a host. One of his colleagues had brought along a friend: a JNU professor, young, neat beard, gender studies. What was not to like?  Yayati and the professor chatted. Abhishek passed them a couple of times, catching snatches of conversation: “I went looking for that book of essays, Trick Mirror, by a New Yorker writer at the World Book Fair. I loved what she wrote on women and optimization that is forced on us.”  “Yes, optimizing, these days teachers also have to optimize, we are forever writing reports for babus on how we are optimizing ourselves.”  Yayati giggled. Abhishek had never made her giggle, although she had laughed at him sometimes when he griped about low pay in his profession. “...a king’s name, a man, if I remember correctly”. “No, could be a woman, just the desire for eternal youth”. Aromas broke out in the third-storey flat. Chetan’s man entered with the starters. He piled up the boxes, looking absurd in khaki uniform with a pistol in holster on his hip. He seemed in his mid-30s, or was it late 30s, and sported a fierce face — burnt deep brown in the sun — on a stocky body. He brought in another smell, along with the food, the smell of male sweat.  “He is an assistant sub-inspector, he will never reach anywhere. I will be made SHO during my training and some poor man who has worked for years to be made SHO will be shunted out,” Chetan told Abhishek and Yayati once they stood in the balcony together. Yayati went “shh....”, glancing aghast at the flunkey, who could well have been within earshot. “That beast of an air cooler is a good idea, Abhishek. Where did you get it from?” she said, smoothly turning the conversation. “Local tentwallah,” Abhishek replied. Chetan took pains to point out to guests that though he had a high-enough rank in the exam to qualify for bureaucracy, the police service had been his choice.  “It is a more on-field profession, it will allow me to serve the country better,” said Chetan to whoever cared to listen. The assistant sub-inspector was the one doing the serving right now — opening beer bottles expertly and handing them out. Yayati smiled at him, grabbing them from his hand, and buttonholed the guests with the alcohol. She even ran down the stairs swiftly to help him haul up a second crate of beer.  “Is she a Leftist?” Chetan joked to Abhishek. Abhishek hadn’t met Chetan since he had completed his training in Mussoorie and Hyderabad, miffed at Chetan not inviting him to the elite academy in the hills despite the dropping of several hints. “Friends are not allowed there. Only family. I can put you up in a guest house.” So much for friendship, which in Chetan’s five unsuccessful attempts at the exam, had often covered his bill when the two met. The exam in the first year; the exam in the rest. Yayati had let the friendship with Abhishek and Chetan slide, of late. Maybe she felt the monotony of the job after the excitement of a start-up. “Janaab, tell them about your bravery last night,” said Chetan, addressing his flunkey. “My man here, and a constable, got shot at by two robbers scaling a wall. They fired right back. One of the goons ran away but the other got three bullets inside him — three effing bullets — and collapsed. Our guy here took him to hospital, then donated blood to save his life.” Chetan paused, and gave the room an eyeful. “This is how police functions,” Chetan looked around, again. “But people say we only beat up students at Jamia.” The junior-rank cop’s face did not change expression. “Sir, can I go down now?” he asked Chetan.  Yayati turned to the cop who wouldn’t‘reach far’ in the police hierarchy, and asked: “Why did you give blood to a criminal?” “It was not like that, a big sacrifice or something like that. If someone needs blood to live, you give. I wasn’t thinking so much,” replied the junior-ranked policeman, his fierce eyes, for the first time, settling on Yayati. He seemed to frown to recollect why he had done what he did, struggling to answer while registering that this woman just lent physical help with a crate to him, a man used to doing physical work. Chetan began explaining to Yayati the various WhatsApp groups his batchmates had formed: “We threw the IRS out, even the IFS we are re-considering. I want the WhatsApp group to be only IAS and IPS.” He swigged from his beer bottle. “I am clear who is in, who is out.”  “Chetan, you are not in school, you know,” Yayati said, and laughed an uneasy laugh — perplexed, perturbed. The assistant sub-inspector’s eyes crinkled as he watched the exchange. “Who you associate with can make or break your reputation at this stage,” Chetan answered, grabbing a plateful of peanuts. “Thank god, Abhishek has at least arranged peanuts. One boy of 22, junior to me in exam rank, called me yaar whenever we met. We were in an IAS batchmate’s house in Jaipur for the weekend when I took hold of him. It is a beautiful house, very big. Even she, whose house it was, is junior to me in exam rank. I said to this boy, this 22-year-old — yaar kisko bol raha hai, bay? Now he calls me sir.” Chetan was unstoppable: “From the rank and file you learn because they know much more about policing, and then you control them.” Abhishek tried to throw in a tough question on police brutality against students, against Muslims in the protests. “They shouldn’t have thrown stones on police. All I know is there is a line which they can’t cross,” Chetan replied, actually drawing a line with a finger on the balcony parapet. He had been a ‘liberal’ journalist once. A pilot dropped in — someone’s friend — and the JNU professor collared him. “I love pilots,” he said, almost drunk now. The air cooler and beer crates had worked their magic. “In Indigo, we actually used to speed up the aircraft, yes, you can actually speed up a plane just like a car. Air India, where I am now, things are chill. Lots of overtime money. I actually waved at a Pakistan Airlines pilot from the cockpit at Heathrow. And she waved back,” said the pilot. Abhishek heaved a sigh, glad Chetan had competition in holding the floor. Abhishek heard Yayati telling Chetan’s man: “Please stay. You are a guest now — and you’ve been on your toes since an hour here — and it seems were on duty through the night.”  “I don’t know,” the cop replied, hesitantly, looking out for Chetan, who was not be spotted. “We don’t mix up with officers.” Yayati moved a dismissive shoulder, smiling at him.  “Madam, what do you do?” he asked, hesitant but making direct eye contact. “She is a Leftist who makes Bournvita,” said Chetan, coming in from the balcony.  Abhishek laughed, despite himself. Yayati winced.  “I drink Bournvita. It is tasty,” murmured the assistant sub-inspector. He adjusted his pistol, and slid into a quiet place near the table, refusing the offer of a seat. “Well, I did try, very hard, to be a businesswoman.” Yayati said to him, her constant brightness replaced by a flash of sincerity. “I have an MBA but not the dishonesty it takes to be one.” “Its ok. Not every dream come true,” said Chetan’s man, wincing, his eyes faraway. Yayati watched him as Chetan watched her. “Mine did. If you work hard, they do. You have to believe,” said Chetan.  “For five years, when your bills are covered by other people,” shot back Yayati. Yayati made Abhishek pull out his Bluetooth speaker. “I was going to, anyway...”, protested Abhishek. “No, you weren’t...,” said Chetan. She dimmed the lights, bathing the drawing room in yellow glow, and twirled around in the breeze created by the gigantic air cooler. Abhishek noticed she was wearing the irritating rose that Chetan had brought in her hair. How clichéd. She had rarely looked this happy. Didn’t she mention once that she dug uniforms? Chetan had a man Friday, status, power. Journalism, in contrast, was so uncertain a profession — always in recession, always firing people. Abhishek wasn’t even on TV: visible, mike in hand, jogging after people for answers. Yayati was dancing with the JNU professor, his colleagues, the husbands — and the wives. She pulled the assistant sub-inspector to the center of the room.  “Madam, I dance only pahalwan-style,” he said. Yayati giggled: “C’mon, ASI, your boss isn’t even looking this way.” “Madam, I have a request. Don’t call a child in police force my boss,” the cop said. Yayati almost tripped. Abhishek, leaning against the wall, gasped. Both looked at Chetan, but he hadn’t heard.  “Tell me about policing,” Yayati said after she had recovered. Her silver eyeliner glinted in the dark. “Policing according to public, I can tell you madam. Public calls police when bulb on street in front of their house isn’t working. Or sewer has too much water. Every problem is problem for police,” said the cop, his broad back moving, indeed, pahalwan style. “Really? No wow moments?” “A case comes sometimes. A maid got raped in a park; three thanas worked on it for months. I came up with idea of decoy because rapists repeat crime when not caught. We caught them with help of lady police.” “Any accolades? Meaning, any praise?” “No, credit goes to seniors. I got two thousand rupees and special mention”. “It is a princely sum, ASI – my sari cost less than that.  Can’t expect more from the government.”  Yayati took his hand and actually twirled the sturdy sunburnt man around, sliding her hand on his belt as his body pivoted. He laughed quietly. A smell of tobacco drifted into the room where hands met hands, fingers touched. Someone had lit a cigarette.  “I put everything in my business, it was online medical advice, purchasing health supplements online. We tracked gyms, put our stuff in there, brought doctors online. Then my partner got caught importing stuff without paying duties, without telling us. We lost everything in that one legal case,” said Yayati. “hmm,” His eyes narrowed. “You should have shot him, madam”,  “Do you make toxic jokes about shooting people?” “Why so? What is meaning of toxic?” “I mean dangerous.” “Every policeman want to shoot a few people. Seniors, netas who don’t give us promotion, who make us do double duty. All thanas run on one-fourth staff. You were cheated by a partner, madam, we are cheated by a system.”  “Yes, sometimes I do. Sometimes I feel like shooting people,” said Yayati, taken aback by her words. She had always thought of herself as easygoing; where had this anger been dammed?  Abhishek broke into the dancing with a round of clapping and announcement of dinner. “Biryani by the bowl, with raita” he barked out. At least he had got dinner right, he thought as guests dug in, collecting by the table. “Oh, yes. The Calicut crash: what do you think about it?” asked the professor. The pilots filled his plate, occupied centre stage, and said: “Boss, totally pilot’s fault. We really respect the Indian monsoon. You don’t land in that weather, especially after two turnarounds. The SOP is don’t attempt a third time, get the hell out of there. And your Kochi airport is just two hundred kilometers away. Land there, na.” Everyone was all ears. Abhishek wondered if he could make a switch to the airlines beat, a sexy and powerful beat. Chetan explained the stars on the epaulette of his uniform to the pilot: “I can’t understand how people can confuse a DCP and DSP.” The party wound up at three in the night. As one Uber after another pinged its arrival on phones, Abhishek’s eyes darted around for Yayati. He felt the same festering emotion towards Chetan — sitting atop the Indian hierarchy with his lal batti and government machinery. All Abhishek had was limited, market forces-battered, penmanship. Abhishek was made to get busy with the goodbyes and thankyous and lovely party, see you soons. “Where’s Yayati?” Chetan asked himself looking around. “The lady with the rose in her hair, who I talked to?” the JNU professor asked. “She left with the cop. The man helping you with the party, the junior-ranked policeman. Didn’t you notice they had hit it off?” The sound of ‘bella ciao, bella ciao’ hit Abhishek as Netflix’s irritating and successful version of his favourite song began playing. Indian women had become strange of late.     Aparna Kalra enjoyed poha, and telling and writing stories in school. Every girl grows up with boundaries, she feels, but every woman must learn to break and re-set them. She has a post-graduate degree from Delhi School of Economics, and has worked both as a journalist and editor in newsrooms.   

A Live-In In Lockdown

What does lockdown mean for a couple living-in in a big city?


  When I first moved to Delhi to start college, I realised quickly how difficult it is for a single young woman to find accommodation in the capital. I was studying at a women’s college and my Paying Guest accomodation or PG as we called it, located right outside the college gate, was also only for women. Since young women from across the country came to study here, with only a few finding accommodation in the college hostel, the area around the college had quickly grown into an ecosystem that sustained the lives of these young women. It may have been convenient, but it wasn’t easy. The PGs were run by super strict aunties or uncles who strove to control curfew, one’s food habits and even one’s friends circle. Even women who chose to rent independent flats together to share, were under constant surveillance—from their landlords, the neighbours and their parents. Although these women pretty much support the livelihoods of everyone in this ecosystem, they are constantly judged, shamed and sometimes even kicked out for not upholding the rules laid down for them.      Five years later, not-so-single, my partner and I realised how much harder it is to find accommodation as an unmarried couple in the NCR. That winter of 2018, when my long-term partner and I started looking for an apartment together, we faced a host of challenges. One broker, very confused by our use of “partner” for each other, thought we were getting a flat with our business partners, leading to several puzzling conversations. Whenever we went to meet a new flat owner, we were filled with dread, worrying about whether they will ask us about our marital status. We’d given each other promise rings and we made sure that we wore them every time to ‘look married’. Once I even told the landlady that I was looking for the flat with my ‘fiance’ (because I somehow felt it might legitimise the relationship in their eyes). Instantly, the conversation stalled and she ultimately said that she couldn’t rent the apartment to us since we were Bengalis and would likely cook fish, the smell of which would bother her.  It was evident they all felt that there was something unnatural and illegitimate about our relationship. Unfortunately, this wasn’t new to us as we had been turned away from numerous hotels while being on holiday, simply because we weren’t married (or at least didn’t look it). Even when we did find a house that we ended up renting, the hotel we’d booked to stay for an intermediate house-less night refused to let us stay without proof of marriage. Funnily enough, the same group of hotels that turned us down now advertises itself as a ‘couple-friendly’ establishment. In a world where couple equals marriage, it was a long and arduous road for an unmarried couple to finding a home together. Society somehow chose to see the world divided into two—one comprising of families, ie married couples (brownie points if you have kids since that somehow legitimizes a ‘family’) and ‘unmarried’ people who somehow signify an unnatural state in society. By the time we found the house we currently live in, we were exhausted and just wanted to be able to live together in peace. So we settled on telling the landlord that we were married and he readily agreed to sign the lease document. But I am a terrible liar and on the day that we moved in,  in a vulnerable and tired moment, I ended up telling the landlord the truth when he asked me if we were really married. The lease had already been signed, our furniture had already arrived, so the landlord didn’t say much and let us move on with our lives. That didn’t stop me from spending the next year in a state of panic, wondering if our lease would be renewed. Thankfully, our landlord turned out to be a sweet and gracious gentleman who never brought up the marriage-talk again, and a year and a half later, we’re still living in the same flat (touchwood!). Our relationship had been long-distance for six years and we had fought tooth and nail to find jobs we both enjoyed in the same city. When we first moved in, I imagined it to be all sorts of magical and to be very honest, things felt that way. We could finally spend time with each other without having to take holidays and travel; without having to worry about finding cabs to get home after seeing each other in public spaces. We’d go to work in the morning, dedicate our time and energy to building our individual careers and come home to being together, discussing our day at work, cooking, getting takeaway and binging on TV shows. Of course we had teething issues about schedules to take out the garbage, buy groceries and other such mundane tasks. But none of that could compare to the sheer joy and luxury of being with each other long-term without any strings attached.     Cut to the present when the world has been plunged into utter and total darkness-- I am afraid to look at the news each morning since I’m worried it’ll be even worse than the day before. A pandemic, floods, a migrant crisis, a major cyclone in my home city, racial violence, religious fundamentalism, a lockdown and many more terrible things that I am scared to even recount have turned all of our lives upside down. When I was in college, a friend and I would often wonder what we’d do in a zombie apocalypse. Her idea was to stay in a house with infinite supplies, surrounded by treadmills so that the zombies would get stuck on them (they’re not very smart). Little did I know, that when what feels like the apocalypse would be upon us, I’d be home in my nightie, having anxiety attacks and watching TV. If I had to choose someone to partner up with in a film-like apocalypse, my current partner wouldn’t be my first choice. He’s neither strong, nor athletic and as a techie, he knows very little about zombies and how to defeat them. But, here we are, overstretching our working hours and ordering cakes late at night in the apocalypse. Having stayed apart for years, moving in together, the sheer luxury of seeing each other all the time, was a dream come true. Little did we know that within a year and a half of carefully balancing work and (what I call) an endless sleepover, we’d end up being the only people we see for months on end. The first few days of lockdown passed with great anxiety. The unfamiliar situation kept throwing me into fits of panic attacks, while my partner silently worried about me. I tried to work through it, breaking my work down into bite-sized jobs so that I didn’t end up slacking – with partial success. His workload increased, work spilling out of office-hours as everyone grappled with the new work-from-home environment. As a result, although we were in the same house, we saw each other less and less. I watched ads on my social media about families and about how lockdown was bringing families close to one another and wondered what we were doing wrong, further driving up my anxiety. It became such that our interactions became limited to panic attack control/care and fights about his long working hours. The fact that neither of us are particularly good at house-keeping, coupled with the fact that we had sent our domestic staff on paid leave because of the the virus, did not help the situation as dirty dishes and dusty floors became grounds for further conflict. At a point, it felt like the end of the world, that we’d never emerge out of it. At the same time, we read about the state of the rest of the nation, especially the migrant labour crisis and realised the massive amount of privilege we wielded despite everything that was seemingly going wrong in our lives. Over six months into lockdown, a lot has changed though. We’re still worried about the corona crisis, but, on a purely personal level, we’re coping with it much better. While we have definitely upskilled in terms of house work, we do have help now. His working hours are still all over the place and my anxiety comes and goes. But we have accepted life for what it is at the moment. We’re not the googly-eyed lovers living together (as we’d assumed when we’d first moved in), but rather, a compact familial unit, who have weathered our personal ‘new normal’ of living together. We’re still very much in love, but cohabitation comes with its own challenges that has the super power of rendering the most romanticised things mundane. For example, your peaceful weekend can totally be wrecked by an AC that stops working in the middle of summer and your parents aren’t around to help you sort it out.     While living together as an unmarried couple in India, there are plenty of ways of society to tell you that this isn't okay or ‘natural’ or that you aren’t a ‘real’ family. But as a couple in our late-twenties who don’t wish to have children, (apart from legally sanctioning our marriage for the purpose of convenience and maybe having a party while we’re at it) this is the only family we choose to compose. In sickness and in health, in good times and in a raging pandemic, I’m not in a ‘live-in’ (a word that is often uttered with ridicule and scorn), I live in a small familial unit of my choosing, and making.     Toonika is a writer, editor and audiobook producer. She lives in Gurgaon and writes about gender, culture, food, mental health and more.   

I am Big and Beautiful

A fat woman rises to own her sexuality, desire and desirability

 
  I was 16 years old when a senior boy dumped my ass because I was overweight. The pursuit of slenderness has been a major life goal for me since then (and for a lot of other women, known and unknown), constantly worrying if I can strike the right balance between calories I eat and calories I burn. No one told me such victories are unnecessary. However, it has been particularly difficult and draining for me to be my own sexually demanding unapologetic self because I felt like I carry a lot of baggage as a big, fat woman and was undeserving of any kind of sexual autonomy- fat bodies like mine are unwanted and unloved. It’s always been a struggle because I feel like men who sleep with me do it either because I’m a fetish or out of pity and I don’t know which is worse. I am saying ‘men’ very consciously, mind you, as more often than not in my experience, they are the ones pushing me to approximate idealized images of thinness and beauty. I dated men almost throughout my teenage/adolescence days. That was before I realized and accepted the fact that I am bisexual. Many of those men never failed to make me feel miserable about my body. They would respond to the flab on my stomach or the stretch marks on my ass with an unnerving passive-aggression that made me feel like I should apologize first, for being big. I remember back in college I was seeing this guy who would always laugh it off when I expressed my desire to be on top. It passes off as funny because no one in their right mind would believe that a fat person can be fat and sexually controlling simultaneously. So it was always good ol’ missionary and even then he would never look at or hold me because it was too much to ask for a person my size. Orgasms were replaced with backhanded compliments “Black lingerie might make you look thinner” and really strenuous sexual relationships “Your bulging tummy distracts me and makes it a little difficult for me to finish”; loving and supportive partners were replaced with judgmental voyeurs examining my body in what would always become a powerful confirmation that it was men who got to decide and judge what desirability is, rather than just act on their own desires like any other person. During this time, the overwhelming need to raise myself to the needs of men while completely overlooking my own, and constantly faking it till making it became an easier way out. Of course it has taken a lot for a poor man to put their manhood inside a fat body (who was forcing them?) and they must be rewarded even if it meant no orgasm for me. Never did I ever, throughout these years realize the sexual pleasures my body was actually capable of, because it felt like a massive sexual constraint at that time. All this felt like – that’s just the way it is. Back in college after a horrible sexual encounter, I remember conducting a rather harsh self surveillance of my body because it wasn’t desired by a man- because he got to decide whether or not I deserve an orgasm! A couple of months ago, I was on an online dating app looking for some good loving. I encountered so many (woke) men who use porn as their sole sexual guide and have little interest in female pleasure, or women, let alone big bodies, maybe even, let alone women as individuals, not just a category. Dating women, changed a lot of things for me. I used to find it impossible to pick apart toxic sexual dynamics until I started dating women. Don’t get me wrong, I am in NO WAY saying that women exist solely to undo the collective male anxiety and violence towards big bodies. I am not even making the ironical suggestion that the only viable way to circumvent the rather antiquated and oppressive understandings of heterosexuality and gender is other sexualities. All I am saying is that I’ve experienced that women do not consciously sexually dehumanize me for simply existing the way I do, for living in a larger body. The first time I stripped naked in front of a woman I wasn’t ashamed of my big buttocks or huge swinging breasts because she didn’t turn away her eyes in disgust. Her hands celebrated my body so endearingly like.. it was soft but powerful and sensually inviting; not something repulsive. Hilarious, right? It’s been almost 4 years since I have accepted my sexuality in all its glory and realized recently that there is never any scope for the weight stigma, glazed in male supremacy, to inhibit my sexual autonomy in the bedroom while making love to a woman. I didn't sleep with a woman for the longest time (despite wanting to) because my previous relationships convinced me that sexual liberation was redeemable only through the attainment of a smaller body completely offsetting its desirability in the process. There were times when I almost did it with my then girlfriend but I was so body conscious- eventually it always got the better of me, the “Is my body good enough?” Then I slept with a woman for the first time and my body didn’t feel like an anomaly. What are orgasms but the act of letting go, the feeling of liberation in the face of a system that is hellbent on reminding us that we do not belong? She held me and told me my body was beautiful and the way she touched me made me feel that way too. And sometimes that’s all we need to get by. I would like to conclude with a question: Is there any scope of emancipation for everyone under the common banner of womanhood? The term lately doesn’t feel like a unifying call to arms but a convenient erasure of difference. I am bisexual, I am fat and I am a woman-  thrice removed from the milieu of the (sexually) privileged. It’s exhausting how we need to constantly remind ourselves time and again that our bodies should not take over the space of sex, romance, self worth and truth- that the world is something we can collectively build; be an accepted part of and not just endure. Of course, to the vulnerable, words like fat liberation and body positivity are just that-mere words, unless people collectively listen, understand and actively practice the art of keeping patriarchal malaise out of the bedroom and definitely off our round, infinite bodies. And for those with whom I’ve begun this journey finally, with whom I’ve experienced my body as full of sweet spots of pleasure, I sing the body electric.     Aritri Dutta, a keen poetry lover is currently working at an advertising agency based in Mumbai. On weekends she cooks, reads, spends time with her mum and contemplates on the wicked, wicked ways of the world.

A Prostitute and A Saviour: A Diary

A trans-person's journey through sex-work and back


  It was February 2020 when I left prostitution. I had come to sex work in a very confused manner—confused in the sense that I didn't know that sex work was the last option I had to survive in Chandigarh. I got evicted from my lodging. I had been homeless for a few hours and made a hundred calls to people I knew well and to little known ones, but I didn't get a response. I got to know about Khajeri (in Chandigarh) from a friend and the work one had to do there. I remember taking an auto to Khajeri and talking over the phone to a man I didn’t know well; he was constantly warning me against going there. He said that he would find me a place to live and help me find a job. ‘No gentlemen or women go to Khajeri’, he said. I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to go anywhere. I just wanted to get off the auto and enjoy a day to myself in a luxury hotel, doing nothing. I had saved five thousand rupees. But I finally went to Khajeri because I knew very well that the five thousand wouldn't last long. When I first saw Khajeri, I compared it to Sonagachi in Kolkata. I don't know where this vivid mental image of Sonagachi came from. I have neither visited Sonagachi nor watched anything related to it. I had only read that Sonagachi is Asia’s number one red light district and had heard a few things from my male cousins who visited there. So, Khajeri felt like a mini-Sonagachi. It has a rustic quality that Chandigarh’s posh localities do not. Khajeri reminded me of the small mofussil where I spent my childhood. If you remove all the hotels from Khajeri, it will look just like a mofussil of the 90's where you can hear music coming from the radio, shops selling fake fairness cream, and other cheap ‘duplicate’ products. Khajeri can’t afford originality yet, even in 2020. I liked the initial days of Khajeri: the Bihari neighborhood, the smell of Guthka and the muddy roads. The coming and going of men—their smell, their touches, their symmetrical and asymmetrical faces and bodies, their different socioeconomic statuses, and the stories of loneliness they wrote on my bare skin. Above all, the money was easy in prostitution. I never thought my body could be used as a medium of income and someone could make a profit out of it. My gender dysphoria always taught me to hate my body. But sex work instilled a sense of pride in my body. I started feeling beautiful because of the attention I was getting from men.     The initial feelings of pleasure were quickly lost though. I felt suffocated by the environment. I felt I needed to get away from prostitution. Many men were nice – but not all the men who paid were kind. They were paying for something, so they wanted “full pleasure” even if it was by torturing me. Also, I began to feel guilt about sleeping with so many men. I was in a happy monogamous relationship before I came to Khajeri, and my mind was constantly thinking of my ex’s handsome face. I felt like a product, in a meat market and my brown skin was coated in stick foundation. My body was roasted by men's lusts and was served for them to savor. Every day, I watched the stars with vacant eyes before standing on the road like a leg of lamb. The touch of men started tearing at me. I felt like a thousand hands were trying to tear me apart and make a feast of my raw meat. Sleeping under them, I couldn't bear the heaviness anymore. All the faces were a blur, all the bodies turned into a bulb of meat. Even the sculpted male body was not arousing anymore.     I left Khajeri in February 2020 with the help of a man. I met him online. There was every reason for me to believe in him. The most important reason was that he was not ashamed to be seen with me in public. I realize that people are embarrassed to walk with me. Even my trans-friends, who both openly identify as being trans or the closeted ones, try to avoid me in public in fear of their identity being disclosed. But this man did not just dare to take me outside, he was introducing me to his friends and requesting them to offer me a job or helping me plan how to make my crowdfunding appeal successful for my surgery. He took me to every job interview I had and stood outside interview halls until I finished. He was trying to find a safe locality for me. He was not like the other men in my life who only took from me—he was making efforts for me.  I was liking the friendship with an older man. It was unique and cute. I can’t think of an appropriate word to describe my feelings. So, when he first forcibly kissed me, I just bore it as an act of gratitude even though I was repelled. I was looking for a friend in him or a supportive fatherly figure. But he was looking at me as the glue who could put the pieces of his heart together, the person he would save to redeem himself. He used to spend long nights telling me how lonely he was or how he is in a failed marriage. Soon, he realized that I had begun to feel irritated by his presence, his touch, and his sad stories. But instead of understanding my consent and how I responded to the age gap between us, he began to say things. Like, with my looks I shouldn't expect a handsome young man. He told me that I was not sensitive enough to be called a woman. He said that the doctor who delayed my surgery did the right thing, as I didn't have the womanish qualities yet. I walked out of the one-sided relationship with all my strength and I lost half the money I had. To be honest, I miss the man, yet I am afraid of his touch. I am now trying to get a job and be a part of society. But I am afraid the situation is really hard for everyone. With the little savings I had and with the help of friends I am still living a good life. I don’t know how long this will last, and when I may go back to prostitution no matter how hard I try not to. But for now, this is me.     Arina Alam is a 27-year-old transwoman. She says she is a person with lots of mental limitations and fights her mind every day. On some days, she wins, and, on others, she loses. The only happiness she gets is from writing.   

BOSOMS - A Poem

A poem about a little girl's desire to have big breasts


 

 

She laughs till her gut pangs

and till her breasts sprang

She assured me someday it will grow

and that's when the community affirms

me to wear bras for them to suit an art

that day I won't be a girl, perhaps a woman

I was hinted of her breasts every day

for she wore dawn-tinted bras so pretty 

she proclaims with unending sighs

it is required to attract men;

it is required to be called a woman 

dear vagina endures a space

it is planted sincerely inside

but the breasts are like hearts

they are open and obvious 

open to be touched

open to be felt 

open to be embraced

Your breasts are supposed 

to be frozen and fleshy

plump orbs very like attractive butts

Mumma said I became a woman 

when thick blood flowered between my thighs 

No Mumma! I oppose, the cousin said 

it is when my boobs turn round and full

 

 

Crack was the sound of a tight slap 

chah! was the sound of aunties watching 

but my breasts, nevermore grown 

while some taunt yours are lemons

while others taunt yours are gooseberry

tuck in any socks to cheat, trick it's substantial

still they say I own petty change, and it's dull 

but the cousins' cuddled in warmth

she can confer on her deep cleavage

miss nosy stays to examine me

does it even weigh a gram girl?

she scoffs concerning mine, saying

discern, gentlemen will never desire you

for they will neither express echoes

nor draw the intricate biology of sex 

I scream with no sound by dusk

to the breasts through thoughts

Reaching up amidst noisome cousins

I remember short and scarce 

to enjoy my wholesome self

I nap with blurs and perceive

little, loud, or lavish as you receive

Never worry facing a mirror

some may swing you permit 

some may sing you permit 

some may stand still you permit 

cry for those who talk to you 

not for those who talk to breasts 

let it be itty rather bitty 

let it never choke you 

don't ever regret 

simply fall asleep, serene. 

    Eshwari is figuring out writing and loves discovering stories in people. On some nights she writes, on some days she tells stories. A 20-year-old student of Bengaluru who enjoys stalking people in government buses. She blogs here.

Why Does Guilt Follow Pleasure - An Investigative Documentary About Me

Moving from guilt to satisfaction in sex!

 


  My relationship with my sexuality has been like a wildlife documentary.  There are times when I am the prey, ensnared in the clutches of brawny toxic men. There are times when I am the calculative predator. And my loved ones watch from afar, providing commentary calmly, like our beloved David Attenborough, on the disaster that is about to unfold. How did I get here and why? Truth be told I am still seeking the answers in sloppy kisses under the tungsten light of my balcony and bar-stool footsie games. I have spent many a morning-after just face-palming myself and muttering under my breath "Anithya, why are you like this?". My pensive, guilty state is only broken by my Uber driver telling me that I have reached my destination- home.  My inability to say no has contributed to this guilt and often landed me in significant trouble. By trouble I mean solo trips to the chemist to purchase an i-Pill. I am what you would call a “people pleaser” and sadly the pleasure is seldom returned. I have sat with many metaphorical microscopes and real friends to examine the nature of my sexuality. And the only question I truly want to resolve is: Why do I feel guilty about satiating my physical desires? As endless as these desires seem sometimes, the truth is, they are natural. Our desire to make love, fuck or copulate (choose a term, I believe in democracy) is natural (editor : as is a desire to not). So, why do we face guilt when we freely act on these desires?     My formative sexual experiences were based around solely pleasuring the man. It was only 2 years into this journey that I discovered I am allowed to orgasm too. What I initially thought of as a single player game, it  turns out, has multiplayer options too and this led to a liberation which allowed me to finally focus on what I desired. These desires allowed me to explore, experiment within the confines of a dimly lit room until I realised I was getting pleasured but not respected. I was still walking the tightrope; my feet weren’t firmly on the ground and I am not referring to the blissful lightheadedness you experience post a mind-altering orgasm. The more respect my sexual experiences lacked, the less respect I gave to myself hence, the guilt monster resurfaced frequently. I would call myself names and subject myself to a monologue in the shower that would be somewhere along the lines of convincing myself to abstain from sex entirely and treat it as a pleasure I didn’t deserve. I desperately wanted to change the state of my bedroom affairs because I couldn’t become that person who I was when younger, who only indulged in sexual experiences for the pleasure of another. I have an equal or possibly larger stake over my pleasure than the person I am sleeping with, so I had to be the one that changed things. The reins to my clitoris’ satisfaction and my sanity lay predominantly in my hands. A large part of the answer to my guilt I discovered is our social conditioning. Especially when you were raised by a mother who strictly said "No boyfriends till you are 25" but your adolescent self is fed up with making out with her pillow and is desperate to go out there and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.  But apart from that I have noticed that the guilt is borne out of unclear boundaries. In not setting clear boundaries I set myself up for an unavoidable crash. Most of us refuse to look in the mirror and acknowledge our desires. I tiptoed around them until I was presented with the opportunity to unleash them. And when our desires are not acknowledged, the act of succumbing to them becomes sinful and that aura of disrespect starts to surround it somehow.  I am the person that falls in love with a summer holiday fling and I am also that person who has jumped into bed with another after a few hours of conversation. In my head, that is enough time to decipher a person but the truth is I am laying out my vulnerabilities in front of someone I have only discussed superficial things like favorite colors and films. I never seem to be able to muster enough courage to lay out what I am comfortable in wanting. And when you act according to the whims of another person’s desire, you often feel disrespected, then hollow and guilty for wanting to be satiated and after you are satiated, the hollowness and guilt plays out in full force. From all these trials and error-based experiences I have concluded that if we acknowledge and recognize our needs, then and only then will we stop going to war with ourselves. You are neither the prey nor a predator. You are merely a being responding and satiating your basic needs.     Anithya Balachandran. 22. A writer still trying to figure out the cogs and wheels of adulthood sustained by the love of her puppy.  

“If He Does 'This', Girl You Need To Let Go Of Him!”

How the Discussion on 'Toxic' stuff can become toxic to live with

 

  ‘If he brings up his ex often and talks about how strange she is, then he is not over her, because he is still not indifferent to her’. I read something along the lines of this on Instagram and thought about how many times my partner has brought up his ex in a conversation. Not many times. I have definitely talked about my ex, more than he talks about his. I am not sure of many things. But I am certain that I am over my ex.  My partner and I have discussed our previous relationships with candour, including what we think are the reasons they didn’t work. We had been best friends for years before we started dating and now have been dating for almost two years. When we were friends, we would talk about our romantic interests and our then-partners in detail. Why then would either of us discussing complicated feelings about our previous relationships in hindsight, be construed as a red flag? And though, I still think my ex was a wonderful person, my partner is not quite fond of his ex. This has something to do also with how our exes acted with us after our respective relationships with them.  Over time, we have confided in each other about our friendships, relationships, hookups, work etc. just like any typical best friends. If I had judged (or judge) our conversation by the toxic red flag checklist though, where would be the place for all this context, this intimacy? Popcorn opinions/hottakes masquerading as universal logics to sit in moral judgment over all relationships make me uneasy. Mostly, they are about things far removed from the realities of my relationships. I feel bad about the dating landscape for women when I think of this -  but at the same time, I note a telltale sense of relief that they mention things that I am confident have not been a part of my relationships. But this relief is a part of the binary of us (wholesome) vs them (toxic) and it is becoming increasingly precarious because toxic is a word thrown around so routinely these days. We use it to label people and describe behaviour or relationships.      Here is another example, ‘it is a red flag if your partner goes out of their way to keep your relationship secret and you must leave that toxic person.’ I am your average Type A, ambitious, emotional person. I have felt during school and continue to feel at university, that sometimes my activities are subjected to more scrutiny than I would like (or maybe I am just self-important and have conspiracy theories about myself). I did have some insecurities when I first started dating at university. They were fuelled by the fact that some of my friends would come to me and ask if I was actually dating X as rumoured (who I was indeed then dating) and how they hadn’t believed it because X didn’t seem like my type (I didn’t know I had a type, much less what it was). My female friends, who I wasn’t as close to, as I was to X, took the liberty to tell me flatteringly that I was way above X’s league. Except it wasn’t flattering. I didn’t want to be judged for my dating choices. More importantly, I didn’t want my partner to be compared to me (or me to him) in the extremely hierarchical (and, well, toxic) pecking order that dictates leagues and status, in relationships.  I went out of my way to keep it from everyone that I was dating him, not because I was ashamed to be with him, but only because I didn’t want to hear unsolicited opinions about our relationship. I told a few close friends and requested them to not tell anyone either. Only a few close friends know about my current relationship too. It doesn’t bother either me or my partner, and frankly the lack of external judgment is super comforting in many ways. He is free to tell anyone that we’re together if he really wants to. However, I prefer keeping our relationship private, and he respects that preference. The internet will tell me this is toxic, because there are no grey areas in a listicle I guess. This discourse around ‘toxicity’ is so decontextualized and oversimplified that it is completely impervious to the complexity that undergirds the act of understanding and knowing someone intimately. People act and react in various ways, because of multiple reasons and their respective equations. Every relationship exists on its own terms and one takes the time to understand if those are terms that feel understandable or non-negotiable to the people in it. Though I know this intellectually, these judgments and absolute declarations are so noisy around me and I find it hard to be immune to them. Viewing relationships and behaviour through the prism of these external standards, makes me feel more alienated and clueless than I ordinarily and actually do, when I am romantically involved with someone. A strange second-guessing starts to creep in. As a feminist, I do place upon myself the responsibility of ensuring that I must make a fuss about something if it seems ‘toxic’ to me. If I don’t, and if I rationalise it with other factors that could possibly cause it, I find my self-concept, my idea of my beliefs, under attack. If the internet is telling me that something is wrong, and so many people in the comments to such posts affirming that they ignored the ‘red flags’ talked about, am I just making excuses for myself or my partner?  Here’s another commonplace and popular piece of advice: if he is not chasing you, then don’t text him. You deserve someone who will bring you flowers, pick up your calls on the first ring and text you, and double and triple text you till you reply. Where is the space in all of this for the mundane, for sometimes just not wanting to talk? These context deaf snippets of wisdom, construct relationships like some highlight scenes from rom-coms. Labelling relationships in absolute terms, they remain oblivious to and maybe invalidate, their ambiguity. They limit the creative possibilities of growth and self-examination that relationships can offer.      If it’s almost been a day since he has texted, should I listen to the internet’s advice that 24 hours is too long a time for someone to not miss you or should I think about the fact, that I have not texted him either? Am I still making excuses? If I text him, once I have decided to not text him till the next day, is it because I cannot stick to a course of action,? If he sends a lovely song in the middle, should I let go of a grudge that’s meaningless anyway and respond affectionately? Or should I assert my boundaries because I have been letting go of too many grudges of late which is filling me with prickly resentment against him that resurfaces in overreacting to things every time we disagree? Can we call it an overreaction, if it is based on experiential knowledge (resentment)? I haven’t seen my partner for the better half of a year now and though, we have been in a long-distance relationship before, this is the longest we have gone without seeing each other in person.  But sometimes, I think about the intentionality of his embrace, the loving warmth of his arms and all the familiarity we have had over the years. It makes me wonder if he’s just busy today and not in the best mood to talk, and I should stop looking for patterns, because both of us are frequently busy and continue to make it work besides that. Don’t all relationships reveal their own patterns, their own ethical logics? Can we see behaviours as homogenous and ready to pass quality checks like items in a factory line? At any given point of time, these conversations around toxicity and standards, and the slippery slopes they lead to make me question everything in my relationship. I have known my partner for so many years, which should (and does) inspire immense trust. But does that faith make me more vulnerable to being oblivious to the telltale red flags of his concealed toxicity?  I am an overthinker. Sometimes obsessing over things only saddles me with worry without leading to any authentic insight into myself or my world. This habitual, lazy self-indulgence, of  catastrophizing to imagine the worst, ends up making me sure about just only this -  that I know nothing about what’s going on. This external set of governing logics makes me perceive our relationship, and both me and my partner in absolute terms. We become types and antagonists instead of complex persons who can engage with each other based on negotiables and non-negotiables that are arrived at more authentically. I am expected to serve some set of unbending, unambiguous, external rules without room for the utterly, helplessly human emotions that underlie intimacy. I don’t know where I was going with writing this but maybe I write it as an appreciation post for Agents of Ishq, for it covers what Twitter and Instagram red flags leave out of the picture. Conversations about toxicity in intimate relationships are incredibly important. We are presumably at our most unguarded in relationships and it is likely that we may lose sight of when we are being taken advantage of and manipulated. This is particularly true of women, because of how we are socialised, and used to making excuses for those who mistreat us. These signals/red flags can then get us back on track. I am lucky enough so far, to be a part of what I would like to think are healthy relationships but the discourse around ‘toxicity’ has ensured I can never be certain if my relationships are actually not toxic. The tight frameworks supposed to help me realise the ‘truth’ underneath my relationships, sometimes just erode my confidence in my own judgement and obscure the truth about who I am. Their simplified language of victimhood, while claiming to be ‘for’ women, often rides roughshod over women’s agency to love and stop loving, their resilience and their consciousness of what is happening to them, their ability to accept mistakes and learn from them. Sometimes, I think I am less scared of being in a toxic relationship for the harms it can cause than of being the agency-less victim talked about in posts regarding toxicity.  This leaves me confused. Often.  Sites like Agents of Ishq are an oasis of respite in this crazy carnival of relationship advice dished relentlessly, in the most generalised manner, usually with little distinction between causation and correlation. Which brings me back to patterns- because patterns can help us tell apart causation from correlation. I have to say, I hate actively searching for patterns. Here is why. For instance, I keep a journal, but I record only unpleasant experiences in it, since recording them calms me down. If I’m happy and grateful, I’ll send dumb texts or call up to communicate. But if I’m sad I’ll become the writer version of a teenage boy listening to heavy metal and relating to lyrics, that are honestly too extreme for anything that I could be going through then. So, I only journal when I am angry and deeply sad at something my partner has done. As a result, anyone can guess what patterns would emerge on studying my journal, and the unreliable conclusions they would lead to. In fact, I would only open my journal when my heart is heavy and my judgment blurred due to disappointment, which would mean that previous entries would also be read with renewed confirmation bias.  This leads to self-doubt, which is not necessarily wrong and also can be the core of moral intelligence as many smart people have already noted. But the content I consume probably exacerbates this self-doubt a little too much. It tells me I am not the ‘girlboss’ I should be (everyone knows girlbosses are annoying but many of us would rather be one than feel like our partners are victimising us in more ways than we can fathom).  I feel like I am letting down the sisterhood along with myself, if I don’t find these patterns and obliterate them, say goodbye to the person I am with once and for all without second guessing myself or texting him again because I can always do better and I should never settle for less.  This toxicity discourse further alienates me by making me believe, on the other hand, that toxic men and relationships are all-prevalent and my odds of finding a kind partner with average levels of empathy are frighteningly low. Maybe they are low (aaaarghh) and I am just too young and stupid to accept it? So, funnily enough, I must either let go of my partner forever in the girlboss fashion prescribed or never let go of him because he’s one of the rarest of his kind that are left. I don’t know whether I must do either of these to prove a point to myself, to make my relationships the testbed for my politics or because I feel compelled to live up to external standards and the behaviour, they impose about toxic vs wholesome relationships.  But Agents of Ishq, provides specific and nuanced perspectives on what goes on in relationships, a world of experiences, the wisdom of people living and learning from life. I wouldn’t claim that it makes me any less confused, but its groundedness in concrete realities and experiences comforts me and gives me room to think about myself. My confusions are my own then, and I start to feel it’s natural to think about them on my own terms. Questioning yourself, your partner, life choices, intuitions and impulses is a necessary part of growth. However, Agents of Ishq is a mellow affirmation, letting me think at my pace, letting me find strength in my vulnerability, when so many other sources seem bent on telling me the meaning of my experiences.     I hope that one of the results of massive investments in relationships, is being able to be my messy, emotional, instinctive self without feeling the need to live up to any external benchmarks of strength/foresight/intelligence to protect myself from ‘toxicity’. I hope that what I learn from my relationships, will be the things that love and feminism can both potentially teach us: to recognize each context for what it is, to become the person you want to be, believing ever more deeply in yourself and in the good things the world has to offer.      Lakshmi is a law student. For now, the things she’s really wanted to do, luckily seem doable. Sometime down the line, she hopes to take a creative writing course, write fiction and have more conversations with people that leave her brooding (in a nice way).   

How Masturbation Helped Me Cope With Heartbreak

Masturbation and other remedies for rejection.

 I learnt to masturbate at the ripe old age of 20. As a child, I’d naturally discovered that squeezing my legs or humping a surface feels good. But a few times someone had walked in and gently (but visibly uncomfortably) told me not to do it. I got a feeling that maybe what I was doing was illicit or unhealthy, so I stopped. It was only when I started reading American blogs on feminism at 17, that I realized girls masturbated too! That masturbation itself could be a good thing, desirable even in the world of #SexPositivity. My re-entry into the world of self-pleasure began then. But trust me, if it was as easy as a contestant making a wild card entry back into Masterchef Australia, this story would be shorter.     I had also at that time started realizing I was gay. Questioning my sexuality started making me aware of my own feelings of desire. But becoming confident about your sexual orientation doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with being confident of your sexual-ness. Aaaaand there was also my perpetually bleeding heart. When I entered college a freshly-realized lesbian, little did I know the next 4 years would be lined end to end with intense heartbreaks. I fell deeply and serially in love with everyone - the butch girl who was actually straight, my closest friend, my friend’s friend, a senior I never spoke to, an older queer woman, an emotionally unavailable poet on Tinder - my disastrous heart spared neither other people, nor me. Unrequited love brings feelings of shame with it anyway. And I’d also gone from a world where everything sexual about me was in the shadows (even to myself) to a community where sexuality and sexualness were celebrated to the max. Being confident and sexy felt like social currency and I was clearly broke. Everything from seeing people kiss on stage at queer events to statistics of lesbians having more rocking orgasms than straight women, made me acutely aware of my own inexperience. How could I be sex-positive like all the queers and feminists I wanted to be like, when I had not even given myself an orgasm? Any talk of sex made me want a chullu bhar paani to doobo-fy myself into. I'd also have very intense feelings of heartbreak every time I liked someone - strong feelings of desire for a person that quickly escalated to intense feelings of despair (because it was all unrequited) complete with midnight crying fits on the balcony over my bad luck in love and cluelessness about sex. These lashings of pain swirled inside all my thoughts about love or desire for the longest time. My string of heartbreaks led me to the greatest discovery in life (after masturbation of course) - counselling! In the counsellor’s office, I found a place to express my insecurities about my love/sex life. When dealing with heartbreak alone I was always in crisis mode. Now I had somewhere to go when another pyaar ka crisis struck. It left me with more space to understand my own mind. And the self-awareness it brought started extending to my sexualness too.   Earlier I didn’t realize those strong feelings of desire that preceded my crying fits were also sexual feelings. I just thought I was an ‘intense type’: falls in love too quick, too hard. Wanting someone’s attention, my desire for them, feeling attracted to them, fantasizing about them - I named these feelings just “Love and Desire”. But over time, I recognized that these intensely heartbroken days often had a simple starting point, which was *drumroll* “Horniness”. But without masturbation, I didn't have a healthy outlet for these sexual feelings. So they’d get mixed with all the other emotions of heartbreak, leading me down a rabbit hole of sadness. Separating love from attraction and arousal isn’t so clear-cut, I know. But this confusion had allowed me to ignore there were hormones involved too. Looking back, it was difficult to see myself as sexual when no one seemed to desire me (and fantasizing about someone still felt taboo). I did try to masturbate sometimes but these difficult feelings made it hard for me to persist. It would take too long and I’d give up mid-way, and feel worse. I guess feeling undesired also left me feeling shameful for feeling desire. I didn’t know how to feel sexual without feeling like a failure. I finally learnt to masturbate when I (yet again) fell for a woman I was wildly attracted to. But there’s a twist to this tale - she reciprocated. I felt sexual touch for the first time with her, I made out with her under a tree in a shady garden, I slept with her and ahem got royally dumped a day after my sexual debut. This heartbreak was particularly bad because it had felt like I finally had a chance and then it ended so abruptly. Yet, it sparked a flame in me. I was so so into her that I was able to recognize my feelings of arousal even through all the heartbreak. The shame of rejection remained, but some of the shame of feeling unsexy had lifted. Having sex had let me recognize myself as a sexual being. The longing combined with the frustration that I’d had sex before knowing what an orgasm felt like, and also finally having the privacy of a single room - gave me the motivation to taste that pleasure again -  to really actively try pleasuring myself. Being raging mad at yourself and someone else can sometimes have unintended positive consequences. I starting exploring myself and these sex-with-self sessions became regular. It was hard to separate my feelings of desire for her, but as I got better and better at feeling pleasure just by myself, it got easier to distance myself from the “I miss her and her body so much” wala feelings and to slip into a different zone (you know the one where you can’t see anything but are also seeing stars at the same time *wink wink*). One fine day, after much exploration in my lovely single room - it finally happened. I was able to focus on my feelings of pleasure and at some point, my body went into auto-pilot mode and boom. But you know what felt better than the pleasure of the orgasm? The sheer relief I felt afterwards. The slow building sexual confidence. That feeling of discovering something new about yourself. I didn’t feel broken anymore. All that shame of feeling not sexual enough and feeling unlovable was suspended in that moment. And of course, it felt like a bit of a fuck you to the girl who broke my heart to be able to give myself an orgasm.     Even though this was my worst heartbreak yet, I had a way to deal with those intense feelings when they came. To cope with my desire for someone who didn’t like me back. Feeling horny didn’t make me spiral anymore. Instead whenever I felt myself going down that path of horniness leading to me feeling hopeless and ashamed for being rejected - I masturbated and felt much better about myself. It prevented many days from becoming bad mental health days. I was heartbroken, yes. But I wasn’t feeling defeated or lost. I never imagined my ‘intense’ days could ever end with me feeling great about myself! The simple pleasure of it was healing and the ability to make myself feel good was therapeutic. I even began to understand that many days that I’d hit an emotional rock bottom came before my period. As bad days got lesser in general (once again big flying kiss to counselling), the PMS-moodiness connection became more visible and I was able to manage my emotions better. As for good days? I learnt to give in to my ‘intense’ aka horny days when I feel too much and float into fantasies easily. I give in to these visceral calls of pleasure, remind myself that no one’s looking at me and masturbate. I once got obsessed with a queer film for a few days - shedding tears over how romantic it was, low-key wondering why I’m so moved by just a movie trailer with two cute women - and bang, my period started and that brief period of intense feelings for a super-gay film suddenly made sense. It seems even PMS can be fun sometimes. Drawing these connections between my hormonal periods, my horniness and my mood, and developing a routine around masturbation and my menstrual cycle (yes I have specific days during my cycle when sexy time strikes) - it helped me regulate my mood on a day-to-day basis. It was a big part of my recovery out of that bad phase and helps maintain my mental health even now. Love and desire (and shame too) might be very much about the mind but I know now that my body with its strange mix of hormones is involved in it too. Like art therapist Neha Bhat said in her IG live with AOI “I don’t see mind as brain only, I see mind as pussy, mind as armpits, mind as taste, as touch”. If the mind, heart and body are one and all influence each other, then knowing what’s coming from where helps a lot. Counselling gave me the tools to listen to myself and understand what my thoughts do to me. If getting mental health help gave me a language to converse with my mind and understand my desires, then masturbation gave my body a language to express the desire I felt. My mind would never have become a happier place if I hadn’t learnt to say “hi, hello, feeling horny? let’s have fun” to my body without feeling ashamed of what I feel and want. Now I may not know how the phases of the moon are connected to my menstrual cycle, but I do know that within me - pyaar, desire, hormones and my mind are as closely connected as those naked ladies dancing hand-in-hand under the moonlight.   Ms.LesbiPataka is an intensely gay and intensely awkward social-issuey designer in her 20’s. Believes in non-judgmentally talking about sex coz pleasure doesn’t come aise hi for everyone.      

TWO OR THREE THINGS I LEARNED FROM BEING ALONE

How living alone during a pandemic changes how we think of our wellness.

 When the pandemic hit, I was away from home. In the midwestern American college town where I was living, with its long, bleak winters, it would get lonely even otherwise, and bring on pangs of longing for home. At the start of the academic year I had moved in with a flatmate. Life settled into the fairly typical routine of a grad student – classes and research work, teaching duties and domestic chores, all punctuated by a couple of social outings a month. I remember being at a diner and watching the news on television the day in March when a national emergency was finally announced in light of the pandemic. All of a sudden, campus life evaporated into an eerie shadow of itself, as if the academic year had ended.   At first, there was a strange kind of thrill in things coming to a standstill. The thrill of evolving-by-the-day developments that impact your life but are also world events, out of proportion with the scale at which most of our lives are lived; of being part of something together, something all too rare as the world gets more stratified. The vestigial thrill, in part, of the child who does not want to go to school and wishes for a miracle, and all of a sudden has their wish granted. Then it began to sink in – what it meant to be indefinitely alone.   At first, cut off from social interactions, I compulsively consumed news and podcasts, as a way to remain connected with the world, as if this glut of information could help defeat the virus. But underneath, this sense took hold that my body itself was caged and there was nothing I could do about it. It started to feel like my social biome was melting away. The feelings churned and morphed into a period of intense discomfort, even occasional anguish. Deep-seated feelings of anxiety around loneliness bubbled up to the surface and I’d feel physically stifled at times. Especially bad were moments when I wanted to just run out and be among people again, but had to simmer down. My mental health was reeling from the constant pendulum swings, but I didn’t know where to go or what to do to make myself feel better. Nothing seemed to work. The feelings would come in intense waves and leave me exhausted, like someone in withdrawal – but from what exactly? As classes moved online and some semblance of our previous lives began to take on a spectral form, I sought out all manner of mediated socialization. At the end of the day, despite all the virtual communion, this was a need that could only be filled by being physically proximate with other human beings. Nothing, however close, could replace the real thing.     I want to be able to say in the ever-optimistic register of some pithy aphorisms that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but that would be glib. Being alone took its toll. But in return it taught me a great deal about myself, even allowed me to stretch the limits of what I thought I could tolerate. For one, it brought into stark relief the shape and texture of the life before, a balance of professional, social and personal time that I felt had worked to give me a sense of well-being, physical, mental and emotional. That was gone, but gone also was the structure that may have allowed me to be unreflective about what might make me teeter on edge, and a dozen other things. I could no longer be distracted from who I was in the absence of all the social roles that I had come to identify with. At one with our most undisguised selves, who are we? I had to start afresh.   Here are some things I learned from being alone. First the big stuff. An important result of the isolation, at least in the early days when the peril was fresh and heightened, was that it became a sort of laboratory experiment in personal responsibility. I felt like I was looking down at myself as an isolated subject and my choices were under surveillance.   When every action of yours can potentially contribute to the spread of contagion, it acquires a new weight, previously absent. Where secrets and trust and scrutiny and everything gets folded into the shared vulnerability that's dependent on contact, which for those of us who have never had to live through war, insurgency, occupation, or in a police state, was previously unknown. You were no longer responsible only for yourself but also for others known and unknown. Even passing the occasional senior made me think twice about whether my presence might pose a risk. The demands this situation places on us can bring what someone called “moral fatigue” – the idea that when each of your actions has a clear moral consequence for those around you, the stress can wear you out.   In the sanitized bubble of a thinly-populated American college town, I had the luxury of this introspection. I might have thought less of these risks at home where for hundreds of millions the cost of losing their livelihood is the greater of the two risks. In news from our part of the world, I read of one migrant worker in my hometown who, unable to earn for himself and his family, decided to put an end to it all. He was the same age as I. Regardless of location, it gave me a glimpse of our interdependence in all its fragility and on full display. Even when isolated, we never truly are. But equally important was the little stuff. As someone who is physically affectionate and has a deep need for not-necessarily-sexual physical contact – such as hugging, cuddling or the occasional touch, and no means to meeting these – being alone taught me to learn, painfully, to be comfortable with being alone by myself. When I realized what was missing, it stirred in me a memory from my recent past. One day, when I was leaving after having met someone I knew, they just extended their arms for a hug, like a child would. Of course I hugged them. But as even the simplest of things can seem to someone deprived of them, it struck me as a sort of special ability, one that I lacked. I remember thinking, this is so beautiful, that people are able to do that – reach out and have their needs met. I am convinced that they have been able to do that since they were children, because it came so naturally to them, and that I wasn’t able to because it had never been that way for me growing up. I wondered whether this was something I might be able to change. Being alone taught me about love. And that the love of people – even thousands of miles away – whether family or friends, partners, acquaintances, comrades or colleagues, is all transmitted and can sustain you.   I, who rarely called my parents before, began calling them frequently. It became a daily ritual, and one that I looked forward to. Having had my life pared down to the very bones made me value and cherish everyone who was connected to it so much more. I spent more time talking to my flatmate, and sharing the occasional meal or movie night became something far more special and invigorating than before. I had always been in the habit of checking in on friends I had not met for the longest time, but it began to take on a new significance when so many were grappling with mental health issues. I learned that there is love of all shapes and sizes to be shared in all manner of ways.  It has taught me of the different ways there are of needing and being there for each other. It taught me to seek companionship with people wherever they are and where they are at in the moment and to the extent they are comfortable with, whether that is physical or virtual. You never want to impose on people, but especially when everyone is struggling with this collective trauma and the ensuing stress, to let people be unless they express or demonstrate a need for you or your company is a learning in emotional humility. Earlier I would sometimes wonder whether I was the only one that struggled with this, but seeing everyone struggling together allowed me to see the conflicts we experience in the light of our shared needs. During this period of intense reflection I was reminded of the words of a practitioner of Zen Buddhism living in town. He recalled his master telling him to be wary of two things: don't collect money [or material things], and don't collect people. Because I keep ticket stubs, plastic covers and receipts and can feel sentimentally attached to the smallest of things not for their material value but for their having been attached to a moment in life, the first is not simple. (I might have a hoarding problem.) But tougher still is the second. How do we not collect people in life? I can understand the wisdom in not wanting to collect a following or entourage and such (listen up, social media users), but the people who come into our lives in whatever way big or small – why is it so much easier for some to let go than it is for others? Let me just say that I would have disappointed the Zen master. As you grow older, life certainly teaches you that you have to let people go. But in the beginning alone-ness also struck me as a somewhat violent thing to do to yourself. Are some people more attuned to and accepting of the metaphor of each person being a satellite, encased in their own little shell and hurtling through space and occasionally passing close by others? Are people with stronger ties to community never really alone, and therefore more readily able to be physically alone? Do some of us need community, in all different senses of the word, more than others who are satisfied in their isolation and don’t experience it as loneliness? Is it really the balance of the shared (community) life and the personal (private) life that most of our pre-Covid lives had reached that keeps things on even keel? My thoughts were inundated with these reflections, and any answers that came forth were untested.     I also learned something new about work. How certain kinds of work by their very nature (like the work some of us as researchers or writers do) can isolate you, take you deeper within to make you seem almost self-enclosed. But when there is no longer a social scaffolding to support you, the isolation is doubly felt. It might make it more comfortable for you to be on your own because the work itself, we like to believe, is worth something and its value enduring. On the flipside, does it also give you a deluded, inflated sense of your own worth? After a long period in which I was unable to bring myself to work, I grappled both with the sacrifices that this life calls for and the privilege of doing the sort of work that you could carry on with in these times.    I saw around me people whom the isolation didn’t affect much in any obvious way. I know many who were perfectly happy being alone before and some have even come to enjoy having to see less of people. We have also discovered ways of doing without what was superfluous to us both as individuals and as an aggregate, granting that a lot of this comes with privilege. Are we all wired differently, or does the situation force us to adapt? Speaking for myself, I continue to find enforced isolation something I cannot do to myself in good conscience. But looking back now, I see that maybe, like a person going through withdrawal, I was also building endurance all along for something else: to be alone for longer periods. Is this what we call resilience? If one must reflect and grow, then this is as good or bad a circumstance to do that as any. It may or may not leave you changed, but there is a lot to learn. And it is not over yet. It’s been over five months since the weekend in March when the pandemic was declared, and a month since I returned home to all its warmth and the physical company of people I love. I value them more. I value our time spent together a lot more because I have yearned for it for half a year. I value personal sacrifices for collective well-being and solidarity in the face of danger. I value us all. The first time I went out to be among a crowd of people was for a Black Lives Matter protest. Despite the initial trepidation, it was heartening to see people wearing cloth masks out in numbers, with volunteers carrying sanitizers bobbing in and out amongst us. Even as we dealt with this new scourge, people had been facing epidemics less pathogenic, but as pathological, and battling those could not wait. At the end of the protest, a group of young people took to the streets dancing and their joy was infectious. There were things that were important enough for us to start easing the norms of social isolation.   Navdeep has made one documentary, and finds that he enjoys research in media and film history more, for now. He just completed a master’s thesis on international non-theatrical sponsored film programs in post-independence India and is working on converting it into a form that fits people’s attention spans. He is a founding member of the Bi Collective Delhi.  Sukh Mehak Kaur (BFA, MVA) is a comix artist and illustrator based in Ropar, Punjab.  She is currently pursuing her goals to become a children's illustrator.

My Body In Bed Isn’t Any Kind of Map To Pleasure

What is intimacy like when it’s traumatic to live in your body/head?

Content Warning - Self-Harm    ‘A detty detty pig.’ That’s how I feel always, but Eric Effiong’s voice in my head is a completely different beast during anything remotely sexual. What to make of a disabled body(/mind) in bed - this disabled body(/mind), mine. How do you move through intimacy when it’s traumatic to live in your body/head. As my closest friends talk about their whoring 20s, falling in and out of love, being in polyamorous relationships, being in toxic ones, being in stable nourishing ones (apparently these exist), I am quiet. I am usually a quiet person too - the only time you’d see me animated is when I am having an anxiety attack which is unbearably often. I am quiet because I have nothing to recount, nothing to add to these stories. In one of her poems, Erin Slaughter writes ‘Sometimes what people love more than being in love is feeling like part of a story.’ My story seems to be one of absence. As I sit listening to my friends I wonder if they would even notice if I weren’t here.  Why am I writing about this? Because I should get something other than a malfunctioning digestive system and an increased dosage of sedatives from obsessing about boy/s. My body in bed is just that - a body. It is unwieldy and it refuses to listen. I don’t register touch/sensation during anything remotely intimate so if someone’s touching me, I have no way of knowing whether I like it or not. My body isn’t any kind of map to pleasure - it’s just all consuming anxiety interrupted by body ache and shoulder burns. Once, while going down on me, a boy asked me what I liked. I wanted to say, ‘your guess is as good as mine.’ Another time, a sweet thing asked me if I wanted to cuddle and I said no even though I really really wanted to. He reached out and I retracted even as, in that moment, all my body needed was touch - some sense of grounding. I was shaken by the vastness between what I wanted and what was being said.  I barely tolerate my body/head in the everyday, but I am never as disgusted by myself as during sex. When physically close to someone, I am really just swathes of shame - I feel yuck. I want to be there but I also want to be light years away and the exhaustion of this can’t stay-can’t leave eventually makes me flee. Either I am too present, hypervigilant about each detail or then I can feel my mind surrendering to the exhaustion of what I subject it to. Soon my body follows suit. I try to hide it/myself in clothes that don’t come off, in sheets that are always close by, rarely, in language like here. Somewhere in the middle of all this happening quietly inside my head, when someone touches me, I have this gushing urge to cut myself- to break skin. And post most of these encounters I do. Shame leaves visible scars on parts of my body. How do you negotiate panic attacks, wobbly steps post pill-popping, self-harm scars and sheer exhaustion during a casual sexual encounter. Because even as one expects respect during such an encounter, I am not sure if I should expect care. I wonder if the intimacy of care can be asked for in a casual hook up. I wonder what casual means when you are disabled, (or rather) when you hate yourself; but also, what care means when you’re casual. Because in some ways my illness means (/demands) that ‘I am not good at the slow reveal of self’  as Morgan Parker described in an interview to Kaveh Akbar. So I make necessary disclosures in order to protect myself. My way of saying Hi on an app is ‘I have anxiety so please don’t take it personally if I flee midway.’ I give away details that aren’t exactly first date banter. And in doing so, I find a hiding place in revelation.  Because in the impossibility of can’t stay-can’t leave what I haven’t said is what happens when I stay and then why I flee when I do. I have managed to successfully evade the experience I am writing about - something that also happens during sex. I can’t bear to be witnessed, so when I am out of hiding places, when a performance is no longer available to me - I flee/freeze. I come home in the middle of the night and cut myself. Cutting becomes a ritual. It is testimony to how much of me another human was witness to.  A friend once told me ‘but you’re never the protagonist of your own story.’ So then, I write(/document) because I want to be ‘the protagonist of my own story’ even if the story is one of absence.      Karishma is perpetually miserable. She currently works a day job in Bombay but looks forward to getting paid for swatting flies in a government archive in the city. 

My Struggle To Live and Love With Vaginismus

How does trauma manifest in our bodies and our intimacies

I have primary vaginismus. I have said this out loud to hardly anyone because of the shame and stigma that is associated with experiencing what comes with vaginismus – the inability to allow vaginal penetration. There are many contributing factors to vaginismus, but in my case, it is a manifestation of trauma in my body. My brain perceives physical contact, particularly the act of penetration or insertion of any object in my body as a potential threat, and goes into a freeze state. My heart desires pleasure, intimacy, love, and sex. But, my brain, heart, and body are communicating well. I am in a state of hypervigilance, scanning for signs of danger. Forming a connection with an intimate partner or relaxing during a gynecological exam feels impossible. This is not all in my head and I cannot relax, because my body and mind do not know how to feel safe. I discovered my condition in a very vulnerable state. I had been in a long term relationship with a man I met in college, for many years. We enjoyed a rich intimate life. He read stories and poetry out loud to me. We were both exploring the sexual world for the first time, with each other. Every night, I would go up to his hostel room to cuddle by his side; we made out passionately and explored each other's bodies. We had oral sex and shared many intimate moments. When our relationship became long-distance, we had phone sex. . We were both exploring the sexual world for the first time, with each other. Much later, I learnt that none of this was ‘real’ for him; that he would tell his friends that we are together, but we have never had sex. When he shared this with me, I felt ashamed, angry, and betrayed. For me, he is and will always be the man I had sex with for the first time. I experienced orgasms and together, we both discovered sexual acts that we both enjoyed. Just because he did not penetrate my body does that mean we did not have sex? I was ashamed of how other people who are having penetrative sex would perceive me. He had decided everything for us – our future, the validity of our sexual experience, and our break up.  It was his decision to not have penetrative sex. There were no condoms in his bedroom, and when I had offered to buy some, he said, he preferred not to have  penetrative sex. One day, he also said that because we can never be together because we belonged to different faiths. He does not want to be the one I have sex with for the first time. Was sex only penetration?  Was I only my vagina? It was troubling and hurtful that someone I loved so deeply, didn’t seem to take my desires and choices into consideration.  But somehow, caught up in that relationship, I too started believing that I never had real sex. So, I never realised I have vaginismus.  I remember though, that even when he tried to insert his finger into my vagina, I would wall up, like my vagina had a mind of its own. I felt disconnected with my own body part, but I never gave it much thought. I wonder often now, what would have happened, if we had had penetrative sex and I couldn’t go forward. Would he have been frustrated? Upset? Agitated? Or thought that I am just making a fuss about something routine? Growing up, my mother had told me about periods and a special teacher visited our school to tell only the girls how babies are made without explaining how sex happens and what different people experience while having sex. When regular people spoke about sex, it seemed a given that penetration, for women, is a painful experience, that there would be blood – something my partner also brought up.  I would curiously ask my college friends about their first time experience – most had been sexual for the first time, all with men. Some would never talk about it. Most would be taciturn. I wasn’t looking for juicy details or prying. I was simply trying to understand what intercourse would entail, when it did happen. The fear was palpably present though I had no idea that I had vaginismus. When there is so much silence about sex, when it’s already presented as a difficult experience for women, the chances of discovering that there may be an issue that isn’t just in your head, are slim. I also grew up in a violent home environment, feeling constantly unsafe. As a child with a learning disability, my body bore scars of beatings, and my mind remained in a state of constant hypervigilance, anticipating violent outbursts. One can live through suffering and pain, and understand what it means. But not having the language for your pain can leave you feeling very lost. That is how I felt growing up -- lost and alone. I learned I had vaginismus, in a very vulnerable state. I had broken up with my partner. His family did not approve of our match and he gave up on convincing them because khoon ka rishta hai. After 9 years of trying and trying to make this relationship work, we ended it.  I was in a difficult financial condition; I was supporting myself, my family, and cradling my broken heart. There was no time to grieve and mourn this loss. I moved overseas and started a new job. I was learning to live by myself. I was trying to move on and meet new people. For the first time, I downloaded dating apps. I was 30. Everyone in my new location assumed that meant a glorious sex while everyone in India thought that I am a 30-year-old virgin. Of course I was neither. I took it slow. When I thought I was ready, I connected with someone on Facebook, and we became friendly. But as he showed interest in becoming intimate I completely shut him off. I told myself, perhaps I am not over my break up. The fear of pain had taken deep root in my heart. But, we met again after a gap, and somehow, this young man and I kissed and made out. After a few minutes, he asked me if I was ready and I nodded; my heart was beating against my chest. Was I ready? He put on his condom and the moment he tried to penetrate me, I felt a sharp and searing pain at the opening of my vagina. It was like my vagina screamed at his penis without consulting me. I immediately asked him to immediately stop. I wanted to burst into tears. I was embarrassed. He was confused, and ready, and asked me eagerly, “are you really sure we cannot do this?” I said, “no, I am sorry, I don’t think I can.” I wondered why though. Was it because he was only the second person I was being intimate with? Or because I needed  more than a casual connection, that I needed to be romantically to have sex with someone? But really, the fears that had haunted me in my first sexual experience, had followed me to a new place and with a new person. I was afraid of being hurt, bruised, and my sense of safety being violated.  He was a kind friend and hung out with me for a few days. We kissed and made out during my stay, but he said that he need to have penetrative sex to ‘finish.’ I began to feel like I am causing, and perhaps will cause, men to not ‘finish.’ I had learnt from media and friends that this is ‘climax’, the culmination of a linear story of sex. Things get hot and heavy, people make passionate love; there are no hiccups, no one gets embarrassed, no one cries, no one fails to have sex. But me? I used to fail at Math, and now I was failing at sex. I was dejected and heartbroken. I tried to speak to a friend at work and she just said, “Oh, maybe you have not found the right person yet.” How was I going to find that person? The world of online dating felt so intimidating. When people – cis, heterosexual men, anyway -  are looking for sex on the internet, they don’t expect to meet a person whom they cannot enter, and who stops them. I feared that if I tried dating, I would get a person excited, and then right before penetration, I would say, “nah, I’m in the mood, but my vagina is not.”  Is there a guide book for having this conversation? I googled --- FEAR OF PENETRATIVE SEX …. NOT ABLE TO HAVE SEX….  There it came. A label, a language, “vaginismus.”   Some time passed before I looked for a non-invasive and queer-affirmative gynecologist, in Mumbai,  finding one through someone’s post on Twitter. It was my first time going to a gynecologist. I had only heard horror stories about women being asked personal questions. Having vaginismus was terrifying enough, without fielding intrusive questions from doctors. But I went determined to be confident, and not be bullied. I told her I had been with two men and not found  sexual intercourse too painful to have, never inserted a tampon, or met a gynecologist before. She wrote down, ‘primary vaginismus,’ and asked the nurse to bring out the dilators. Three dilators ranging from the size of my little finger to big, penis shaped-ones. The sight terrified me – but she reassured me that we would try, but didn’t have to continue if it was hard. “I just need to see if you can.”  The moment the dilator was inching close to me, I raised my buttocks; my muscles clenched, and my vaginal walls closed. The doctor asked me to breath and relax, and said, “imagine you are urinating”  Somehow that did the trick. For the very first time, a dilator -- the size of my little finger -- went into my vagina. “See!” she exclaimed. At first numb with fear, I was now numb with joy. My vaginal walls relaxed. Dilator no 2 was inserted, the third one went halfway through, and I asked her to stop as we had agreed. Having something in my vagina was strange -- there was no bleeding and the two small-sized dilators slid in and out with the help of a water-based gel lubricant. For the first time in my life, my vagina was listening to me. We were on the same page; it had decided to open up to me. It felt like it belonged to me, and did not exist outside of my bodily and emotional experience. I tried using my dilators every day. The first time was hard, Whatever I tried, my muscles would involuntarily clench. I would breathe, apply a lot of lubricant, and gently persist. At the same time, I also started receiving therapy. As a trauma survivor of my violent childhood, my challenges are further compounded. But, I was learning to anchor myself to the present and learning to be safe. I started reading a lot about vaginismus, trauma, and people with the trauma that also experience vaginismus. I had a name for what was going on in my mind and in my body. Knowing the names made me feel less alone. My sister was the first person I shared this with. She was very kind, sharing that her first time with penetrative sex had been uncomfortable and painful. “I only did it because I was at the age where I felt I needed to  tell my close friends I had done ‘it.’  My therapist was the other person I told, explaining my response to touch. When I told her I was scared of being in relationships and telling men that I have vaginismus, she validated my fears. We discussed how I would go out there, look for love, look for sex, with vaginismus. My therapist also asked me to try masturbating and try what seems fun and pleasurable. I tell many of my friends that I am struggling to be intimate with men, and they listen, but I don’t know if they understand. I still cannot tell anyone that I have vaginismus. Because it becomes a label -- they read the label and based on their understanding of sex, they draw a conclusion about my sexual life. Am I in a relationship with someone? A man? No. But I am learning to have a relationship with myself, with my body.  I feel more in control because I am now on dilator 3 of Amielle Comfort. I have had to unlearn many ideas I had about sex in order to rebuild my relationship with pleasure. I had to tell myself that I am having sexual experiences. I wanted to see what are the different ways in which I can learn pleasure. I bought a clitoris stimulating vibrator and used that to have orgasms. Watching porn was frustrating. Everyone “climaxes” in porn. The fixed journey, the predictable, linear sexual path – just starts to heighten my anxiety that I am lacking. But I searched for other eroticism and started listening to audio stories on Dipsea. Of course there is a sense of linearity for the characters in these stories too, but at least I am able to create my own sexual experience in my mind while masturbating.  When I had just begun dilating, I joined an online support group. Surely, I am not the only one who has primary vaginismus. A community of people, which also includes partners of those who have had vaginismus are also a part of the group. Many women and individuals share their stories, their dilating journeys, their frustration, and lack of motivation to dilate. Sometimes we also celebrated each other's journeys. Only we, in that group can understand how a person feels when they have been able to manage penetrative sex and enjoy it. In that community, I do not feel alone. But the world outside can be very isolating, intimidating, and limiting. Now that I feel more comfortable with myself, I recently told another friend, and the more people I share this with, the more my shame shatters into pieces. Its silence is broken. This friend was wonderful; I took pictures of my dilators and shared them with her to tell her which dilator I am on. She said, “I completely understand. Penetrative sex is difficult, and sometimes you do feel frozen.” She does not have vaginismus, but listening to her, made me realise, maybe sex is not always as easy as porn and films make it sound, is it? So, I am carving on my own path. I started a personal blog in which I write about my sexual experience with myself, my fantasies filled with delicious possibilities, and my mental health. Recently, I wrote a private blog post describing my imaginary sexual experience with my dentist on whom I have a massive crush. We’re in a fantastical land, and this dentist is loving, caring, and makes me feel safe. In this fantasy we do not have penetrative sex -- but it is hot, pleasurable, fun, and we both are happy at the end of it. We know that there will be more, but in my fantasy, in this specific story, we are happy with how it is now. I am still trying to muster the courage to ask him out, but I am not feeling hindered because of vaginismus. I am just scared that he will say no or find it absurd that I am asking him out after he pulled out my teeth!  I don’t control my vagina or feel ashamed or embarrassed by it. It is scared. It needs me -- to love it and to comfort it, and to slowly help her feel safe. She needs to know she is cared for.   Tara is an educator. She loves talking to young people and seeing them grow. Outside of work, she takes long walks, takes care of her plants, reads and admires art.

It Was ‘Twilight’. I Woke Up Bisexual.

How one can stumble upon one's (bi)sexuality with the help of fiction / fan-fiction

It was in 2011 (and I was 15), that I first changed my Facebook profile picture to a photoshopped image of Kristen Stewart and me. It wasn’t masterful editing, but at least Bella was holding me instead of Edward. I wanted to go for a riskier picture, of us kissing, but I couldn’t photograph my face from that angle. Also, I didn’t want to piss off my uncle who religiously liked all my posts. Back then, Robert Pattinson’s smile and disheveled hair were topics of international interest. My friends and I would discuss Twilight at lunch break, and only the few who had read all four books had control over the discourse on Pattinson’s smile. I remember wondering why we didn’t discuss Kristen Stewart with the same zeal. I could think of only one reason. She didn’t sparkle like Edward. That had to be it. In biology class, we were learning about the stages of cell division. I knew everything already, thanks to my extensive research on mitosis, after watching Bella argue with Edward about whether the cell in front of them was in anaphase and metaphase. I could have topped the class, but we also had parts of the knee for the test. And unfortunately, Bella didn’t seem to care as much about the femur. When I read New Moon, I couldn’t contain my anger. That bastard. “Forget about him, forget about him, forget about him,” I chanted, knowing fully well that she wouldn’t. In English class, we had to write about “Pain” for an essay. And boy, did I understand pain. So, I wrote. I wrote of my pain. I wrote of her pain. I wrote of the pain in the behind that was Edward. I got a “C” and was gently told that I didn’t seem to have understood the topic. I loved Jessica (Bella’s friend from school, for the uninitiated). I thought she was empathetic and kind, unlike Edward. She was pretty too! A small, gay part of me longed to see them kiss, but a friend told me that only a boy and a girl could kiss. “Because it would be messier when two lipsticks are involved?” I wanted to ask. This was also around the time I stumbled into the rabbit-hole of fan-fiction. I found plenty of stories about Jessica and Bella and their grand kiss. I didn’t care that they were poorly written. A lot of things were poorly written, including my fate. I hated that I didn’t have a friend who agreed with me about Jessica and Bella. Only HannahP1, the writer of some of the steamiest Jessica-Bella stories, seemed to understand me. And as though it wasn’t enough, Kristen Stewart was dating Robert Pattinson. But this pain, I could share with my friends. All of us hated the relationship. “Why is he dating her?” they’d lament. “Why is he dating her. Really.” I’d sigh. I got my hands on the leaked version of Midnight Sun as soon as I heard about it. I wanted to see Bella through Edward’s eyes. I wanted him to tell me how beautiful she looked in her blue gown, and how it felt when he wrapped his arms around her for the dance. There was only one other person who made me feel that way. Shah Rukh Khan. When he danced on the train in Chaiyya Chaiyya, my eyes stayed glued to him. When he said “palat,” I did (after a perfectly timed walk-away). I could gush about Shah Rukh Khan’s dimples and boyish hair with my girlfriends, and they’d get what I was talking about. But for the 15-year-old girl in Bhubaneswar (yes, me), with little knowledge of queerness, there was only one other person who felt the same way about Bella. It was Edward. So I flowed through Midnight Sun, like my life depended on it. I wondered whether Bella would like set dosa or masala dosa. Or, more importantly, whether she would like masala dosa with sambar or mutton curry. I desperately hoped it wouldn’t be sambar. I wondered how Bella wanted her coffee. It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I’d get her to like filter coffee. How else would she wash down the mutton curry? So, a few weeks ago, when a dear friend tweeted about her recent guilty splurge on Midnight Sun, I did what any Twilight fan would. I downloaded a pirated copy of it. I didn’t feel as guilty as I otherwise would since Stephanie Meyer had appropriated the Quileute tribe. She was problematic and I was broke, so it was a fair deal. It’s still poorly written, but still better than Godfather (sorry, dudebros). I breathed through the book in a day. It was hard to explain to my friends why everything I spoke about, over the next two days was about Midnight Sun. It’s hard being a Twilight fan. It’s harder being a Twilight fan who doesn’t swoon over Edward. Twilight haters don’t understand you, Twilight lovers don’t understand you. The wretched life of bisexuals. I wish I could find HannahP1 and discuss Bella-Jessica smut with her again. This time, however, it wasn’t mitosis I was obsessed with but Victoria, the antagonist. I’ve grown to love my bad girls. Especially the ones who challenge the heroes, are bitchy, and make you dislike them. With passion. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that made me pine for Bella. It wasn’t long before it dawned on me that it was all Kristen Stewart. Watching Midnight Sun isn’t the same with Kristen Stewart having outgrown it. She’s kissing women now, and my older, gayer heart is finally almost content. The rest of the contentment will happen when I master Photoshop and kiss her. My uncle can turn away if he, too, is worried about the mess that two lipsticks will make.   Anusha Bhat is a student of Development Studies in Bengaluru. When she’s not reading, writing, or snacking, she enjoys sitting under the trees and watching leaves fall.

Sex Sure Doesn't Need #PeriodLeaves

What's so special about the flow period sex can take?

I have made fun of romantic fairy tales and forever promises all my life. To be quite honest, I still do. But there’s one thing that still intrigues me; the ‘it feels right’ emotion. I experienced it the day K and I spent an entire night just talking, during a train journey. Never had I felt more comfortable in a person’s company. From that day that I knew: this man had an energy that I’d craved all my life. But relationships aren’t just about a charming man looking at your dreamy-eyed self on the beach as you drink wine off of each other’s lips, right? Relationships need rational thinking and conscious decision making, no?  But, to my surprise, not so much, in this case. K lived up to way more than just a few of my expectations. Well-behaved, respectful to women, insanely funny and a genuine-eyed sensitive and empathetic human being, he’d been ticking everything in my list of desirable traits in a man I’d want to spend my life with.  And then came that bloody night. We’d been sexually involved for some time and had begun living together about two weeks before. We had been victims of Mumbai's space-crunch and judgemental hotel staff. Now, released into glorious privacy, our bed witnessed more movement and moaning, than still, sound sleep. It was going great. Our endeavours in bed were getting more experimental and exploratory. Then, fuck! The menstrual cycle. As a young girl I saw sanitary-pad packets being covered with an opaque black bag, my cousin sisters telling their fathers "I'm not feeling too well" when they were on their period, menstruating women denied entry in temples and so on. So my mind was always fed the notion that periods were dirty. Forever terrified of blood stains on my sheets and pants, I have always detested my menstrual cycle. Women (especially ones with a waist size more than 28) are anyway made to feel like shit about their bodies. So being naked in front of a man I wanted to look attractive for, WHILE my period was on, did not seem an option, nope, not at all. We climbed into bed and got into our favourite cuddling position with the aim to doze off soon. Rationalizing the lack of sexual activity in bed that night, I tried to focus on an early morning class the next day. But the human mind is a funny place. Articles that I’d read about how sex can be more pleasurable for women during periods, started parading through my brain. Could it be? But yuck, wouldn’t it be gross? I was just beginning to think of how it would be when I felt his hand under my t-shirt, sniffing my hair and caressing my waist as we spooned. Classic move! Any other day and I’d be convinced that he wants it. But...today I was “down”.  I turned towards him and asked him what’s up. He kissed me passionately and held me close against his body. I kissed him back. That sweet and familiar taste of his lips always sends electric currents down my spine! I craved him. Before I knew it, our shirts were off and I was on top of him, top-naked. The make out was getting wild. It was evident that we couldn’t keep our bodies off each other’s. Just when I leaned in to kiss his ear, to see him go berserk with all the stimulation, he stopped me. He stopped me, gently put his hand on my cheek, put a strand of my hair behind my ear, looked into my eyes and said “Do you want me inside you?” I was speechless. I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t know how to react. My reflex reaction was “What? No!” He asked me “why not?” and I honestly didn’t have an answer. Nobody had really questioned that no? Why not? “I don’t know”, I said. “It’s gross!” “It really isn’t babe. It’s just blood”. “You won’t be comfortable, love. It’s dirty”. “It isn’t. I want to. Do you?” “WHY? Everything will get dirty. The sheets, the condom....just no ya” “You said it’ll be more pleasurable for you when you’re menstruating right? I want you to feel it. Trust me I want to. It’s not gross” Oh. He remembered when I’d made a fleeting mention of the articles I was thinking about earlier. “Listen, are you sure? I have a pad on. My bum’s also going to be dirty. It really isn’t the right time” “Babe, I like dirty okay? Plus I don’t want to look at the calendar when I feel like making love to you!” My heart skipped a beat. What, again?! I was convinced this man was out of his mind. He didn’t know what he was saying. But...I wanted to too. I just never thought it was possible for me. You know how you read progressive articles and attend open minded discussions and yet feel like those instances are and always will be far from you? So many times I’ve been part of ‘liberating’ and ‘empowering’ discussions around sex and how the woman’s pleasure is of equal importance. Yet today, I was hesitant in realizing my own right to sex and pleasure despite being offered it. How often do you find men who truly appreciate you for what you are? It’s sad but there’s only a handful. And even though I had this man who fell into that minority caressing my body and craving to be in me, why the fuck was I reluctant? Periods, for most women in India, are a taboo subject. But more than being avoided in public conversation, menstruation is equated with impurity and filth. It's as if there’s nothing more disgusting than a prominently visible blood stain on my bed sheet. These beliefs are so ingrained in our socialisation and so internalised by us that we, who menstruate ourselves, often succumb to believing in them. If your period is not crazy painful, sex during your period may be messy, but it’s not dirty-dirty, except in a good way. In fact orgasms during your period can relieve your cramps and headaches, the blood is a natural lubricant. It’s lovely, what loving can do! I've been thankful to find a partner who helps me question these internalized notions. But I’m not saying I feel "blessed", "obliged" or "undeserving" of this. Rather, I feel happy, unapologetic and at ease with myself, my body. Bodies need and deserve to be loved at all times.  So please don't let go if you're with someone who feels that  - just let go that weird-ass conditioning instead! And if you aren't, just please don't ever settle for less than you desire. Bloody hell! No!   Ananya is a 25 year old cis-het feminist woman who studies social work and likes to think critically and question norms. She’s also a hopeless romantic who cries when happy and/or angry and is super proud of it.

Being A Sub Made Me Bloom And Widened My Perspective

What sharing intimacy with strangers online may reveal about your kinky self.

Covid, right? No, it was neither Covid nor 50 Shades of Grey that prompted me to explore this. Years ago, an ex-boyfriend was once away and when we were sexting, he asked me what my fantasies were. The cat was out of the bag. I had not thought much about it until then—maybe because no one had asked? On his way home, he brought a whole bunch of sex-toys and accessories (he was always ‘overenthusiastic’ about everything)! It was quite an exploration. Unfortunately, it was also the time I was on medicines for anxiety, depression, and PTSD, and I did not know then that they had affected by sex-drive (they can lower libido). I look back at those years wistfully. In my subsequent relationships, no one asked me what my kinks were but sometimes, I showed them what got me going, and the smart ones took the hint!  Earlier this year, I happened to discuss this with a close friend (a man). It was liberating to be able to discuss this with a friend—a friend who knew and understood. We discussed various options I could try and use to explore this. There are many as it turns out: apps, Facebook groups, Reddit groups. I do not use Reddit or Facebook much. Also, given how much Facebook snoops, there was no way I could risk this. I started looking for chat options and stumbled upon one that needed no prior registration. It was perfect! On this website, all one needed to enter was gender, age, what one was into (dom, sub, master, slave) and select their preferences, termed fetishes on the website. One can send pictures, videos, as well as call each other (voice or video). The only down in chatting on this website was that you could not select what you are looking for. The website randomly pairs you with someone. As a sub, I could run into other subs (men or women) even though I was looking for a dom. Once I figured out how this worked, I needed to be patient. And my patience was rewarded, no doubt.  I have to say these chats are where I met some of the politest men ever.  Chats usually started with, ‘Hi. How are you?’ or ‘Hi. How are you holding up’? I would reply, ‘I am good. Thank you, and you?’ After some pleasantries were exchanged, the most important question, ‘What are you into?’, would pop up.  I did not have a wide vocabulary, so I stuck to ‘I am a sub, I like XYZ, and ABC’. The next important question, ‘What are your limits?’ I answered with, ‘None (on chat)’, at first.  I thought that how did it matter what I agreed to do on chat—it was all make-believe anyway. Consent was key. Time to time, some doms stop to ask ‘All okay? All fun for you so far?’ Not one man in real life has asked me this yet. That said, I think I am a very 90s girl—I do not like being asked a lot of questions, especially around consent. Explicit consent is absolute, but if I (a woman in her late 30s) am in a private, intimate space (irl or online) with a man, I feel okay with implicit consent—I expect a man to stop when I ask him to than be bombarded with a whole lot of questions. I have left chats where I was asked many questions because a) I do not want to answer questions about my likes and dislikes—I preferred winging it as the chat progresses,  and b) Being impatient is a part of my personality, so I think I did not have the patience to answer questions. Also, added to this was the uncertainty that after answering all these questions, I may still not vibe with the person at the other end. With the right dom, the vibes are pretty instant (although they could get boring too after the initial exchange of messages). The first few exchanges were limited to chats. Some men wanted to only chat, some only wanted video calls. Some wanted pictures that showed I was following instructions. After some chats, I felt ‘bold’ enough to send pictures that showed I was following instructions. It is hard to explain the rush that came from sending pictures. It was liberating, for sure. It could have also been this rush of indulging in what is seen as ‘taboo’ or ‘unacceptable’ behaviour. It was also a great lesson in accepting my body, how I look—I did not feel embarrassed or ashamed of my brown, imperfect body. Once, a dom asked me if I could get on a voice call, and on an impulse, I agreed to. To hear a voice tell me what to do was exhilarating. It is not easy to describe this in words but hearing a dom’s voice got my heart pounding, and my voice turned into a whimper (perfect for a sub, if I may say so). It made the whole experience more real than a chat. While chatting, I could be multitasking—reading or watching TV, for example. But while on a call, I had to be fully present and commit to the moment. Once someone asked if I would be willing to ‘switch’—a switch is someone who enjoys engaging in both dominant and submissive behaviour. I did my best to be a dom but being a dom did nothing for me. I did not have the vocabulary to dominate a man, and it did not turn me on, at all. After that first time, I have not tried switching again. Some conversations, however, took an interesting turn (when I was in the mood to answer questions). I was asked ‘So, what makes you want to submit?’ I replied, ‘I like being controlled, being told what to do. It is unlike daily life where I decide everything. I am tired of it.’ He asked, ‘Are you dominant in your professional career?’, and continued, ‘You enjoy liberating yourself from the burden of choice’.  I replied, ‘I have my own business and I live alone. So, yeah. It is liberating’.  It was a light-bulb moment. I realise being a sub stemmed from this intense desire to give up all control. I want to surrender completely, be told what to do, and follow instructions. The word ‘submit’ feels like it would be restrictive, but in reality, it brings freedom, liberation. Giving someone else the power over me was still retaining control as I decided who I wanted to give the power to and how much. I read about kink quite often and voices of other women subs who have similar stories and share similar feelings. There are also some voices that talk of how kink can be stress-relieving. And it has been true for me. I found myself reaching out to chat when I was extremely stressed or anxious. Giving up control but in a way that fulfilled my innermost desires is a balm that soothes my anxieties.  I have been in long term relationships where sex took a backseat but emotional compatibility, and intimacy were on the forefront. Sex in most of these relationships (barring one or two) was okay-ish but not electrifying—they were mostly been about the men prioritising themselves. I never minded it because while sex was important it was not the most important thing. But after my BDSM experiences, I look back and wonder if my reaction to okay-ish was the sub in me willing to prioritise men, even when they were not doms. BDSM is not the only sexual experience I seek or am willing to have but my experiences have definitely enriched my sexual encounters and widened my perspective, allowing me to redefine relationships outside acceptable societal norms and understand my sexual self a little more.   Silk Smitha is a strong, fiercely independent, ‘in-control’ woman who used to be married and is now inching towards 40. She lives alone and loves it.

Dear Girls Who Sent Nudes, Thank You

What leaking of nude pictures says about betrayal of consent and privacy.

 When I was 15, I made out with a boy (it wasn’t my first time or anything.) My mistake(?) being that this boy had a friend who liked me. The events that would take place still come back to me on some days, and today is one such day. The friend- let us call him Kooldoodh69- had a claim that to him seemed very reasonable:- I must date him. Imagine my audacity when I asked why? And his “it’s so obvious” answer? Otherwise I will tell your sister that you made out with my friend.  In a bid to escape, I quickly told him that my sister said I should not date him. Kooldoodh69 took it to heart and sent my sister a long message asking her why she was coming in between. My sister in turn gave me an earful. I was not to be dragging her name into my rendezvous’ with various boys. I remember being scared, feeling stuck, since it seemed like I had lost my freedom to choose. It had not occurred to me yet that I was being blackmailed.  Studying in an all-girls school in Dubai means that certain topics are taboo. An unspoken understanding hangs in the air that any talk related to ‘private parts’ was bad. And yet, it was only such stories that were notoriously smuggled in, pedaled during free hours or snorted quickly under the teacher’s nose, leaving addicts like us in a high that would last an entire school day, maybe two if it was your first time.  This mirage-like veil of morality seemed to vaporize when a girl's nudes got leaked. And almost every other girl had this ‘shameful’ photo in her phone gallery- a girl sitting in front of a mirror, her legs spread apart, and her tongue out, or just a pair of breasts, and if the boy had been especially good there was a face involved too.  If some unfortunate girl decided to date someone’s brother, sneaky smiles from his sister(s) the next day was proof enough that it was no longer just an intimate photo to “prove that you love me.”  From 8th grade onwards, stories about the girl who shoved a pencil inside her vagina, the Head girl who gave a ‘head’ to a boy or even the girl who slipped ice into her white shirt so that the boy could fetch it out, were teaching experiences. Each of our faces creatively displaying emotions ranging from shock and disgust to wonder and amusement, all the while making mental notes about this new seduction tactic we had just chanced upon. Sitting on staircases during our Games period, we would eagerly wait for that one girl with ‘chill parents’ who could interact with boys to declare, “let the ‘shareef bacche’ play, come I’ll tell you gossip.” Nobody held the boys accountable for serving these steamy stories, nobody wanted to, nobody was used to it.   The last time I would take part in these acts of double standards was in 12th grade when a classmate had sponsored one week’s worth of scandal: she had openly proclaimed that she masturbates. In return she got disgust-filled glares. Nobody spoke to her or wanted to shake her hand for a week or more. But there was something different about this incident. None of us relished this as much as we did the other stories; no creative expressions, nothing but pure disgust. In fact, we wanted to know how she even thought of sharing such information with us. Why couldn’t she just keep quiet? Almost as if, dare I say it, we couldn’t accept a girl having power over - and  pleasure in- her own body. All through school, any girl who remotely expressed any kind of sexual feelings was discussed, and intense judgments were passed on her character. Never was she ever seen the same way after something got out. Sometimes I wonder if they had anyone to talk to- someone who wouldn’t blame them? Not their girl ‘friends’ for sure- they were too busy spreading the story. But enough throwing sympathy. What about those boys? The ones behind the big wall, throwing over small chunks of meat for us to share and feed on? Why did they never have to face any repercussions?  Because Boys will be Boys, and girls let them be boys.  I often wonder how different things would be if we all had begun calling out the pathetic boy who decided to profit off of a body; or maybe if the girl in question had begun circulating the conversations that preceded the photo- the “please”, “if you love me”, “I never asked for this na”, “please please, please”, “if you won’t send I won’t talk to you”, “why you wont send?” “You don’t love me?”  “Why you’re being such a bitch?” type chats.  But Economics is a way of life, and where there is demand, there will always be supply. We needed these stories you see, we needed good girls who turned bad at night, we needed the nudes. Imagine our surprise when we realized all breasts did not look the same, but were equally attractive anyway! We needed these bold girls in a country where porn was blocked, girls who introduced us to distant concepts like oral sex and masturbation. These girls made us feel morally superior, we were better, smarter even- or so we thought, while covertly lapping up the vicarious sexualness. As for me now, I owe it to these girls. Phenomenal that they were, coming to school every day knowing what everyone thought about them, but just not giving a damn, continuing to drop the sexiest photos (not for any Kooldoodh69 types) and do the sexiest things. Most importantly, they taught me how to deal with my personal Kooldoodh69 – Ignore him, watch him talk to himself in my DM’s, laugh at him- all as I owned my own body and wondered what it could do for me.   Anika Eliz Baby is a student studying in St.Joseph's College (Autonomous), Bangalore. When not making memes, she is passing awkward jokes and fangirling over anybody that is not her. Read more of her writings here.

Romantic Sensual Asexual - That’s Me

Can one be asexual and terribly romantic too?

There are some secrets that we hide even from ourselves. And so it has always been for me. Despite knowing the truth from an early age, I continued to make excuses- 'it's different for women', 'if only the person is attractive enough it will happen', 'if only the situation is sexy enough, it will happen'. People everywhere spoke so confidently about sex, that I was scared to bring up my own confusions. My confusions revealed my inefficacy. My inefficacy became my defect: something to hide, something to mull over, something to try to get rid of, but definitely not something that could be talked about. It is only now, after having crossed thirty years of age and still being a virgin despite multiple relationships and encounters, that I am starting to accept my asexuality- not as a defect but as an orientation; as a part of my nature..  Asexuality doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. There are aromantic asexuals as well, but not me. I am the kind of person who can call someone ‘my sun, my moon, my stars’ with a straight face and totally believe it. I am the person who writes poems of longing in those initial phases of hope, and poems of bereavement in the later phases of heartbreak. I am the person who lives on ‘I love you’s- clinging to them for dear life. When I was in a relationship, that was all we said in terms of conversation for most of the time. After my break-up, that gap remains.   For me, asexuality doesn’t mean that I don’t like to be touched. I love holding and cuddling. I can really enjoy kissing and at times, both giving and getting in terms of oral sex (only if I feel an aesthetic attraction and/or emotional connection with the person). But I can not have penetrative sex. And I do not really get 'turned on'. Not by persons anyway. I get turned on by certain very specific situations. And I have never been able to really experience that with another person at all. Instead, I have experienced that kind of pleasure only by myself, with literature or TV of 'hurt and comfort’ genre (without any sex scenes at all) leading to masturbation..   Socially, talking about sex has become about freedom from repression- and that is a good thing. But sex-talk also becomes a form of social bonding from which, as an asexual, I always felt excluded. People around me would constantly make remarks about other people’s negative behaviour, attributing it to lack of ‘getting some’. If you are grumpy, miserly, too finicky, or annoying in any way at all, it must have to do with you either being a virgin, or not ‘getting some’ as if not having sex could never be a choice and a preference. Where does this language, this common code, leave asexuals? In that way, conversations about sex, if done in a very presumptive way, can repress conversations about sexuality, in particular, asexuality.   My lack of sexual attraction for people I have loved has led to a tumultuous journey of self-discovery. It began with confusion, self-blame and self-hate, transformed to doubts about the authenticity of my feelings for my partner (‘maybe I would feel ‘more into it’ with someone else’), then upon repeated ‘failures’ it led to a conviction that I was defective. With an extremely low sense of self-worth, I started becoming too eager-to-please and too accommodating of mistreatment. It took multiple misadventures to come to terms with myself, to accept that whatever I am, however I am, I still deserve love- at least from myself. It is only now, after coming across a whole community of asexuals on the internet, that the loneliness feels a little bit reduced. So I am writing this, thinking about those of you who have ever been made to feel ‘all wrong inside’ just because your relationship with sex may not be the one experienced by the majority. I am writing this to tell you that you are not alone.  

Rosa (pseudonym) is an environmental researcher who likes to eat, sleep and doodle. For a conversation about asexuality, trees, food or weather, you can email her on rosa.abyss@gmail.com

 

The Adorable Boys Who Love ‘Papa Bear’

Who decided that desire is only for the young?

I was struck when he said, ‘I’m sorry you are too young for me.’  I looked at the photograph I had sent him via WhatsApp, after long conversations with him, on the gay dating app, Grindr. Me, with my thinning hair and a grey beard; I couldn’t possibly look young. But to him I was. And not in a nice way. He wanted someone wrinkled. Older, the better. How could that be desirable, I thought. It was, for this strapping young man, in his thirties, a professor in a junior college of the Mumbai suburbs, with his handlebar moustache, and thick wrists. I asked him, ‘What is the oldest guy you had sex with?’ Eight-five, he replied.  I had stumbled upon this desire very recently. Young adult men, not boys, men ‘ready to settle down’ as they say, who loved older men, sexually, and sought them out actively. A young, rather aristocratic looking man, with broad shoulders and long firm thighs, whom I met in Ghaziabad, said he liked men who looked like his father – big powerful-looking men, with moustaches and a protruding belly. I asked him, ‘Isn’t that incestuous?’, trying to be funny. He looked rather disgusted at the suggestion. ‘I am just describing what I want. My father is the handsomest man I know.’ I felt foolish. Desire existed in an unmoderated domain for him, where analysis was an unwanted voyeur. It’s what he wanted. And he would settle for nothing else. I was not big enough for him. I also did not have a beard then. Nor a belly.      We assume what people find attractive. Let me rephrase that: I had always assumed what people find attractive. Youth. Fitness. Light skin. Muscled body. Cute face. Beard. I did find that attractive. Still do. But OTHERS did not necessarily seek out the same thing. The very kind of boys I found rejecting me in my youth, were the ones drawn to me as I grew older, attracted not despite my age, but because of my age. Not all of them. But a substantial number. Those who were clear in their profiles: ‘Only seeking Matures. Young men below 40 please stay away.’ Never ever had I felt more desired. Or amazed.  On porn sites I had seen videos of young guys having sex with older men. Somewhere, maybe without thinking about it as such, I classified this as deviant – desperate youngies, hypersexual oldies. Like chubby porn. There was money involved, probably. It couldn’t possibly be part of the spectrum of desire. Everyone should love youth, right? That’s what everyone tells us. That’s how it should be. Old men prey on young women. Old women prey on young women. Old people prey on young people. Right?  I have always known I’m a gay man. However, I did not get along with young gay men when I was young. They felt I was too serious for them, too mature for them: an old man trapped in a young body. The dismissal was mutual. I didn’t quite enjoy the things that young people seemed to like. I did not enjoy alcohol, partying, loud music, dancing, going shopping or watching movies. My tastes were much too boring, for them. My tastes were ‘mature’ but that did not mean I found ‘matures’ desirable. I desired the young body. But young men did not desire my body, young though it was.      Gay friends, I felt, approached me for career advice or emotional counselling. I was the big brother they could lean on. The sensible asexual friend. I had (still have) body image issues and so I felt they looked down on me as too fat, too unshapely, wearing tight clothes pretending they fit me, choosing trousers with elastic bands. I felt I was being rejected for my body and not just my tastes. I didn’t belong with this younger generation. I always felt like an outsider and so I invested my time in my work. I never really dated, especially, after one serious affair and heartbreak (‘you are too practical, no fun’).  I focused on my career, rising up the corporate ladder, earning money and finding sexual pleasure in rent boys. These were eager young men easily available on the internet or other networks for a small fee. It was very convenient for them and me. They would come, they would have sex with me, take the money and go away. No clinginess. No mess. No risk and drama of rejection and hurt. No mess and pain of wanting what you might not have. With some of these men, I struck friendships. At no point did I assume they desired my body.  I was nice to them. If they were nice, like wishing me for festivals, I suspected they wanted more money – which was often the case. For me, their arousal when we were together, was part of their youth. I did not like it when they would want to watch porn clips, of women mostly, in order to have sex with me. I did not call such guys back. I did not like those who, after sex, insisted they had girlfriends and sex with men was just a hobby, a timepass. This was a turn-off for me. I would give them money and ask them to leave. I preferred those who did not talk too much, who performed more and proclaimed less. I did not allow myself to feel that they might find my body attractive.   My lack of self-confidence in my private space was in opposition to my over confidence in the corporate world. I was very happy with my life. A single life; with staff to take care of your housekeeping needs; young men who take care of your sexual needs; friends for your social and emotional needs; another group of friends for your intellectual needs. A neatly compartmentalised life, until one day during the lockdown, you miss them all, and tired of webinars and video calls, you start spending more time on Grindr.  You know you can’t really meet people because of the social distancing norms for health and safety reasons. So you have to satisfy your desires digitally. This is when I stumbled upon what was for me a totally new bower in the garden of sexuality – sexy youths who yearn for the companionship of older men, who desire their ‘papa bear’. I was familiar with Twink clubs, Straight Acting clubs, Muscle clubs, Sugar Daddy clubs, Bear clubs and Otter clubs. This classification is common and casual especially in dating apps. People are clear what they want. There are spaces to cater to men who like older men with lots of hair on their bodies and big stomachs. Men who don’t like smooth, young boys and a whole range of choices that is not part of popular media. What surprised me was the number Twinks and Muscles who liked Bears. They saw the Laughing Buddha and Santa Claus as sexual, desirable, delightful, beings.  Here were these young, beautiful men who clearly knew what they wanted. They wanted older men and the range varied. Some preferred men who are wrinkled, bent and stooping on a stick, a movie grandfather. Some preferred them to be fit, muscular uncle types. Many of them wanted moustaches. Some wanted wobbly pot bellies and jiggly buttocks. Some wanted chest full of grey hair to whose cushiony comfort they could abandon themselves. Many preferred older men who were ‘loose’ – which means natural, not sculpted in the gym. Regular older men, with dad-bods, or shall I say, Indian dad bods :D My world really changed because I grew a beard. I was always clean shaven and happy to look cherubic, thinking this would attract other men, a calculation with low returns. But the moment I grew a beard and it turned out to be grey, I realized I was in high demand. It took me by surprise. People complimented me for my looks – women, and men. Something had changed. It was the beard that got me attention on Grindr, more than anything else. Especially the fact that it was grey. I was now officially ‘papa bear’.  For all the porn talk that is popular on Grindr, I was shaken and taken by the genuine kindness, gentleness, romance that I was showered with by these men who sought matures. They were not seeking money. They were not simply seeking a body. It was borderless – no compartments. Friendship. Mentorship. Desire. Support. I felt parental, the word is ‘vatsalya’ combined with the shringar and the madhurya, the sexual and the romantic. A tenderness between a young man and an older man. A ‘pure feeling’ as one of the men said, that few understand, or at least, give in to.      The young men I met during the lockdown could spend hours chatting with me; discussing their careers, nature, politics. I would ask them, ‘Don’t you have friends your age?’ They did. They played PUBG with them. But that was not enough. They found pleasure in men like me – older men, with beard, with experience. They were not part of the ‘gay scene’; they did not want to go to parties. They don’t want to meet younger gay men. They were not interested in queer politics. It bored them. Sometimes, younger men hit on them and they would laugh about it. Some of them are stunningly good looking. They go to gyms and sculpt their body; they could be poster boys in gay clubs. They were aware of the impact they had in the gay world, but they were not interested in that. Youth just did not arouse them. And their gymming was not to attract old people either. They said they love going to gyms because they liked their bodies, and wanted to look good and attractive.  My insecurities returned. What did they want from me? Surely it could not be my body.   You see Bollywood stars and celebrity-creators clinging to their youth, with the hair dyes, the face lifts, the tummy tucks, the keto diets and the Instagram posts, fearing old age, fearing rejection, fearing aloneness. But I was now confronted by the opposite: a paradise I had never known before in my life, a paradise I refused to believe could exist, a paradise where I was desired as I was, mature and plump. For me it was permission to be myself.  Still, you can’t help second-guessing:  was there something perverse about it, even if you are dealing with adults? Is it the right thing to do, even if the consenting man is post graduate in political science? Then you realize, there is mutuality here, between two grown-ups and what’s coming in the way is mixed baggage. Where are these rules coming from on how to be gay? Who said only young people fall in love? And why should they only fall in love with young people?  Why do we put our desire in boxes made by other people? What I love about the boys I’ve met is how full of life they are. One sends me photographs of his haircuts and enjoys me praising them. Another tells me how he cannot talk to his family and prefers staying away. Another wants me to send him selfies every day, doing ordinary things. Another sends me juvenile jokes, and gets upset if I do not reply instantly. One lives in a slum in Mumbra, another lives in his small village near Kota, one is a sales person from Kakinada, one is a small businessman in Ajmer. One loves to see me nude, one just wants me to send emojis occasionally. The video chats are short, just a kiss, a smile, a moment of adoration, under bed sheets, or from the bathroom, avoiding the scrutiny of family. I see their innocence sometimes, their fears, the burdens placed on the youth by society. These man-boys, looking to sleep on my chest, and feel safe – which is also an important and beautiful function of intimacy. I have never been monogamous so I chat with multiple people simultaneously. I clarify I don’t like exclusivity. Some do have a problem with that, but most don’t. I don’t talk about one to the other. I feel that is violating privacy. But they know there are others.  Occasionally they ask me about my ‘partner’. I laugh and change the topic. When they try to make me jealous, of other papa-bears in their life, I feel relieved. No pressure of being the only one. I have heard stories of possessive boyfriends, drama and even suicide attempts, bouts of depression. That world of clinginess terrifies me. My have coped with aloneness not by seeking the one but by craving the many who also find solace in many.  I am also in high demand because I’m single. I found this out because most of the older men are married. These married men meet the younger men in hotel rooms during travel, for sex which is shrouded in secrecy and maybe self-hate. They don’t want to have conversations. These young men are looking for not just sex; they are looking for a friendship. They don’t want to encroach on the married life of these older men, but treated as guilty secrets, they feel humiliated, denied, deprived, waiting in the margins for crumbs. A delightful young banker I know from Jogeshwari hails from a very affluent North Indian family. He told me he had a relationship with a solicitor from the age of twenty to twenty-three. It ended when the solicitor’s wife and children found out about it. His other relationship was with a civil servant who was twenty years older than he. For five years, the gentleman would travel to his city and spend so much time with him that his wife got suspicious about it. She realized this was not just friendship and forced him to break it off. These were long term relationships, and he was still in touch with those people. He was in his thirties now, with two relationships under his belt. I asked him if he himself would get married and he said unhesitatingly that he would. He could not push things away for longer. He has to accept the inevitable. He was not too happy about this but saw it as the way things are, even should be.  He didn’t see anything wrong with loving an older man and having a deep emotional bond with him; while being married. He did not see his sexuality as being any impediment to his married life. He was very comfortable with it. There was no anguish or doubt in his head. Would he let his wife have lovers? I asked. He did not reply. The thought had not occurred. And what if his children found out? He blocked me. I guess, he loved daddies who indulge, not daddies who interrogate. But some papa-bears want their lover boys to be decent, not just dashing.  For me, these last few months have been discovering that fixed notions of how the gay world is or should be were based on propaganda. There are many worlds out there, hidden, but real and thriving, if we look beyond the shadows.  I have seen men who I once felt were unreachable, out of my league, eagerly welcoming me into their fold, enjoying my body, enjoying my maturity. With them, I feel I am myself, not performing, not pretending, not transacting, just being, taking a moment at a time. Yes, may be these boys are seeking a father figure. And maybe my own erotic and sensual pleasure is mixed with the desire for loving those children I never had. I am not their father and they are not my children. To classify such attraction as ‘incest’ or ‘fetish’ is just another way of invalidating different desires. I just want to enjoy this feeling, without analysis or judgement. Let it be what it is – natural.      

Ankur Mehta (name changed) is a planning-to-retire IT consultant who lives in Bengaluru mostly but prefers Mysuru, and is often found in the beaches of Bali.

 

I Ghosted Him. Then I Got A Second Chance.

Caught between shame and surprise, will a ghost-er make a different choice?

I rushed into Kitab Khana, drenched to the bone thanks to the sticky wetness of Mumbai’s infamous rains. The blast of the air-conditioner froze me momentarily but the polite reminder of “madam, the store is closing in fifteen minutes” by a gentle cashier snapped me back into life. I had held my pee for far too long, and so I rushed to the toilet at the far end of the quaint bookshop. Small brown footprints followed me closely. On the way to the toilet, I paused and peeked into the coffeeshop. I had spent many a summer afternoon here, a few years ago, when I was in the city for archival research. I could almost taste the sweetness of the chocolate fudge brownie mingling with the sharp saltiness of the sweat on my upper lip. A little crowd of lawyers wearing their quintessential black coats were busy relishing the same fudge brownie. My body warmed up at this nostalgic indulgence, but my bladder reminded me that there were more practical matters that needed my attention.  In the bathroom, I chuckled thinking of my sudden and irrational urge to come to Kitab Khana all the way from Santa Cruz when I knew fully well that I would not be able to spend more than ten minutes in the bookstore.  But allowances had had to be made. This whole one-and-a-half-day trip to Mumbai had been a strange decision, after all. I had no “real” reason to be here. I was simply here to see the city. Something from my last trip here had felt incomplete. Sometimes it felt like I had not bid my long-lost lover a proper goodbye. Sometimes it felt like I had forgotten a part of me behind.  I had spent three months in Mumbai back in 2016 – but I did not do much in terms of getting to know the city. I just loitered aimlessly, pretending to be looking for something interesting to research but I was far too besotted by this city to have any sense of perspective. All I was really doing in Mumbai was falling in love with someone or the other, over and over again. It was liberating to feel absolutely irrelevant. I picked up six books off the Fiction shelf, quickly took a photograph, and promptly put up a story on Instagram – “reunited with my favorite bookstore!” – and tagged Kitab Khana.  Phone in hand, I hailed a kaali peeli and made my way back to Santa Cruz. Ping! Someone had replied to my Instagram story.  My mouth felt sour as a pang of guilt rang through my cold body. R.  I had ghosted R – seven years ago – and had conveniently forgotten about it. Until this moment. I still remember seeing his text “I am waiting at the bar, drinking a beer. Take your time!”, promptly turning my phone off and going to sleep. I still remember sleeping for 13 hours that day, waking up to 16 missed calls and panicked texts, and not feeling a thing.      I have always been a lover of challenges. Through my high school, my college, all I have truly savored is the adrenalin rush of working hard towards deadlines. Losing sleep, being overcaffeinated, and agonizing over the process has been my fuel. As I grow older, I have unlearned a lot of this but seven years ago, if something came too easily to me, I would abandon it in the pursuit of something more challenging. If it is too easy, is it even worth it? Nah.  In such a context, R arrived in my life and brought with him an effortless, fearless, shameless sort of affection. It was all almost too easy. It was too easy to make him laugh, it was too easy to make him see things from my perspective, it was too easy to make him desire me, it was too easy to make him fall in love with me. It was also so too easy to fall in love with him, with his devilish charm, open laugh, and his crooked little nose.  And, so, I left. Without as much of an explanation, without as much of an apology, I moved to Chicago to chase after a PhD in a university that is known for its toxic academic environment. I was all too eager to indulge my imposter syndrome all the while trying to please all the men who were going to be hard to please. I was going to make them all fall in love with me, I decided. If it is too easy, is it even worth it? Am I?   ********   Now, I suddenly felt very conscious of the number of times I had ranted about how being ghosted sucks and how men who ghost women deserve to rot in hell. All those Instagram stories I had put up about “fuckboys”. He must have seen those stories and rolled his eyes. He knew I was the biggest fuckboy of them all.  Hesitantly, I opened his text: Hi, saw you at KK and waved at you…was not sure it was you but then I saw the tattoo on your collarbone. You did not wave back, so not sure if you saw me or you don’t want to hear from me. Anyway, it was nice seeing you if only from a distance. Sorry if I am intruding. Seven years of silence punctuated by a ping. Something salty in my mouth. Sweat. Anticipation. Shame.   I found his phone number buried under the list of contacts I hardly ever looked at. The contact had a picture. R standing against the poster of a film we had gone to watch together. The photograph was grainy, but I could still see the creamy kindness in his soft, brown eyes.  I messaged him.   “I am really sorry!”    “Haha! Sorry? What for?”   “Today. I didn’t see you. Wait, how come you are in Mumbai? Have you moved from Delhi?”   “No. I was here on work. I missed my flight and was very bummed about it, so my friends took me to KK for some fudge brownie. Did you not see us? We were the only ones at the café.”   Oh. The little crowd of lawyer coats. Of course. R was a lawyer now. I knew this. How had I not noticed him or his crooked little nose?   “Shit, no, I didn’t see.”   I saw him type. And then stop.     I typed.    “Hey, I am so sorry.”   “For what?”   “For seven years of silence. For everything.”   “It’s ok. We were all young.”   This was R. Quick to forgive, always ready with his effortless affection. Easy, easy, too easy…     Stop it. Reply already!   “I think I was destined to be at KK today. I don’t believe in destiny but…”   Why else would anyone take a cab from Santa Cruz to Kitab Khana during rush hour traffic only to reach the store fifteen minutes before it closed for the day? Why else would someone come to Mumbai for a day and a half?   “I think I was destined to miss my flight today. I don’t generally miss important flights but...”   Why else would anyone miss their flight and then come back all the way to Kitab Khana for a fucking brownie?   I looked outside the frosted window of the taxicab. Cars, buildings, flyovers, rain, rain, rain. Rivers of rain had turned the stern metropolitan skyline into a pathetic sludge – and, in a sense, the world outside had begun to resemble the world I carried within me. My brain had been washed away, my heart had most certainly melted into a silty puddle, and I was but a surging ocean of guilt, hope, love, and desire.       It was too easy.    Stop it. Reply!   “Coffee tomorrow? At KK? 4pm?”   “Definitely. But don’t stand me up or disappear on me this time!”   “Never again. Never.”     Never.      Sneha Annavarapu is an unapologetic romantic who wants to find love in a hopeless place and will kick your ass at antaakshari.

To All the Boys I Couldn't Love Before

What fleeting connections with many interesting men tell you about having the hots for none of them.

 I know Aditya through Instagram. His name is a name I’ve heard only once before, on Kumar uncle’s grandson who studied in Christ (deemed to be) University and now works in Goldman Sachs. Kumar uncle’s grandson is a sweet boy. Whenever we meet for dinner and drinks with our families, he hugs S and me tightly, like we’ve always been friends and will always be friends. During our hug, I imagine Ma looking at us in our moment of intimacy and wondering whether there’s something going on between us. I hold on to him for a moment longer and pretend that there is something between us, that perhaps we’ve been secretly dating. Our families are ‘compatible’ also, it would work out very well. But Kumar uncle’s grandson, Aditya, has a perfect face and an even more perfect body. On his Instagram and WhatsApp pictures, I’ve seen his abs tucked away behind tank tops that are only slightly lifted. They don’t match well with my uncontained body; it never would’ve worked. Kumar uncle’s Aditya and Instagram Aditya are same- same but different. Grandson Aditya once asked me why I’m not dating anyone, to which I replied carelessly, “who has the time, ya?” The shock on his face lent itself to me and I quickly began to calculate how much time I don’t spend thinking about boys. Insta Aditya would never say such things because Insta Aditya is more my type. P set us up over Instagram and said that we would be perfect for each other. His curly-curly hair falls over his light eyes and even lighter skin. His beard is dark and very thick, and when he writes poems, he narrates them with an all-knowing smile (not a full smile but a half smile). I mean, I’m not fully sure of this — but this is what Instagram tells me, so I’m sure that this is what he wants me to think. I talked to Insta Aditya on Instagram chat for three weeks. We sent each other long walls of text in which we spoke of Ghalib and poetry. One day, he sent me a frustrated sounding message. He had just watched Uri and felt awful. I knew that he was from Jammu so I knew enough not to assume anything about why the film might have made him upset. In his message, he offered me emotions I suddenly felt very scared of. What I took from his message was that he didn’t have a good day and he was telling me now so that I could help him, maybe speak to him, maybe learn more about him. The beginning of our love story was now, and I didn’t know how to be a part of it.  So I didn’t reply until the next day and by then it was too late to dwell on emotions given to us by films.  When he stopped replying to me eventually, I waited for the very familiar feeling of rejection. I looked at the stories he uploaded after having seen my message already, and waited for my mind to give me excuses (he must be busy, he must be thinking of a reply, he must be upset), but some part of me had deemed this interaction unworthy and when I told P that he had stopped texting, her look of sorry sadness fell flat and everything just felt okay.  -- In a conversation with T one day, she asked me if I had ever been with a boy. Already sitting deep in the dregs of two LIITs, I told her about Navtej. Navtej who was perfect; Navtej who was studying in Ghaziabad (but visited Delhi often); Navtej whose pictures on Hinge showed me that he had lots and lots of friends. The kind of friends you stayed over with after getting drunk, the kind of friends you had impromptu parties with, the kind of friends you were always with. He texted me often. Hinge was glitchy so I missed his messages every morning, and when I found his chat in the evenings, he always asked about my day or told me about his. His classes were hectic and he had to travel very often. Once he asked me what I was reading and when I said that I was reading Yashpal’s Jhootha Sach, he replied very quickly, “you should meet my father, he will love you.” I giggled a little bit and felt the beginnings of a phantom feeling. When we met in Champa Gali some weeks after talking, in the corner of a small coffee shop, he spoke and spoke. He smiled often and when I asked him questions that showed that I cared, he looked down and blushed. I wondered if he was charming — in a neatly ironed shirt and formal pants. He hugged me tight before saying goodbye and said that we must meet again soon, and this time it will be in his favourite chai point. I knew this was romantic but kept waiting to feel it. In the selfies he sent me later, post-workout and pre-dinner, I recognized the beginnings of what would, ideally, become a relationship. The last time we spoke, it was weeks after I had ignored him already. He asked me what I was up to, and when I told him I was busy with my master’s (in English) thesis, he offered to help even though he was already busy with his own MBA. His message was short, “arrey, my literature is lit.” (giggles?) But I forgot to reply and we haven’t spoken since. Months later, in a drunken confession, I told C about the Navtej I once ghosted by mistake. She laughed, like she usually does and I remembered something he had once told me, so I asked her, “you know, Navtej knows you? You matched with him on Tinder, but you never replied.” C didn’t remember him, but she did remember Vishal who she had lots of conversations with. She met Vishal in one of her serial dating phases. C tells me that Vishal was sweet and kind. I wouldn’t know either way because Vishal and I only sexted using Harry Potter euphemisms and I knew nothing else about him. Our conversations were nothing and everything all at once, and the first time he said something about things slytherin(g) somewhere, I laughed at him and myself before trying to think of something sexy about Gryffindor. We spoke every morning and evening; the mornings bringing anticipation and the evenings bringing research (what does accio do again? spoiler alert: it makes you come). Was our conversation the beginning of the perfect love story? That in which we spoke only through Harry Potter and then found love in our boring, real life language? I will never know because Vishal never stopped speaking through Harry Potter. So one day I forgot to reply to him also and Hinge hid his chat after twenty one days.  C stopped speaking to him after I told her about our magical time; it was too loony, she said. -- Before Aditya, Navtej, and Vishal, there was Siddhant. Siddhant who had the same name as my father; Siddhant who I pranked into falling in love with me, Siddhant who I thought I was in love with too.  Prateek found me in school one day. I was in 7th standard, living in the glow of my newly purchased Sony Ericsson. Pulling me to the side, he whispered, “I have an idea for a prank.” By the end of the day, I had his best friend’s number lounging on the last page of my biology notebook and a promise to prank Siddhant for two months, till his birthday. I initiated conversation with Siddhant as his secret crush, a girl who was too scared to be honest about her feelings (no no, I wasn’t being myself). He remained distant at first, but I was persistent. Prateek and I met alone in school every day to discuss our progress, and sometimes we talked on the phone. Siddhant had to be tricked. He gave in soon enough, and I remember days on which I itched to reach home, glaring impatiently at my mother who always stopped at Nilgiris on the way home. When I would finally get to my phone, there would be two messages from him: one telling me about his day, the other asking me about mine. In this way, we spoke and spoke. When his birthday came, Prateek and I told him that his secret crush was me. I don’t recall a reaction, but years later, when we shifted to Facebook and keeping his attention had become an impossibility, my attention also began to drift. He began speaking to Ananya. Ananya Shetty who was Mitali’s best friend; Ananya Shetty who sang so so well; Ananya Shetty who had long hair and long long legs. During lunch, Siddhant stopped sitting with us and began to sit with Ananya and her friends. In the Facebook Wall posts they both shared, I saw why he spoke to her, her perfect vocabulary and her perfect punctuation was enough to give me also pause. In a vacuum of longing, I wanted nothing more than to be her — to sing like her, to laugh like her, to speak like her. So when Mitali and I got close over Maths tuition, I asked her about Ananya. Mitali loved Ananya too, so when she spoke of her, her smile stretched over painful-looking braces and she gushed, “we met last weekend to discuss the Lost Hero. I’m obsessed with Jason, but she likes Leo, how can anyone not love Jason?” When I read Percy Jackson, I found that I loved Leo too but I couldn’t bring myself to disagree about Jason. Mitali and I met every day in tuition and spent hours going over trigonometry and triangles. Her frustration with numbers and their attached x’s and y’s leaked into my mood also and I did all I could to cheer her up. Most days, I forgot to ask her about Ananya, and whenever she mentioned her, I felt the very familiar bite of jealousy. But by now I had also forgotten the Siddhant who shared my father’s name and remembered only Mitali; Mitali who was a friend, Mitali who texted me often, Mitali who I didn’t know I was in love with until much much later. She stopped talking to me after we finished board exams. I remained painfully aware of the silence of my phone until I asked her over Facebook, if something was wrong. She said no until the word lost meaning so I blocked her from everywhere and deleted her number in uncharacteristic bravado. The months of pining and anguish are now just a faint memory, so I can say with a puffed-up smile, “Mitali, who Mitali?” -- Ma says that I am unhappy. She is sure of this because the last time I told her that a boy was cute was years ago while we sat in a Coffee Day and the waiter and I exchanged smiles. When I said he was oh so cute oh so wow, Ma looked at me with disgust, "how can you find him cute?"  Sometimes, she asks me if I like someone. I think for a moment, sifting through my small, but handy collection of beards. I imagine lives in which I replied to these boys immediately, on time. I imagine knowing how to flirt and being able to see their charm.  If I’m in a good mood, I feel like apologising for wasting their time. But all these thoughts are fleeting. It doesn’t matter that Ma doesn't know that I am actually very happy because every time N plays a video of k-pop artist Hwasa, my heart beats in lub-dub-lub-dub a little faster and I can tell you for certain that she is so-charming-very-charming; especially when she looks at me through the screen of my phone — in knowing smirk and green hair, and sings the lyrics of her song in rather apt imitation of Danish Sait saying, 'ah thoo'.   All names have been changed.   Veronica Oberoi is a teacher who leads a double life. In one, she has regular conversations in which she laughs at everyone including herself. In the other one, she does the same but reads way more queer fanfiction.  

Memories of Touch- Poem In A Pandemic

In the protected rooms where people are intubated there are no last hugs and the only thing to touch may be the glass of the window through which you can look at them 

 

I have touched a broken arm 

to wrap it in a brace that may heal it 

My feet have touched the wet and freshly trimmed grass 

and gathered specks of the earth between my toes 

I have touched some kneaded dough 

some dusty books 

and a dog’s tails and ears 

I have wrapped myself 

in a thin sheet each night 

so that the mosquitoes can’t touch me 

My hands in gloves 

touched the powdery plastic a bit much 

such that the skin on my finger tips 

feels confused 

when my mask touches my nose and mouth 

beads of sweat emerge 

and touch the space between my nose and lips 

such that the steam builds and touches my glasses 

I hate the nurse’s touch 

each time I have been on a hospital bed 

I hate the prickly touch of a needle 

or the cold touch of a probing instrument 

I hate the hot touch of hot leather 

In gloomy buses 

and I do not like touching the thick rexene 

on train berths 

I love touching my mother’s hair when I comb it 

and my brother’s when he rubs my feet 

My friend, when she laughs and pats my back 

and touches me, I laugh too 

My landlady cries when she talks about her illness 

and I touch her face gingerly 

Trying to hold back my tears 

When they didn’t touch me 

for the five days I bled 

My thighs touched each other tight 

Shielding the pain in my abdomen 

All sorts of things touching each other inside 

In the small town I live 

on the coast of a land 

where too many newcomers 

pushed those people away 

who touched too many things for their liking 

no one touches much 

save for those living in the same homes 

wanted and unwanted 

They hold hands 

with whom they love 

and may be an arm around them 

But they don’t touch without anxiety 

if the shade of their skin doesn’t match closely 

In the small town I live 

in a land that claims eternal time 

a few decide the boundaries of touch 

the touching of a meal 

of water, women and land 

of the skin of humans and animals 

of waste and thresholds 

Those who should not be touched 

bear upon them 

the touching of the earth 

that makes life possible 

When I don’t want to be touched 

I retreat into the corner of the room 

with the softest light 

such that only its glow can touch me 

I like the touch of a pulpy fruit 

Of a dried nut 

and of the last layer of oil on my dinner plate 

When I wipe it clean with my fingers 

In a crowd 

I do not mind the touch 

of shoulders rushing against each other 

or of a child tugging at my sleeve 

I do not like however 

the touch of someone pushing me from behind 

touching my waist and my back 

When I dance alone 

I like the touch of my fingers through my hair 

Posing like the glass window is a theatre 

with bright lights 

while dancing with others however 

I do not like to be touched 

Except through their eyes 

They are not touching the dead 

Covered in plastic shrouds 

Mourning faces covered in 

Masks and helmets 

lifting and dropping the dead 

with sanitized hands and writhing souls 

when my grandfather died many years ago 

my little cousin asked 

if we could let him stand tall 

in the corner of the room 

so that he could keep watching us 

and we could keep touching and hugging him 

whenever we wanted 

In the protected rooms 

where people are intubated 

there are no last hugs 

and the only thing to touch 

may be the glass of the window 

through which you can look at them 

I see my father has grown a beard 

But I haven’t touched it 

He has never had a beard 

for me to touch 

Labour on foot 

Have touched the hot concrete 

of our highways and roads 

Their children’s bottoms 

Touching their heads as they walk 

Because the things they touch 

to make in floor shops and workshops 

are not touching their neat plastic bags 

and sealed foil covers 

to touch our hands 

Those who build our homes 

And touched it all over 

Places that we haven’t 

are touching the bottom of their tins 

Like air, dust touches everything 

It floats in through the windows 

And doors, and crevices and holes 

and accumulates over surfaces 

I long to touch 

the face of the one I love 

As I think the need to wipe the dust off his face 

For I haven’t seen him in a long time 

And distances are not only 

aerial, physical or as the crow flies 

they are social 

The dust settling on all our faces 

That can only be wiped away 

By the hands of those we love 

S.W.A.G (Secretly We Are Gay) 2: Till We Meet Again

Revisiting an old lover with new realisations and self-admission.

 Maybe that dream has ended but its effect on me, the memories and leftover questions, will last forever.  He slid towards me an old-looking small white box from his bag and said “Smell this, you’ll get emotional looking at it”. There was a faint fragrance when I smelled the box. “I went to Paris a few years back and met a guy, and fell in love with him. He started showing pictures of himself on his cell phone. I asked if he was French. He corrected me, saying he was Chilean. We couldn’t understand each other’s language, we talked through Google translator throughout. The meeting was so beautiful that till today I carry his fragrance with me everywhere.”      I was shocked listening to him. I was worried about how he would spend his entire life pretending with his wife. I wondered what circumstances led him to agree to marriage. The last time I met him he had gorgeous, long, curly hair. In our beautiful moments together, when our faces were close to each other, I would ask him to open his hair and run my fingers through his curls, losing myself in his love. This time his hair was cut very short. When I asked why that was, he answered that he is growing them out again. I understood that during his wedding someone must have pressurised him to cut his hair. According to our society, real men, serious men, don’t have long hair.  He showed me pictures of the rangolis and paintings he had made and the cakes he had baked. He told me stories about always being the topper in school. Then he got sad, and said “sometimes I think I am gay and sometimes I think I am not”. I assured him, “whoever you are, you are worthy of love and you have qualities that no one else does.” During the conversation, I noticed his frail legs and realised that he had lost an unhealthy amount of weight. I told him that he looked different, that something had changed in him. He said, “Yes, I  have lost a lot of weight after marriage, perhaps I have some mental-health problems” I understood and told him that if he wished to cry, he could. He might feel better. Every night we have to prove our manhood in bed and spend our entire lives pretending and reassuring the people around us that everything is “normal”. Some gay men even take Viagra so they can prove themselves in bed. I doubt our wives are fooled, simply carrying out their own helpless pretence and reassurance on all sides, including sometimes, to their lonely selves. His long fingers had very beautiful rings, with varied designs. I asked him which one was his wedding ring. He replied “My wedding ring was a bit too big for me and I never got round to fixing it”. We looked at each other and shared a smile. My fingers were empty…the wedding ring is a constant reminder of a false marriage, hence I constantly find excuses to avoid anything which reminds me of it.  That night he was very real- he told me things that he had not even told himself. He would always keep himself occupied with different arts as a form of expression or maybe because it made him forget his own existence. Often when gay people like me -  like us, who are not out -  meet others through the internet, it is mainly to fulfill carnal desires. The moment our lust is fulfilled, we turn our backs and sleep facing the other way - as if we feel nothing, as if we are empty inside.  But that night was a beautiful soul-meeting. We never had sex. He asked me “What about you, don’t you want to reach climax?” I smiled and said, “I orgasm just by meeting you and listening to you.” We kept talking till we fell asleep. He took my hand as if it was his own and placed it on his chest with such authority that it felt like we had known each other forever, and he would never let me go. It is my bad habit that I can’t fall asleep cuddling someone or holding their hand. I slowly lifted my hand, and turned around so I could sleep. A few days ago, I had carefully looked at his father’s house where he also lives. There was a big iron gate,  and huge walls, as though it were a jail, and on one of the walls sat a symbol of his personality-  a quiet musical instrument. The reality is that we do not live in homes, we live in jails. Those who do not know what their children want, can we call those people parents? The cost of a big house, money, and business is our silence, and marriage and sex with someone of our parents’ choice. We spend our whole lives carrying the weight of these superficial relationships, admittedly fearful of leaving those very same privileges. I often think about how we have ruined our own lives - and someone’s else’s too. People like us are not worthy of being the life-partner of any woman, because we were never meant to be. What do we say to a woman who has no say in any of this? How do we say society has placed its false sense of reputation and notions of masculinity on our shoulders? I am always afraid of my wife suspecting me. If she gets to know the truth about my sexuality and leaves me, how will I explain myself to my parents and to society? I don’t have the courage to look into her eyes and speak to her. Today, we are in this position because we don’t have the strength to break out of the binding norms of our society. A courage I’m often trying to gather, and then losing.   Inside that constant churn, I often read this poem by Amrita Pritam, and think about him.  Mein tujhe fir milungi (मैं तुझे फिर मिलूँगी) kahan kaise pata nahin (कहाँ कैसे पता नहीं) shayad teri kalpanaon (शायद तेरे कल्पनाओं) ki prerna ban (की प्रेरणा बन) tere canvas par utrungi (तेरे केनवास पर उतरुँगी) ya tere canvas par (या तेरे केनवास पर) ek rahasyamai lakeer ban (एक रहस्यमयी लकीर बन) khamosh tujhe dekhti rahoongi (ख़ामोश तुझे देखती रहूँगी) mein tujhe fir milungi (मैं तुझे फिर मिलूँगी) kahan kaise pata nahin…(कहाँ कैसे पता नहीं…) I will meet you again I don’t know where or how Maybe in your thoughts Maybe as your inspiration I will manifest on your canvas Or perhaps lurking on your canvas  As a mysterious streak of colour I will gaze at you in silence  Till we meet again Somewhere, somehow

I Took A Nude Selfie. It Changed My Life.

After years of hiding, can a nude selfie get Ini to see her body in a new light?

I grew up in tents. I wore salwar kameezes that could accommodate a supersize suitcase strapped to me and layered it with dupattas when I was a teenager. If you asked me what colour were those billowing wrappers, I would not be able to tell. If you asked what the texture of the material felt like, were the necks outlined with embroidery, or did the cut resemble an A or V, I would say O. My memories of that time is like a film montage with a me-shaped hole in it. I seem to have taken a magic marker and erased my body painstakingly from every frame. I do not recall my body or my being in it. How do I explain this absence to you? If you ask me to tell you about my life during those times, I could tell you vivid details of every plot and line I encountered in books, how I tussled with certain words and images, and how certain characters still whisper to me. I can tell you about the libraries. Galaxy, the lending library was near the railway station. The owner, a tall, dark man, conjured a perfumed halo. A hint of gold peeped out of his shirt, and he never spoke much to me. I thought he was one of those Alistair Maclean spies who was spending time between missions lazing in this book lined room. I borrowed books in the morning, finished it on my way to junior college in the bus, and in the evening rushed to return them to get the next set.  The other library, a vachanalay, which signposted a narrow lane, smelled of agarbattis. The owner’s hair was always oiled; estimates of how many liters of oil were devoted to taming those thick strands makes for fun calculations. He too didn’t speak much, and let me ponder over the shelves. The silence was not what you would call companionable, but that of benign disinterest. On the other hand, if you ask me about the shape of my hips or my breasts when growing up, I don’t know. I never shared a companionable silence with the mirror, and I don’t think the disinterest was benign. I sang. I listened to music. I had the privilege of control over a tape recorder and a ledge by a window where I sat listening to songs late through the night. You couldn’t see much outside the window because it had two layers of mesh – one more closely knit to dissuade pigeons and the other, regular jaali that seemed to invite dust more than dappled sunlight. At home, I wore nighties, that formless fortress of cloth, made usually of some thick durable material. The sides were stained with turmeric, for why use a towel when your sides had ample reams of cloth too.     The tent was comforting. In a way, as my body lived inside that tent, I didn’t need to live inside my body. I think I was afraid of my body. It felt it was always too much of everything. Others had bodies that seemed tame – they did not insist on gaping between buttonholes, they obeyed waistbands, they slid into sleeves, they remained cupped in bras, and they let bones outline them in sharp relief in photographs. My body seemed like a testament to refusal. My breasts pushed through the sides of bracups, tugged on straps, my tummy fought with nadas and waistbands, and button-up jeans, and my arms seemed to resist any sleeve. It felt like constant battle – indented shoulders, branded waists, and abraded thighs – every part seemed to rebel and said no to being tied down, stuffed, or wrapped. And so, to compromise, I loosened up the sartorial shackles. I was afraid I would lose, and my body would take over.  Every shoe I would wear would soon develop bestial qualities. Crocodile mouth, I used to call it, for my feet would insist on ripping the seams apart. I remember going to a shoe shop in where a bespectacled Gujarati man clad in creased pants kneeled in front of me, only to laugh at the size of my feet saying, no girl has feet of this size – go anywhere, you won’t get this size, he declared on behalf of shoe manufacturers worldwide. I looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes or my mother’s despairing ones, while he turned to my mother’s dainty size five feet hoping she would want to choose a pair from the tempting array displayed all around. He caught me looking hopefully at a particular row, and smugly said, those are for gents. The world had caliberated, parameterized, and standardized who is a girl, and it had been decided by an august committee that I did not fit the specifications. Though I was told I was a girl, shoes made for girls left half my feet unshod; bras puzzled over spilling flesh; jeans were, well, just not for me. The world screamed, through measurements, labels, and laughter, that my body was illegitimate.  But that’s just part of the story. As I was laughing with my friends getting out of a train compartment on the way to a trek, an unknown hand squeezed my left breast. I faltered out of the train, confused and turned, and did not know whose face among the hydra that stared back from the train’s maw owned that hand. My friends had noticed nothing, it was as if the fast receding sensation on my breast was the only sensible remnant.     I am not sure how much I want to recount such momentary violations, for there were many. It was as if, this body of mine, that was deemed illegitimate was still fair game in another murky arena. When my dupatta slid away, the eyes of a senior in college immediately darted to my chest, and he looked away immediately, abashed. Even when I was very young, I understood in an inarticulate way that my body was capable of eliciting desire, but not the wholesome kind that runs cursive in rose day cards, smiling in living room photographs, and is given a U certificate. Bodies like mine, it was indicated in several different, deliberate ways, were suited for a different kind of desire – one that was between sheets, either on the bed or in a magazine. And in a world spun into a digital web, this other kind of desire was the lifeblood of its most profitable industry, porn. And so, the word best suited to my body was not just illegitimate, it was also illicit. Many years passed.  I was once telling a long-haired friend who was telling me about her boy troubles that oh, ok, it is not something I know too well about. Why, she asked. Well, I began, faltered, and blurted, am not pretty, so boys never liked me that way. She stared at me awhile. And said, I think you are confusing beautiful with sexy. We spoke of other things, but over the next few weeks, months, years, and decades, her words kept coming back to me. I may not squeeze into the world’s mould labeled beauty, but did that mean that I was not desirable?  Some more years passed. Recently, I came across a project called ‘Identitty’, where an artist Indu Harikumar was exploring the relationship women share with their breasts. People shared their stories, and sent a photograph of their breasts to her – and she drew them. She had stopped accepting contributions. The prompt called out to me – I wanted to write about what I felt about my breasts, and before I knew it, I had typed out a few pages. I sent it to her, thanking her for the project, for it did feel like I had dislodged something within me. She wrote back. Asked me for a picture. I was petrified. I had just written about that girl who lived in tents, and suddenly I was back being that girl who tugged on her kameezzes, wishing for that tent. I had two choices – I could retreat into that tent, or.  Before I could change my mind, I went to my room, shut the doors and windows, and took my top off. Turning the camera toward me with no clothes on, felt like deciding to go buy groceries, naked – utterly demented and prosaic, all at the same time. I remember laughing, loudly, almost startling myself. I could go and read the fourteenth finance commission report and forget all about this escapade. What if someone stole my phone, and made billboards of my boobs. Suppose my phone slipped from my hands while chatting with my mother and in trying to catch the phone, I pressed something and sent these to my mother? It was as if, faced with that unbearable lightness of a selfie, I felt a bit foolish, and that made it all alright. I clicked. Clicked some more. Some months passed. I was lying on my bed chatting with someone. I finished and then was just fiddling with the camera. I tried to take a selfie, felt conscious. And then dipped the camera lower. I unbuttoned. I clicked. This time, I did not think so much. As I scroll through those images of my naked body, it is as if I am able to gaze upon myself, without looking back at myself, as a mirror is wont to do. I take my time, linger on my folds, the way the skin gleams, the way it colours differently in different places. Often, I can’t shoot my face with the picture, and so, I become anonymous – I don’t know whose body it is. It feels delicious, just watching the skin, the way sometimes body hair curls, and I feel compelled to touch.      Somehow, I was able to distance myself from my own body. It is objectification, of course, but perhaps, in being both the person doing the objectification and being objectified, it felt safe. I wondered about how I framed these photographs – was I drawing from a vocabulary that objectified women? Did I want to be seen a certain way? I tried to shoot myself in postures, which would be usually deemed unflattering, but even then, watching those photographs, I discovered a new kind of desire, a desire that slowly cut that invisible cord tying it to beauty. As I walked on roads, I watched people, and thought, naked, all of us have different shapes, and these are desirable shapes. I would like to touch an arm, slide my hand over someone’s belly, kiss chubby thighs, or stroke bony hips. I sometimes just let my hands slide over my naked body, closing my eyes, and feel skin meet skin, a warmth that speaks of life. It feels like desire, and I do not need to even see myself then. Beauty is about seeing, desire is about touch and want. After bathing, as I rub myself with a towel, I linger here and there, and wonder how the skin of different parts feels so differently. I look at pockmarks, darkened patches, stretches, and gently trace a finger over them, and it just feels like skin.  All these years, I had thought my body was something I had to battle with. And here I was, suddenly wanting to rub myself, massage my legs, bite my own tummy, and smell my palm as it wandered over my face. I met a friend, and over conversation I told her about taking these photographs. She wanted to see. I gave her the phone, and she glanced here and there, and then looked. I watched her face, and something in me unfurled. It was no more my secret, someone else had seen it, seen my body, the one I live in, and we giggled together.     Ini is 39. During lockdown Ini realised that you cannot tickle yourself.

Can I Open The Window And Let Go Of The Past?

A journey back to a room full of a traumatic memory to seek reconciliation.

TW : Sexual Assault

  
I lost my body in an OYO room one summer night of March a year ago. I got myself so idiotically drunk that I had to sit down on the floor multiple times while making my way through the corridor to that shabby room with white walls. It was a small room. It had precisely one window that was shut and it caught every breath of mine inside it. My consent to the person on top of me was a suffocating ‘yes’ like the room and it was a ‘no’ like I wished I was in another room.  I woke up the next morning and immediately left the room. If I had stayed I would have had to consciously unravel the sense of pain of being used, of being somebody’s same-sex experiment. I would rather stubbornly cling onto rage because I know if my rage goes away, I will be left to deal with the pain, consciously and carefully. So I convinced myself that I will move on, that I could forget a memory. So I left that memory in that room with that shut window, with all the breath I took, not letting it out. I skipped forward to the end, ‘moving on’. Ever since then my body refuses to be aroused. For a year I made up several excuses. I told myself I was with the wrong person, I told myself I had no sex drive, or that my partner just doesn’t try that hard. I thought my body was broken in some way, and I could fix it. But deep, really deep inside I knew it was because of that room. Every time I am in bed with someone, I just lie there, exhale and think. I thought of things that aroused me in the past. None of it worked. So I faked smiling a lot, I faked heavy breathing a lot. It was so easy to convince people that I was aroused.  For a long time, I blamed myself for that night. I kept reassuring myself, “I gave my consent right?”, “It was a friend right?” and many questions that I made up answers for.  A year later a good friend sat me down and asked me a question, “would you have gone to a different room that night if you knew what might happen?”. My answer was YES, and that settled some things in my head. I would have gone anywhere else but that room. My body betrayed me, I was stone drunk and all I wanted was to sleep, to pass out and wake up thirsty like a normal college hangover morning. I let it happen. It passed. I graduated. I forgot. I didn’t take it seriously. I buried myself in books. I moved to another city where nothing reminded me of the past. My mind tried to move on, it crumpled that memory like a piece of paper and pushed it down some deep crevice in my brain.     That friend and I, we remained friends even later, we had a conversation about that night a long time after. There was an exchange of apologies, there were shame and disgust to which my friend admitted to. I forgave because it was an easier thing to do. My body though has failed to forget. It has a memory of its own. It can remember the touch, the pressure of someone’s hands, it has scars from things I did to unfeel this memory. I did succeed in un-reminding myself but the bits of that crumpled paper fly out through those crevices when I find myself in bed with someone. My body unfeels everything there. It collapses, lying there. Blinking. Exhaling.  My body disconnected with my mind so easily. Every time it did, my mind tried harder to arouse it. I asked my boyfriend for a stronger emotional connection, for healing, so I feel things again. I never told him about that memory, about that room because at that time I didn’t confront that it was the reason that made my body numb. He said I was asking too much then, more than he could give. He broke up with me because I was stuck in my past, in the complicated emotions that I repressed but not enough. He told me I was like dead weight, I was anchoring him in one place, in a sea of all things I tried to forget. I wish my body could erase a few things, throw a stone forward so I can run and catch it. On my way, I could hold my boyfriend’s hand and show him the finish line. Only if he gave me more time so  I could go back to that room and open that window, let all my breath out. Let that memory out like it never happened.   I’ve been hauling around my numb body for about a year. I’ve taken it to bed with people so I find the comfort and warmth of healing after a heartbreak. I kept wanting to test if my body would work. If it could have arousal. It never did. Once this boy who I was making out with stopped midway and asked me, “it’s not working for you, is it?”. No one has ever directly asked me how I felt while we were at it. I had put a plug to all my questions and now the dam was forced open. I could once measure the questions that came out of me, that was my power. But I have tormented and second-guessed myself so much that these questions have taken some shape within me. They have grown and developed into something dense, exhausting my heart and mind, assuming the form of something ripe that demands a resolution. I was angry that a question could so easily take away my power, the power to measure my questions, the power to skip to the end and move on.  The question made me sense my passive suffering, made me want an alive skin. So I told him about that suffocating dirty white OYO room with a single-window, all the while holding his hand tight like that shut window. I wished someone asked me this question before, so I cared for my body, so I could give it time to throw a stone and catch it whenever it wants. My body still flinches at every touch. Sometimes I gulp it all down and let myself go through everything. Not once have I reciprocated arousal. I think that’s how my body protects me from being used that way again, numbness is a shield from remembering. My mind has somehow made peace with what had happened. My body just needs to come around too. I wish both of them were even. I wish they both shook hands with each other and let me orgasm. How long would it take? I wish I could go back to that night, in that room and wake up the next morning and not leave immediately. I would have sat there and told her how I cried when she fell asleep, that this was something I never wanted but I couldn’t insist enough to a convincing ‘NO’. I would tell her that it would take me a long time to forgive and a lot more to move on. I would have opened that window so I would not feel choked.   Sharon Varghese is 22, queer and studying Comparative Literature at the University of Hyderabad. She steals cigarettes from her professors and occasionally lights a bidi.  

Tell Me Tarot, Will He Ever Come Back?

After Manjari is ghosted, all search for closure leads to herself.

Something awful happened last year. A  guy I truly loved broke my heart like I never mattered to him. I couldn't get out of bed for ten days or so. I cried so much, my throat went sore and I couldn't speak for two days. He blocked me seven months ago leaving me with tears in my eyes, unbearable pain in my heart and so many questions in my mind. Y and I met via Bumble when he was traveling to my city for work from Mumbai. After chatting on Whatsapp about life and his dick for five months, we finally met in a hotel room in Lucknow. He told me he liked me and he had feelings for me. He also told me it was much more than casual sex. Then he ended it all by simply blocking me when I told him I had fallen in love with him. Putting my pride aside, I sent him SMSes which obviously went unanswered. I needed my closure and I needed it very badly.  My friends told me he was trash in a way men ( yes, all men) are and that should be my closure. But the heart wants what it wants. It needed the answers. I wanted to know why he told me he had feelings for me when he had none. There was a strong sexual tension, I won’t deny that and we both were very attracted to each other. But he told me we were much more than sex. And honestly, we did not even have sex but we did kiss like there was no tomorrow.  Why make a fuss about a few kisses, you would want to know. But let me tell you something about myself first. I am a late bloomer. By late bloomer, I mean very late bloomer. I am a woman in my early thirties and I have never really dated anyone. Yes, I have had crushes and one-sided love, but never a relationship. I was obviously not in a formal relationship with Y, but it felt a lot like that. Oh, there is a term for what we shared. It is called ‘situationship’ ( I told you, I was a late bloomer).  If Y had told me, he was only looking for something casual, that would have been disappointing, but fine. I would not have even met him. I might be casual about life but I am really serious about sex. Why else would I have stayed a virgin at this age? This is something about me I would not like to change. It’s how I feel comfortable, and I don’t think there’s any standard of ‘normalcy’ I need to meet. And then happened Y and things escalated quickly with him. It felt like magic. He typed one thing, I typed another and soon I knew that I never wanted this to end. That’s why Y became the first ever guy I sent nudes to. It did not feel wrong because Y had already told me he liked me and I liked him too. Our first meeting was as good as it could be. In his words it was the ‘ second-best date ever’ ( Best was with his ex wife).  We just cuddled and held hands. There was no need to rush. We were just okay.  A few more dates happened in the same hotel, and in one of them we just cuddled and slept in each other’s arms. I could see the morning rays from his hotel window falling on his face while he slept next to me. I think that was the moment when I fell in love with him, and then it was over. Never in my life I had felt that lonely. Friends did listen to me and offered comfort and support for some time and then they said things that made me wonder why they were my friends in the first place. Actually, they were not to be blamed for this. All of them were either married or were in serious relationships. ‘You are ten years late,’ said one of them.  Desperate for answers, I turned to my best friend Google. I typed ‘ why did he ghost me’ and I clicked the first video that turned up. A beautiful blond tarot card reader was sitting with her cards in front of her claiming to provide me answers dictated by her ‘guardian angel’. She asked me to choose one amongst the four decks that would tell me everything I wanted to know.       “Oh, maybe he was previously hurt by someone so bad he is afraid to commit again." (Oh yes, he was a divorcee ) "Oh I can see he has blocked you" (Damn)  "I can see Leo energy being  represented here along with Libra" (Bang on! That’s our sun signs)  "I can see long distances" ( Oh well…)  "Don’t worry, I can see an offer of love coming from him in a few weeks." (Really ??).  I immediately clicked on the other videos by that tarot card reader with titles like, ‘What is the future of this connection’, ‘Will he call again’, ‘Will he commit’, No communication, what is he thinking’ and so on. All of them claimed to go deep in his heart and soul and let me know of things he left unsaid.  After two weeks, instead of binging on Netflix and Prime I found myself fully engrossed in those tarot videos. There were monthly and weekly readings by sun signs with titles I wanted to see ‘He is in love with you Libra, he is just not showing it,’ ‘No. It is not over yet. There is more to this story’ ‘He is all yours, Libra’ and what not. Well, who needed Netflix when I had these people sitting in some distant countries to help me?  By the end of two weeks, I knew what ‘Ace of Cups’ meant, what it meant when ‘Wheel of Fortune’ showed up in my reading. I also came to know ‘Six of Cups’ meant reconciliation while  ‘Two of Cups’ depicted ‘eternal twin flame connection’. And most importantly I was fully convinced that he was coming back. To confirm it further I took a personal reading from someone living in their tiny apartment in Paris. Three days after I sent 40 dollars ( that was her discounted rate for her ‘most loyal fan’) via Paypal, I received a video in my mailbox in which the cute blond (with blue streaks) in her mid-twenties, said everything I wanted to hear. ‘I see loads of potential in this connection. Yes, you guys will be together soon’.  I watched that video God knows how many times, and one night, when I was watching it for perhaps the 67876th time, something hit me hard. Damn. Yes,I could be a tarot card reader too. I was well acquainted with all the 78 cards, I could colour my hair blue and green, and my tarot deck was just a click away.  I called my friends over to my home the moment my tarot deck was delivered to me. The girls shot their questions about their love life and job situation (but mostly love life) one by one, and all I had to do was to shuffle and pick cards to answer them. My friends were shocked to see how accurate my cards were about most of the questions and they beamed at the possibility of me picking tarot cards as a career.  I did not upload anything on my Instagram or Twitter  but the word traveled and it traveled faster than I had imagined it would. Friends, and friends of friends, knew I was learning Tarot and doing readings for free. My phone would not stop ringing with the young women on the other side wanting to know whether ‘he’ will text again or not.  Damsels in distress could not  stop bombarding me with questions like ‘Will there be a second date?’ ‘Will he call back?’ ‘Will he leave her for me?’ ‘Does he even know he had hurt me?’ and my favorite -- ‘Will Karma punish him for hurting me?’      I shuffled and I answered all the questions until my cards withered and those pretty colourful pictures faded. I shuffled till the time I realised ninety-five percent of my predictions were wrong. I shuffled and picked the cards till the time I came to understand, most of the girls were in abusive  relationships with the men they were inquiring about.  While the cards showed deep love coupled with commitment phobia, the reality always remained something else. When men behave like they don’t care, we must believe them. I threw my cards away and told them what was true. ‘NO sister, he won’t call. Focus on yourself and just block him. You are too good for this shit.’ What surprised me was the fact that it was only women who were contacting me to get their readings done.  No offence to the tarot card readers. Maybe I was a bad reader. But what was really bad was the trauma those women were facing due to ghosting. Questions haunted them and some of them (including me) were so desperate for answers that they were ready to believe anything. It might get us through the worst part, but it’s not the final way of freeing yourself from pain. And what about that guy who got me hooked to tarot in the first place? Well, I do have my answer now. The answer is he is an A**hole.        Manjari Singh is a writer from Lucknow. She was fuming with anger while writing this piece. All her life she dreamt of having that ‘Modern Love’ column kind of love story and all she could get was this!   

June Rewind - #WhenWomenLoveWomen, All In One Place

Stories, histories and resources for queer women - ek dhamakedar package!

  Agents, this past month we brought you experiences, stories and histories of queer women. Despite the growing visibility of queer representation, LGBTQ narratives tend to be dominated by representations of gay cis men - perhaps mirroring the larger gender dynamics of society. Toh humne socha, why not tilt the balance a little - and create some resources that would widen the representation. The material for this month's theme shone light on three areas: Personal experiences -  We went beyond stories of coming out to explore a conversation about queer life as it is lived. This month the narratives we carried are a range of experiences about women loving women, bringing along voices from diverse backgrounds - urban, rural, peri-urban, younger and older -  to help us see romance and desire for the non-linear experiences they are. Narratives of tingling sensations when in lust, falling for close friends, hurting from love's cruelty, writing letters about it to somebody who would understand- all help open up the discussion about queer loving and living in their fuller forms. Histories - For as long as homophobia and prejudice have existed, they have been countered by queer lives, loves, activism and creativity. The work of gathering these histories is an ongoing one and we did our bit this month by gathering some histories of queer women's work: a reading list of queer romances and writings in different languages, an interview with writer Suniti Namjoshi about her fervent politics of art and caring, conversations about  queer desire in rural and small-town India with writer Maya Sharma, Urdu poetry about lesbian loving from 18th-19th Century, a conversation with Ruth Vanita about her new novel and tracing the journey of the word Lesbian, over time and space, through inventing new words, to slurs and reclamations. Guides -  With illustrated, super-clear infographics on safe sex practices for women having sex with women, to suave and well-vouched-for dating tips from queer folks who have been-there-done-that, AOI put together handy helpers to clear your doubts and confusions about queer love and sex. All this good stuff is  as always, in English and Hindi - and here it is in one place for you to use as an easy reference. We hope you use it in your work, conversations, and thinking as you make the world more loving, livelier and smarter!    

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

 

I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It – 7 Queer Women Tell Us About Their First Kiss With A Girl

  With scintillating first kiss stories from queer women of different ages and locations, and Amruta Patil's gorgeous brush strokes, these stories are sure to leave you with those dreamy, heady feelings.  

“So Many Women, But It’s Her I Love”

  First of the two edited excerpts from Maya Sharma’s book, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India, shows the messy, stubborn love between two women in a small town even as it faces pressures of marital expectations from families and the society at large.  

Shiela Ki Jawaani Ki Anokhi Kahaani

  Second edited excerpt from Maya Sharma’s book, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India that we published this month was the story of the mysterious heartthrob, Shiela, whose many romantic escapades are nothing short of an adventure ride, dwarfing a traumatic past.  

What Falling For My Friend As A Lesbian Taught Me About How We Express Friendship

  The common experience of the unreturned desire for best friend becomes sharply hurtful when it comes with the added pangs of subtle homophobia from near and dear ones . Read how Ritu dealt with it when she faced this, more than once.  

You’ve Got Mail! Letters Between An Older and A Younger Lesbian

  Discussions of coming out, loving, dating and futures in these letters exchanged between lesbians of different generations reveal the relationship between political activism and our personal lives, one story of change at a time.  

Secret Loves And Broken Hearts: A Comic

  Read Vimlesh and Kanak's secret-yet-obvious messy, stubborn love affair in the comic form. Reformatted excerpt from Maya Sharma's book Loving Women: Being Lesbian In Unprivileged India.  

Satrangi Ladki, Atrangi Khiladi: A Comic About Shiela

    Read about the dashing, lesbian player, Shiela, and her many romantic exploits, in the comic form. Reformatted excerpt from Maya Sharma's book Loving Women: Being Lesbian In Unprivileged India.  

HISTORIES

 

‘Not because I have wisdom, but because I care’: An Interview with Suniti Namjoshi

  Full of sharp wisdoms and quotable views, the poet, fabulist, lesbian, feminist writer shows the caring way to practice art, politics and love.  

L Se Lesbian, L Se Love, L Se Library – A READING LIST!

Desi narratives of queer desiring, loving, and living- this reading list makes the hunt for a diverse collection of books just a little bit easier.  

#WhenWomenLoveWomen in Unprivileged India- A Conversation With Maya Sharma

 

A Conversation With Ruth Vanita About Her Latest Novel 'Memory of Light'

 

Steamy Shayari Alert! #WhenWomenLoveWomen in 19th Century Awadh

  For all our basking in the glory of Indian erotic heritage, there’s very little khullam-khulla dedication to women in love and lust with women. But the late 18th- 19th century Urdu genre of Rekthi poetry brings us some steamy, juicy poetry-romances between women, a few of which we have put together here, based on the research and translation by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai.   

THE L WORD – Konjum History, Zara Geography, Thoda Politics

  Slurs, slangs, reclamations- a journey of through ways to say the word ‘Lesbian’ around the world and across time is also political articulation about desire in the face of discrimination and homophobia.  

GUIDES

 

Safe Sex for Queer Women? Yes, Yes, Yes!

  Sex between women may not get them pregnant but safety in sex is not about pregnancy prevention, na? This super sophisticated, myth-busting infographic explainer sets right the perception about safe-sex, with special attention for sex between queer women!  

Pehle App! Online Dating Tips for Queer Ladies from Queer Ladies

  App recommendations, manners & etiquettes, safety settings, conversations starters- tried and tested hacks and advices for a clearer way to connect.        

Satrangi Ladki, Atrangi Khiladi: A Comic About Shiela

The many romances and realities of this dashing woman!

Secret Loves And Broken Hearts: A Comic

A comic about queer desire, love, and loss.

This comic is based on an excerpt from Maya Sharma’s book, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. Get the book here on Amazon Kindle and the Juggernaut app.                          

You've Got Mail! Letters Between An Older and A Younger Lesbian - Plain Text Version

How much has changed for urban women who love women in India? Sameera Iyengar, 49, a lesbian woman who grew up in 1980s India and Sarathy, 24, a queer woman growing up in the 2010s, write letters to each other about growing up queer, figuring out love, relationships, dating, community, family, self-knowledge.  In their exchange we glimpse a history of being, a history of change, personal and social.   Hi Sameera, Here goes the first letter!  I am terrible at writing physical letters hence I am relieved this is on email. My girlfriend has more than once written me a love letter (full-on romantic with her perfume sprayed on it too) and as hopeless as I am, my love letters to her have been on Whatsapp. In my defense, I am far more honest when I type things out.  I will be honest. The oldest queer people I’ve had an actual conversation with are, perhaps, at the most, 30. Which I will say has left me quite comically desperate. You know how when you have just realized you're gay and then every gay person you meet feels like finding water in a desert, except they're human and it's scary hence you only admire them from afar? I think once I genuinely befriended a few people my age who were queer, my curiosity shifted to older queer people. Where were they? A list of crushes that emerged as a consequence of this curiosity - All the people on old Gaysi podcasts. I remember all their voices by heart, which is very creepy of me. - A older super cool and butch-looking queer artist who took a few classes in my college (to my despair I wasn't in any of them). Every queer person in my batch had a crush on them. We’d grab people from their class and ask how do they teach, what do they say in class, etc etc. - LABIA, a super historical (for me) queer collective that I had an encounter with at a zine fest which surprised me because I didn't know they still existed. Let's just say I nearly cried (but kept a straight face) when we did a zine swap. All those old zines, how could I not get emotional?  The idea of queer history, lesbian history especially, moves me so much. I wonder if this feeling of being like a sponge ever fades? Did you have any of these obsessions with what other queer people are like or were like too and more importantly - do you still do? Or does kind of thing get sorted once you're older? Do you feel you know very few young queer women and hence are very curious what their lives are like? Awaiting your response on Sunday!   Signing off, Le Younger Lesbian - Sarathy.   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sarathy, How beautifully you put it - “every gay person you meet feels like finding water in a desert.” It often still feels like that to me, even though I’ve been out for almost three decades now. I don’t know how it was when you were in school, but when I was young, “gay” felt like a concept. We knew there were some such different people somewhere. And that it was not okay. As teens in a girls’ school where girl crushes on seniors abounded, there was something dangerously attractive about it as well.   For me, even though I had my share of crushes, it only became real when Martina Navratilova came out publicly. I remember reading about her being a lesbian in The Telegraph. And I remember my father telling me that this is what happens when girls don’t properly identify with their gender. Not the words he used, but that was pretty much what he said. And I remember 12- or 13-year old me wondering why he felt it was important to say this to me. I was always very boyish, and he must have had some fears for me. So I didn’t really expect to see any lesbians around. And when I fell head over heels with someone, I never expected it to have a future. What was normal was to be with a guy -- even though in all my thought experiments, I could never see that happening (for instance, how can I possibly change my surname?!) And too many of the girls I’d known in my young days, despite having torrid love affairs with other girls, all finally chose to be socially “straight". Those affairs are treated as phases, and are left silent amongst us -- I respecting their married status, and they perhaps needing to keep it safe from prying eyes.  In retrospect, I now know that there were gay people even amongst the adults I knew. I just didn’t know how to recognise them. There was gossip, rumours and also so much was unsaid. There was a certain staff member at school who went on to live with her partner after she retired. Girls gossiped but because they had respect for her, they also let it be. So all this existed in a strange liminal space, which I think was also why I never came out till I went abroad to college. I don’t like hiding myself … so I hid myself completely. If I wasn’t out, then I wouldn’t be hiding anything, right? A few years after being in college — I was still in my early 20s, and finally out, I think — I was visiting home, and I once again opened The Telegraph to find an article on a gay film festival. I reread it many times. There was a gay film festival in India? (I don’t think the term queer was being used then). It was being written about in mainstream media? Had this really happened in such a short time? My head swam.  So till date, when I meet yet another queer person, I still taste that joy of “finding water in a desert”. Just to know there is one more person there, who exists, and has embraced or at least acknowledged their gay identity — that feels really good.  Young, queer people — whenever I meet any of you, I feel a smile in my heart. Because so many of you act like you have a haq in the world. I know there are many many queer people still struggling with their identity. I don’t mean to downplay that. But I truly never thought there’d be islands of light in my lifetime.    Till later, Sameera   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Hi Sameera!   I grew up on a staple diet of American rom-coms so I knew at a young age that men could be gay. But it’s only when I saw this one movie on TV, which was about a lesbian couple, did it hit me that girls could be gay too.  I remember going around asking my friends if they approved of homosexuality. I used to think I was doing this survey out of curiosity. Then when I just a little bit started questioning my sexuality, I went to the extent of Googling “Am I gay?” “Am I a homoromantic heterosexual?” and what not. But all those years of my childhood and my teens — I did think of being gay as a ‘dangerously attractive concept’, one that exists in America. I never let it touch me. Then in 12th grade, a girl in my class had a picture of an actress from The L Word (a super gay American series which an average 17-year-old wouldn’t have known of unless she had gone down the lesbian culture vortex of the internet) as her Whatsapp DP. I struck up a conversation about it and she was shocked I knew about it. And I… I felt the earth moving underneath me.  It wasn’t just a concept! It was real and it suddenly felt like I also had the option to be gay. Here was an Indian person who was a lesbian and also out of the closet. The phrase you used “islands of light” is so poetic, beautiful and true. She was like an island of blinding light. And ahem, I promptly fell for her. Which I guess, didn’t leave me with much choice but face my own reality. I still don’t know how she did it - she was barely 17, had a sort-of homophobic family (at that time) and was very much in the public eye at school and yet she spoke about her sexuality with so much clarity. She definitely knew she had a haq in the world and I still marvel about it sometimes. Funnily, the only other thing in my life that moved me similarly and took such a powerful trajectory in my life was discovering feminism. I discovered it through (again) American teen blogs but finding feminism felt like another island of light. I found a world full of explanations of myself and the world, and I was never the same again. I guess it’s a kind of queerness too, isn’t it? Until then, my dream was to be a fashion designer and travel the world. And suddenly over a couple years, I changed so much, so fast and what I wanted to do changed too. But of course, sudden changes have a price but perhaps that’s a story for another letter. I think hard about applying feminism and queerness in my life most in my relationship with my family. In matters of love - kindness, respect, a feeling of equalness come easy. In family - it feels like it has to be fought for. I feel like I'm forever trying to convince my parents that marriage is not the only future for my very talented and independent sister, to be genuinely understanding of women like my mom (there is so much insidious, casual belittling) and to stand up to my father (without crossing any limits). I am very excited to hear about your college days. Was it radically different to be queer abroad and did it feel strange to come back?  I also have another, perhaps, very personal question -- does your father know you are queer now? My father knows about me but we’ve never openly spoken about it and I often find myself wondering what he is thinking.    Regards, Le Younger Lesbian - Sarathy   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sarathy,   Thirteen. That is when I first fell head over heels for a woman. I didn’t know that was what was happening. Every sense I had was alert to her presence. I was always looking out for her and I felt on top of the world when I was around her. When it became clear to both of us that this wasn’t just a schoolgirl crush, but a strong attraction, she, being older, told me she felt responsible and that we must not act further on this attraction. My response? “How can it be wrong when it feels so good?” I was young enough then, that the world really was that simple. As I grew older, I realised that I found women attractive. I was always boyish and I’ve realised many women like to flirt with women who are boyish. Maybe we are ‘safe boys’ for straight women! I had my fair share of that in school, and of course I felt quite chuffed about it. Especially because I didn’t think of myself as particularly attractive -- so this attention from really lovely women was more than wonderful. We were a very expressive school -- girls held hands, put their arms around each other, leaned back on each other while sitting. We used to literally pile on top of each other whenever we had the opportunity. So I could easily live in this liminal space -- acknowledging I felt good, but not really acknowledging that it was attraction - playing a sort of game with myself. When I was 17, Class XI, getting leadership positions in school - I remember this strange conversation I had with myself where I said, "I am completely okay with homosexuality. There is nothing wrong with it. But I cannot be homosexual." So began a chapter of strong attractions and stopping just short. It was hard and confusing and exhilarating, all at the same time. Many long, passionate, confused letters were exchanged, pronouncing love and walking that dangerous line.  I look back now and think perhaps that’s when I learned to hide myself.  I come from a family where my parents have been extraordinarily open. I’m naturally sporty, my brother showed an inclination for dancing, and we were both encouraged to go for it. We were a typical enough family that I don’t think I’d have discussed sex with my parents, and this kind of attraction -- it had to be hidden. I was doing homework at the dining table once, and there was a letter lying open, that began “my darling…” My mom pounced on it, and I explained it away saying, oh, that’s just how we all talk in school. As much as I was knowing and not knowing, I think my parents also knew and preferred not to know. When I went to the US, to college, and joined the soccer team in my freshman year, and realised that almost half the girls on my team were out lesbians (it was funny, the other half were sorority girls!) I can’t find the words to explain what that meant to me. Talk about light! In my mind, those soccer fields are bathed in light.  My soccer coach was lesbian - a bit older, not overtly out, but out enough. My basketball coach was lesbian - she was VERY out. This was the world I had walked in to. It took me another two and a half years to come out, and I think I came out not only because I had this environment, but also because there was never any pressure to come out. Instead, I was invited to brunches, where most people were lesbian, and I got to enjoy their company while they sat openly and lovingly with their girlfriends. I played in lesbian soccer leagues. It was all very easy and normal - and that was very important for me. I needed it to be okay. I used to live in a co-ed fraternity - thirty of us in one big house, and these people were my family. I remember looking into the mirror one morning while getting ready, and saying to myself “Who are you fooling, Sameera? You’re gay.” And that was that. (It helped that I was attracted to someone then). I told my friends in the house, and one of my dearest friends - a very straight man - came with me to a lesbian club for my 21st birthday. I think a few other straight friends came too. And of course the woman I was getting to like. It was a dingy bar, quite close to MIT campus. There was hardly anyone inside but they were all women, and clearly lesbian. I know we drank and danced a bit. Today I’d probably feel that bar was a bit of an anticlimax, but at that time, I was just thrilled! Not only was it okay, my friends were going to stand with me while I explored this world I now dared to enter. I feel enormously lucky to have had that gentle, nurturing environment.  I finally started going out with the girl I was attracted to. She was from Wellesley – I mention this because there was a thing about MIT students – presumed boys – dating Wellesly students – girls, as they are an all-girls college, so I just find it funny. Stereotype but not quite! MIT and Wellesley students could take courses at each other’s colleges, and I met her as part of theatre crowd at MIT – same classes, same rehearsals. She had cast me in a play she was directing – Marsha Norman’s Getting Out – dealt with my tantrums at wearing a dress as my costume (she let me wear jeans!), and I guess we just got closer.  She wasn’t new to the gay scene or to the city. My relationship with her was my first eye-opening step out of the college scene. I saw performances I wouldn't have known existed, in places I wouldn't have known existed. I got introduced to a lesbian scene with lesbian terminology (“lipstick lesbian” was coming into vogue as a term I think!), to lesbian porn, to the lesbian love for Madonna and KD Lang. It was fascinating ... but it was an American lesbian scene, often very white. I always felt like a (welcome) guest. I subsequently came out to my friends in India, and my parents. But that’s another letter I think.  I feel like sexuality is you - the nature of the attractions you feel - while feminism and queerness have to be arrived at. Nowadays I wonder if sexuality is also something you keep arriving at through life.  I understand bits and pieces of the politics and try to live up to them. I hesitate before applying these labels to myself. I feel other people would say that there is a lot of me that is still ‘heteronormative’. When this comment comes from queer and/or feminist folks, it often feels like a judgement. It doesn’t bother me hugely, mostly because I’m a bit stubborn. My whole life has been on the margins, not just because I am queer  but also I guess because I am a bit of a nerd, and I think I’m comfortable there, intermittently stepping in and out of various spaces. For me, what matters, is to contribute towards a world where we can be true to ourselves and have space for others. Kindness matters too. And when a shift feels right, I work on that. I see myself as a work in progress.   Till next time, Sameera   Hi Sameera,    Your experiences of being in lesbian soccer leagues sound like an absolute fantasy! I must clarify that I don't mean that in a creepy way. When I went to Sweden for an exchange programme, I attended a few roller derby matches, which is this underground sport played mostly by queer women. It was the friendliest space I had witnessed in a long time. They even had a kids’ team! It seemed like some gay feminist utopia (at least from a distance).    Perhaps my slight envy comes from the fact that I am a bit of a failure at finding community, that of queer women especially. A long time after I was out and proud and all that, I hardly had any queer friends. Some of it comes from my being socially inept, and also because except for parties and Pride events (where I can manage to make only acquaintances), it didn't feel like there were any queer spaces to regularly go to where I could get to know people at my own pace, over extended periods of contact. It took me all 4 years of college to finally find a support group for young people, and there were barely one or two queer women there. So the idea of creating a queer space around a sport seemed revolutionary.  When you came back to India, how did you find other queer women, not just for dating but also just for making friends? From what I've heard, (I may sound funny or rude here) it feels like private parties were invented by lesbians. Or private FB groups, these days, I guess. Most of the times I really connected with other queer women, it was through Tinder, so I can't imagine what one would do without it.  When you said feminism and queerness has to be arrived at, did you mean that un/learning the ways of the world is a lifelong process? Because it does feel like a school I'm forever attending and I feel like every few years I realise how wrong I am.  If you mean we keep discovering who we are in phases - I feel that too. I used to like boys solidly up to 8th grade and then it just changed. Sometimes it feels like I could like men again but that I chose to not be with them. Maybe 40 years down the line I could like men too - wholeheartedly and with interest (but do not tell my mother or it'll rekindle her hope of getting me married!). In some ways, I feel sexuality can be a bit of a choice, just one that we shouldn't have to justify. Looking back do you ever feel like those early years of secrecy affected your later relationships?   Le Younger Lesbian, Sarathy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sarathy,   I am the last person you want to ask about how I found other queer women … I have done a really bad job of that. It’s only in recent years, when I’ve made some close friends through my work in the arts who were feminists, who in turn had friends who were lesbians, that I started meeting queer women. Till then, the only lesbian I met sort of regularly was a friend from my school days who is also out. Like you, regular contact over time is how I make friends. I’m not great at parties and I’m also terrible at small talk. I got on a dating app when a friend encouraged me to. I haven’t been able to use it. I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly uncomfortable making overtures, but I have zero gaydar. Also I can’t tell when someone is interested in me. Denseness is an unfortunate quality that I have! I keep wishing there was a lesbian soccer or basketball or even chess league here. I’d find that so much easier. My American friend who moved to France joined a gay cycling club. Some of his closest friends, and his wonderful partner (now husband) of more than a decade, came about because they all went cycling together to all kinds of places. Of course they go off on other activities together, meet more people, and the circle just grows. In tribute to that club, they all arrived at their wedding in beautiful blue suits, on cycles! Last year they had twins (surrogacy) and they had a get-together of gay dads with their kids.  Carrom! Maybe we should start something like this - are you up for it ? ;-)  A social space, where you’d come together just to play. It would give you time to get to know people. Dating would be one possibility. It could have its own online space, so anyone visiting or just out or new could drop in. It would make it easier to find community. Oh such a dream - don’t know if it will happen here in my lifetime! Hopefully yours. You asked how the secrecy affected me. The biggest difference in that first relationship in the US was that we could be a couple out in the open and I could celebrate it. My friends knew, my professors knew, my theatre colleagues knew.  In India, a lot of secrecy, or rather keeping it quiet and letting it go happened because I didn’t want to make my parents’ lives difficult. Once I get to know people better, I slip it into conversations. It does affect relationships – you are not always treated as a couple, and that can be hurtful to the other person. I’ve not been very good at handling this, and given that my work has often been public, it can’t have been easy for my partner at the time.  I’m also curious to hear how you marry your own grasp of feminism and queerness - which seems to have been far more conscious than mine - to the way you live your life.   Cheers! Sameera   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sameera,   A Lesbian Board Game Night sounds great! Especially for people like me who have forever been embarrassingly terrible at sports. I'd love to pile on if you start one! Bangalore has a football team for queer women and once a year Mumbai has Queer Games on the beach. There's a badminton tournament that Gaysi hosts too! But nothing that's regular. I love your story of the gay cycling club! I do hope that in my lifetime I get to see more queer families and queer spaces.  Those old LABIA zines I loved, the covers were fun in an unpretentious way and had a very community-made feel. Many people wrote in it like they were speaking to their friends. You know how some stories need a close-knit space to come out in? And not a platform, per se? There was a story about a woman teaching her mom to read, speak, etc again after she got brain damage. Others saw it as a burden, but she saw it so differently, akin to the joys of bringing up a child. Very queer, na? I struggle with labelling myself as a feminist too. I hardly ever say it out loud (and thankfully I don't need to). Somehow it feels like by saying it out loud I'm comparing myself to all the people in the women's movement who did substantial work. But at the same time I don't want to say I am not because it is important to me.  I relate to what you said about kindness. It matters to me. I want to be able to make things that give people a sense of relief and an opportunity to be kinder. It makes me uncomfortable to face someone trying to impose some kind of superiority. I see Kindness to be a sort of antagonist to Power. I don't think I'm built to be an activist but I want to always work in change-making spaces. My logic is that if I get to spend most of my day working towards something I know helps even a little bit, I'll sleep easier. Work harder without inhibition.  With regards to coming out, I made sure to be out to my closest family and friends as soon as was possible. It was also a matlabi move perhaps because I needed people to turn to whenever I was unrequitedly in love, again and again hahaha. I've had the remarkable luck of having very few homophobic people around me. I usually just slip it into conversations (like talking about meeting other women on Tinder, jabbering about some queer movie or the other) but mostly it's unspoken. A lot of my personal work has been about being queer so if someone Googles me or follows me on social media, they will know I'm gay. That's probably how most people/friends in college knew too.  With extended family it's unspoken. Other relatives that I have a tricky, distant relationship with - I'd prefer they not know about my personal life at all, you know? I am okay with letting it slide because in most spaces I don't really hesitate to talk about my queerness if I feel like it. Here I have that young, queer haq wala attitude. I come out whenever I feel like it and feel safe. And I end up talking obsessively about queer things anyway - sabko pata chal hi jata hain.  Oh and that first lesbian friend of mine you is living her life like any other person my age. She’s been involved in some queer initiatives, works for a young people & politics kind of organization. She had her first girlfriend in college. That’s the last thing I know about her personal life. She doesn’t talk about her sexuality or private life publicly often but it doesn’t seem to be in a bad, repressed way. She seems good only and I do hope her parents have accepted her. Did you ever want to get married? Do you still want to?  I have this fantasy that someday there will be a queer community center in every neighborhood where you can just walk in, sign up an for clubs and make friends. Maybe when I'm older, finding a close-knit community (queer and otherwise) won't be so elusive. That's my biggest dream really, more than work or marriage or anything.   Regards, Le Younger Lesbian – Sarathy   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sarathy,   I had never fantasised about marriage. But I was with someone for almost 10 years - I met her while on PhD research in India - and we did a sort of ceremony early on. I wanted to celebrate with friends, but we did it equally because I was denied the social right to that ceremony. If I was straight, and the ceremony was expected, I most probably would have refused - and either done a court marriage or refused marriage completely. I am laughing as I write this to you, because I am seeing myself as that kid who does things because ‘how dare you tell me I can’t do something’! My cousin, brother and close friends put together the ceremony, with even my aunt pitching in at some point with some beautiful alpana and Brahma Samaj vows. It was all very eclectic - people threw in ideas and we picked what we wanted. I had my close friends and friends from university, and some family, and my bosses from the theatre magazine I worked part-time at flew out. My friend commandeered her boyfriend’s uncle's empty house in Delhi and did it up beautifully. We made lots of gestures towards marriage ceremonies, including a havan, which my friends did not quite know how to light so we were all smoked out of the room! It was hilarious, warm and beautiful, though our life together wasn’t exactly the stuff of dreams.  Back then I was pretty traditional. I wanted to find a partner to live my life with. I still remain a romantic and love musicals and happy endings, but I am no longer sure I want to share life in the same way. Partly because I love my house now, and can’t imagine redoing it to make space for someone permanently! A constant visitor with whom I feel wonderfully comfortable and like to chat and cook and eat and chill with would be nice. And just get a hug from when I am feeling totally overwhelmed! So maybe I’d like to live with a really close friend and have romantic relationships elsewhere - who knows!     Cheers, Sameera --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sameera,   I am afraid of marriage, but mostly because of the straight ones I've seen. I also feel too young to think of forevers. If any relationship of mine ever goes on so long, then maybe I'll have a gathering like yours - to celebrate both the relationship and a shared community of friends and family. The popular perception is that young queer people reject marriage but with same-sex marriage, I see the potential to redefine the institution. Overall I'd say I have only 7.5% shaadi potential. But I'll never ever marry a man, even if I suddenly fall for one.  The year or two I was on Tinder, changed my life. It was a miracle for a lonely, awkward person like me who finds it hard to stir up conversations, especically in a group. It taught me to take love less seriously and with more curiosity instead. I learnt to speak to queer women without nervousness. It allowed me to see people as people without that social anxiety. It allowed me to discover worlds and random friends beyond my insulated art school scene. I got my heart broken, got career advice, had the some of the nicest, most intimate conversations with other queer women.  Thing is there are no expectations in online dating until you state them. If someone says directly ki I want casual sex or friendship then you know what you're saying yes to. If nothing is said, then it's open! You need not worry coz it could end anywhere. Maybe you'll only like the person as a friend. Maybe if it feels like a date so you can think of taking it in a romantic direction. Maybe you can talk only thoda online and then say that you'd like to meet in person. It’s full of maybes. With online dating, what problems have you run into? Perhaps I can help? I've always liked being people's Tinder cheerleader!    Regards, Le Younger Lesbian – Sarathy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sarathy,   The problem I run into in online dating is ME! For starters, I can’t bring myself to say yes or no to someone I don’t know. I recently very bravely got onto OKCupid, and immediately fell silent. What do you say when you only have a picture in front of you? When I got my profile, a bunch of people very nicely reached out, and I immediately became self-conscious. What are their expectations? It’s an alien space to me … I have no idea how to behave. It’s pretty funny now that I am relating it to you … but there you go. I swam a lot as a kid. Some pools I loved, others I swam in because I had to or they were the only ones available, but they just weren’t right. I guess the digital space for me is the pool that has not yet come to feel right. What do you want in terms of relationships?   Regards, Sameera   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Hi Sameera!   For the longest time I thought I just wasn't someone who could be attractive to someone else, let someone who could be loved. I had a long string of unrequited crushes, confusing situationships - my singleness felt like it was going on forever.  But with help from friends, a great college counsellor, Tinder, and getting into my first relationship -- I realized that of course, everyone gets a chance at love and sex. But late beginnings also mean I've not thought about relationships so much (I'm in my first one right now).  My first few rejections weren’t outright rejections but more like realizing that my attempts to know someone more closely were being stonewalled by someone’s lack of interest. Or I realized they were straight. I coped by being very sad and falling for other people.  When I started telling people I liked them (and when I first started getting rejected/disinterest/ghosting on Tinder) it took every rejection to get better at coping. My friends often help me to see someone else’s point of view instead of wallowing in self-pity. I also learnt to ask people if they are interested in me and teaching myself to unconditionally accept what they say. Focusing on being clear but also kind and polite helped. Nowadays I don’t feel I need to get that rejection confirmation stamp to move on. I’m able to sense if someone just isn’t interested and not pursue it further. All I know is that I'm a bit of a romantic (but a lone wolf too) and a very regular texter. Whether it's Tinder or real life, one must always be true to your romantic self na?    Regards, Le Younger Lesbian - Sarathy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Dear Sarathy,   I respond so much to people on the energy between us. When I meet someone, I know when I am ‘in deep like’. It’s rarely verbal. I know this probably sounds old-fashioned but I have always known my truth from that connection. There are people in my life who I have known have to be in my life. I’ve recognised them in an instant - they walk into a room or I see their smile, and it’s like I know them, without yet having got to know them. I immediately fall for them, and with many of them, I remember that feeling, "this one is special". I am not talking specifically romance but perhaps these relationships have been the deepest form of love I’ve known. I am thinking of the pools I liked as a child, not the ones I just ended up swimming in. As I write this to you, I can feel the coolness of the water, the perfect temperature, the smell. Some pools are just right to swim in. What do you imagine the future to be? What do you imagine yourself writing to a young lesbian when you are old?   Regards, Sameera   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Hi again,   Now is probably the worst time to imagine a future. But I’d like the future to be like…Sweden? A nice government that supports the existence of a nice national queer organization. Small, casual (and not casual) spaces. Politics-sholitics is still there but people easily accept your desire to just live, love and laugh also.  But I really don’t know what a future looks like, to be honest. I feel queerness in India is so complicated, so attached to class, caste, how women are treated, ruralness, urbanness - all these other things. So it’s difficult to imagine it separately. If I had to write to a younger lesbian, I’d tell her to give as much importance to her private world as the rest of the world. Our life is not just about coming out or changing the world (ye toh waise bhi one woman job kaha hai? Don’t give so much importance to yourself, beta) or continuously telling our stories to others. You should let yourself fall in and out of love, do things and know people organically too.  I’d be the old lady asking young lesbians to have fun and go on Tinder. And grab us older lesbians and take us to their parties too.   Cheers, Sarathy.

You’ve Got Mail! Letters Between An Older and A Younger Lesbian

How much has changed for women who love women in urban India?

How much has changed for urban women who love women in India? Sameera Iyengar, 49, a lesbian woman who grew up in 1980s India and Sarathy, 24, a queer woman growing up in the 2010s, write letters to each other about growing up queer, figuring out love, relationships, dating, community, family, self-knowledge.  In their exchange we glimpse a history of being, a history of change, personal and social. You can read the plain text version of the post here.

Image Source - Crime City Rollers FB

Image Source for Scripts - a zine by LABIA (A Queer Feminist Collective)

 

What Falling For My Friend As A Lesbian Taught Me About How We Express Friendship

Does queerness complicate the experience of falling for a friend?

I’m a lesbian and like many other people – not only lesbians - my best friends have changed over time, and I’ve fallen in love with many of them. It’s common among straight people too of course and we see that in popular movies, like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. But if you’re lesbian it’s different, as you can imagine. If someone remarks on the closeness between two women, it’s often like a taunt, or mocking. This first story is the one that happened post puberty. Ek hi sabse intense tha and then after that I was like ‘Bas hogaya’. I had learnt my lesson (or so I thought). I was 14 years old. I didn’t know about my sexuality yet. And I didn’t know I had a crush on her. I was just extremely attracted to her and I used to explain it to myself as ‘I just want to be friends with her’. But -  I was friends with her! So I was confused about why am I still feeling this way? This was the closest I could get and it still didn’t feel enough. I used to get butterflies if she was around me, laugh at all her jokes, we texted all evening, all of that - it was a typical teenage story! I was a little crazy about her. A little obsessed. She stayed some distance away from me but her classes were near my house. Whenever I was out on my cycle, I used to fervently hope that she would pass by so I could wave at her, because I knew her car. So every time I saw a honda city I used to think it was her. I may have given off the vibe that I liked her or maybe it was just too obvious. One day I was probably irritating her or something when she turned back to me and said “Do you have a crush on me? Are you lesbian or bi?” in a joking manner. I was dumbstruck at that time and didn’t know how to address this at all. I went hahahaha and I just laughed it off. But when I went home, I kept thinking about it and wondering “Do I actually have a crush on her?” It was then I slowly started accepting that I do like girls. I vividly remember that moment, because it was such a defining moment for me to look into the whole matter and finally have a conversation with myself which helped me discover my sexuality. I didn’t feel shamed by her calling me out -  I was so caught up in my own self-discovery. But I did become self-conscious and my behavior became more restrained.  Leaving school was difficult because I didn’t know where I was going next and she was going somewhere else, so I feared that separation. But we were in the same tuitions in 11th and 12th so we continued being friends.  In school after 10th, no one assumed I liked a guy because I was very tomboyish. I remember one day, my school friends and I were playing Truth or Dare at a sleepover, and they asked me ki do you like a guy? I was still confused. But because everyone was liking a guy, I also decided to like a guy and said yeah. And one of them was like “Thank god you like a guy, abhi tak we thought you liked girls” -  again in a very demeaning way. That was a key reason I took a really long to come out to them as I thought ki fuck my friends don’t accept me, they think this is somehow weird. I was in denial thoda sa because of them.  But by 12th grade, I had completely accepted my sexuality and I thought that I’ll tell her. I was over her and for some reason I thought she was gay and just wanted to tell her that I am too.  She was surprised and didn’t react how I had expected her to, but that’s fine because everyone takes time. We eventually became better friends once I told her I was queer, because then the air was clear between us. She’s my best friend now but I have never confessed the feelings I had for her. She does think I had a crush on her but she won’t be hearing it from me! I guess it’s an ego thing and I hate it when she's right. It took me almost 2-3 years to get over her. It helped me know that she is straight and doesn't  feel the same way about me, so what’s the point, you know? I realized I needed to move on because it was never happening. After this, I almost never fell for a friend again. Except for this one other time. I was in my first year of college and had a single person room in the hostel. She was 4 years my senior, we bonded very well and she, me and another girl hung out together a lot. They were my best friends in Aurangabad – my only friends really. I wanted to transfer to a better college in Mumbai the next year, so I didn’t want to invest emotionally in other friends. She used to come over after her day was done and chill in my room while I studied. We'd talk a lot and she told me things  she wouldn’t tell anyone. The third friend of ours, Sejal, was more conservatively brought up - so things we talked to each other about openly like sex, we couldn’t have in front of her. She would tell me about this guy she likes, about her past romances etc. I had that typical hostel single bed and we slept beside each other whenever we hung out in the room. And somehow it became so that we started being a little intimate - just cuddles and snuggles though, nothing more. She was the one who would always start it – and it would always be one-sided from her. I was extra careful to resist the temptation to cuddle her back. My sexuality was still secret back then and I felt anxious about anyone suspecting anything. It wanted to cuddle her back – but I felt that if I reciprocate, I will reveal myself and who knows what will follow. But as we got more comfortable with each other, it happened on a daily basis. It wasn’t a physical relationship in the typical sense of it, but the physical affection was a big part of our friendship.  Sometimes she slept the whole night with me and the next day it used to be like nothing happened, we always acted like nothing ever happened between us. I guess nothing did. It did create a feeling of sexual tension in me, a little. Also that was the closest I had ever been physically involved with someone, so maybe I didn’t want to jeopardise it? I also knew she was slightly homophobic. Once my mom had come and we were just chitchatting and she’d said something like “Ye toh ladki se hi shaadi karegi, ye toh ladka hi hai.“  I ignored it like you usually ignore such small things because you don’t want what you have with that person to end. One day I was sitting and studying when she came from behind, I don’t know what it was. But it felt like she was coming to kiss me and I jokingly said "Kiss hi karle, abhi aur kya reh gaya hai?” She responded “Ha! If I have to kiss someone I’ll kiss a guy, why will I kiss you?” and wow, that hurt me. She said it in a very belittling way as though to say why would I choose you over any guy. I didn’t react to her, I just let it go. I realized that there’s obviously nothing going on between us in her mind and it was almost like she's using me as her teddy bear at the expense of my feelings. The cuddling still continued after but it was almost the end of the year and I had to leave anyway. I was happy about my admission in Mumbai but also sad to leave my friends, especially her. It felt like I wouldn’t have something like that with anyone ahead in the future. She was visibly upset too. They came and dropped me at the station and that’s the last I saw of her. We still talk once a year - one of us just calls the other randomly and we talk for hours about our life. She still doesn’t know that I’m gay, she thinks I have a boyfriend but doesn’t know it’s a girl, she’s just assumed it is a boy. I didn’t want to tell her because she’s still in the same college and I don’t trust her to not tell anyone. I also fear she’ll look at me differently because of our past, afraid she will be thinking “Ohhh tabhi bhi woh lesbian thi, did she get turned on?” and it would become weird. It is going to be very weird when she comes to know. Recently we were talking after months and she just brought up the topic saying “Haan hum kaise sote the tere room mein, kya kya nahin kiya humne” and in my head I was just like *nervous laughter* please let’s not talk about it.   I guess there was something a little obsessive about how she kept bringing up the topic - you know, of lesbian love. It’s hard to know whether it was because uske andar there were some feelings, and she kept poking at the idea out of fascination and fear at the possibility. Or if she sensed my orientation and was trying to make me say it out loud. But whatever her reasons, I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable to any hurt or homophobia. But yes, it creates a weird sense of tension. I always think – I can’t let this happen to me again, until I fall for another friend. But thankfully now I'm head over heels for someone who feels the same for me. I think when you’re best friends, you tend to fall in love because you know her as a person, you know everything about her. So the heartbreak is also obviously harder. Sometimes the intensity of friendship confuses you into thinking it’s love, so it feels like a betrayal, ki kal tak toh sab sahi tha - that person was really good with you and you really thought they felt something for you - but it was just friendship for her and it's nobody's fault. Friendship has no fixed definition – it’s just how different people express their closeness and the confusion is natural. But when you're queer, it’s not just about rejection. It’s about that edge of scorn or shame or meanness that homophobia creates in even ‘nice’ people. It's not just the rejection then that hurts, but also the feeling that you're not going to be accepted as the full person you are, that your feelings aren’t just unwanted, but invalid.   

Shiela Ki Jawaani Ki Anokhi Kahaani

An excerpt from Maya Sharma's Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India

Illustrations by Vidya Gopal This is an edited excerpt from Maya Sharma’s book, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. Through ten intimate, tender narratives, the book paints an emotionally powerful picture of the lives of women, or those assigned female, that love other women, in small town and rural India.  Ishqful thanks to Maya Sharma and Yoda Press for permission to publish this excerpt. Get the book here on Amazon Kindle and the Juggernaut app.   Somewhere in the enormous chaos called Subhash Camp, in the midst of the hazy outlines of TV antennas, sudden pots of green leaves, clotheslines and sad shreds of discarded objects, dozens of women came to our women’s group meetings. Subhash Camp was illegal: non-existent on paper, yet in reality a thriving hub where women congregated defiantly to make a difference in their own and others’ lives.  One Sunday a construction worker called Babulal came to the meeting with his wife Meena. ‘People told us about your group so we have come to you, will you help us?’ he pleaded.  ‘Shiela Sharma has been living in our house for the past two years. She does not vacate the house, nor does she pay the rent. Each time we ask her to pay up she brings along goondas or the police to intimidate us. She came to our neighbourhood with a wedding party. There she struck up a friendship with my daughter Lali. She told us that she had been orphaned at an early age, and her only family was a married sister across the Yamuna. We felt sorry for her and offered her the option of moving in with us till she found work. For two months we bore her expenses. Then she found a job, so we rented her the second floor..’  ‘What does your daughter say about all this, where is she?’  ‘We have sent her to her sister’s house. I just do not know what has come over my daughter. She wants to be with Shiela all the time. They were inseparable, eating, sleeping, walking around together. She seems to have discarded us, her own family, like an old piece of furniture.’  It became clear to us that at the core of the landlord-tenant conflict lay an emotional struggle, the attraction of two women for one another, perhaps not articulated directly, but visible.  I stated that before any mediation, a meeting with Lali would have to be set up to get her side of the story. However, I knew that this would have to be carefully handled, and for the most part by me alone, as in our team we had never till then broached the subject of same-sex relationships.  Babulal insisted that we accompany him to the village Shiela claimed she was from, to ‘collect evidence’ that would support his case.  The village was in Haryana, a good two hours away from Delhi.  Our inquiries about Shiela revealed that she had indeed lived there. It seems she had been well liked and well known. Though she did not conform to the traditional image and role of a woman, she enjoyed a surprising degree of freedom and social acceptance in most homes. We got various descriptions of her. She ‘was not a bad woman’. She was not linked to any man, so her character was without a blemish until ‘it was found out that her job was to sell women’. She had a close relationship with a Muslim woman. Their friendship was highly visible. When the family of the Muslim woman found out that their daughter was not prepared to marry because of her bond with Shiela, they plotted to have Shiela thrown out of the village. But she returned quietly on the day her friend was to be married, and eloped with her. A week later the two were sighted in a nearby village and forcibly brought back. Shiela was locked up for two days, beaten and stripped to verify that she was indeed a woman. Before being released, her face was blackened and she was paraded around the village with a garland of shoes around her neck. A man who took part in this proudly declared, ‘We did not report the incident to the police because our daughter would also have been dragged into the mess. Besides, the whole affair of two women developing such relations would have brought shame upon our village. We settled things amongst ourselves.’  The enormity of what had happened to Shiela, the magnitude of her brutalisation, took a long time to sink in. Nothing, nothing had been done to bring justice here.  Three days later we met Lali in our office space. Without hesitation or shyness she said, ‘I love Shiela with all my being. I gave her all of myself. But she has betrayed me.’  Babulal, cringing, quickly turned his face away. But Meena, the mother, looked at her daughter tenderly. Perhaps she understood her?  ‘How has she betrayed you?’  ‘She loves someone else. She is with her day and night. I loved her and did all her work—all the cooking, sweeping, sewing, cleaning—I did everything.’ Suddenly, without a pause, Lali asked, ‘Have you met her?’  I silenced my conscience and lied. ‘Yes, we have met her and she says you let her down. You succumbed to your family’s pressure. She says that those who betray their love are not friends, but....’  Furious, Lali interrupted me. ‘She is the one who has let me down. She used my emotions and my body. While she had a relationship with me she was carrying on with two other girls in our neighbourhood’ Over- whelmed, she could not continue. Her voice shook with emotion as she wiped tears from her face with her dupatta The next day we reached Babulal’s house early in the morning. ‘Shiela has just left, she couldn’t have gone far,’ he exclaimed. But there was no trace of Shiela.  Babulal took us to another locality where Shiela’s friend Laxmi lived. ‘She may be able to tell us where Shiela can be found.’  We knocked on the door. When it opened we saw two young men and a woman in the room. We walked in and said directly, ‘We know Shiela Sharma has come to your house, where is she?’   ‘I have not seen her for some days now. We had a fight and since then she has stopped coming here. But why do you ask?’ said Laxmi.  We introduced ourselves and told her about our work.  Suspicion hung in the air, but as we sat for a while and chatted to the inhabitants of the house, they relaxed somewhat. Laxmi introduced the two young men, saying one was her husband and the other her brother-in-law. Laxmi and her ‘husband’ were not married but were living together secretly. His family was from north India and belonged to a thakur caste. Laxmi’s family was Christian and from the south. If their relationship was made public, the couple would have to face all kinds of humiliation and opposition. All their young friends, male and female, came to the house to offer support. So the locals thought they were running a brothel.  This was also one of those areas of Delhi, which had come up unsanctioned, and acquired legitimacy by the sheer physical force of the needs and numbers of the inhabitants.  People looking for work, looking for anonymity, asylum and greater personal freedoms, in the manner of women like Shiela and Laxmi, fugitives who had broken the rules and wanted to cut loose from given identities, the locality took them all in without discrimination and sheltered them all equally. As we drank tea Laxmi’s husband confided that Shiela generally hung out at the paanwala’s shop. In a bewildered tone he said, ‘I do not understand Shiela, why does she have only female friends, a young woman like her? Even here she hangs around Laxmi all the time. After a while I found it strange. I told Laxmi to stay away and to discourage Shiela from coming here.’  As we left, we saw Babulal hurrying towards us.  ‘Come quickly, Shiela is at the panwala’s shop,’ he said breath- lessly.  As the shop came into sight Babulal stopped us and pointed to a young person dressed in a white shirt and green pants. Her hair was very short. She sat between two policemen in khaki uniforms, her legs slightly apart. She seemed perfectly at ease in the public world of men, one with them, drinking tea.  Coming up behind her, we slapped her on the back and said casu- ally, ‘Here you are, and we have been looking for you everywhere.’ Shiela was taken aback. Before she could respond, the paanwala said to us, ‘What is it that brings you here now? Last time you had rescued our locality boys from the police, this time what is the problem?’  One of us pulled Shiela away from the other people sitting at the shop, and said to her, ‘You cannot forcefully take possession of someone’s house. We have also learnt that you lure women and sell them.’   ‘I have done no such thing,’ she said nervously. ‘If you are referring to Babulal’s place, let me tell you that I gave the man jewellery worth Rs 20,000 for safekeeping. Now he denies it. If you can make him return my jewellery I will vacate the house.’  We said, ‘Let’s go to your house, we would like to talk to you.’  ‘My life is an open book. Whatever you have to say can be said here. These men know everything about me.’  This put us in a sudden dilemma. How wise would it be to talk of her relationship with Lali in such a public place? ‘Is this only a landlord-tenant conflict or also a story of your love affair? You love Lali and you have a sexual relationship with her. She feels you have betrayed her and says if you could meet her just once....’  We had touched a raw nerve. ‘Come,’ she said in a voice heavy with unshed tears, ‘let’s go to my house, I will tell you everything.’ As we moved off we heard one of the men exclaiming, Strange, how can two women do it?’
On the way Shiela said, ‘I had no idea you knew about these relationships between women. You talked so openly about them before the men.’ Her initial hostility and unease had turned into a kind of openness.  Back in Laxmi’s house we went into the inner room that was also used as a kitchen. Shiela spread a sheet for us to sit on and showed us albums and loose photos of both her and Lali. ‘She had named me Ravi. I called her Naina. She has lovely eyes, look at those eyes,’ she said, pointing to a picture. ‘I met her for the first time at a wedding party. At the bidai ceremony, when all the women were standing and weeping, I stole up quietly from behind and held Lali by the waist. She liked that. Then when I had gone away she wrote me a letter. We wrote often. When I began to stay with them, Babulal would say, “Take care of your pining patient.” I even put sindoor in the parting of her hair. Her mother was open to our relationship.’   ‘Babulal denies that you gave him anything. Instead he says that you are staying in his house without paying rent. If you ask for anything back, he may have you beaten up.’  ‘I do not care. If you say so, I will vacate the house without taking a single paisa. Just let me meet Lali once.’  A few days later we went to Babulal’s house in the hope of reuniting the lovers. Our entry was preceded by loud barks. To our surprise Lali was in the house, and it was she who held back the white fluffy ball of a puppy as we settled down in a cool dark room with a large television set in the centre. All three daughters and their mother were watching a movie. Though we were served water and later tea, it was clear that we were seen as those who had sided with Shiela.  Lali’s mother wanted to know if we were in touch with Sheila. She said, ‘We have heard that Shiela lives with another woman now. Those people also have a young daughter. They should be forewarned about the kind of woman she is.’  ‘No one is going to believe anything bad about her. She has something about her, a certain inexplicable sweetness that attracts people to her. By simply looking into women’s eyes she can make them fall in love with her. She is so supremely confident about herself. We were even prepared to allow Lali to live with Shiela, but she simply proved so untrustworthy.’  Lali said, ‘I have torn up all the letters she had written, she used to sign as Ravi.’  Bhavana said, ‘Everyone blames us for being so naïve, for so completely and blindly believing her, but shouldn’t people also accuse those who deliberately set out to mislead others? I went up and cleaned the room, and there I found all kinds of scraps of papers put away in nooks and corners. She used to do black magic.’  I looked at Lali. But stubbornly she kept her gaze down. We could not meet Lali alone to check if she was happy with the decision. Some months later we learnt that both the sisters had got married.  But we had several meetings with Shiela, and she began to trust us. ‘My childhood name was Anuradha, until I changed it. I must have been 10 or 12 years old. I renamed myself Shiela. I liked the sound of it, so simple and straightforward.’  Androgynous, heavily built, Shiela looks taller than her five feet. She is like the neem tree—a bitter truth for the society that throws her from place to place because she traverses a path that cuts through sex, gender, caste, class and religion, challenging the received notions of womanhood. Though uprooted several times, she fights back to grow again in places with little water and harsh sun and cold.  ‘I am the youngest among five sisters and two brothers. My father died in 1989 and my mother in 1995. I could not live with my brothers.’  A few days later when we went to meet her, she had disappeared. We walked down many different streets in the same locality, searching. Since Shiela is visibly different from the female norm, people remember her. We were told that she had moved. Now she was living in another household on the first floor with a woman called Manju. When we told her how we had traced her, she said, ‘I like to wear pants and shirt. When I was small my mother would make me wear a frock sometimes. But I would insist she dress me in an undershirt and shorts. But now looking at you, I think a kurta with pockets worn over a salwar looks great. I will also wear a kurta-salwar.’  We had found her sitting in the house alone in her vest and shorts. For the first time we saw her left arm uncovered. It bore the marks of a severe injury from the elbow downwards I asked, ‘Have you been beaten up, ever?’
‘No,’ Shiela replied with a vehemence that took us all by surprise. ‘No one would dare to beat me. I was riding my bike when a rickshaw loaded with those iron rods passed and the rods pierced my arm.’  In a manner that was both teasing and curious, I asked, ‘How did you find Manju, and how many women have you been involved with?’  ‘Don’t ask me - I cannot remember the exact number now. But I remember the first time I fell in love. I was in the 8th class, or maybe 9th. At that time I did not know about these relationships. But I was attracted to women. And one such woman I was very drawn to taught me all about love between women. When we found one another we would not go to our class but sit under the trees and talk to one another. Then everyone began to notice us, and her parents did not like it. They took her out of the school. I missed her a lot. I intercepted a letter she had written to her parents. She was in Haldwani, a hill station. It was cold and dark when I got there. Before this I had not travelled alone for such a long distance. But I pretended as if I knew the place. The rickshaw-puller was surprised at my self- confidence. Finally I did succeed in meeting her. We kept in touch for quite some time following that trip. I even got her eyes treated in the eye hospital.’  ‘Then there was Shashi. I had passed out of school one year earlier. I used to pick her up from school. I would take her brother’s scooter and we would return home after a ride. Once I thought she had seated herself behind me on the scooter, I started off. It was some time before I realised I was talking to myself. I returned. She was angry as hell. I bore her punches and tears quietly, it was my fault.’  ‘In Babulal’s house I used to sleep in the middle of the bed. On one side was Bhavana and the other side was Lali. For a brief while I was actually involved with both of them. Later on Bhavana distanced herself, she was angry and jealous.’    But Manju, she is a different sort of woman, she is the first woman I know who cares for me genuinely. She cares to the extent of actually saving up money for me rather than spending it on herself. She insists on saving, she says that my first priority should be to have my own house, not a scooter. For this is my dream, to have my own vehicle to ride around. I understand that what she says is wise.’  ‘I got to know Manju when I was involved with Lali. But our relationship began much later. It so happened that there was a wedding in the house and there was not enough room to accommodate all the guests. Since there were not enough beds, Manju and I shared one. She did not know that women could have such relationships. Lali knew, she had seen something about it on television and read about it in books. I reached out to Manju. At first she turned away. So I too turned away. I am not interested if the other person is not. But then she snuggled up to me. We kissed. Now we are together.’  Getting up, Shiela went to the end of the terrace, peered down and called out, ‘Manju...!’ A tall, slim girl came upstairs.  As Manju went into the inner room, Shiela whispered, ‘Now, do not ask questions about Lali or any other woman; do not even refer to my relationship with Manju, when she is present.’  Then, switching to a normal pitch, Shiela said, ‘I noticed Manju the first time in the market, she was selling vegetables. I thought to myself, “What is she doing in this place where mostly men run the stalls or at best, older women?” I observed her daily, sitting there in the market and conducting her business seriously. She held her own in the midst of all those men. Then I began to buy vegetables and talk to her. We became friends and grew fond of...’ Shiela stopped in the middle of her sentence. Manju had come in with cups of tea on a tray.  Shiela looked at her and said, ‘I was telling them how you and I met. Manju will confirm that I told her honestly that the marketplace was not a suitable environment for young women like her. But poverty leaves few choices. She has a brother who is the only earning member of her family. I also lend them money and I give rent for the room I have taken. I will contribute towards Manju’s wedding. But on the wedding day itself I will not stay here. I won’t be able to take it, seeing her go away with somebody else.’  We asked Manju, ‘But why must you marry?’  Shiela said, ‘She tells me that I should make friends with her future in-laws.’  Manju said, ‘It is the right thing to do. My brother worries because of me. Besides, people talk if daughters of marriageable age are not married off. We will be allowed to remain friends if I marry.’  We said, ‘Many women have actually stopped marrying. There are women here who live with one another, and there are groups who help women who want to live with one another. We ourselves have sheltered such women in our own houses, talked with their families, tried to make their relatives see that there is nothing wrong with women who want to share their life with women.’  The conversation drifted on to several other subjects. The sun had gone down when we left the couple.  It was the last day of the navratas when we next met Shiela. We knew Shiela too would have fasted. A large framed picture of goddess Kali rested against the wall of the terrace. Shiela was lying on the floor. Hearing us she raised her forehead, adorned with a tilak. A smile of sheer joy spread across her pale, tired face. She looked handsome. The red on her forehead, the mauli thread around her wrist contrasting with the blue of the shirtsleeve, and at that precise moment, a vulnerability which she otherwise carefully hid. Manju was standing near the gas with tears in her eyes. A silence descended. Clearly, it was not the best of times to have come.  We asked, ‘What is it?’  Shiela replied, ‘We had puja today, and I found Rs 100 short from the money I had given Manju....’  Manju said, ‘If you have to tell, then you must tell the truth.’  Shiela said, ‘At the puja many women came and there was singing and dancing. I asked Manju to dance. She refused. It is not as if she does not dance at all. When she is with me she does shake about. When I was specially asking her to dance in front of others, she could have danced for my sake, but no. And then I asked her, where is the Rs 100, and she answered me back, saying, “Am I a thief?” I replied, “Yes, you are a thief, a thief.” That is why she is crying.’  Manju said, ‘I am not like other girls, I cannot dance, why should I?’  Shiela said, ‘That is the trouble, she is jealous. Anyone who comes to see me, she resents it. I want to live in freedom. If you have to live with me, this is the way I am.’  Manju’s eyes were brimming with tears.  At the end Sheila said to us, only half joking, ‘Why don’t you begin regular meetings of women here, maybe twice a month, whatever is convenient. We can all meet and talk about such things. You know what I mean. We can drop in...’ and then with a twinkle in her eye, ‘but make sure there is a bed there...!’     

"So Many Women, But It's Her I Love"

An excerpt from Maya Sharma's Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India

This is an edited excerpt from Maya Sharma’s book, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. Through ten intimate, tender narratives, the book paints an emotionally powerful picture of the lives of women, or those assigned female, that love other women, in small town and rural India.  Ishqful thanks to Maya Sharma and Yoda Press for permission to publish this excerpt. Get the book here on Amazon Kindle and the Juggernaut app.    Before I actually met Vimlesh the first time, it was her voice that drew my attention. Somewhere in the middle of introductions at a union workshop on women, gender and work, came a voice surprisingly loud for a woman. ‘Vimlesh Pandit,’ she said, and then jerkily supplied the name of her union and the place she came from. She is shy, I told myself and looked up. She had a crewcut. Her brown eyes were set in a round face with chubby cheeks. In trousers and a full-sleeved shirt she looked like a teenaged boy.  The first conversation that drew us together was about our common love for Rajasthan. I became more alert when she said she was single and free as a bird, and intended to remain so until the end of her days. ‘I have a right to do what I want,’ she said defiantly. And then one day a letter arrived from her. I wrote back at once, she replied, and after some more letters had been exchanged, I asked her if she would allow me to write her story.  -- Vimlesh had her own room, in her family home, but her only truly private space was her mind and her body. I observed that even when she sat among us, she some- how kept herself apart. One day, she took us to meet her friend Munka. Observing her here one could not have guessed that she was reserved by nature. As I praised the old architecture of the house, Vimlesh entered with tea and interrupted my commentary, ‘Munka’s mother will leave the house to her sons, because that is the custom,’ she said in an ironic tone ‘Even if the sons don’t bother about her, and care is provided by only the daughter. Amma, who do you think will protect your daughter and provide for her, after you? Don’t you think about this?’  ‘Beta, it is the sons who inherit,’ Amma replied without hesitation.  ‘Then Munka will stay in my house, regardless of whether her brothers want to keep her or not,’ Vimlesh said firmly. ‘Everyone needs a place to lay their head.’  The way Vimlesh and Munka talked and laughed, the way they teased one another, put me in a quandary. It was rare to see such an open demonstration of love considered illicit and perverse by social norms. I wondered if Munka was indeed Vimlesh’s special friend. After we left, I said to Vimlesh, ‘In Munka’s house you seemed so different, relaxed, joking....’  ‘Yes, I am different with her. She is special. I confide in her. But my life is empty, blank without colours....’  ‘What do you mean?’  We had reached the main road. It was somewhat depressing to hear the stoic Vimlesh speak this way. She raised her arm and hailed a three-wheeler, saying, ‘It is time for you to go, when we meet again we will talk some more.’  Suddenly, abruptly, this initiating and terminating of dialogue, the persistent weight of unasked and unanswered questions within which we sensed further questions, a strange flailing about for reassuring certainties—it was difficult to assimilate the load of such emotion. I could not grasp it, and I was unwilling to depart in the midst of such ambivalence. But Vimlesh left me no option. Her demeanour did not indicate that she wanted to share anything further.  As we seated ourselves in the three-wheeler I said, ‘Write to us.’  ‘Yes, and you also write.’  We did write to Vimlesh in the following months. In response, she wrote how she was faring, adding, ‘I want to ask you one question. You have learnt so much about me, will you tell me something about yourself, because I have a full right to know.” I marvelled at Vimlesh’s forthright clarity. What she was really asking for was a greater equality in the relationship. In telling her story and making her family accessible she had made herself vulnerable to us. I wrote back that I would be only too glad to talk about myself.  * * * On our next visit, the opportunity to talk to Vimlesh alone presented itself. We left the house, walked along the bank of the pond and entered to a mango orchard. Dense shade and deep silence, a corner of this earth woven by sunlight sifting and flickering through the leaves. We were about to sit down when Vimlesh said, ‘Don’t keep your back to that direction. It has a shrine dedicated to Tejaji Maharaj.’  We turned round. Carved deep into an arched stone slab on one side was a coiled snake with its hood raised and flared. Right across the middle was a proud rider with a regal moustache and a turban tied round his head.   ‘Snakes are symbolic of sex and sexual desire, but it is a motif which has come to denote only male-female desire,’ I remarked. ‘And this does not hold true for all people.’   ‘Yes, it is not mine,’ my friend said, ‘Neither is it yours.’  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘Vimlesh, tell me, what is your truth? Who do you desire, is it Munka?’  A slight gust caressed the mango leaves. As they quivered, Vimlesh said with quiet simplicity, ‘No, there is someone else. She lives in another town. Munka knows about her. All the women in the factory know.’ So easily she said it, without ado. And how long it had taken us to ask!  ‘In the factory no one mocks me to my face. I am not bothered by others’ opinions. Everyone has the right to eat what they want, wear what they want, live as they choose. From the beginning, I have dressed in this way, like a man. And I have always preferred women. Why it is so, I have never thought about too deeply. But it is not important to have an answer to everything. You ask if I have heard the word “lesbian”. No, I have not heard it. I consider myself a male. I am attracted to women. Why create categories, such deep differences between male and female? Only our bodies make us different. We are all human beings, aren’t we?’  ‘Bodies make us men and women,’ I said.  ‘Is that so? Tell me something, do bodies alone make us men and women? First of all, we are not that different when we are young. . . . When my body began to change like all men and women’s bodies do, I felt strange. I did not like it. Besides, no one had prepared me for these changes. I thought, because of these changes I cannot stop living. I had to overcome the shock, adjust to these new developments in my body. If it was within my control, I would change my body just as I have chosen to wear men’s clothes. I say I am a man. I choose to be one. Despite our physical differences, we can be who we want to be and do what we want to do.”  ‘I have met several women who are attracted to women, but I understood the full implications of this in depth only after seeing Jyoti at my cousin Baby’s marriage. . . .’  ‘Our family went to Aligarh for the ceremony. Crowds of relatives, dholak, music, songs, mehendi, clothes and make-up, food—it was a festive atmosphere. I was standing below the stairs when I saw Jyoti. As soon as my eye fell on her, I recognised something, some deep bond, though I was seeing her for the first time. I stepped forward and said, “Are you looking for Baby? She is upstairs.” Jyoti pushed her way through us and raced up the stairs, declaring loudly, “These city people have no manners!”  ‘During that wedding we kept encountering each other. When she was not present, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, when she was around I always felt happy. Baby teased me, saying I had fallen in love. Looking at Jyoti, something was aroused in my soul. We both fell in love. She was in Aligarh, I was in Ajmer.... We wrote letters. A year after Baby’s marriage, she too got married. For a while I kept meeting her.’  ‘Her husband did not like it at all....One day we were sitting on the bed, chatting and joking. Suddenly her husband gave her a hard slap. I was enraged, but what could I do? I stopped meeting her, stopped writing. The one I love, why should she suffer on account of me? My love always demands sacrifice. Nothing physical took place between us. We desired one another, that was where it stayed, to sit and talk, holding hands and hugging one another. We felt so close to one another.’  ‘To this day, I am pure. Sometimes I think I will take a vow of celibacy or become a renunciate, give up all attachments.’  ‘Is that possible?’
‘What else can I do?’
 ‘Who is this girl you have mentioned?’
 ‘Kanak teaches children in a school in Bharatpur. These days she is angry with me. I went to Bharatpur for some work and returned without meeting her. Now she is studying for her MA exams. We can meet her together.’  On the way there Vimlesh walked with her hands in her pocket, her stride confident as she stopped to ask the way to Kanak’s house, ‘It is a rented house, not their own. Kanak’s father now says, “What is the point of owning a house, when my girls go to their husbands’ houses, who will be left here to take care of my property?”...’  ‘Do you think Kanak will get married?’  ‘Kanak’s father will not agree to any other arrangement. She has turned down many proposals. She says she does not want to marry.’ ‘Would your parents, brothers and sisters accept your living with a woman into the house?’  ‘To conform to society, they will raise objections. But internally they will accept my choice.’  ‘Are you sure?’   ‘Well! They do understand I am different. But to this day I have not asked Kanak what she wishes. We desire one another but we have not even touched.’  ‘Never touched? But one always wants to touch the person one loves, knowing that perhaps they wish the same....Have you ex- pressed your feelings to her?’  ‘She knows.’  At Kanak’s house, the door was open. Kanak was standing by a tree in the long courtyard. She was tall, slim, fair, dressed in a polyester salwar- kameez, her dupatta neatly folded over her shoulders. She appeared to be the same age as Vimlesh. A long plait swung below her waist, moving in rhythm with her neck as she turned to Vimlesh and clapped her hands with a scream of delight. Vimlesh’s face lit up. Then Kanak exclaimed angrily, ‘I don’t want to talk to you! Why didn’t you visit me the last time you were here?’ She was not in the least disconcerted by my unfamiliar presence.  Kanak went to the kitchen to bring the tea. Seeing there was one cup less on the tray, I asked, ‘Who is not having tea? You, Vimlesh?’ ‘I only want a little tea. We do not need two cups. One cup is sufficient for both of us.’ She took a few sips and slid the cup towards Kanak, who lifted it and took a big sip.  ‘Come, let’s go up. Bring your camera, you can take our photos.’ As we climbed the stairs to the terrace, she added, ‘She has my photo but I do not have hers. Take her picture and send it to me.’  On the terrace I squinted at them through the lens while they adjusted themselves into a pose against the parapet, close together, smiling. Vimlesh put her arm around Kanak’s shoulders. Kanak pulled away. Vimlesh glanced at me and said, ‘Did you see that? What were you asking me earlier? Can anyone do anything?’  Kanak quietly slipped her fingers into Vimlesh’s hand and said, ‘Yes, now take our photo.’  Face half-hidden behind the camera as I adjusted the focus, I said, ‘Kanak, how would you describe your relationship with Vimlesh?’ As I pressed the button she replied without hesitation, ‘A love affair. I love her.’
I walked to the far side of the terrace and left them together.  So long as we participate in silencing our own desires we will have to live off stolen moments, brief trysts on terraces, in one another’s eyes, in dreams, between this town and that town, our visions shrinking like the stubby and shapeless noon shadows at our feet.  A few months later Vimlesh came to the city on union work. When we met she seemed happy and more at ease. She wanted to know how I was. After sharing some events of my own life, I asked, ‘How are things with you and Kanak, is there any progress?’  ‘Yes, there is some progress. This time when I went to Bharatpur I went to meet her. We kissed and embraced. But we could not say or do more, we were both so embarrassed, it happened so suddenly. It was our first time. I thought my heart would split, I just got up and left. I was trembling. Later we talked on the phone. I cannot understand it. We were eating food at home, she took a barfi, bit off a piece and put it in my mouth. I don’t know how, she actually came to my brother-in-law’s house to see me on her own. When I said, “I am sleeping alone in that room,” she came along with me.... We lay side by side all night, talking. She says, “I have done your share of studying as well! Don’t be tense about the future, you do not need to study.” She says, “I will elope with you.” On February 14 she sent me a Valentine card....’  ‘I don’t know where this is going. The next time I am with her I will surely confront her, ask her what she wants, what she is thinking. . . .’  Three months later we got a letter from Vimlesh. Kanak was engaged to be married, she informed us. After she got the news, Vimlesh went to see Kanak, who refused to meet her. Vimlesh tried to phone her but Kanak would not respond. ‘If only she had spoken to me once, I would have understood. She owed it to me, to us, our friendship....’  Just when she had begun to hope! What could I say that would make it better, bearable? I tried to remind her that in all likelihood Kanak had been forced into agreeing to marry. I reminded her that Kanak had resisted the pressure for a long time. I repeated what I had told her earlier, that it was time they frankly discussed their mutual expectations. I suggested to Vimlesh that she write to Kanak. I assured her that we were willing to give whatever support was needed. She wrote to me saying she had written twice to Kanak but had got no response. ‘I want to die, my life is meaningless, no job, no money, nothing. I am angry with you also. You said you would come but you did not, I got the message you had called. I hoped you would call again. I want to talk with you.’  A few days later we met in Bharatpur. I called Kanak at the school where she worked. Vimlesh stood quietly beside me.  Kanak’s voice sounded small and forlorn. ‘Please bring Vimlesh. I have to see her.’  
On the way to Kanak’s house Vimlesh said, ‘Please do not insist I eat anything or drink tea there.’ I remembered what Vimlesh had said about being able to eat with only those people with whom she had some understanding. This was her expression of hurt and anger.  Kanak’s family had shifted to a new house—a bigger one with more rooms. When we turned to go in, Kanak came from behind and held Vimlesh in a close hug, completely hiding her face in Vimlesh’s chest. While the rest of us stood pretending normalcy, Kanak simply would not let Vimlesh go. Her mother urged me to move. This was a hug deeper than a meeting of two friends.  I asked myself, why is Kanak marrying? As I walked inside the room I saw a huge carton holding a television set, the first sign of dowry. Kanak’s mother followed my gaze ‘Some things I have bought now, others we will buy later. Sit, please. You have to come for the wedding.’  I thought of Vimlesh, Kanak and innumerable others who stand on shaky ground long, long before their life even begins. Though Kanak longed for Vimlesh, she relinquished her dream in order to maintain family honour. She had won for herself the label of a ‘good’ woman. She had even freed herself of the certain struggle and danger she would have had to negotiate daily had she opted to live with the woman she loved.  Vimlesh walked in slowly a few minutes later. Too casual, I thought as I looked at her. Her face was calm.  ‘Where is Kanak?’
‘She is coming.’
When Kanak’s mother got up to make tea. Vimlesh said, ‘We have to go. We will not have tea.’
‘Don’t go right away,’ Kanak said as she walked in. She looked thinner and darker. We exchanged greetings and she looked away, blinking back her tears. When the tea was brought in, Vimlesh picked up her cup and put it on the window ledge behind, while making polite remarks. Kanak looked at me in desperate appeal. ‘She will not drink it.’  Raj was telling me about the boy Kanak was marrying. Kanak and Vimlesh got up and went out on the balcony. I could hear them whispering as I sipped tea.  A little later Vimlesh returned to the room. ‘Are we ready to leave?’  ‘Yes.’  We said goodbye. Kanak did not come down to see us off. As soon as we were alone, I asked, ‘Well, what did she say?  ‘She said that if I had come to her with the proposal before March, that is, before she got engaged, something could have been worked out.... But she also said that women have no choice. “My parents said yes to the boy’s family, if I said no... It cannot work for us if we go against the wishes of our parents.” These are her words.’  Vimlesh shared her sense of anger and betrayal in the letters she wrote to me, vowing that she would break off all contact with Kanak. But when we met several months after Kanak’s marriage, she said Kanak had called. ‘What was I to do? There are so many women but it is her I love. Maybe I should not have talked with her. I am angry with her. But I talked to her. What could I do? She has told her husband about us. She even told him she loves me.  He has asked me to come over. But I do not want to see him, nor hear about him. Before her marriage Kanak was loudly proclaiming our love, and then in the end she withdrew. What can one do? I am telling you, though I do not tell anyone at all, I am missing her.’ Looking away, Vimlesh said in anguish, ‘I wish she were here with me, sitting right beside me. I know there is no point in such thinking, and yet....’   ‘I did what I have never done before, I went to the dargah and bowed my head in that Court of the Almighty. I asked Him to give her to me. Before she withdrew from me the whole world seemed so wonderful, and now nothing seems worth living for. Thoughts of her fill my being, and it causes me so much pain.  ‘We cannot love anyone just anyone. If only we knew why we love the ones we do, perhaps it would be easier to find someone else to love. Before Kanak there have been several other women but it was not possible to reciprocate....’  “Even now, a month ago, I met a woman. I had gone to my sister’s house in Jodhpur. This woman lives above my sister’s place. She openly told me she loves me. She is married and has one small child. In the night when I went up on the terrace to sleep, she was there. She approached me saying that she had lost her heart to me. I could not think of anything to say to her.’  ‘Then it began to drizzle and the raindrops were enough reason for me to get away without really answering her. “You will get wet,”  I told her, as I folded the cot.  * * * After the rain that day, two summers later, a small patch of blue led up to a full sky. Vimlesh’s window in the shop opened on to a potter’s household and in the wet earth behind the potter’s wheel Vimlesh found an answering echo of her longing in the eyes of the woman who stood beside her father helping him knead and prepare the clay.     

I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It - 7 Queer Women Tell Us About Their First Kiss With A Girl

Stories of people's first taste of pleasure and tenderness

"I kissed a girl, and I liked it. The taste of her cherry chapstick.” Or in Aditi’s case, talcum powder - which she was very into, the 90’s kid that she was. Agents! We asked some queer women what it felt like when they kissed a girl for the first time. For some it was just a senseless blur, for some, a first taste of pleasure (literally), for many a moment that confirmed their sexuality and for one, something that helped her leave a violent marriage, for her own happiness. Ek ‘Kiss’ mein kitna hai dum? These stories tell you what a single kiss can mean.  

“My lips were sore and I blushed the entire next day”

Salima, 22, Lesbian

She was the first person I’d matched with on Tinder. We met a few times, were comfortable as friends, but also used to flirt with each other. I didn’t know if we were going out because we never discussed ki kya chal raha tha, bas chal raha tha.  One day she called me over when no one was home. I wasn’t expecting anything as I didn’t want to get hurt, but somewhere in my head there was hope. We spent the whole day together and then in the middle of the afternoon, we got drunk. At some point, we were sitting across each other on the dining table just staring at each other, smiling, blushing and what not. I was anxious, looking at the time constantly and I did the weirdest thing - I removed my watch, it was a subconscious move. Then, she finally said: “Can I kiss you?” “Yes” “I’m warning you, I’m a bit scared”  “I’m not scared. But yeah, I’m conscious”  I should have made the effort to at least go up to her, because she walked across the table and kissed me. It was my first kiss so it was...intense. I had never kissed anyone before, let alone a girl. I felt very accepted ki okay, so she does have feelings for me. I was also thinking  - Am I doing this right? Is this fine? She’d kissed others before so I was obviously a little insecure. The most unexpected thing - I thought it would end there, but it didn't. We wound up in her bedroom, kissing all evening and by the end of it my lips were very sore.  I was blushing the entire next day. I had to tell my friends what happened the second I entered class because they could see it on my face ki kuch toh hua hai - my face was glowing that much.  

“My heart was heavy, but I felt I could fly. That kiss was my first definition of pleasure”

Aditi, 37, Cis Woman 

The story of my first kiss goes back to 8th grade. At that time I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was feeling but I was sure about the feeling itself. I knew I was attracted to girls. I had just joined this new Marathi medium school and there was a person I liked from day one.  It was very organic for me. I was sure what I felt for this girl and made sure my intentions were clear, but she wasn’t receptive. She was maybe going through her own confusions because it was a never-heard kind of situation in that town and it took me almost 5-6 months to woo her. In a small town, finding space to express anything was a challenge. We had the freedom to go over at each other's houses to play, but were always surrounded by family, either hers or mine. Even though I barely had any vocabulary for love, thanks to what I felt about her I managed to write her a letter. She was prickly when I gave it, saying she’ll tear it up and wants nothing to do with me. I was heartbroken. But I still felt there was something as I had caught her staring at me, making excuses to sit near me and of course accidentally brushing against me. Two weeks of torture later, one evening I was playing in her neighbourhood and she’d made up her mind by then. She said she hadn’t torn up my letter, had read it multiple times and felt the same way but didn't know what all this means. I sat there, almost sweating, not knowing where this was leading and a tiny voice in my head was asking - how will this end? We had a small talk and she told me (in Marathi) that one thing she knew is that love is limitless. Now that I think about that moment, what she meant was that love was beyond the binaries, beyond the boundaries of gender. And when we finished talking, it led to our kiss - my first kiss.  I made the first move. As for the kiss itself (this sounds weird, but it was the 90's) - I was very very attracted to the talcum powder she used. There’s always these other senses involved in attraction right? That smell used to make my heart race so fast even if she was meters away from me. My heart felt heavy, but at the same time, I felt very light like I could fly. My skin felt like it was shining. I basically felt like Jesus. And that kiss was my first definition of pleasure because I finally felt my desire being fulfilled. I was with her for a long time - twelve years, and it was much later on that she told me something that had been a puzzle for me all these years... why torture me for two weeks when the attraction was mutual? And she said "I’ve always known you’re a womanizer and it would have been too easy for you if I said yes right away!”

“Compared to that kiss, everything is ordinary now.”

Parmita, 24, Sexual Identity - Constantly Fluctuating

We were neighbors. Every day after junior college, we’d get on the same bus and go to her house first. Without saying anything, all subliminal in-the-air cues, which I'm not sure if I'm imagining, we’d just be together in her room. And then I’d go home. The day of the asking out, I went home & texted her "Will you go out with me?" The phone tinged, she’d said yes and I screamed for half an hour in my room.  The next day I was so scared to go to college. When we saw each other, we were all awkward and I was thinking ki ab toh kiss hoga. Lekin kab? I don't know. When we went to her house as usual, she told me that all day she wanted to take me to the bathrooms and kiss me. Turning deep purple red, I said nothing. I was the shyest girl in the world. After that, she shut up and so did I. Everyday it was like this - minimum talking, only smiles. She was too beautiful for me. She’d kissed before but I had not. So I was not even going to try making a move. It was one of these days just as I was leaving, she's like "Paro" and I'm like "Ha?" and somehow I know it. I'm dying inside and she asks  "Can I kiss you?" and I say yes. We got closer and something weird happened. It was like a vacuum, lasted 1/5th of a second and we broke apart. She said "Let's try it again?" and we did. Mostly I could just hear my beating heart but didn’t know what happened with our mouths. Again we shot apart, I went home and that's it.  The next day, it felt more comfortable. We were lying down together, my head below her hair. The light was yellowish reddish in the room and somehow being so close to her, I turned my head round and so did she. And in the most easy manner, we kissed each other. Slowly slowly slowly feeling her, I don't know how long we went on... it could have been an hour. It was unbelievable and it was a kind of intensity which nothing has ever matched up to afterwards in my life. Compared to that kiss, everything is ordinary now. 

“With boys, I felt disgusted. But you can say I liked her saliva since I was in love with her!”

Shakti, 24, Transwoman Lesbian

Unfortunately my first kiss was a boy, but once I figured out my comfort zone is with women, my first kiss with a woman was a great story.  I’ve been part of every color of the LGBT rainbow. Assigned male at birth, had some homosexual romance in school which didn’t work out, realized I wasn’t comfortable with my body - so I transitioned, had a bisexual phase too. But after my first experience with a woman, I settled down. I already identified as a lesbian when I met her. She was from Peru and had a thing for Indian women. We spoke on dating apps & FB, and though it was risky, I was convinced she’s real. And then one winter, she came to India.  She said ‘I know no one in India except you, so I’d like you to help me out.’ She traveled all around India, but I was her guide in Mumbai. I’ve been almost everywhere in Mumbai but when you accompany a person, you see things anew. And yes - my first kiss was with her.  We kissed in a hotel room. I was nervous that what if this person is taking advantage of me? As a transwoman, I make it clear: are you falling in love with a person, or their body parts? I need a deep connection to trust someone with my body, so I don’t regret it later. We were lying down and she must have been very eager because she said “You know what would be better if we do right now?” I said “What?” She said “Let’s make out” and I said yes. She immediately jumped on top of me and kissed me. And for the first time I felt I wasn’t pretending or just letting it happen. It was soft, warm and real, you know? You feel like you’re dreaming, that time has just stopped. It was very sacred to me and then... it went way more ahead than kisses. I learnt a lot about kissing from her. With lesbians it’s very wet. It’s just not limited to the lips. It’s everywhere.  With boys, I felt disgusted by how the saliva spills all over you, it felt like they’re only lusting over me, but if you’re in love with a person, all these things become like gold for you, you enjoy that. So I can say that I liked her saliva since I was in love with her! And when she left from India na, she said I’m saying ‘goodbye’ only to say ‘hello’ again and that she’ll come back someday. 

“The sense of comfort and togetherness we shared helped her get through a difficult time too. Some months after I left, she worked up the courage to leave too.”

Harshita, 50, Woman, No labels. I am what I am

I was just shy of 16. I had been sent to the US for high school, and was living with an American family. I became close to K, the wife, because she not only looked after me functionally, but was also very kind to me, very caring.  They didn’t have a good marriage and led separate lives, in separate corners of the house more or less. He worked the night shift and wasn’t around in the evenings. And because we were together in the house so much, she would also confide in me – I mean, to the extent you can to a 16 year old. Those evenings, her favourite thing to do, once dinner was eaten, the washing up done, kids asleep, was to open up a bottle of wine and listen to her amazing collection of Motown records. I would listen with her and we would talk. One time she said, oh that’s my favourite song,  and I don’t know how...I just asked her to dance to it with me. And then, somehow, we just, quite naturally, kissed. It wasn’t my first kiss. I had kissed a few boys. But my first with a woman. And it felt like I had not kissed before. It wasn’t a long kiss, or heavy in any sense. It was a very gentle, tender kiss. And it blew my mind. There was no awkwardness after - we flowed back into our usual rhythm. But it sowed some sort of a seed – that this is a possibility. I had no language for this kind of love-attraction before. I came to the US at 15 from a very typical, conventional middle-class family. Sex and sexuality aren’t exactly a discussion there, queer love toh door ki baat. I was clueless and naïve even with boys. But, there was a sense that this isn’t fun, there’s something missing. Now the thought filled my head and I began looking at women in class around me differently and wondering.  The moment also opened the door to more experiences with her. Just, sometimes, in the nights, after the wine and music, intimacy would happen, though looking back now I realize how chaste it was, really. It was complicated of course, but it was never painful. Our relationship remained kind and caring.  By the time I felt ready to suggest we do something more, it was time for me to leave. Very filmi – pehle haath pakda, phir nazdeek aaye aur phir bicchad gaye! But it shaped my intimate journey completely. Where there is a pre-existing notion of sex, there is a kind of fast-forward behaviour. Things like tenderness, gentleness, simple attraction and small gestures don’t acquire as much meaning, but they matter. This was an eye opener that physicality can have loving-ness, sympathy, sensitivity, that I can take my time. It’s not just about power and getting or taking. There is no race, there is no necessary outcome, that passion and aggression are not inevitably the same, which is what I had known with boys. It gave me time to understand myself, a lot. I had a history of sexual abuse -  the Indian relatives I stayed with when first I came to the US. It was like a sore on my skin, I was always picking at. But that corner of time  became a refuge  - for both of us – a space for rebuilding the possibility of love. I am still in touch with K. About two years ago she said to me, the sense of comfort and togetherness we shared helped her get through a difficult time too. It gave her an oasis of calm, and an awareness that her reality of emotional violence and unhappiness was not inevitable. And some months after I left, she worked up the courage to leave too. I was very moved when she told me that. That we could be that to each other.

“Usually I'd be awkward about no music playing in the back because I'm like ew all these sounds can be heard. But in this case I didn’t mind it at all.”

Anonymous, 24, Queer Woman

I had kissed many girls before, just pecked friends on their lips - all of them were damn stupid, like ahahahaha we're drunk, it was absolutely stupid, but they didn't matter. And then it happened with someone whom I actually liked which was a completely different experience. My first real kiss was an “Oh my God” kind of moment because there was a whole build-up to it. She was much older than me, 6-7 years almost and was my colleague. I’d stay late at work, chilling with her, and it was nice - we were friends, even though I knew I had a crush on her.  This one time at an office party, I got drunk and I told her I liked her. And she told me she liked me too. But she was leaving and moving back to her hometown for good. Start of every intense queer story ever coz everything is always long distance, right? I decided to have a farewell party for her. But the whole time, we were trying to get some alone time, which almost didn't happen at all. We were losing it a little bit as we wanted to act on things, so we ended up going to her house. It happened very fast - we were tipsy and she probably initiated it because I was too nervous. In my head I was going “Oh my god! This is what it feels like kissing someone you like!” Then I went “Oh my god, our faces ARE touching, what do I do? I don't know if I'm doing this right!” but because I was drunk, it was all fine. It was just genuinely really nice. It was my first time ever with someone I actually liked and my first partner ever, so I was surprised that someone likes me back. Usually I'd be awkward about no music playing in the background because I'm like ew all the sounds can be heard like *gagging sound*. But in this case, I didn’t mind it at all. It feels weird talking about this because I absolutely cannot stand this person anymore. Now that I'm with someone who’s been my favourite person to be with so far, when I look back at it I’m like “Oh my God” I was with a not-so-nice person so long. So yeah, fun! But you can’t know at the start, can you! 

 “I said “No! This is only the second time I am meeting you, I had no idea.” And then we made out.”

Krishna PS, 25, People say she’s probably asexual, she says she’s probably lesbian

I was 24 years old. It was a friend of a friend. I’d met her on Tinder though. We were enjoying the calm sunset, there was no agenda. I was on her lap lying down, she was telling me some story about Gandhi. I honestly had no intentions but it’s true that I started the whole shit. I was absent-mindedly kissing her hand and she took it to be a sign of interest. I went back to the room saying I want to lie down and she joined me. At that point I still didn’t suspect anything. Then she just kissed me and I was like “What the hell is happening?” She said “I had a crush on you for the longest time, didn’t you know?” I said “No! This is only the second time I am meeting you, I had no idea.” And then we made out. She was super-experienced, so it was really pleasant. I was taken aback, like I’ve been avoiding this my entire life and now you’re just giving it to me. But within a few minutes I went from “Holy shit holy shit, no” to “This looks like fun, so okay!” I had never fantasised kissing a girl, never had a crush before, any celebrity crush either. I liked my project mate a year ago and felt like going out with her for a coffee but beyond it, nothing. I’m a very boring person. But atleast I was hoping it was on a holiday or something similar, definitely not someone I met on Tinder. I was hoping it would be somebody I knew. Even if it was a friend I wouldn’t mind it, but this was someone I barely knew. I wasn’t even drunk when it happened.   

Lockdown Diaries: There's A Naked Woman In My Mirror! F*** It's ME!

When there is nobody to call us beautiful, what might we discover while binge-watching ourselves?

During this lockdown, I wake up one morning and find myself face-to-face with the mirror on my wardrobe, next to the bed. The light from the slightly parted curtain at the window peeks inside and makes my face luminous. I look at myself and inadvertently think ‘You look so beautiful’. And immediately feel shame and embarrassment at my narcissism. I’m about to get up and begin my morning routine but instead I come back to the mirror, sit in front of it and remove my clothes. And look at myself in the mirror again. I wonder, what if I have to live alone for the rest of my life and there is nobody to call me beautiful ever again especially in the mornings.  Would I still feel ashamed then, for calling myself beautiful? I smile and the room lights up. I have this urgent desire to capture this moment where I find myself so desirable – my wild hair disheveled, falling over my shoulders, my long neck ending in the valleys of my collar bones that cradle a mole inside; my rounded breasts that I had become so self-conscious of after breastfeeding my child four years ago, seem normal again. Rested but free. Each trying to find its own path without the prison of a bra that holds it together…my nipples being the GPS pointing them in directions they need to pursue. I quickly bring a paper and a pencil and start sketching. I have not sketched since I was 8 and here I am at 36, alone in my house in Mumbai, in isolation, attempting to capture this moment of beauty with a burning desire.  I draw the curves of my body and the magic that I see; each fold a curve, each seeming crookedness simply a line as my amateur hands try to match what I see in my mirror. It’s far from perfect. And yet it looks so beautiful. I had been feeling miserable for days for not working out, for not exercising, for my big thighs growing bigger, for letting myself go because who was going to see this body anyway, except myself.  I baked cakes doused in butter and lapped them up because I was hungry. When had I ever cooked for myself? If I ever got a couple of breaks in between in the last few years, I would cook haphazardly, so as to finish a chore. After all, who am I cooking for, it’s just me. And yet, I had cooked so many meals over the years for those I loved.  And it brought attention to the thought that perhaps I had never loved myself. I didn’t know how to do it. I had never seen my mother do it. There was always a quiet disdain over anything that involved spending more than five minutes on yourself. There was always so much to do. I told my mother that I had looked at myself in the mirror and sketched my naked body. She laughed in embarrassment, ‘You’ve gone crazy. This lockdown is making you crazy.’  And I realised, it wasn’t true. I was crazy before this, but not anymore.  Looking at my eyebrows breeding hair every day…multiplying tenfold, looking like writing quills and the hair on my arms and legs growing like wild grass and in the middle of all this wilderness stood I, like a tree ready to birth fruit. I have never felt so beautiful in my life, watching my body come alive again. Like a patch of land that was left to be fallow and instead of a groomed farm, I see this magical forest waiting to be discovered again. I feel raw and magnetic. I stand under my shower imagining it as a cascading waterfall and I feel one with nature knowing that nature is not to be sought outside. It has always been here, within me. I just forgot to nourish it.   So, I moisturise my thirsty skin with oils smelling of almond and coconut and sesame and become the food that I was meant to devour. I lather myself up in foam, and wash myself with water that drenches my body in gratitude for the love that I show her. I settle in my gluttony and in my lust for my own body. I discover a newer palette for myself in the kitchen and I map my body in the bedroom discovering newer cities on the exotic island that I have become. I conquer myself and I feel rich.  While I was already headed there for a few years now, since the lockdown, the gaze within my mind has completely shifted.  My body no longer exists to please anyone. It’s there first, for my pleasure. The flowers that will bloom out of this, in spring – I will smell them first and then make an offering as I stand on an altar of my creation and feel like the goddess I was always meant to be.    Roopal is the author of the book THE LITTLE RAINMAKER, screenwriter, single mom of a 6-year-old on a quest to rekindle a relationship with herself. She has seen magic in her life and wishes to share it with the world.

I Have a Disability. Why Does Everyone Keep Saying That Love is Not For Me?

It took me way too long to realise that I, too, was allowed to love. That I, too, was worthy of it.

I remember lunch break one day in grade eight, when my friends and I were randomly discussing the latest rom-coms. One of them suddenly confessed her feelings for a guy, and we got all excited and giggly. And that led to talking about crushes and love by everyone in the group. Turn by turn, they talked about their type, their expectations, and even shared their experiences. It got me thinking about my recent and first-ever crush! I felt shy but couldn't wait to let them know about him! However, when it came to my turn, they didn't even consider me.  When I urged my friends to listen to my story and my thoughts on love, they simply laughed it off. And I distinctly remember one of my supposedly close friends even saying, "Tu kya karegi pyaar-vyaar karke?" Not one friend that day stood up for me. Perhaps they assumed either I wasn't capable of loving someone or wasn't capable of getting loved by others. It made me feel so small and unimportant. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by what my friends did that day. As someone with a disability, I was conditioned to believe for a very, very long time that love and disability could never go together. I was told from the beginning that love and/or marriage would never be an option for me, that finding someone who’d actually love me was a distant dream. Every time I would dare to dream about love, there would always be someone who’d crush my dream just like that. Random aunties would come to my mom and ask her "Aage jaa kar iski shaadi me toh kitni dikkat ayegi na aap logo ko?" (“Getting her married would be so difficult for you people, right?”) The funny thing is, they would never show concern for real issues like educational institutions not being accessible or the high chance that I would not be able to continue school or get a job. Because marriage, of course, is the only important thing in a woman's life! My friends in eighth grade were so focused on my disability that they forgot I also had crushes just like any other teenager – that I also daydreamed about my crush talking to me, and even asking me out on a date, just like it happens in the movies. Whenever my friends would start talking about their love lives – their first date, first relationship, first kiss – I would get excited. I would sit and listen to them with so much enthusiasm, with the hope of going on a date, having a real relationship, having my own first kiss! When my friends got into relationships, everyone else would congratulate them, everyone would be so happy for them! They would celebrate. On the other hand, when I would just mention the name of my crush (leave alone dating or falling in love!) everyone would start telling me things like how "unsafe" it was for me to be in a relationship or how someone would only be with me out of "pity". Pity. A lack of safety. Exploitation. This is how society introduced love to me. And so I learned and accepted it as well, not realising that none of it was true. "What if someone actually dates me just out of pity?" "What if they use me and then throw me away?" "Will I be able to handle heartbreak? "What if they are right? Maybe they are right." These thoughts would take over my mind every time I would think of going on a date, and I would drop the idea of dating immediately. People would share quotes, poems and stories about how love can happen anywhere, anytime with anyone. But the same people would tell me how there were a few "exceptions". I didn't know who and what to believe. I didn't know what the correct definition of love was. I didn't know who "deserved" love and who didn't. How could I know all this? After all, love wasn't made for me – that was the conclusion I had internalised. I often listen to music while travelling and recently, I came across this song: "In dino, dil mera, mujhse hai keh raha, tu khwaab sajaa, tu jee le zara. Hai tujhe bhi ijazat, karle tu bhi mohabbat..." (My heart these days tells me to dream and to live more. It tells me that I, too, have the right to love) And, it got me thinking because it reminded me of the struggle of breaking out of the shell of stereotypes that society had built around me. It took me way too long to realise that I, too, was allowed to love. That I, too, was worthy of it. Love. They say it's the most beautiful feeling in the world. That there's nothing like your first crush, first touch, first kiss, falling in love, falling out of it and falling in again. Isn't getting a text back from your crush the sweetest feeling ever? And getting to know that they like you back is, well, magical! Oh and your friends calling you by your crush's name is the cutest tease ever, no? This is what I wanted for myself, no matter what other people said. I wanted to break away from this confusion and I realised the only way to do that was to unlearn whatever I had learned. It took a lot of time and effort to do that, but it wasn't impossible. I had to break the shell, layer by layer. So I kept dreaming and hoping and I started the practice of questioning this received wisdom each time. People would tell me that love is uncertain, but I’d think to myself, isn’t it the same for everyone else, regardless of disability? They’d tell me that there would be heartbreak and chaos, but does love bring only joy, to everyone, always? I introspected more often and interacted more with people with and without disabilities and came to the realisation that there has never been any standard definition of love, and there never will be one. There isn't any specific group of people worthy of love, everyone is. Everyone has their fair chance to fall in love and fall out of it. I am pretty bad at math but, if I can understand that you and I both have an equal probability of falling in love, you can too. Of course, having disabilities comes with a few extra considerations. But every relationship comes with certain expectations and adjustments, no? We have been conditioned for ages to believe that people with disabilities are incapable in almost all aspects of their life. Breaking this conditioning is difficult. It gets worse when you're a woman with a disability, because you are targeted with double prejudice. How can you fall in love? Who will fall in love with you? You are a woman and you are disabled. You are not supposed to love.   When love doesn't mind, who are we to care? Let's stop defining and redefining love. Let's stop making exceptions and targeting certain groups. Let's stop making rules for falling in and out of love. Love is love. Let love be love.   Srishti Pandey is 20, female, and studying psychology from LSR. She loves exploring so much that one can find her rolling around the city almost any day, any time.   

S.W.A.G. Secretly We Are Gay

Two closeted gay men, who are married to women, fall in love with each other.

    Far away, hidden from the world, when two souls meet in the darkness of the night, the world comes to a standstill. One such rainy winter night, as I tuck myself into a warm blanket in front of the heater trying to work on my laptop, my phone flashes. I realize that a stranger is waiting to meet me.  The memories of the first night we met are still clearly etched in my heart, a night wet with rain. His curly hair, his calm and blissful nature, an air of slow smiles about him and everything he did. I loved luxuriating in his presence, the warm male glow that came out of him when we were together. I can never forget the intent, faraway look in his eyes when they rested on me for the very first time. Each moment gone by is a step closer to reaching the other side of the mountain I cross tonight, on this yet again rainy winter night. I’m dressed up in a long black jacket, wearing my favorite fragrance and an umbrella in hand. “Will I ever get there?”- is all I can think of.  For yet again, I have set off to be with my dream. A dream that no combination of words could ever describe. I realized that this time, my dream looked a little different- his hair  now cut shorter and his body frail, it felt as if he was leaving something unsaid. Wait. A lot unsaid. Instead, he says it all with his touch. Sometimes he rests his head on my lap, and sometimes he hides it in my chest. He holds me firm, close to his heart and kisses my hand a hundred times. As we kiss, our bodies leave no room between us. “Why can’t all our nights be the same?”- is all he wonders as I gaze at him.   I so wish to love him, to caress him, to hold him close to my heart, but I resist. I know that dawn will make us strangers again. What we desire is against societal norms; we have tied the nuptial knot with women, and the undeniable fact is that we are both men.  He architected and decorated his dream house himself. All I see as I look around are very bright, pleasantly colored paintings made by him with urdu/sufi names on buildings. He loves singing, cooking, playing with colors and doing agrarian work.  A person filled to the brim with every possible quality, is today broken into pieces. He swings between two different identities within himself. “At times I feel I am gay, at times I don’t” he says. The lies he says to himself every moment of every day are now tearing him apart.  Undeniably realizing that he is his wife’s sole culprit, he says that it’s been only a few months since their marriage and that his wife complains about lack of love. He says that every night in the bed with her is a grave punishment - for both perhaps. He feels crushed by the burden of societal norms, and it constantly plays on his mind whether society will ever accept him for what he is. “I had a girlfriend in college, but that was because everyone else had. And so it was out of pressure that I had one too” he says. “I met someone in Delhi before my wedding; I knew I would never get a chance ever again after marriage. We were together for 15-20 minutes, but he did not miss the slightest chance to pleasure me immensely.” He feels relieved of the burden as he confides in me. Dawn breaks and it is time for me to leave. We pull up our pants and button up our shirts. I hold him close, kiss his lips and step out of the house, the shadow of the full moon still waiting to embrace us. With a few unanswered questions, a sting of happiness and a pinch of sorrow in my heart, I walk back towards the mountains. Each moment of the next day, I wait for a call, for a text from him. But it feels as though someone shabbily woke me up while I was living my favorite dream. He sends no message, he replies to none. We are strangers again.  I wonder how to go on with dual identities living inside of us. Just how long will the wait last to truly love? Yes, we have deceived our wives, but what about the rules that society imposes on us?  Do we have to bear with such cruel norms all our lives?  Perhaps, we will have to spend our entire life in S.W.A.G. (secretly we are gay).  

From Saat Khoon Maaf to Khoon-Kharaba : Ways People React To Cheating!

Stories from people who discovered their lovers’ infidelity, what happened next and what they think about it now.

    Ishq and Wafa – love and faithfulness – are always holding hands. So the movies say, and so the romance novels declare. However, Love, Sex and Dhoka also sometimes come along in an unexpected triangle. Some of us say we’ll never cheat – and do. Some of us say we won’t tolerate cheating – and stay. Some of us say we’re okay, we’ll deal with it – and then find that maybe, we can’t. What really happens to us when our partner breaks a promise of faithfulness, whether the promise was made implicitly or explicitly? Do we all really think of even the idea of faithfulness in the same way? Here are some stories from people who discovered their lovers’ infidelity, what happened next and what they think about it now.   One Bad Apple Can Ruin an Entire… Community? Dislike of everyone from the other person’s community Timothy, 30, trainer, Bangalore My girlfriend and I had been together two years when I found out that she had been seeing someone else on the side. I went to see her on her birthday and I had spent so much money on her gifts. I remember walking back afterwards with this huge bag full of things, teddy bears and whatnot, wondering what I would do with it. I couldn’t possibly take it home. She had just told me that she had been introduced to a nice Malayali guy and had been talking to him and considering getting married to him. I am Tamil and Christian so she didn’t think her parents would like me. The next day I was so angry and blank I just felt I never wanted to speak to a Malayali again. I had a couple of Malayali clients, good clients. I called and cancelled. To date, I never even take Malayali clients because it reminds me of my ex and how she crushed my heart.   Okay, She Cheated… Next! Accepting Premarital Sex Rahul, 30, marketing professional, Bengaluru I dated this girl in college. She was two years my senior. I was working at a call centre to earn some pocket money and she joined too. Our office had a policy about dating so I informed my boss. He moved her to a different section. On my birthday, my friends decided to surprise me at my house. One of my friends picked up my girlfriend and brought her over. He later told me that my boss was the one who dropped her off where he had picked her up from. She didn’t mention it. I got suspicious. One day, we were headed to the office terrace for our tea break when she had to go to the loo and gave me her phone to hold. Her phone buzzed. I saw a text from my boss. I opened it. It was a message saying “Achha, Rahul isn’t here, the coast is clear, do you want to come up?” I didn’t say anything to her. We went up to the terrace and there he was. When he saw us, he casually walked away. I said, “Hey, I read the last message on your phone.” She read it and her face changed. I knew then. She didn’t have to say anything. Back then I believed sex would happen only after marriage. And hurt and angry as I was, my reaction was, “This woman has cheated on me, so I’m not marrying her. So, I’ll wait for the next one.” But I did end up having sex soon after. I’m not usually so rash in making decisions but the decision to have sex… usually, I’d think a hundred times before that sort of call. The cheating episode may have had some influence because I had given up on the idea of sex only after marriage. It wasn’t a small shift for me. Areh, Cheating Was Just a Discussion. Why So Serious? Unwilling Forgiveness Rukhsana, 27, lawyer, Bombay I was in a long-distance relationship with my then-boyfriend. He was in London, I was in Bombay. He met his ex-girlfriend in London and at the time, he was drunk and she was sober. He had told me all along that their relationship had been a friends-with-benefits situation. While dropping her home, he kissed her. She didn’t kiss him back. He told me all this on the same day, when I asked him how the meeting had gone. He said he was offended by my anger. He felt I should have understood that he did it only for closure. I felt betrayed and lost a bit of trust in him. I was angry and felt he didn’t care about me or our relationship. It took a while to feel better. I forgave him for it because I didn’t know what else to do. It felt like he didn’t understand my position. So, I forgave him, but didn’t forget. It planted a seed of doubt in our relationship. Sex with him was usually emotional and when it was, the baggage of the cheating remained. But sometimes, when it was just sex, the cheating didn’t seem to matter. The first time we had sex after the incident, it was good because after that, he proposed, so everything else took a backseat. But after that, we had a couple of conversations where he talked about wanting to sleep with other women because we were in a long-distance relationship. He never acted on it, though. Once or twice, the conversations made me very angry and made me very aggressive during sex. But then I just lost interest eventually because every time it was brought up, he’d say, “It was just a discussion. Why are you taking it so seriously?” I let it go because it was causing more problems for me than it was for him and I didn’t like that. Aaah Se No, Thanks Tak Wildly fluctuating sexual libido Prateek, 36, media professional, Delhi I’ve been cheated on at least three times. In fact, it was the reason why my marriage broke up as well. But the first time and the most recent time it happened, I reacted very differently. The first time, I must have been 22. I had just moved to Delhi and was in a pretty serious relationship with a woman. But soon, I found out there was somebody else. I felt low for a long while and a lot of anger. I went into a phase where I began to tell myself that all women were like that, which I now think was very juvenile. I wanted revenge and the way I did it was to have sex with lots of women. I ended up having sex with 52 women in the next 52 weekends. I was very young and I felt that this was how I would get over how this woman had wronged me. But a year of meaningless sex which was not emotional in any way made me realise I was only hurting myself. The next time? I met a woman online couple years ago and we started dating. We were together for about a year and a half when I found out she was dating multiple other people. I had some doubts about what was going on but every time I asked her, she dismissed my concerns. One day, I had her phone in my hand and saw a stream of romantic and sexual messages. So, I confronted her and we broke up. Afterwards, for many months I had zero sex drive and went through a bout of depression. I didn’t want to do anything. Eventually, even my therapist began to tell me to ‘do things to myself’ to start feeling again. I’d started thinking that I wouldn’t ever have sex again. Ki chapter khatam ho gaya ab. So, the first time I did have sex after that, it was a bag of mixed feelings. While I was doing it, it was as good as it used to be. Afterwards I largely had very positive feelings about sex and myself. There were also about 5% negative feelings. It was a turning point and after that things began to get better. But even now, I no longer take things at face value anymore, which I don’t feel good about because I’m usually a very trusting person. And this affects any budding relationships that come my way. Bad Timing, Dude Unsureness about one’s body Sumeeta, 27, Pune My boyfriend told me casually one day that he found his night shift colleague sexy. I was just speechless because we were sitting on the balcony in the evening in a romantic mood. I didn’t know what to say. At that time, I was sharing a house with four other girls. My roommate was very pretty and irritating and my boyfriend must have met her once for two minutes. But he heard all my stories about our fights. A couple of days after the balcony incident while we were having sex he said to me that he thought my roommate was very hot. I asked him in a confused and angry way (he was inside me!) whether he wanted to sleep with her. He said yes, of course. I was speechless again. The next day I asked him if he had slept with his colleague, he said yes. I broke up with him then. Since then, whenever I have sex I am so tense and anxious about how I look. I am always wondering whether whoever I am sleeping with is thinking of someone prettier, someone I know. Everybody Cheats, No? No More Faith in Fidelity Anushka, 25, writer, Bengaluru I found out that my ex-boyfriend had cheated on me only after we had already broken up. I was about 20 and he was 25, so at the time he felt much older. He’d cheated on me with two women and it had gone on for a while. With one, it was just sex but with the other there was more to the relationship and that affected me. I blocked him from all social media after sending many angry texts. But we got back together after two years. During those two years, I didn’t have any serious relationships but I did have sex. Being cheated on didn’t affect my idea of sex (not with other people nor with him later) negatively, but I lost my faith in fidelity. It made me look at long term relationships and assume that someone would cheat eventually. Sex itself stopped being emotional, special, personal. I felt I’d been having crazy loving sex at the time and it had been possibly all pretend. What Goes Around, Comes Around Embracing Cheating Aayushi, 25, works in an export company, Indore He was my neighbour and we started dating in 2010. In 2011, a mutual friend told me that he’d been dating another girl for three years. I spoke to the other girl and we confronted him. He denied that he and I had ever been dating. After a month, I begged him to speak to me and we reconciled. After 6 months, we got physically involved. Making out, no sex. I haven’t dated anybody else since then. I still have feelings for him. We still have physical relations. It’s not a relationship, but it’s not less than a relationship. He’s still with the other girl. He says that she’s been forcing him to be with her, which is very hard to believe. Back when I found out, I could not accept the fact that he chose her over me and I was ready to do anything to get him back. At the time, I didn’t find it wrong to keep seeing him. Now, while I’m happy with the fact that he is still involved with me, we still fight about his other relationship. While we’re getting physical, I don’t feel bad he’s involved with someone else. But afterwards, I avoid the thought. I feel no guilt though because that girl was so sure of herself when I confronted her that she said, “I know he’s going to choose me.” I couldn’t really digest that dialogue. I’m happy about the fact that he’s still cheating on her with me. I think she deserves it. Ab Bas Bhi Karo Desire to fully move on Leo, 27, Delhi We’ve been together for six years. Sure, I was angry for a month after I found out and the night I discovered her infidelity, I sent her packing. But now, I feel like we should talk and move past this. We were about to get married. Let’s see if we can fix it. Clearly how we respond to cheating isn’t always black and white. It can be all the 50 shades of gray and more. Even how we define what is unfaithfulness changes from person to person and with experience – is it only physical or is it emotional as well? But one thing is for sure, there’s no one fixed way of reacting to infidelity no matter how we think we may react.  

The (Secret) Porn That Turns Me On

Must our fantasies mirror our real-life sexual preferences?

In my quiet world of best kept secrets, especially from feminist friends and allies who sanitise my sexuality with #lovewins and #loveislove hashtags, there is a ringing noise of defiance which compels me, time and again, to make an honest confession - for someone who does not identify as either cis or het, I do watch a lot of cis-het porn, or as some folks call it, mainstream straight porn.  I can hear the sound of my own disapproval in my head. As a queer person who has been part of many conversations on desire and pleasure, in classrooms as well as smoke filled halls of after parties, I feel a weight of expectation on my sexual life. The weight to be some prototype of queer, feminist liberation. But like the sheets in my partner’s bedroom, after hours of raunchy sex, which would make second wave anti-pornography feminists tsk with horror, the reality of my sexual-ness is messy.  But let’s ask the obvious question: is the kind of porn we watch simply a reflection of one’s sexual and gender identity? Are we really, any of us, that simple? Does fantasy have to be under politically correct orders to be, um, realistic? Desire is so much more intricate than categories of identity allow or can contain. I wouldn’t say my experience of porn is the universal queer porn experience – and I hope in fact that we can fly far away from reducing queer experience of desire to any univeralising whatsoever. Ever since I googled porn for the first time five years ago, I have found myself watching clips of male porn stars fucking their female counterparts. I can’t explain clearly why this turns me on – maybe it somehow allows for a sense of familiarity, sometimes it feels less alienating than watching most things I find from the category of “lesbian porn”, or even behind the paywall protected porn for feminists and queer persons.  I wish my alienation from lesbian porn, could be dismissed as simply as a disconnection from the male gaze (though after how trans* feminism has nicely complicated these categorisations, do we even want to use these simple lenses anymore?) which produces porn for the viewing pleasure of cis-het men. But well, if a lot of lesbian porn is produced to engage the male gaze, isn’t cis-het porn produced for similar purposes? Why do I find pleasure in watching mainstream straight porn (which is never actually described as that, leave alone cis-het; it escapes its own categorisation) than “lesbian porn”? The reason is both simple and not: It’s possible that desires and fantasies and porn preferences have nothing to do with sexual identities, at least not in a match the following way.  Recently my partner, held up her mobile screen with a clip of a same-sex female couple, complaining that after hours of browsing through dozens of websites, she had finally found something we could watch together. Then, she looked at my face and remarked that my lack of enthusiasm was telling, that she knew my mind had wandered to images of the porn I know best. I told her it’s because the men in those clips look like me, with their cropped hair and broad shoulders. In lesbian porn, masculinities are often reduced to their affects – acting masculine as per some set notion of behaviour -  and less to their stylisations – looking masculine in all its diversity. Lesbian porn often has same-sex female pairs, where both in the pair are unmistakably femme, even if the affectations of one might be deemed “masculine” – which basically means being overtly aggressive, domineering etc, while the other would be more submissive, passive etc. Lesbian porn then has different stylisation, which is femme, but follows the same cis-het script.  In simpler words, I like the script, but hate the stylisation. I like porn in which the femmes dominate the mascs. In lesbian porn, much more than cis-het porn, this is really hard to find, because lesbian porn does not really have mascs. And even in the rare  case that it does, the mascs always dominate. So in it’s own strange way, the fantasy is limited too I suppose. Last summer I went home to a small town that my parents had shifted to from an even smaller town in central India many years ago. I was standing in the kitchen next to my mother while she made chai for her husband, my father, when she told me that she recently came across porn on the internet. Her brows came together in an effort to make her confession - “I just kept looking at the women. How do they look so perfect?”  Yes, I agree, not the most typical mother-daughter conversation. I think it was an effort on my mother’s part to suggest to me that looking at the women in porn clips does not translate to desiring them, that looking and desiring are different things, that it is possible I am confusing desire for women with what might just be an appreciation for the female form and body (aka, it’s just a phase). Maybe she was trying to enter my world and my head in some tentative, awkward way. Or maybe it was an affirmation of my mother’s queerness. I would never know. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to decide what she meant, but just let it stay in that ambiguous space we sometimes describe as queer. Just like the space between the brain and the skin and the groin. Between fantasy and reality. Between desire and identity. Between you and me. Ryna doesn’t spread out, she leans in. She is a post-graduate student of Gender Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi, and has recently learnt to ride a motorcycle which is one of her proudest accomplishments.

Does Size Matter? A True Story

For a man with a small penis, porn and condoms can unite in a nightmare.

As an average privileged 28-year-old Indian guy who had access to the internet before Jio became a thing, I first came across sex by virtue of porn. After the initial shock of watching porn for the first time (you’re supposed to get naked with another person and put certain parts of your body in theirs, ugh!), I learnt the art of using ‘incognito mode’ in my browser and subsequently pleasuring myself by using a certain body part I had only been using for peeing till that time.  This newfound “high” however was short lived, as I came across a problem that I’m sure many guys face – penis size anxiety. Given that my parents never had “the talk” with me, and “certain biology chapters” in school were skipped, breezed through or declared self-study chapters (have you ever wondered how India got to be the world’s most populous country despite no one talking about sex?), this was a big problem. I was a young impressionable teenager who mostly knew about sex from porn, and the only penises I had seen were my own and that of pornstars. Spoiler alert – looking at Johnny Sins’ tool and comparing it with yours is injurious to your self esteem!   To solve this problem, I turned to the only medium where I could find information about such things – Google. I came across a study by the Indian Medical Council which talked about how Indian men had on an average smaller penises than the global average. I wasn't exactly thrilled on reading this, especially since porn videos show male actors with penises as big as my forearm, and apparently in pop culture it is okay to body-shame people with small penises. Anyhow, I did my research and found out that porn videos were mostly a smoke-and-mirrors act and penises do come in all shapes and sizes, so I shouldn't lose hope just yet. By this time, I had passed out of school and college with no sexual experiences – just tales of “studs” in college and how they had a minimum of three girlfriends. By the time I started working and earning, I decided to do something about my so far uneventful life. I went to a chemist’s shop and bought a pack of condoms. (How optimistic of me, taking Step 4 before I had any clue about Step 1! Anyway, what happened next made me forget about Step 1 completely.)  My worst childhood fears were realised as I tried one of the condoms on during a porn binge session. The condoms were simply too big for me. It was almost as if I was trying to put a plastic bag on my penis and expecting it to fit. It just slid off as easily as it slid on. Anyway I did not despair (too much), did a lot of research on trusty Google and ordered a pack of small snug-fit condoms. I ordered Kohinoor Pink for those of you who’re curious. These had a width of 49 mm (+-2 mm) and were a better fit than the previous standard pack I had bought, which had a width of 52 mm (+-2 mm). However, these were still not a close fit. Though I've not had sex yet, I'm pretty sure that this new pack of condoms will not do the job if that opportunity ever comes up in the future. I'm not keen on having to deal with condom slippage and penis size anxiety along with first-time-sex anxiety – whenever that happens.  Still, I persisted in this valiant quest. Continuing with Google as my guide, I ventured further. I came across an article by Vice in which a reporter reached out to different pharmacies in Delhi and was unable to get a box of small-sized condoms. I can relate to that experience – I had to order the aforementioned pack of Kohinoor online (and forever ruin my Flipkart and Amazon search suggestions in the process). Surprisingly though, quite a few of these pharmacies that the Vice reporter visited had “magnum” sized condoms available. It was only later that I got to know that magnum condoms are only slightly bigger than regular size and are basically for giving guys a psychological boost. This is a problem I would have loved to have. But the problem at hand was quite different: How am I supposed to have safe sex if I don’t have condoms that fit well? Forget safe sex, how am I supposed to have sex? Even if I get a girl to sleep with me, given all the talk about being well hung, won’t she just look at my penis, laugh and take off? Trust me, you don’t want these kind of thoughts in your head. After this thought, there was no option for me to move anywhere but ahead. So, I turned back to the only option I had. Yes, you guessed it – Google. It helped me find brands like Iron Grip condoms. These are supposed to be for small-sized guys like me but they cost a whopping Rs 2,000 for a pack and are sporadically available. Seems like they’re imported. (Wait, aren’t Indian guys supposed to be smaller than westerners on average? So why aren’t made-in-India condoms smaller than these western brands? Very fishy!) And Rs 2,000 isn’t something I'd like to spend on a pack of condoms especially when there is no way to know if they would even fit. Dimensions written on a box vs. the actual fit can vary a lot. There are supposed to be tester packs available which would have an assortment of condoms of different sizes from different manufacturers, but these only seem to be available in the US or the UK. Again, isn’t size supposed to be an Indian problem? If that’s true, then why are solutions only present in the West and non-existent here? In all this browsing, I’ve come across a number of studies, some of which claim that Indians have average-sized penises while others claim that Indians are smaller than the world average. Then, I’ve come across different forums in which some brave well-hung Indians are valiantly fighting for all of us and claiming that the studies that claim that Indians are smaller than average are just slander campaigns. Are they speaking the truth or suffering from survivor bias? I don’t know. But I wonder, if what I have experienced is the norm and condoms are actually inadequately sized, then is that contributing to the population problem we’re going through? “Hey I just met you and this is crazy, but my ill fitting condom just slipped, have a baby with me maybe? (After getting married of course, we’re sanskaari, don’t forget!)” Jokes aside, there’s probably a good chance that my experience is not the same as everyone else’s experience. Maybe I have to face the fact that (sigh) I have a small penis. Despite it being 2019 and all the talk about body positivity and people coming in all shapes and sizes, this is still a harsh reality for me to accept.  And even if I do accept it, there’s still the question: who’s going to solve my condom problem?

A Mudblood Child of a Love Marriage

From my parents’ inter-caste marriage, I learned that love was worth hardship 

From my parents’ inter-caste marriage, I learned that love was worth hardship  This is how my parents met: it was a big city in the mid-1980s and my mother went out one night with a friend, who was trying to set her up with a guy she knew. That guy brought his roommate along – maybe for moral support, or maybe so it could be a double date. My mother didn’t like the guy, but she thought the roommate was cute. She told her friend to pass the message on that she wanted him to meet her at a cafe. Two weeks later, they knew they were in love and decided to get married. Starry-eyed, the fact that they came from different castes, communities, and parts of the country, and that my mother was older, seemed immaterial. But my mother’s parents were furious when word reached them that she was dating someone who wasn’t from their community: her mother cried, her father threatened to shoot her boyfriend (not metaphorically: he owned a gun) if he ever came home. Her mother met my father’s mother, to convince her to forbid the marriage. I’m told that his mother said she wasn’t happy about it either, but then said something that even today, fifteen years after she died, gives me feels despite the fact that I don’t remember her very fondly: “We don’t want to lose our son.” My mother’s parents, it turns out, had no anxieties on that front. They threw her out of their family. When I was younger, the years of my childhood felt like they were lived in an awkward, in-between place. Between my father’s parents, who lived with us and were doting grandparents but mean and oppressive in-laws, and my mother’s parents, who were larger than life in their absence, between communities, languages, castes and later, between homes and neighbourhoods, when my parents lived separately for a few years. I would sometimes jokingly refer to myself as a mutant at school to pre-empt further questions about my family. To avoid conflict with my paternal grandparents about language and culture, my parents simply avoided it all. We spoke only English at home, celebrated no festivals and followed no traditions. You’d imagine that a child from a mixed background would be a smooth, multilingual chameleon. Instead, I am language-stunted, and on some days I still feel like an awkward interloper wherever I go, with no roots in any cultural tradition that I can authentically claim. But growing up with no traditions also meant that we could make fun new ones of our own. Our way of spending time together was to listen to music or watch music videos. Sunday mornings meant turning on MTV and singing along to the 1993 song Informer by inventing gibberish lyrics, as we couldn’t understand the words anyway. I remember head banging all night as a small child with my father while we listened to Metallica, and the aching necks we had to sheepishly deal with the next day. Our lives were not always smooth, and as a child I witnessed a fair share – as I imagine most people do – of unpleasantness and upheaval and sad stuff. Even so, my strongest memories of my childhood are of things we did together, like singing along to my mother’s cassettes while she would pause her housework to do a little jig. As a child, there were times I regretted not having an easy answer every time someone asked me where I was from (and it’s something I still fumble with). But I never wished that my family was different. The tremendous thing that my parents did for love was never lost on me. People in my mother’s small community still speak of her as having “run away” with an outsider (even though she did not elope, and it was her family that decided not to show up to the wedding), and the whiff of scandal surrounding us has dissipated somewhat over the years, but never quite left. Often when someone asked about my parents, I would hear, “Oh, lou marriage aa?” That has always been framed as the context to my existence, and there has rarely been a time when people have not responded as if it was not remarkable – whether or not they approve. When at fourteen, I attended a family wedding, a cousin explained my situation to her friend using the term “Mudblood”, a Harry Potter term used as a slur within the books for a magical person with mixed blood. Oddly, I was thrilled at the time – it felt like a term that everyone immediately understood and that described me perfectly (the overtones of racial purity escaped me entirely at the time). Today, some of my cousins still use the term to tell people that I am of mixed parentage, and although I feel like I should be annoyed, to be honest, I’m really not. “Yaav (which) caste?” was a question that I felt used to follow me everywhere I went. I would usually answer “no caste” or “inter-caste” because I didn’t know what other answer to give (sadly, as not everyone is a Harry Potter reader, “Mudblood” wouldn’t do the job). How could I want to admit to being part Brahmin, when I know that some of my father’s Brahmin relatives would decline to eat meals that my mother prepared? Equally, how could I be proud to be from my mother’s meat-eating community from Coorg, when many of its members are so openly chauvinist to outsiders, and even though they have no organised religion, some represent themselves as upper caste or being from a Scheduled Tribe depending on which serves their purpose better? I spent many years wondering how to present myself to people, and wondering how they see and judge me, and trying to manage all my conflicting feelings and shame and anger. Who doesn’t want to have an unquestioned feeling of belonging, and yet, how could I want to belong to communities that don’t see me as theirs? And there was a time when I thought, how could I love myself for who I was, when I felt particularly unloved by my extended families? But you know all that anger and shame and mixed feelings and stuff? With time, it lessened for me. And I have a theory – a totally unscientific one – about why this is so. Growing older and wiser and going to therapy might have something to do with it, sure, but I think there’s something else that has been infinitely more healing: romance. I have always marveled at my mother’s confidence as a young woman that my father’s love could make up for the love her family denied her. At how she could take the incredible risk of being alone in the world if her marriage didn’t work out. And really, at how she was able to leave one life behind and step into another, without holding on to anger at her parents over the fact that she had been forced to make that choice (especially because I am still raging about it on her behalf). The relationship between my parents is far from fairytale-like, but my mother still speaks of the the early years of their romance as she has always done – dreamily, and with tenderness. In a way, that made me unafraid to make my own decisions, and unafraid of failure. Although I knew that I never had to worry about my parents disowning me if I was with someone they didn’t approve of, I also knew that if my parents did cut me off, at the end of it, I might be fine. Because from them, I learned that love is worth hardship. When I eventually did fall in love and begin my first serious relationship, everything seemed shiny and new, like I was looking at the same old things in my life but through a pair of sparkly new spectacles. Here was someone who loved me joyously and completely, for my achievements and my flaws, and who wanted to hold my hand in public and show me off to everyone he knew. My insecurities about my weight, my looks, my desirability and my accomplishments melted away, and although they didn’t melt away permanently (how could they, having built up grain by grain over years and years?), they gave me a break for a while from self-doubt. What did it matter what community I belonged to or didn’t belong to, when I was now the co-founder of an awesome, brand new community of two? Of course nothing ever works out how you imagine it will. I was determined to never marry, because I saw that as opening the door to the very things I wanted to avoid: being defined by one’s caste or community, being pushed into a neat slot in service of patriarchy, and reliving my mother’s experience of dealing with oppressive in-laws. But I understood what my boyfriend meant when he said he didn’t know how to resist his family’s pressure to get married. His childhood couldn’t be more different from mine – he grew up in a village and later, a tier-2 city, his first language is not English, and his deeply conservative, deeply religious family from a violent communal belt in India hadn’t featured on my list of things to worry about before he brought up the subject of marriage. I don’t think it was an either/or choice for me – if I said I wouldn’t marry him, I don’t know if it would have meant that our relationship would have had to end. But I could see that he was struggling with the intense pressure from his parents to get married, their disapproval over his dating someone not from their community or caste, the possibility that they might throw him out, and his own conditioning about what a ‘legitimate’ long-term relationship looked like. Even amidst this stressful whirlpool he took my concerns about marriage seriously: we talked through the possibility of never getting married (we were already living together), although we knew the constant opposition from his parents would likely take a big toll on him – and us. I don’t think I processed these things with as much clarity at the time, but perhaps his willingness to take hard decisions on my account and bear the consequences made me more willing to do the same. I surprised both him and myself when I agreed to a wedding, and steeled myself to meet his family. That was a source of plenty of confusion for me, because I expected the worst and was proved wrong every time: my boyfriend’s father, after months of fuming and sulking and what-will-people-say-ing, made his peace with our relationship. When his family travelled to meet me and my parents for the first time, I was terrified because I imagined that things would be tense, but our first interaction turned out to be a friendly one. And after we were married, I struggled to reconcile my expectations of how things would be, which were set by my experiences of witnessing the bitter war between my mother and her in-laws, with being welcomed into his family so warmly and thoroughly. How could I, a cool woke urban millennial, who believed that if you were liberal you were good, and if you were religious and conservative you were bad, come to terms with the fact that I was at close quarters with people who were conservative and casteist and religious, but who were also willing to change, and respected the fact that I had opinions and beliefs that differed from theirs? In hindsight, perhaps I have no reason to be surprised that my life is full of crazy contradictions. That’s how things always have been and will be – my father’s parents accepted his marriage but made my mother miserable; after years of warring, before my paternal grandmother died, unbelievably, she and my mother were able to put the past behind them and be friends. My mother, a ‘modern’ city girl who scorns Hinduism and claims not to believe in caste, has always kept separate utensils in our home for domestic workers; my mother-in-law, a proud Brahmin, would not dream of doing so. In my family, we do not hug; in my husband’s family men and men, women and women, men and women, hug, caress, and kiss each other more often than I have ever seen. If my life had been different, and my parents’ marriage had been straightforward in the conventional sense, and I had neat answers to questions about my family, would I have still made the same choices in life and in love? Maybe, maybe not, but I do think that the day my parents decided to get married, it set in motion a chain of events that have made me more okay with life’s glorious messiness, and more willing to find ways to work through it. It has given me more questions than I have answers, chief of which is: can I take my parents’ commitment to love over caste and community, and apply that to everyday interactions in my own life? In this polarised era of vicious social media takedowns, my chow-chow bhath background sometimes leaves me wondering how to wade through online discussions as much as I wonder about how to wade through life offline. I haven’t yet learned how to deal with seeing blind anger from people when discussing caste, whether they use “savarna” or “internet Ambedkarite” as an insult. I’ve seen people I know, from mixed backgrounds like me, attempt to deliberately erase this ambiguity in their online personas, to identify with marginalised groups. I understand the urge completely – I, who have always longed for a community I could belong to without question. If I were to do this myself, I feel that in some circles it would give me a kind of intellectual and moral authority over other people, because it would grant me authenticity and legitimacy, which makes it all the more tempting. In a world in which now being upper caste doesn’t always protect you from scrutiny or censure, I get the desire to dissociate from that part of oneself, and the hope that being the one to shout first and loudest to denounce caste will take the heat off oneself. But I think what has stopped me from taking that route is a need to deal with my own myriad insecurities about my identity. And perhaps a need to re-examine my ideas about the usefulness of identity as a starting point in interactions with other people in the first place. With my in-laws, our beliefs often come into conflict (whether it’s about temple visits, whom to vote for, having grandkids, or what I wear). Sometimes, like in the case of politics and religion, we agree to disagree, not always gracefully. Crazily, it seems to me, given the strength of their own religious faith, they have come to accept that I want nothing to do with religion at all. Through all our disagreements and tense moments, my in-laws have never stopped communicating with me, or stopped being genuinely loving. (Of course I know I am privileged and lucky – unlike so many other people in inter-caste relationships, I do not live in fear of violence.) And I have tried, as firmly as I can, to reciprocate that love without letting them off the hook for their political choices. It might sound trite to say that the personal is political, but it hasn’t stopped being true. Fighting or negotiating them both at the same table can be painful and messy. But I’ll speak for myself when I say that sometimes it’s possibly, maybe, totally worth it.   Vi is 30, female, and loves to read.

As A Man Am I Condemned To Choose Violence Over Love? Maybe Not.

I hit her. The realisation of what I did, and the guilt it brought is unbearable even now.

 It was just a normal conversation. Meenu*, a dear friend – and maybe a little more than a friend – was upset and sharing some problems she was having with work. I tried listening to her and calming her down, but it wasn’t helping. And the frustration and stress – of my own unfinished work, and my agitation at not being able to calm her down – grew. Even though the cause for my panic seems so trivial to me now, the rush of emotions that I felt at the time was enormous. And not knowing how to cope with it, I did something horrendous. I hit her. The realisation of what I did, and the guilt it brought is unbearable even now. How had I been able to make that transition from hugging and expressing affection to being violent with her so easily? Searching for answers to this drew me back, to memories of being younger and witnessing beatings at home and learning to hit as a matter of course. Is that what shaped my ideas about touch? Then why did it seem at times like such an unsatisfactory explanation for what I did – that is, if there could be an explanation that wasn’t an excuse? Touch is in many ways fundamental to how we communicate – whether it is fear, love, authority, affection, or even just a sense of comfort – and it plays a big role in how we build relationships with people. Does what we learn about touch as children shape our relationship with it as adults? I decided to dig into my own memories, and speak to a few other people about theirs, to find out.  

* * *

  When you think about touch within families, do you think of it as being comforting? Do hugs and caresses come to mind? They certainly do for me – my parents were sometimes affectionate with me as a child. At the same time I would often see my brother being beaten excessively by my parents for small mistakes that were more often than not blown out of proportion in their heads. It would upset me. Even so, I had internalised the fact that hitting someone was a natural and an okay response. I had also been told, “What kind of elder brother are you if you don’t keep your younger brother in control?” If I look back, I can clearly see how my behaviour changed towards my brother. From initially opposing my parents’ mistreatment of him, to hitting him myself when he was not able to understand a maths sum even after repeated explanations, my actions had shifted, even though on some level I knew what I was doing was not correct. I don’t think I can ever justify my aggression, but sometimes I felt like I had no choice. It was expected of me. And it was how I learned to express frustration and try to gain control of a situation. I know of other people, college students like me, for whom violence was a large part of childhood. Abhijit, a 21-year-old communications student, tells me he had been beaten a lot by his father, and used to feel aggression and hatred towards him. Gita*, a 21-year-old student of fashion design, also has a fractured relationship with her parents. The youngest of three siblings, she would see her brother and sister being beaten as punishment – though she never experienced it herself. However she says a consequence of witnessing this has been that she is not close to her parents, and she has severed ties to her father and to a certain extent, with her mother. My own parents’ actions seemed too harsh to me and I didn’t understand why it had to be so. I’m sure every family has their way of scolding and disciplining children, but my family’s way affected me quite a lot. I knew that their beatings – and my own participation in it – was wrong. But I still did it … and that left me very confused and anguished for a long time. I too had a rocky relationship with my parents as I was growing up. In the cases of Abhijit, Gita and me, our parents probably did what they thought was best for their children. All the same, even though not all of us were beaten by them directly, and violence wasn’t our only experience of childhood, simply witnessing their violence in our growing up years damaged our relationships with them. That was perhaps the opposite of what our parents intended, but it was a sad reality for us, at least while we were young. The shortage of loving touch created a rift in our families that hasn’t fully healed. But feeling the absence of loving touch from one’s family isn’t only for those of us who grew up with beatings. Radhika*, 22, pursuing an MA, lost her parents when she was very young. She lives with her guardians, whom she calls her father and mother. Although she has been living with them for quite some time, and they do care for her, the element of touch – that experience of someone affectionately running their fingers through your hair, or a warm tight hug – was missing. She feels she didn’t have the privilege of experiencing the affection one gets from one’s parents while growing up. And so, she is keen to experience it. She talks about how important touch and affection is in one’s childhood, and how the absence of it has taught her to value it more. Radhika also tells me about about how an older man touched her inappropriately when she was a child. Though at that age she was not aware about “good touch” and “bad touch”, she knew that she was uncomfortable with it. Even though it remains an unpleasant memory, it hasn’t made her averse to being touched – but rather increased her desire for a more caring, warm, affectionate touch. Does coming from a loving home where the only kind of touch you’ve experienced involves hugs and caresses, automatically mean having a healthy sense of touch as a grown-up? I have wondered about this sometimes. Meenu, who has just turned 21, and is in her final year of studying journalism, comes from a stable, happy family. (When I asked her about her family, she told me something that made me feel more guilt and pain for the way I treated her: “There has never really been any violence in my household, and so I’m not really used to it. I am used to being treated very nicely.”) Meenu has always been comfortable with experiencing and expressing physical affection to her mother and other women in the house. She is more reserved with the male members of her family when it comes to physical affection, but the love remains. Going to college has put her in situations where it is more common to touch others and be touched – bonding with friends by hugging, putting an arm around someone, pulling and pushing them playfully. And she feels that in all these situations she has been able to be a stable, open person, who knows as well as firmly asserts her boundaries in a healthy way. To me, she is one example of how when parents are loving and gentle, their children grow up to be confident and comfortable with themselves. My close friend Neelima*, a 22-year-old communications student, also says she had “a lovely childhood” and grew up with a healthy sense of touch. I have known her for four years as a happy-go-lucky, very physically affectionate person. So you will understand my surprise when she told me that she feels awkward about being touched, and is actually not fine with physical contact, except when it comes to people she is really close to. On some level she knows that she appears affectionate because she is a people-pleaser – she says and does things that she thinks people would like, at the cost of how she herself might really feel. She is afraid of losing her near and dear ones – an insecurity of hers, and I wonder sometimes if her showing tremendous affection to people close to her might be a function of this insecurity. At any rate, Neelima reminds me that in my search to find a link between touch in childhood, our relationships with our families, and touch in adulthood, there are no absolutes, no finalities. If having a happy childhood doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you have a healthy sense of touch as a grown-up, and you may still have to work on it, might it mean that growing up with an unhealthy sense of touch doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s how it must always be?  

* * *

  Speaking to different people about their early years has made me realise that for many of us, adolescence was a tough time. My formative years left me with scars that are yet to heal, and issues with low self-esteem, that spilled over into my relationships with other people – and perhaps this is the case for others as well. Some of us, as a friend of mine puts it, have been victims of victims, growing up with our parents’ violence. And whether we know it or not, we often absorb these behaviours – I see people around me who mirror their parents’ opinions and actions, and I know it’s the same for me too. But in diving back into my childhood looking for answers to the question of why I hit Meenu, my aim hasn’t been to dump blame for my actions on my parents, or to claim that that’s the only way I know how to be. With time, things have changed – I have cried before them, spoke to them about everything I had felt, and they too have responded with introspection and compassion. I understand now the intent behind their actions – they wanted to make sure my brother and I did everything right, to keep us safe from society’s comments and disapproval – though I do think there were better ways of expressing that concern. They could have let us know why they were disciplining us, and reassured us that we were still loved. Their love was something I was never sure of, growing up. And unlike the director of the film Kabir Singh, Sandeep Reddy Vanga, I don’t see violence as an expression of love. Sometimes we forget where love ends and possessiveness begins, and I think violence is a form of that possessiveness, used to control others. I felt traumatised by the violence in my childhood, but I think I need to move beyond it – others have before me. Abhijit says his relationship with his parents got better as he grew older and they disciplined him less. Gita says that even though she felt very affected by the violence she witnessed in her childhood, with time, she has started being at peace with herself, and says that whatever she had witnessed shaped the way she is today – silent, stoic, and composed. She tells me that when she found herself battling with issues, she attended a 4-day yoga session that allowed her to examine her actions and emotions, helped her deal with her problems, and helped her be a better person. Though she may not have reached a place of healing by working through her problems with her family, she was able to take the initiative to find it outside of her family – something I deeply admire her for, and hope to learn myself. I feel cheered by the fact Gita’s experiences don’t appear to have affected how she experiences touch as an adult. At first glance, she does not seem like someone who likes hugs. But if you are really dear to her, she becomes a hugger, constantly showering you with affection. She likes to let people know even when she feels a tinge of affection for them: she’ll tell them, act it out, or leave notes for her loved ones that make them feel good. Funnily, if she had to be a parent, she says she would be, “A contradictory one. One who is very loving and caring, but is ready to hit and scold the child to make sure that things are done the way they ought to be.” And the more I think about it my own parents and my childhood, I realise that violence hasn’t been their only legacy. Have you ever taken a step back to think about how you behave with children around you? For me, I have mostly replicated the mannerisms and habits that I have seen in my mother. The words that she uses, and the way she plays with them, are now mine. Other friends tell me they’ve noticed this in themselves too. I also think that the way I go about romance is something I learned from my parents. I have often found myself imagining scenarios in which I am expressing my love to the significant one in my life, in ways I have seen my father express his love for my mother – teasing her, random kisses, romantic nicknames, and so on. Literature and other media might have had a little influence on my notion of romance, but most of it comes from what I saw between my parents and grandparents. I guess I mirror my parents’ actions in more ways than I realise. And speaking with Shivam, 22, my hostel roommate, made me realise a beautiful thing – my parents have taught me the importance of being sensitive and considerate of others. To think about how someone might feel or get affected by my actions and words. Moving forward, we all in some way know what’s right or wrong, and I’ll try to stick to that. And when I have children of my own, and have to deal with the pressure of caring for, protecting, and nurturing a whole human being, I hope I would be more willing to tailor my actions to be supportive of my children, to employ methods which are more encouraging towards better behaviour than disciplining bad behaviour. To be more open and willing to accept their mistakes, as well as mine and those of my partner, friends, and family. After all, we’re all in the continuous process of learning. And from Meenu, who has given me the gift of forgiveness, I’ve learned that I have to let the past go and learn to be better. She has taught me calmness and compassion, that there are other ways of dealing with stress and conflict that don’t involve lashing out. And she’s shown me that the person I want to be from now on depends not on my parents, or my childhood, but on me.   *Name changed

Is ‘Good Touch’ and ‘Bad Touch’ an Unhelpful Shortcut to Teaching Kids about Consent?

Is focusing all our energy only on preventing abuse, instead of building autonomy, missing the woods for the trees?

A sexuality educator wonders if focusing all our energy only on preventing abuse, instead of building autonomy, is missing the woods for the trees. By Srinidhi Raghavan Illustrated by Kruthika NS @theworkplacedoodler I was having a conversation with my seven-year-old niece a few months ago when she told me that her school had introduced “good touch” and “bad touch” to her. As someone who talks about touch, sex, romance, consent on a regular basis, I asked her what she learnt. I was not surprised by her response: she summarised that all touching of her private parts was bad and all touching by “certain” members of the family/outsiders was bad. She told me that the examples given by her (well-meaning) teacher involved male figures harassing and preying on young girls. This teaching had resulted in her telling her grandfather not to touch her feet or her grandmother not to wash her during a bath. I remember asking my niece, “If I touch you, what does it make you feel?” She didn’t know what to answer. Even today, after several open discussions with her on touch and consent, I see her struggle with this, including with the idea of “strangers touching her” (which she’d been taught was bad) vs “known persons touching her” (which she’d been taught was okay). It’s understandable that teachers – and parents – would want kids to learn about different kinds of touch in order to help keep them safe. But I can’t help wonder if this “good touch” and “bad touch” business needs some rethinking.   My niece’s confusion transports me back by six years to the first time I did a session on preventing child sexual abuse. I had said the same stuff about “good” and “bad” touch (it was an easy trap to fall into then, as it is now, especially since so much of the material we are provided around child sexual abuse uses this terminology). A short while after I finished the session and was packing my bag, a little girl, around 10 years old, walked up to me. She wanted to ask me what I meant by bad touch and how she was supposed to know it – the confusion on her face was remarkable. I myself was at a loss to respond helpfully, and I don’t think I provided her with a satisfactory answer. Years later, I still struggle to explain why I am uncomfortable with this terminology, but let me try. First, what is “good” touch? What is “bad”? How is a child supposed to determine this, and how do we teach them this without being broad and prescriptive in our explanation? One of my own fears about the way we advocate for good and bad touch is that the child may begin associating the touching of “private” parts with “bad”, and – therefore, all touching – with abuse. This association, even if made loosely, has confused many kids who I have worked with or spoken to. Second, considering that the perpetrators of abuse are often known to the victim, teaching kids this “known” vs “unknown” person dichotomy is pretty useless. Third, it is hard to assess how a child, any child, would respond to touch that is unwelcome. If it comes from a known person or is followed by a lot of grooming (that is, creating a bond and gaining a child’s trust in order to sexually abuse them), the child may not be in a place to identify the touch as “bad”. The experience of abuse itself sometimes makes it hard to not internalise shame – classifying it as “bad” only adds more guilt and shame into the mix, because a person may have experienced pleasure in a ‘wrong’ touch, which painfully complicates their sexual and psychological universe. To me, it sounds like a moral judgement is being made when we say good and bad touch – the language has a strong sense of what is supposed to be pleasurable and what is not, what is violent and what is not, and moral frameworks are not usually very helpful. Is all sexual touch bad? If it is bad, are we supposed to never get pleasure from it? Are we supposed to automatically feel discomfort if we are touched by a stranger, even if the touch is not sexual? How does this shape an overall perspective on sex? What then do we do when a 16-year-old child encounters touching of the private parts and feels pleasure? Are we to determine by our standards that it is harassment because they are 16 – since the law says so? Or is it not harassment because the child felt pleasure? The answers are not easy – in fact they are context dependent, but we don’t talk about these things enough, in a world where we also don’t talk about sex enough. And so, for instance, how does this intersect with kinds of touch that society does not consider acceptable? Take masturbation, for example. This form of touch could be pleasurable for the adolescent learning to explore their body, but is often regarded as taboo and made out to be a kind of bad touch too. When sexual pleasure is almost never spoken of, and sexual touch is overwhelmingly tied up with shame, we need to think about how helpful it really is in this context to use the terms good touch and bad touch. Do we then end up doing more harm than good in the long run? Is good touch and bad touch, to put it simply, an incomplete education? Taught in a vacuum – in the absence of any comprehensive sexuality education, what does it really leave the child with? Back in 2009, Tulir, an organisation working to prevent child sexual abuse, began advocating for a shift in the language we use to discuss touch and abuse with children. They prefer the terms “safe touch”, “unsafe touch” and “confusing touch” as an opening for conversation that doesn’t cement a child’s understanding of what happened in terms of absolute terms like good and bad. I see now that the terminology has more agency within it – there is more room for the child to decide if they felt safe, without feeling like the child itself is bad because of the abuse. To me, this approach seems more expansive, more appropriate. At the same time it also feels a bit like putting pressure on the child to decide if it was abuse or not. And I wonder, what can we do to deepen and expand our conversations about touch, rather than focus all our attention and all our fears on protecting children from abuse? I find myself leaning more and more towards talking to even a seven-year-old about consent. I don’t think many people approve of this route because they are focused on protection, anxious about controlling the environment around children – and often, children themselves. I choose it not because it is easy, but because it invests in the child’s sense of self. Teaching a child when she says no that I, an adult, am supposed to respect it, provides an opening for the child to learn behaviour that is useful in all negotiations, including sexual ones. In short, it strengthens agency of the child, and hopefully, equips them to look after themselves. The conversation on abuse often begins and ends with safety of the child. But the conversation on consent is a lifelong one. We begin it at an early age and continue it indefinitely. We teach the child not just about “touching of private parts” but non-consensual touch, through examples and our own lived experience. I learnt to tell my niece that she doesn’t need to hug me, if she doesn’t want to. How else will we build bodily autonomy? It makes me ask the question about why we work on sexuality education in the first place – is it to avoid abuse? Is it to allow people (children included) to explore their bodies and others (with consent)? I think the narrative shift happened in my own head when a few years ago my niece didn’t want me to touch her. I never found out the reason why, but she was stubborn about it and everyone around her told her that I was a “good person”, to try and convince her to get over her reluctance. I had to let her take her time to get over it. We as adults tend to take offence when children don’t hug us or we cannot pull their cheeks. But to me it’s pretty clear – if the child doesn’t learn that their opinion matters, the chances of the child reporting abuse or unsafe touch is far lower. Teaching them that when they say no, it means something and it will be taken seriously, has value for me. Teaching a child about respect, consent, bodily autonomy – even without these words – is hard and a longer process. But perhaps it’s worth it.   Srinidhi Raghavan loves listening to stories. She is a part-time writer and full-time introvert. She works at the intersections of gender, sexuality, technology, rights and disability.

The Shame Around My Friend's Abortion Scarred Us All - A Comic

A comic about Akhil's memory of a school friend who needed help.

Disclaimer: It is not legal to procure abortion pills on your own. If you’re pregnant and considering abortion, you must consult a registered medical provider who can give you a prescription or advise on the best route.   For more information on conception, contraception, pregnancy and abortion, watch this simple and fun video!

How My Girlfriend's Abortion Made Me A Better Man: A Comic

M's story about a life-changing incident.

  For more information on conception, contraception, pregnancy and abortion watch this simple and fun video:

What Emraan Hashmi Couldn’t Teach Me About Dhichak Dhichak

I thought sex meant lying next to someone under a blanket and smooching. I was so, so wrong

I thought sex meant lying next to someone under a blanket and smooching. I was so, so wrong If you’ve seen this Marathi movie called Balak Palak, you will definitely have a fair idea of what I’m talking about. However those of you who are clueless about it, kindly read the entire story. It might be relatable to some of you, or maybe not. It’s the story of how my attitude changed from sex negative to sex positive. I was born and brought up in a typical middle-class family. Although I grew up in the 2000s, the ‘sanskaar’ given to me by my parents belonged devotedly to the 90s. We had this big fat common TV in the living room dominated by Doordarshan channels for entertainment. So right from my childhood I was made to believe by Doordarshan that only married couples should stay together in one room, and on the wedding night the only thing that happens is a shy exchange of smiles with the lights turning off, or flowers jiggling naughtily against each other. When love-making scenes suddenly appeared on TV, I was told by my elders that they were a bad thing and should not be watched by children. My sister used the term “adult content” to describe not-so-controversial scenes – like a kiss on the lips, which was common in Barbie and Disney cartoons – which she thought I should only be allowed to watch after I was 18 years old. I was even greeted with a tight slap on the face for once asking her what a condom is. The reply that came after that was that I should never ask her or anyone else such questions again. The older I grew, so did the number of such ‘unsanskaari’ questions I had. However, I was afraid to talk about them with anyone. Finally, I entered into my teenage years and like every teenager, I had a girl gang, where discussions related to “that thing” – or dhichak dhichak, as sex is referred to by teenagers in Marathi slang – started. Here, I must thank Emraan Hashmi, because of whom we could talk about it openly. At first we thought of him and his movies with disgust, but soon we began to wonder why people do dhichak dhichak. In our quest for the truth, the members of our gang started doing some research – but of course, that didn’t include me, because of my past experiences. They struggled a lot though. The worst thing was the lack of personal cell phones and cheap Internet, and hence a lack of information. At that time Jio might not even have been conceived of in Ambani’s mind. One thing we believed was that dhichak dhichak was only done by bad people, even though we didn’t yet know what sex actually involved. We thought “that thing” was couples sleeping too close together, which our parents never did in front of us. It also meant couples kissing each other everywhere and removing clothes (the idea of which was unbearable, because it went against the concept of shame taught to us right from childhood). Then we came across shocking revelations – like it could be done for pleasure. And it could be done with multiple people! However the worst was yet to come. It felt almost like trauma when one of our friends revealed to us that dhichak dhichak was necessary to make babies – she got to know that from one of her school friends. It was exactly the same feeling of getting into a crowded Borivali local train from Churchgate and later coming to know that it will halt at Platform No. 8 in Borivali. We were numb for a few minutes, and didn’t know how to react. Different emotions and thoughts were running through our minds. The worst part of the discussion was, “It is done by our parents and grandparents too.” The effect was so bad that we were unable to look at our parent’s faces and talk to them. All our childhood theories (built carefully by our elders) about how babies are made, like “babies are sent by gods” and “sitting too close to boys will make you pregnant” were shattered in a minute. The revelations were worse than learning that Milind Soman has gotten married! We even started developing trust issues with our parents. Anyhow, at this point of time our thoughts and opinions began to evolve and we were struggling to try and see sex as normal. Now we started to explore the sexual world more. We came to know about ‘blue films’ and thought they could be a guide to sex, but had never watched any. Once again, Emraan Hashmi came to our rescue and the songs from his movies became our porn. He became our sex guru. Whatever sex education we had was because of him and his co-stars. A couple more years passed and some of my friends entered into the 10th standard and with that, some correct information about sex filtered down to us. And another shocking revelation came our way – sex required a penis entering into a vagina! More than shocking, it was scary, because we were all girls and couldn’t imagine anything entering into anyone’s vagina. Now we started seeing sex as something horrible. Finally, somehow, one of my friends got a cellphone with an Internet connection after trying to convince her parents for more than a year. And that was our ticket to watching actual porn. I was in the 9th standard at that time. Back then, we didn’t think about pleasure or pain, just the idea of a penis entering into a vagina was too much (especially because until then, I imagined sex as two people lying together under a blanket, and only smooches were involved). We discovered that the actors were actually enjoying (or pretending to enjoy) the things that they were doing. It was surprising – seeing that sex could give you pleasure. And while mainstream movies only seemed to show us one position in which people had sex, we were suddenly seeing that sex could be had in various kinds of positions. The desire and lust shared by the couple we were watching seemed mutual. After that, our attitude towards sex began to change, and we began to realise that it could be a fun and pleasurable activity shared by two people. A year later, in the 10th standard, I finally had a sex education session. An educational video was shown to us during coaching class, which told us about the entire process. It was the first time that I saw what a condom actually looks like. Sex was no longer some kind of secret – it was a part of our syllabus, explained to us in detail. There was still some shame involved when discussing it with guys, but for me that gradually disappeared with time. And from then onwards, my negative attitude to sex completely changed and I began to look upon it as normal. According to me the most important thing about sex is consent and openness of opinions between partners. I guess nothing else matters. And I think sex education should be given to every child at the right age so that figuring out what sex is doesn’t become a trauma-filled search for information, and we don’t have to look to poor Emraan Hashmi for all the answers!   Ankita is 22, female, and a student whose life lies in ruins (as she’s pursuing archaeology). Most of her time is spent on unlearning stereotypes and prejudices taught to her when she was younger. The rest of the time is dedicated to hogging food, sharing memes and updating her sense of humour. 

I Believe in the Promises Made by Passing Strangers: Cruising and the City

Leaving behind the threshold of our homes, what other boundaries do we cross?

As a child, there were few places I feared more than a public toilet. The way they smelled of men, the way that no amount of phenyl or naphthalene could mask the rank smell of ammonia was in such contrast to the tiny, cool room at home that smelled of Lifebuoy soap and Sunsilk shampoo. Where Ma would bang suspiciously on the door if I spent longer than five minutes inside. But behind the terror was also a nervous excitement. I had no idea I was also attracted to men back then in junior school (or did I?), but I did know that there was a whole code in those pheromones which stirred something forbidden. “Say no, say no,” an insistent voice whined and I said no to public toilets and blamed it on hygiene. Till that one evening in Pune. As a student in Pune, on an evening walk after a particularly long film in a particularly cold theatre, I had to break the old, personal taboo and use a public restroom. It just so happened that the one that I was destined to use that night was right out of my worst nightmares. Dark in a way that made me wonder about mugging even as I struggled to hold it in, and putrid in a way that I could smell from across the street. I walked into the darkness and unzipped. In that moment, as 20 years of bladder control flooded out of me, I was awash with gratefulness for the existence of every public toilet ever. I will never forget the street-light streaming through a broken window into that ruin of a toilet. God does speak in mysterious ways. And then, as I adjusted to the light, I saw a grotesque shape to my right, in the shadows. It had four hands and a writhing body. It was my monster, my curse let loose. I froze. The next moment came to define my immediate life to come; the monster uncoiled itself into two young men. My entry had interrupted them, but when they understood I was harmless, the kissing slowly resumed (as I realised that the only monster that existed was in my head). I stood at my urinal, transfixed in terror. And excitement. Later, I stammered mentally as I walked briskly down the footpath, flushed with fear and desire, unable to shake away the image of the two men. Something unleashed in that toilet, something that I had bottled up for twenty years in societally imposed in-sanitation. From there, my fascination with cruising began. I had read a little on online forums about cruising in my teens (mostly with disgust) but now I would take long walks across Pune in the dead of the night – walks that mostly led to the extremely cruisy railway station toilet. It was big, that loo and manned by a shrewd looking fellow who seemed to be measuring the world in the way he chewed his gutkha. The moment you entered, there was this huge stained mirror that looked on as all kinds of men washed faces and limbs. Taking a right would get you into an L-shaped hall with a high ceiling, where an incessant stream of travelers of all sorts would come to attend to Nature’s call. None of them really bothered to take the trouble to walk down to the end of the L – and that is where I learned to head; a place where a different sort of call, no less urgent, was being attended to. Often I would stand at the far end of that railway station loo, pretending to pee as if my life depended on it, cheeks flushed red – as around me, strangers looked into each other’s eyes and depending on a nod or a nay, changed the pissoirs they were standing at. Men unzipped and tugged at themselves as strangers slipped silent, gentle hands and helped. Depending on the time of the night, more would happen. Never was a word spoken. At 20, I vehemently believed that sex was possible only when in love. That the craving of my body was a test against being tainted. Nevermind that I wound up at the toilet so often. When someone would reach out, I would shy away and leave immediately, burning with shame. One night at around 2 am, I saw someone I really liked. He was like me – nervous, naïve, young and a little sleepy. His eyes darted to mine as mine did to his. He took off the handkerchief hiding his face, a dark sweating face with a curly beard and adjusted the heavy bag on his back. I took a deep breath and made my way next to him. After an eternity, we touched. I forgot the smell of piss, the leaking pipe, the footsteps around me. I was completely in my body. In that moment, in the most public of private spaces, I finally saw the visible in the invisible. I had found the end of one road. Or perhaps its beginning. I smiled at the toilet attendant as I left that night. He was a little taken aback. Slowly, in the act of making eye contact with strangers and learning to read body language, I began to see how my community had subverted urban public spaces. And I began to talk to the people I met about their experiences of cruising.  

* * *

  At 5.30 pm Palash leaves office as usual after a long, sweaty day of work. An affable bhadrolok a year away from retirement, he says a polite goodbye to his colleagues. Putting distance between himself and them, Palash walks off the road that leads to the metro station and takes a detour. Just a block away from Dalhousie, a bustling business district in Kolkata, is an old public toilet adjacent to a mostly empty park. The ancient toilet attendant outside gives him a customary nod – Palash has been visiting this loo once or twice a week for the last thirty-odd years. “As someone in my fifties now, I never could ‘come out’ the way people do today, though I’ve known I’m attracted to men my whole life. In the early eighties, one day soon after starting work, I got talking to a man at a bus stop. He took me to this toilet which I had crossed but never entered.” “Inside was another world. Two men were kissing and people were peeping over the cubicles at each other. I left that day but ended up returning – it became a haven for me after work, a small break that let me be myself before I caught the bus back to my wife and child. It took time, but I grew confidant enough to make eye contact with men and take them to the park nearby. And now, though so much has changed, I can’t stop going back there once in a while,” says Palash as we sit talking on a roadside bench, drinking chai. I know what it feels like – it seems so much like my own story, except instead of a family, I would go back to a jolly group of friends at the hostel. Friends to whom I was out – but being out doesn’t really take care of desire, does it? Desire sometimes pulls you down its own rickety road, scented with pheromones and carpeted in shadows. Millennia of bodily desire carving a path through memory and morality, through concrete and contact. A path that leads to parks, toilets, cinema halls, bars, massage parlours and stations – places to pick up strangers or maybe just have a go right there – the deity of desire is not one to always take it lying down. The spirit of sex resides as much in spaces as it does in human bodies. Think of cruising as a pilgrimage. Before I encountered the world of offline cruising, meeting men meant hanging around in Internet chatrooms or on sites dedicated to queer men dating (yes, it took years before the straight community caught up). No one really had profile pictures in those days and come to think of it, wandering about in a Yahoo chatroom with bradpittt2002 or myztikaldude007 was like cruising in a park - only with blindfolds on. Words became the primary connect. Then came a blurry photo. On the other hand, cruising revealed a language older than words, flowing through blood and bone and brain. Not just fingertips on a keyboard but an entire body moved to the rhythm of the immediate environment, saying what was needed to be said and hiding what needed to be hidden. A body that dared to say – I need more than a computer. A body that dared to follow the shadow between choice and compulsion.  

* * *

  If not for cruising spaces, where else would so many members of the queer community, many living in the closet and distanced from a ‘gay’ identity, find sexual release? Many with no privacy at home. Many without a conventional home. (Surprising as it may be to some younger readers, many people in India don't have access to the Internet, let alone smartphones.) When “old timers” like Palash talk, it reveals not just the thrill of cruising, but also the diversity within the queer community. They speak of how class, caste, language and body types would not be as segregated as they are now on apps with all their filters and raging body trends. Often profiles proudly advertise – only English, no femme, no dark, no Asians, no fat, no uncles. No this, no that. A far cry from a scenario where a civil servant would be standing beside a daily wage labourer in a park, while a student checked both of them out from a distance. Rejection has always been a part of cruising – but that rejection is at least a conscious one – momentarily bittersweet, tangible. Like smartphones themselves, their users are subject to the copy-paste virus, leaving something as powerful as rejection to the vagaries of consumerism. Those born into smartphones might view cruising as a desperate act, sometimes forgetting that public spaces could be safer and more measured than, or at least as risky as, inviting a complete stranger into one’s bedroom. There is a growing restlessness, a feeling that app driven dating/hooking up forces people to be less authentic versions of themselves. So many of my friends are fed up of Grindr or Tinder – an endless cycle of deleting and reinstalling. Drowning the user in a deluge of profiles, all the app seeks is your attention; a desire that belongs to a lover is devoted to an algorithm. A body, made up of so many things, is reduced to an identity. When out cruising, the ‘feeling’ of another person matters when it comes to attraction and safety – and it matters a lot. What really is anonymity? Does a profile photo held in your palm make the person more known than a stranger you have been exchanging glances with on a train? Your body senses things it needs to know. As Pankaj, a gay trans-man living in Mumbai said to me, “I prefer cruising because I can feel the vibe of another human in the way that I never can in a photograph or a few words. You can communicate everything through your eyes – body language really means a lot to me. I get attracted to different kinds of men when I am out there. Maybe if I saw those same people on a profile, I wouldn’t feel the same.” Pankaj says he has quit online dating and chooses to meet his partners through cruising. I ask him if cruising spots are still active in Mumbai. He gives me a wide, naughty smile. You know all those romantic songs about when eyes meet across a crowded place? Jaane kya tune kahi! Jaane kya maine suni! Baat kuch ban he gayi... (Who knows what you said, who knows what I heard, things came together anyway…) That’s it really, isn’t it? Eyes are meeting all around you, constantly – and sometimes magic happens.  

* * *

  Karim drives an autorickshaw in Bangalore. In his early twenties, he hails from a village in Uttar Pradesh and tells me he has never heard of any of the dating apps – Grindr, PR (Planet Romeo) or Tinder. The only gay pages he knows are on Facebook but he has never used them as he doesn’t have a smartphone yet. He wants one though so that he can use GPS. How then does he manage to meet men? Shyly, he tells me that there are men all around if you only know how to look. “The eyes are most important. And touch. You can tell by touch. A few casual words maybe. But the eyes are the most important. Once in a while I will catch a passenger staring at me. But I never do anything during business time!” As our ride gets over I ask him if he is aware that cruising can be a source of STDs due to risky, unsafe sex. “Yes”, he says, “though I have not always been careful in the past. When I first came to the city I did not even know of STDs. Now I do. I plan to have a blood test soon.” “Check out that man standing across the street. Look at the way he has been staring at us the whole time. Wanna go say hi?” jokes Karim. In my opinion, the queer community has a curious way of both taking stock of disease and ignoring it. Most cruising spaces rarely see hardcore sex happen. Most of the activity is 'soft'. Yet with PrEp available to those with money, where do the rest of us stand vis-à-vis unsafe sex in a world that has overcome a certain amount of paranoia around HIV? And of course, HIV is just one of many STDs to affect people. Whether it is through cruising or through apps, there is definitely a risk of STDs associated with quick, anonymous sex with multiple partners. Incidentally, once upon a time a toilet in a popular park in Pune was so known for men having sex with men inside that there was a condom vending machine installed beside the sink. Tellingly, it was dismantled a few years ago, reflecting our State’s contentious understanding of sexual health and desire, despite other progressive changes in laws. Especially before Section 377 was read down, plainclothes policemen or local hoodlums in search of a quick buck routinely pretended to be looking for sex in known cruising spots and then robbed and physically/sexually assaulted their victims, often older gay men and trans-women. Sometimes this extortion continued through blackmail for months or years. Surprisingly, these same policemen would have no qualms about waiting for a considerable time, often fully erect, at a urinal or a park bench. Perhaps they were pretending to themselves about other things too. A student, R, who spoke to me was so shaken by their experience of being caught and harassed by the Delhi police in a public park two years ago that they still have nightmares about the incident. The beating. The threat of calling home. Taking every last paisa of a few thousand withdrawn for college admission. The humiliation by torchlight in a dark ground. They have not dared to go cruising again. Thankfully, the story does have a happy ending. Noticing the visible distress, that night R's flatmate asked if anything was wrong. R broke down and spoke of their ordeal. R's flatmate came out of the closet. They fell in love and are still together.  

* * *

  Arnab shifted to Kolkata from a small town in West Bengal to pursue a college diploma. At over 6 feet tall, he is an imposing figure. Yet, he tells me that in his second visit to a soft porn theater with a balcony famed for encounters that would put the screen to shame, he was almost forced into a sexual act by someone stronger than him. “I had hardly ever even met anyone who is gay before. In my town, the nearest match on Grindr is 150 km away! And even though that guy tried to force me, I held my ground and people around made him leave me. I dealt with it." "I returned because this space felt like I belonged here, amidst these men. I feel lonely in the hostel. I feel like myself here. I feel like I will meet someone.” Arnab is still a visitor to the hall, though much more confident and intimidating himself after a year of being a regular. Consent in cruising is tricky. Without consent, cruising is not possible in public spaces. How does one respond to a look in a tea stall? Or a gentle touch on the elbow in a train? Do they stop to ask for the time even though they are clearly carrying a phone? Is a smile returned? Or a lighter? These little things can go a long way in safely approaching a partner in a sea of people with different sexualities. It is part of the thrill – being right sometimes, being wrong at others. But cross the hazy line and cruising can become something else entirely. Something ugly. It is in either very crowded places like local trains or queer-dominated spaces like the cinema balcony mentioned earlier, where consent becomes unimportant for some. Like most humans, many in the queer community too have a lot to understand about yes, no and maybe.  

* * *

  Some of the most visible members of a cruising space and often with exclusive spots of their own are members of the trans* community, mostly trans-women. They have been trailblazers in claiming and defending queer public spaces, many a time being at a much greater risk of violence. NGOs and trans individuals have filed a number of ongoing cases of extortion, physical and sexual abuse against perpetrators of violence in public spaces but a huge number of cases go unreported. Sujatha, a trans-woman from Chennai, says, “Many of the members of our community are from working classes with no access to these dating apps. They are definitely not comfortable with English. For them, cruising is not just a thrill or kink…it is the only way to meet partners.” And lesbian/bisexual women are almost invisible when it comes to cruising in India. Tales of meeting strangers in bars, sport centres, malls, nightclubs or other spaces are common but there are hardly any specific cruising spaces for lesbians the way they are for gay men. Public spaces are designed, both morally and physically, for cis gendered men. But in spite of this love persists, for cruising is not only about sex. Leaving behind the threshold of our homes, what other boundaries do we cross? Why is there an urge to risk it all for a seemingly anonymous encounter? At the heart of this dance is belonging. Of belonging to a community, to a moment, maybe even to another being. I have seen strangers touch each other like old lovers, I have met couples who have lived their entire lives together after a smile exchanged on a park bench.  

* * *

  There is no real way of classifying or simplifying the phenomenon of cruising. As cities change and policing becomes stronger and tech-based, old, much-loved cruising spots die and new ones take their place. Is there a space for private queer love at home? Are all queer people supposed to leave their families or come out forcibly? Some of the most open expanses available to people are and will be public spaces. And they will always be used for the full spectrum of human expression. As the smartphone market grows and the world becomes even more technologically controlled, it will be interesting to see the new turns that offline cruising takes. The primal drive to seek out partners that is such a basic foundation of us as humans will be impossible to wipe out, as much as any agency tries. We now live in a world where queer folk who grew up without the Internet live with those who have never been without it. Information is passed on forums, through films and articles. Many straddle both the worlds of offline and online cruising. Young queer people (even with smartphones) now seek out cruising spots, seek out the history of their community. There is a power in these meetings, an ode to a spirit of community. As important as pride, as necessary as reading down Section 377. The search for our true sexual selves is an elusive one, existing in some unclassifiable, intangible space, that apps and matrimonials can’t get to, that we ourselves spend a lifetime seeking to understand. As far as I am concerned, the search has always led me to push a little outside my boundaries of class, language, geography, identity. For where does home, or even my body, begin... and end? Why should I be conditioned into whom to like. Or where. I believe in the promises made by passing strangers. Falling asleep in a train, watching crows squabble in a park, holding my nose as I cross a garbage vat, wolfing down street food that I know will punish me soon, weaving through a market and soaking it all in a quiet bar. For me, cruising is all this and more. Lights and locks. Love and looking. As we finish our chai, Palash sums up cruising for him. And indeed for so many of us in cities, suburbs and towns, packed into our boxed lives in a society that is far from accepting of sexuality in general and queer sexuality in particular. “Desire and loneliness”, he smiles as he gets up, glancing at his watch. “Achcha, I’ll leave now. I have to get back home to my family.” I decided to stay back. After all, the cruising spot that Palash mentioned was right around the corner. Anindya Shankar Das is an independent filmmaker, cook, traveler and writer based in Mumbai. He is always on the lookout for interesting work!

Maybe Fighting with a Friend isn't Such a Bad Thing

Why do we find it so easy to let friendship fade away?

Is fighting with friends a way of fighting for your friendship – of caring enough to go through heartache?   It was one of those days when the gods of Delhi decided to take a break from playing "Khatron ke Khiladi: Who will survive the extreme?” and blessed us with some nice weather and a shower of rain. Little did we know that what was going to come next was Bombaywali humidity. Yuck! While cursing the gods and regretting wearing a tight kurta, I stood by the road waiting for an e-rickshaw to the metro station. I had been fighting with a close friend of mine and now, it was confrontation time. As adults, fights with friends is strange. We have our love lives where we constantly fight with the lover for attention and love and then we have our friendships, where we depend on each other for support. When the friendship starts getting demanding, we feel like it has become a burden and we’re better off disposing of it. We feel it’s easier to get rid of it because we have always prioritised our romantic relationships over our friendships. I mean, all of cinema has been about finding that one true love, not about finding that one true friend. Greta Gerwig once said in an interview that we will never marry our best friend, and that is the ultimate tragedy. Is it, really? The philosophy that is taught to us by our parents is, friends will come and go, only family will be there for you. It seems like an understood norm, that all friends will choose their families (boyfriend/girlfriend i.e future family) over their friendships. So, then one wonders, what’s the point of fighting with and then confronting a friend? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let it fizzle out? As soon as I sat in the e-rickshaw next to an old man, I checked my phone to see if my friend had messaged to inform me where exactly we were going to meet in CP. He had texted. We usually call each other for these small things, so his texting me where to meet was a sign of coldness. Sigh! While I was replying to him, the e-rickshaw stopped near a college and a boy in his late teens slid in and sat opposite me. He pulled a girl of the same age in, though she resisted and suggested that they catch a different rickshaw because otherwise her hair would get all messed up. The boy asked her to stop whining, and then reluctantly, the girl sat next to him. An unusual perk of living in Delhi is being able to shamelessly stare, from staring at someone to staring at someone’s chats while sitting right next to them in the metro. In Bombay, this would be considered rude. I personally think it’s lovely – all boundaries between strangers should be burned down, without shame. Without staring, how am I to know and understand people? Privacy in public spaces feels like such a modern idea, especially in a country like ours. So there I was, staring at the girl, who looked quite fashionable. Long, painted black nails, winged eyeliner, a black full-sleeved chiffon see-through top that looked a little tight and revealed a bit of her cleavage. Her hair stood out the most, no wonder she was worried about it. Long, thick, silky and shiny hair. I then noticed the boy, he had razed off the hair above his ears and coloured a little chunk in the front light brown. He wore a tight red T-shirt and black cargo pants, and was carrying a backpack in such a way that it hung over his chest. Then, my gaze went to the boy’s lips. They were very pretty, quite well defined. Suddenly, I was aware that the boy had quite feminine features. I smiled. Both of them were so into each other that they didn’t even care to see that right in front of them there was a gawky girl staring and smiling at them. The boy was talking about how he wanted to join the NCC and didn’t have enough money. The girl very seriously asked him how much money he needed and how she could help. He said, “Yaar, 50 or 500 nahi chahiye...5000 toh lagege hi.” The girl laughed out loudly, indicating that she couldn’t really imagine having that kind of money on her. The boy went on to say, “Pata hai tujhe kal kya hua. Main metro mein thi. Ladies seat pe baithi thi…ek ladki chadi aur mere paas aake boli, ‘Yeh ladies seat hai’. Maine bhi keh diya…‘Main bhi ladies hi hoon.’ Aas paas ke log hasne lage. Thodi der baad, main phir se baithi toh ek aur aunty ne aake kaha ki yeh ladies seat hai. Iss baar uss ladki ne aunty se zor se haskar kaha, ‘Aunty yeh bhi ladies hai.’ " That’s when I realised that because of the short hair and boyish clothes, I had wrongly assumed that person’s gender. After feeling very stupid, I became extremely curious about what the short-haired girl was talking about. She spoke about someone who had overheard this conversation on the metro who came up to them, said he was from the LGBT community, and asked if she was a lesbian, to which she replied, “Nahi”. He spoke of a mutual acquaintance, gave her his number, and asked her to call him if she ever wanted to join the support group. She narrated the entire incident as a funny story to her friend. The long-haired girl burst out laughing, and asked why she didn’t tell that guy “Ki tu pure girl hai”. She felt that the man was very strange because why would someone come up to you and tell you that he’s gay? The other one cut her off in exasperation and said that her reaction was precisely the problem. The short-haired girl rebuked her for being so narrow-minded about such things. “Maybe that man thought I was from the LGBT community and needed help, so he came. What’s the big deal about that?” Somewhere here, I imagined a big fight and one of them sulking. But to my surprise, the short-haired girl did not become preachy or arrogant while explaining what LGBT was and the other who seemed ignorant at first, was patiently listening. Egos are usually such a big part of our fights that we forget to listen to one another. However cliched that sounds, listening is the only thing that diffuses a situation so quickly. In that moment, it didn’t look like they would obsess over these ideas then fight and drift apart. I couldn’t imagine that happening to them. Once I got off the e-rickshaw and saw them leave, a strange feeling of loss lingered. I missed my childhood, when friends meant the world to me. They made me feel like we could conquer the world together and nothing was impossible. We could all look after each other, us together, some guys and some girls, before those annoying things – romance and coupledom – began and pulled us apart. These two in the e-rickshaw were so immersed in each other, like the world did not exist outside of them. I know that in that moment, it is very hard to see the future very clearly. It feels like there is no future without the other in it and I could only feel jealous of them. During the metro ride, I kept thinking how impossible it was to have differences with friends at this stage in life and still love them and still have them around and most importantly, LET IT GO. As I have grown into my late twenties, certain ideas of the world have solidified in my head. With the lover, the fight is supposed to be endless to make them understand your concerns but with friends, we don’t need to invest that kind of time and we want to be around people who understand those solidified ideas in our head or we want to move on as if the relationship were a consumer good which isn’t working for us, and not a road we are walking down together. With all these thoughts in my head, I started feeling very nervous as I reached closer to CP. I didn’t want to be vulnerable, neither did I want vulnerability from my friend. I just wanted both of us to let it go. Vulnerability is a tricky thing in a friendship. We want it, but we can’t really deal with it or do anything about it. It requires a lot of attention, understanding and work from the other side to do something about the problem and it is tooooo fucking hard. Or maybe it’s just me who feels that way, because I seem to not know at all how to keep friendships. I started to feel almost dizzy with the storm in my head and then it came to me: I would just use the incident I had witnessed in the e-rickshaw to lighten things up, in case I felt uncomfortable and needed an icebreaker.I met my friend and nothing much happened, we spoke but avoided the real issue bothering us. I guess neither of us could figure out how much we wanted to fight for our friendship. How easy it is to let friendships fizzle out! Maybe fights and confrontations in friendships force us to have some stake in the relationship. I wish I was okay with fighting everywhere, with my family, with my lover, with the world and then with my friends also. It’s quite sad, friends are the first in line to be lost over everything in life – at least in my life, and many I’ve seen. I have lost quite a few close ones and for some reason, that loss doesn’t seem to leave me. I guess my parents were wrong, friends don’t just come and go. Is fighting over friendships, the only way of fighting for the friendship – of caring enough to go through heartache? I guess the answer is to be found in that feeling of loss that rocked inside me through that metro ride. Priya Naresh is a filmmaker based in Delhi.

More Than An Identity: How I Realised My Struggle Was With Being Sexual, Not Homosexual

My identity as a queer person became a bit of a shield from the world of love, the world of sex

My identity as a queer person became a bit of a shield to protect myself from the turbulence that comes with one’s private life, in the world of love, in the world of sex It is little-known among those in my circle that I serially crushed on boys (one per year) upto Class 8. Maybe it’s because after the last boy I liked, I realised I was queer. And when you’re queer, your story always begins from the moment you knew you were gay. From the moment you identified yourself as something different. As someone whose ability to desire and love required a label to be explained to everyone else. What was my sexuality before I knew? I don’t know – and it seems no one is really curious. I knew I was queer at different points in my life with different degrees of clarity. In 8th grade, when my heart did a somersault instead of the usual dhadko-fying when my Woman-Crush-Wednesday friend I was obsessed with sent me a text saying “I wish you were here”, I was at 10% “Knew I Was Gay (KIWG)”. When I googled bisexual and felt like, “Whoa, I can love love my friend?” I was at 20% but-in-denial KIWG. When in Class12 a girl told me she was a lesbian and I, ahem, promptly fell for her, I peaked at a 90% shit-ye-toh-real-ho-gaya KIWG. Thing is, I knew about LGBT rights and considered myself an ally very early. Before I even knew I was queer, I knew the term, the movement for their rights, the language of identity politics. I was already feministing, and when people called my best friend ‘corrupt’ (a word used generously in middle school) for having too many friends who were boys, I could call it “slut-shaming”. It was that time in my life when these words for experiences felt like they were liberating me. So when I finally knew I was gay, was I happy to have an identity that held some socio-political significance? A little I guess. It did make me feel a bit like a krantikari. But soon I just got really really confused. Was I bisexual? But I hadn’t liked guys in years by then. Was I *gasp* a homoromantic heterosexual? I seemed to fall in love with women more than lust after them. Lesbian? But what about that dirty history of light-eyed boys I had crushes on? Who’d believe me if I said lesbian? This yo-yoing between labels stopped only when I realised I could call myself queer and leave it at that. And yet – that finding of the perfect word never really stopped. Many labels have knocked at my door ever since. Gender-fluid. Asexual. Demi-sexual. Anorgasmic. Sensual-sexual (my invention). Woman. Lesbian pays a monthly visit, I swear. And in moments of sheer terror, Actually Straight (You’re Just Faking It) comes says hi. For a year or so before I entered college, every second thought was about this, occupying my mental space much more than I’d expected. I thought I was obsessed. In that time somewhere in that relentless negotiation of determining who I was, I left behind my ability to fall in love or desire without the baggage of my queer identity. I pretend that the era of liking boys is irrelevant but perhaps it was the only time my sexuality was really just mine. Not a part of a larger discourse. Not different. Not relevant to anything or anyone but myself. When I went to college, I was starting to know who I was. Although if I have to phrase it more honestly, I was starting to get better at explaining what I identified as. I started coming out to people and found solace in making queer art that further cemented me in people’s eyes as that Queer person. My work really was my refuge. While I was falling in love with close friends who were straight, roommates, beautiful seniors (basically everyone, the emotional ho that I was), I’d try to find answers through my work. When I was confused about why I sucked at understanding romance or approaching it, I analysed my queerness to death and made an animation that explained how heterosexuals had unlimited media to guide them in their love life, but us queers had nothing to teach us. When I was heartbroken and no politics could explain it, I would draw, and dump it in my Instagram. I’m still mentioned in some articles as a queer Insta artist (I call myself gay Rupi Kaur in private). My personal would always be political. So I took advantage of it and made a portfolio out of it. I was building a reputation as that Queer person, as that Queer artist, among my friends as that relentlessly gay friend. In truth just as a person, I had no clue how to navigate my love and sex life. I had placed all my value in making my identity useful – in changing the world, in articulating a politics, and I always prioritised it over (or perhaps even interchanged it with) my actual personal life. I was out and proud, but inside I found myself unexpectedly stumbling upon shame more and more. That shame though, was not about being queer. The better half of every ‘It Gets Better’ narrative starts with coming out. I had already done that. I already knew that liking, loving, desiring women was okay. But my personal life still felt...deeply sad. Whenever I fell for someone, the impossibility of it all would fall like a great weight on me. I was afraid of falling in love, because every time the person was either straight or not interested in me. I taught myself to confess my feelings but only did it when I was already in too deep. I didn’t know how to flirt or test the waters with someone because I was at a stage where just the prospect of befriending a queer person itself would freak me out, forget expressing romantic or sexual interest in them. In college we were surrounded by romancing and sexing and hormones flying around. But I felt completely in the dark about how sexual interactions happened, let alone know how to engage in them myself. I think I never was able to spot a queer person and just befriend them because somewhere I had convinced myself that if I was in a supportive environment, who was I to ask for more? I felt silly for wanting a community, wanting to seek out more queer people, for being single and utterly inexperienced in my personal life in spite of being in a liberal art school where according to other Bangaloreans, “every second person is bisexual”. If there was a word for cruising for queer women, I would have sucked at it. Whenever I went to queer events, the utter confidence with which people oozed sexuality or openly flirted with each other only served to reinforce my insecurities, because I just didn’t know how to get there. I was ashamed of struggling with my sexuality long after having done the entire I’m Out and Proud thing. I guess what I didn’t realise was that more than anything else, I was struggling with being sexual, not homosexual. Which may not be different from anyone else, but for a queer person when that struggle is reduced to ‘coming out’ or ‘being accepted’, and personal goalposts are all about resisting prejudice, it leaves out a big part of ‘love learning’ – of learning to love, to desire, and having a love and sex life. I used to try to find the answers to all my struggles in my queerness and to some extent it did help to be reassured that, yes, it was more difficult to find love as a queer person because – statistical odds, haha, and that, yes, I didn’t get any training from real life or media on dating as a queer woman. But this ended up blinding me to something more fundamental: that a lot of my insecurities stemmed from sexual shame, not necessarily because I was queer. I may have discovered myself straightaway in identity politics (and I am truly glad I skipped the “Oh shit I’m an abomination this isn’t normal” phase), but my identity as a queer person soon became a bit of a shield to protect myself from the turbulence that comes with one’s private life, in the world of love, in the world of sex. I didn’t take my steps into these worlds because it got easy to foreground my queerness and ignore the fact that I wanted love and sex as a person, not for the sake of ideology. And somewhere it was easy to ignore it, because I have in many ways been taught to think of relationships and sex as an indulgent and unimportant. It was easier to say I was queer and think it was socially and politically relevant, than to say I was queer and I wanted to know more people like me to befriend or date. Even when I tried to create a safe space in college, my first fear was, “What if people think I’m doing this just to find people to date?” To be seen as wanting love and pleasure at the most basic human level – that’s an emotional shame no one seemed to be talking about. Even the most woke of people around me would never be caught dead admitting to actively looking for intimacy (ahem ahem, Tinder shamers). To admit to being lonely was to let down ‘the cause’. I think my turning point for acknowledging and dealing with this shame firsthand happened when I joined Tinder. I owe Tinder-Bhai a lot. It was my first and best wingman and pushed me to do what I desired in my private life more than anyone else. I did get some flak because of it because not many around me really took Tinder seriously. I first got on it during an exchange programme because it was so far away from home. I even managed to bring my date over for dinner at my dorm, and overcame that fear of being seen as a sexual dating being. Back in India it took some time and (yet another) glorious heartbreak to push me back into the dating world. Tinder allowed me to see myself as a queer being, but through a more personal lens. I sexted for the first time. Went on dates. Learnt to gauge and express interest. Sent pictures of the moon. Talked. Talked a lot. I not only started learning how people find sexual or romantic partners, but also ended up meeting a lot of queer women I had these personal conversations with, conversations I never realised I needed to have. Tinder made me overcome my shame of actively wanting more queer friends and made me take the first trembling steps to a support group. I don’t know how to express the utter relief that came with being able to do these without berating myself for “asking for too much”. I wish there was an easy way to explain to the world that wanting intimacy isn’t shameful, to tell my mother that my lovers are as important to me as family, and that Tinder is my favourite place sometimes. I’ve never been ashamed of being queer, but the moral obligation we attach to queer persons – expecting them to change the world and explain themselves to everyone else, or to present themselves as trophies for assimilation – made me craft an image for myself that made it easy to ignore my desires and let in shame. When I realised I was queer, I learnt the language of identity politics not just to find myself in it but also because I felt I’d never be accepted into the queer community without it. But somewhere it failed me, because it allowed me to hide my innermost desires for love and intimacy behind it. While I owe identity politics a lot, and I understand the need to define yourself within it, I still hope every queer person finds that peace that comes with acknowledging yourself as a person with love and desire like everyone else. In a world bent on politicising and othering us, even if only with the goal of ‘acceptance’, it helps to give yourself that space. It's still hard, but I'm learning to do things like hold my girlfriend's hand at Marine Drive without feeling weird, being comfortable being cheesy, and not judging people for being the same. I'm learning to prioritise love. I have always been told that family and work is priority and love is secondhand maal. That I'm a lesser person for wanting it. But I am unlearning. I am far more comfortable with hickeys showing and living peacefully in my private life without theorising too much about it or turning it into another queer art project. I guess I am now getting better at being a quieter queer. Earlier, I used to see queer people who were just living their lives without making too much of a hoo-haa about their identity and felt annoyed by them. I thought they weren't doing their duty by not being political about it. But lately when I see such people, I feel a reassurance and a certain liberation. To be reminded that whatever my identity is, I am at the end of the day a person like everyone else.

Amma, I Wonder If You Had Orgasms

I have always wanted to ask you this. Can you tell me about your orgasms?

I have always wanted to ask you this. Can you tell me about your orgasms? When did you discover your body? At what age? Did you let that boy with whom you played carrom touch you? Something about the way you spoke about him always made me wonder. I imagined you outside that Mumbai chawl, sitting with those boys, skirt and braid, and aiming straight. Do you touch yourself? Does water pleasure you? I discovered what a personal faucet could do to me in the toilet of the office in that faraway seaside city. You remember, all the houses we stayed in had toilets with a tap and a plastic mug. I was intrigued by the faucet. I tested it, and the jet stream of water was such a shock. I tried to adjust the force and as I was figuring out how much pressure I could bear, something happened. I did not quite understand it, and I think I was a bit stunned. It was an afternoon, my salwar around my ankles, and I sat playing with this long metallic malleable cord. I tried it again. A certain pressure, in a certain area. I could feel my thigh muscles clenching a bit. I tentatively tried it again, and there seemed to be some strange, and yet familiar sensation building up deep inside. And then the inevitable happened. I spent a lot of office afternoons inside that toilet. I discovered what a good thing it is that no one bothers with time when a girl takes her bag into the loo. We never did have that talk. I remember, after someone sniggered that I have sprouted wisps in my underarms, you did speak to me. You told me something about how I am to become a flower soon. And that many boys will be interested in touching that flower, and I needed to be careful. I had no clue about why I was being given a lesson in gardening, but I wish we had spoken about that tight little bud and my own fingers doing the touching. Maybe then I could tell you about how I sometimes used to worry that I would suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, and that was not because of any typing. I masturbate often, many a time just because I am bored and there is nothing to do, especially on the weekends. I eat whatever I can find, lie down, undo my pajama knots and begin. And then sleep all afternoon. It makes me happy. I remember how you used to sleep in the afternoon, after coming back from work. You had to catch the five-o-clock local in the morning. Pa and I used to wake up much later, take our roti-subzi dabbas you packed for us and grumble – how the quick on-off you used to do with the tube light to check your saree pallu-pleats in the only full-length mirror in the bedroom interrupted our important dreams. We were horrid creatures. I am sorry. But Pa did clean toilets and wash clothes. And I took up cooking as soon as I could for he could never go beyond that one dish. So we were not all that bad, I hope. The one I love now doesn’t sleep in the afternoons. He prowls around with a book, walking here and there. We sometimes fight over my sleeping in the afternoons. He always makes it a point to rustle-rustle in the bedroom until I open my eyes, and he grins that it is time to wake up. Sometimes I sleepily hug him and pull him into the bed. Sometimes I become grumpy. And we fight. Our first bed fight (what do you call fights about sex?) was over my masturbating. We were snuggling and kissing, and slowly we had stripped each other off. He took his time in unwrapping me, he is thorough that way. After a while he stepped off to go look for a condom. The room was dipped in moonlight slipping in through that errant curtain. I rubbed my thighs with my palms, just feeling my own flesh. And my fingers just slipped in, and before I knew it, I had come. I opened my eyes to see him watching me. He looked sad. You couldn’t wait for me, he said. I said, no, no, come to me. But he just looked so sad, and walked away. We were just discovering each other then. What made me comfortable, what made him comfortable. I discovered that after we have sex, my masturbation climax is most powerful. There is this warmth of a body around you, his lips on my breast, hot limbs wrapped around, and warm fingers inside of me. I recently shared this, when asked what gives me pleasure by someone I have just met. I am in this ineffable space – dhak-dhak set to words on a screen. Amma, our bodies are so similar. Does it mean, your preferences for pleasure are the same? Are you attracted to women too? She and I were stretched on a bed, watching a movie on the laptop kept on a table, adjusted to the right height. We were drunk a bit and the lights were off. Streaks from the laptop dusted her face a dark blue. We laughed at something, I don’t remember what, and she snuggled next to me. Her face turned, and she kissed me. I remember her soapy perfume tightened by the summer night, and her long, long legs. I often dream of women. I discussed it with a friend, and she said, it is difficult to say how much of it is because of this culture where women are objectified, and you too start thinking of them as objects of lust, and how much is because you are attracted to women. Most mainstream sexual stimulus is built around a woman’s body, no? I am quite confused. I once came across a magazine stuffed into the pouch in front when riding a train abroad. It was filled with nudes of men. Those trains are mostly empty. I browsed through it, quite thrilled, the feel of paper tantalised more than pixels. There wasn’t any frontal nudity. Sepia and black and white photographs of men with their backs to the camera or faces turned away. I turned the pages, slowly, my fingers tracing a man’s back, as he bent, just a bit, straining his thighs, with his butt curved. I left the magazine in the train. Do you remember the time we watched Kamasutra? In our nighties, you and I sat on the sofa together, when it came on cable that night. Pa, as usual, had slept. When that scene came, you giggled and asked me to close my eyes. I giggled, and said, I do know what happens, I have seen it before. Startled, you laughed, and then we laughed together. The chawl you grew up in did not have a sofa. A huge joint family lived there together. You told me how you all slept together. Fathers, brothers, mothers, and children. An uncle and a niece. You never spoke about it, I never found the words to ask. But I could hear it in your voice. When I came to you one day as a teenager and told you about that other uncle and what happened when I was in an auto with him, you were so angry, and told me he will never touch me again. I need never be afraid. Every time we met him at family gatherings, you would be my shield. Even as the years went past, and my memory of that evening in the auto dissolved, I know you never forgot, because one day at a family event, I was laughing at a joke he said leaning into him, you suddenly showed up, and pulled me away to do some work. And then whispered, “Be careful.” You never had anyone to whisper that to you. You never knew your Amma, who died when you were a baby. You never had anyone who hugged you. Is that why you never like me hugging you? Your hands stick to your sides, stiff, and your face clenches as if you have swallowed a spoonful of particularly sour curds. I would insist and continue to hug you, and at times one of your arms would pat me tap-tap, some sort of wordless placation. I have been trying over the years, hugging you, kissing you, and I think it is only recently you have stopped responding with that strange-non-laugh saying, “Podum, po.” Enough, go. Will you ever hug me back? Ini is 38, female, plots about how to hug strangers, and cooks up poems like 'The moving finger writhes'.

Main Apni Sabse Favourite Hoon: Chronicles of an Instaspam Queen

What is it about being a woman on Instagram that is so joyous, so satisfying – and so annoying to men?

What is it about being a woman on Instagram that is so joyous, so satisfying – and so annoying to men? Here was yet another straight man telling me that I Instagram “too much”. The fifth man in the past two years. I squinted and continued eating my stone-cold sushi in stone-cold silence, trying not to let my annoyance show, for this was someone I was beginning to get those dreaded feelings of attachment and fondness for. And, yet, he here he was, almost choking on his wine to convince me that he was right in being “skeptical” of my instagramming. It was bad enough that I posted at least a photo a day, I also put up stories – what sort of a vain monster was I? He claimed he wasn’t going to stop me from being who I am – oh, the benevolence – but he was “curious” about why I needed to share so much of my everyday life with my 500+ followers. “Why do you need so many people telling you you’re awesome…don’t you know that already?” I was confused. Is this a compliment, or a jibe, or a passive-aggressive attack stemming from an insecurity of my awesomeness? Before I could begin to snipe back at the question, he smiled. A dazzling, charming smile that made me feel guilty about my Instagram habits. Yet again. Strangely enough, that didn’t stop me from instagramming as manically as I have been for about two years now. Sure, I felt bad, but what can I do, I don’t feel bad or good about myself when I Instagram. I do it out of a very manageable need to communicate – a need that I do not want to clamp down on. How do I explain to this skeptical man, I often wondered, that I just like instantly sharing my thoughts, feelings, photographs, jokes, and angst with my small world of friends? Over time, my Instagram habits became the butt of all his jibes at me – in front of his friends, in fights over academic disagreements, in jest, in all seriousness. He called me obsessive – a charge I surrendered to, if only to end the conversation, all the while wondering why he was so obsessed with my obsession. Predictably, we broke up, and I triumphantly put up a selfie to celebrate that moment of liberation. Considering how selfies irked him more than any other posts of mine, I was hardly left with a choice. A few months after feeling guilty about ruining a fledgling relationship, in part, due to my unstoppable instagramming, it occurred to me that had I not instagrammed at all, there would be a different complaint: you don’t Instagram because you’re insecure. I instagrammed this piece of wisdom promptly. After all, who would consider it breaking news that women are constantly surveilled, evaluated, assessed through the eyes of men who feet authorised to express an opinion no one sought in the first place? But this was hardly the first time I had been shamed about my instagramming. And it certainly won’t be the last. The first man who thought that I instagrammed too much, told me that I have a tendency to “instaspam”. A genuine lover of a good word-play, I found the term a total riot, and even put it up on my profile. “Instaspammer”, I called myself. Mr. One was taken aback and even admitted, two years later, that he thought I would’ve felt bad. What I did not tell him was that I felt deeply hurt, and deleted Instagram for a week, suddenly very conscious of what I was coming across as. Maybe I was speaking too much, a trait of mine that is often mocked by friends and family alike albeit half-seriously: “Oh, how much she talks! Nobody can shut her up!” Mr. One had reminded me that I should feel guilty about saying too much, speaking too much, having too much of a presence. For a few days after getting Instagram back in my life, I was very self-conscious. Just as self-conscious as when I first wore a spaghetti top at the age of twelve and my friend’s mother asked me why I wanted to show so much of my body. Thankfully, unlike then, I was now able to shrug it off and get back in the Instagram game with as much abandon as before. Women friends that I narrated this story to reminded me that I am a sociologist. Isn’t this annoyance of women “saying too much”, women having “too much” fun, being “too pleased with themselves” – the fears of men who want to define the terms of our engagement with the world? I conveyed as much to Mr. Two who, a fellow academic, said he thought that was too easy an answer. Mr. Two is a deep thinker, a philosopher, a theorist. As if the academic smirk that emerged as I was trying to explain that I Instagram “for fun” was not enough of a response, he insisted on articulating his thoughts: what about teenagers who are growing up in the age of narcissism? All these selfies, these poses, this obsession with making one’s skin appear brighter…all this points to an obsession with oneself and, by ignoring that, I was being unfair to all those genuinely concerned about an obsession with vanity. (There it was again, the equivalent of “there are children starving in Bangladesh”, the apocalypse that women will bring upon the world, to make you feel guilty about something you did for fun, in which you enjoyed sharing yourself, your body, your thoughts, at will, at random.) I asked him if he had ever talked to teenagers who were posting these selfies about why they did so. He seemed unsure about why that mattered. Their intentions don’t change the detrimental effects of narcissism, he explained patiently to an instaspammer, while I watched him fall deeper in love with how smart he was. I didn’t give up and asked him if he thinks that we should we not let people express themselves in whatever fashion they want. He retorted with a grunt and said, “We all know everyone overcompensates on this app because they want validation… everyone who posts too much is basically just deeply vain, insecure – or probably both!” He seemed pleased with his own analysis. I indulged this too. What I did not tell him then, and I wish I had, was that countless women I knew considered him vain and insecure – for if we could get him to stop loving his own velvety voice at an academic conference, perhaps he would shut up and let others speak. Who said vanity or insecurity was only about one’s appearance? Enter Mr. Three. Heart at first sight. A self-hating academic (I had decided to stay away from the intellectual bros), and a lover of visual art. An instagrammer. Whew, I thought to myself. Mr. Three instagrammed pictures of what he considered scenes worth capturing. Sunsets. Skylines. An obscure street. A sculpture. Strangers. Candles. Sunsets. Sunsets, Sunsets. No captions, no people – for captions are tacky and nobody was as interesting as he. My face certainly was not worth capturing. My posts were not worth liking (one had to earn his Instagram affection). My photography skills were not sophisticated enough to capture his fantastic self. He was the authority, after all, on what is a good click. I couldn’t just demand validation because we were together. How could I be so precocious? All this thought about who should like what on Instagram, by the way, from someone who claimed to “not care” about any of this. For eight months, I felt real pressure to aspire to a standard that would befit His Highness. I bent over backwards to take pictures with “the right frame”, I willed myself to hate filters, I put myself in his shoes and took care to strive for symmetry, I ditched captions to my photos, and I shunned selfies (the horror!). No matter what I did, I was told “Surely, you can do better.” Ironically enough, the moment we ended our toxic intimacy, I instantly took better pictures. I was no longer afraid of being judged. Sometimes, his crisp voice haunts me:                                                               Women are being fooled by these tech companies; The revolution will not occur if women keep taking selfies; Why does this woman post so many photos of herself – and why do you encourage that by liking her every post; If you like all of everyone’s pictures, your ‘like’ doesn’t mean anything; Why do you post so often; Why, why, why… And whenever this voice pervades my insides with its seductive tenor, I tell myself: If you don’t account for everything you do and prove it is worthwhile by some standards, then whatever you do is deemed worthless. With these experiences in mind, Mr. Four was a lovely surprise. He said he loved my Instagram account. It’s so full of life, he said. In four weeks, however, he was condescendingly amused. So amused that it bordered on disbelief. Surely, I was slacking off at work; surely, I was doing nothing else but Instagramming; surely, I was not reading enough; surely, I was not writing enough; surely, I had no hobbies. Words, I realised, would hardly allay amusement. I added one task to my ever-expanding daily activity list: getting rid of this naysayer. If nothing, he would be impressed with my ability to do multiple things at once: to be able to dump him while posting a selfie of myself looking relieved. I was officially tired of being viewed with suspicion: how are you a PhD student if you’re not slaving at away at your research, feeling the pathos of the entire world, shouldering the responsibility of being a “critical thinker”? Why, dear aspiring sociologist with an entire dissertation to write, are you Instaspamming? If anyone cared enough to ask me, I would tell them that I think it’s great fun to share moments of my life that I think are worth sharing with a set of people. Do I think that there’s a lot in my life that’s worth sharing? Yes, probably. Why? I’ve always been like this – eager to tell you about my life. My writing, too, has always been derivative of my personal experiences, and I’ve never quite shied away from thinking through my own experiences and finding moments that might resonate with more than just me. Beyond this, I haven’t had felt the need to excavate my own behaviour. Why can’t I have my own compulsions, my own compulsiveness? Why do I have to lay bare my “behaviour” and make sense of my actions as if I was obliged to the Ghosts of Boyfriends Past? That a very satisfying answer to my existential non-woes was waiting around the corner was a good surprise to me. About a month ago, a male friend of mine commented that his Instagram stories are too obviously gendered: most of them are by women. It irked him that here too, men watched women. Women perform, like belly dancers, and men gaze at them; women feel the pressure of being watched, and go about pleasing the male gaze, he lamented. Of course, I, too, have noticed the skewed nature of Instagram posting, especially with selfies (which is why it gives me unbridled joy when I see a man post a selfie). But his observation made me realise that I like Instagram for exactly the reason he was feeling ‘troubled’ by : I love the fact that most of my content and newsfeed is by women. I like the fact that women take up space on Instagram. I like that women share their outfits, their thoughts, their feelings, their faces, their coffee, their dogs, their cats, their shoes, their hair, their heartbreak, their mimosas, their sunrises, their sunsets, their nights, and their gaze. I like that women post about their heartbreak, that women post screenshots of men being shitty to them, that women can follow other women who inspire them – or just make them laugh. I like that I can like all this. That it’s a world defined by what pleases these women – their amusements, their pastimes, their insecurities, their desire to be admired or their wish for community. And it breaks my heart when I see number of women on my newsfeed apologise when they post “too much”, apologise for selfies, apologise for wanting to share moments of their life, apologise for having a presence. Every time I see a woman add a little apologetic disclaimer about how she is seeking validation “because she is having a bad day”, that little Instagram heart seems a bit broken. Perhaps mending that broken heart requires us to own up to our desires. Most women are told that “wanting to be looked at” is wrong. We have been told from our childhood that we must hunch our backs, cower our heads, walk quickly, and not garner attention. It’s not safe, it’s not right, it’s not something “good women” do. In the virtual streets, we are still figuring out our presence, our participation, on our own terms. But once we are walking these virtual streets, let’s not shy away and skulk away from being what we want to be, from being seen the way we want to be seen, from loitering, or shouting from the rooftops.   Sneha is as Sneha does…while she roams around the streets of Hyderabad supposedly doing research while actually just InstaSpamming.   

How Shru Stopped Hating Herself (With A Little Help From Her Dad)

From self-harm and shame, to learning to be your own hero!


 

Menopause: A Poem

"My tongue has sharpened."

The colours are changing. The silver in my hair stealing a march over the blacks, The carpet that’s begun to match the drapes. The youthful ‘tch’ of irritation My teen makes as I ask him to thread the needle, Explain the mysteries of Instagram, Find my glasses. The eyes that flashed fire. Mriganayani, the lover said, I need some distance. Shifting the focal length Gives great perspective. So he retreated, Into the vanishing point. The big shift is coming. As summer draws to a close A tightening, a drying, As the womb prepares for The Long Quiet. What does a uterus do When it no longer weeps For babies that could have been? It’s snuck up on me, My eggs running low. One more baby, I should have liked. A pregnancy that wasn’t an oops. Mind you, there are things I won’t miss, The calendar, the shecup, the pms, The furtive visit to the chemist For a pregnancy test kit, The i-pill, the IUD, the OCs, the condom. Creation. Prevention. And once, Destruction. It is hard for one woman To wield so much power responsibly, that takes three gods, traditionally. I cannot shrink back into the Androgyny of pre-pubescence What then are the climacteric colours of my body? Is it in the freeing of my speech; My tongue has sharpened. My patience for those that judge Runs a little thin, Along with my uterine lining. All else droops slightly, The daily 5k run notwithstanding. And there’s softening too. Not quick to anger anymore, Quick to forgive, For we are all fools for love. And what’s the English word for ठहराव, Is it the pause between two notes? That benediction of silence, The preparation for the last mile, Crackling autumn’s colours underfoot. And a burst of second wind, Before collapsing willingly into Winter’s senescence.
Hema left a blip of a corporate career to homeschool her two children. She is a perennially hopeful handwork artist who writes to find meaning in the mundane and carve small spaces of silence in the clamour. When not on Facebook, you can find her athttps://youareanothing.com

I Faked Orgasms to be Polite

You know how we’re taught that good kids don't go for second helpings of food? I carried that training into my sex life

A year ago, during a casual conversation with my colleague, I made a joke about faking orgasms. She was shocked that I should have faked an orgasm. I was shocked that she never had. That’s when I started to think about orgasms a whole lot more. I am not sure when I began faking my orgasms. I do remember that my first sexual experience, when I was 19, was a very lovely one. I am not sure if I had an orgasm (and I can’t remember if I faked one) the very first time, but I enjoyed the sex. Perhaps I did  exaggerate the amount that I enjoyed the entire thing, though. I mean, we were seeing each other after six months and had booked a hotel room, and there was so much build-up and investment that I think it seemed imperative that the ‘climax’ was good too. But I do remember one thing clearly from that day: we smoked Cuban cigars later that night, and it made me cough, and I decided that I didn’t like Cuban cigars. We practiced having sex a lot in the coming days, and it was incredibly enjoyable. Some days more so, and some days less. Some days I checked out midway. Some days I was not so excited by the idea of it, but I went along with it anyway. Some days I orgasmed, some days I wasn’t sure if I did, and some days I certainly didn’t come. Every time, I acted like I did. The funny thing is my partner was very good to me, and though I don’t know how he would have reacted if I had told him directly that I hadn’t orgasmed, I suspect it wouldn’t have been so bad. But it never occurred to me that that was an option. I am not sure what exactly put the idea in my head that I could – and should – fake it. Although I was just beginning to excitedly exploring sex, the truth is I knew very little about it. I remember moving to Delhi from a small town when I was 15 years old. At that time I did not even know how sex worked – the largest and the most relied-on source of what sex was supposed to look like, for me, was Hindi films. The image that sticks most in my mind is that familiar and common close-up of the heroine’s face as the hero smells her neck, and she knits her eyebrows as if she has been given a particularly difficult math sum to solve. As though she is almost in pain, but liking it. I also got my ideas about sex from American TV shows like Gossip Girl and The OC, where teenagers always had racy, wild sex which was edited to fast music. All the cool girls in Gossip Girl were having a good time, having sex in amazing clothes in the bathrooms at parties they were attending. Or people would start making out, then get into the bedroom, then clothes would be taken off (all with the steamy making out still going on), and then the girl would – that’s right – knit her eyebrows and tilt her head back in pleasure. Then they would get under the sheets. Fade to black. In my first relationship, I was the one who broached the subject of sex first, I was the one who booked the hotel room, I even bought some cheap red lacy undergarments from the market at Delhi’s GKI. All the good couples on TV were having great sex all the time. So I suppose I wanted to make that my narrative too. And that is true for all other aspects of my relationships and my life – like most people, I suppose I need to be liked and need to fit in. I choose a popular ideal to strive for, and keep trying to get my life to go according to that script, but that rarely happens. When it’s not about sex, I am aware of the possibility of things going off script. When it comes to sex, though, I know of no in-betweens. In all the movies and TV shows I’ve seen, there has only been amazing sex – the kind that makes people wake up the next day smiling, or the kind where it’s so awful that you have to leave in the middle of the night. There is nothing about the million ways sex can turn out differently every time. So if I had learned from what I was watching that sex has to be had in a certain way, I also learned that if the sex is not good, it’s a total disaster. I didn't want my relationships to be a total disaster! Maybe being honest about not orgasming every time I had sex would have been like accepting that my relationship and sexual life were not perfect, and perhaps that’s one reason I didn’t examine what I was doing too much. I was able to be honest with myself about smaller things – like disliking Cuban cigars – but not about the bigger things that really mattered. I remember confessing to my partner that I wasn't sure I even had an orgasm, because I wasn't sure if what I was experiencing was an orgasm. He wasn’t particularly disappointed to hear that. But that didn't make a huge difference to my sexual behaviour. It’s been many years since that relationship ended. The number of orgasms or the amount of sex is not what I remember, I remember only that it was full of love, it was passionate, it was fun because we were both learning and exploring every day. And most times, even when I didn't come, I enjoyed sex. After that I had another partner with whom I had a very good sexual relationship. But that was only at first. He was much less kind. As I got more and more sad in the relationship, I faked orgasms more. By this time I was aware that I was doing it, by this time I knew I wasn’t enjoying myself at all, but I did feel scared of him. I would carefully calculate when it was enough time to say that I was done for it to be convincing enough. This time, the sex was hurting me emotionally, and I knew it, but I faked it (in sex and rest of the relationship) till I couldn't take it anymore. I wonder if that comes from a gendered conditioning – that women have to be self-effacing and soothe men’s egos. Or maybe it comes from how I had been conditioned about romance – that you don’t give up on love. Well, I did love him, but I wish someone had told me then that you can and should give up on love. I could have saved myself a year of misery. In my experience of heterosexual sex between cis people, we put a lot of the pressure of performance on the man, and that is unfair. Sex is for the pleasure of both people and the onus of pleasure should be on both people. Like many women I know, I didn’t take responsibility for my own pleasure but relied on the generosity of men, and then blamed them for being selfish in bed. We don’t take our own pleasure seriously, even if we talk the talk of sexual freedom online. When I did not feel much pleasure, I just said to myself, “Aah, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter so much.” But that goes beyond sex for me, and I think it is so for many of us. I think how we behave in bed has a lot to do with how we are as people. I am mostly mild-mannered and non confrontational. I think I faked orgasms for many years of my sex life only to be polite. I don’t think I was being honest enough with myself, I don’t think I asked for more or better, just in the way I was taught that good kids don't go for second and third servings of snacks that are served when you go to someone’s house. I carried that training into my sex life until I learned that many women around me were not following the same logic. I realised I was being dishonest about I truly wanted, and I was keeping myself in a lower position than my partner when it came to sexual pleasure. With casual sexual encounters years down the line, I would still fake my orgasms, but I was able to tell my friends more easily that sex was bad. The language I used was based very heavily on unfair expectations of a guy’s ability to perform. I did not take the initiative to communicate my preferences. In these new, shorter relationships, the stakes were low, and I barely ever orgasmed. I understand now that I enjoy sex more when I have a strong emotional and romantic connection with the person. The more loving aspects of intercourse are pleasurable for me, so casual encounters were not so enjoyable. But by then I had found a new narrative I was trying to fit into: the single-girl-about-town. If I was single and not having sex, or single and trying to date but having not great sex, I would be going off script. Looking back, what I really wanted was to be in love with somebody and for somebody to be in love with me. Instead, I acted as if I was not looking for commitment and I was unbothered by casual sex. I told my friends about all the different boys I was seeing and acted cool about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, but that it was less out of my own heart’s desire and more out of a desire to play the part of a young, cool, single, independent girl in a big city. Maybe the attempts to fit the script, maybe the idea of faking anything – orgasms, happiness, control over our circumstances – comes from the belief that if you act like it for long enough, you can will it into being true. A year ago, I decided I would stop faking orgasms. Initially in casual sexual encounters, when I was asked if I was done, and I said no, it was followed by disappointment, which was followed by a conversation where I explained why I didn't orgasm, or don't always. But it was liberating to tell my straight male partners that they were not ‘killing it’ in bed, and that they were not giving an exam in which only the highest score mattered. That was something I had to unlearn for myself. Sex ends when the guy comes – that’s been another important unlearning for me. I am now in a relationship that is kind. The sex is great, I don’t fake my orgasms, and we often have conversations about what we like and don’t like. To say, “Yes, more of this!” and “ No, none of that please,” feels so good. I am able to introspect about my own sexualness through our conversations. I am abIe to be truthful – it doesn’t come to me naturally, but I try. I’ve explained to my partner that I experience pleasure on a scale, that I feel pleasure right from the moment I am touched, so not reaching orgasm is not disappointing for me – it is not the ultimate medal. I have had good sex before, but now I am trying to have honest sex, and I must say, I like it very much! It has helped me be honest in other aspects of my relationship with my partner too. However, my relationship with myself has been tougher to work on. I still, inside and outside of sex, feel unable to ask for more from people. I am an “it’s okay” and “yes, thank you” person – I say these things without thinking. But it’s important to me that I keep working to change this behaviour. The pursuit of the ideal is an unnecessary burden we often carry, and the truth is that we do not just land on the ideal, we arrive at it – or somewhere near it – with some trial and error. It’s like the first time you hold someone in bed: you don’t quite get it right, you need to arrange yourself, move an arm, lift a leg, fix the quilt, shift the pillow, rearrange yourself, and then maybe you will find a position to lie in comfortably. But that, too, will be transient, and you will have to start again to find what suits you. I suppose that, just as in sex, the fun of trying to reshape oneself can lie as much in the process as it does in the finish.   Umang is a  film-maker, a delusional optimist and wants to change the world. 

To be Truly Sex Positive, I Think We Need to Step Back From Sex

Between being strictly platonic and having sex is a sea of sensuality. Are we ready to see that yet?

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Consider first, an eighth grade classroom. It was still a better school than most in India – that is, the toilets did not stink permanently, and the fee was high enough for everyone to ensure we had a teacher guarding us all the time. The class was on biology and the lesson on that woeful subject, “Sexual Reproduction and Health”. Our teacher was trying very hard to limit her frowns and keep a straight face while saying the word “sexual”. 

 Could you blame her, with us on the other side? I cannot remember exactly how I felt about what was going on. Mostly because all the space to feel and talk about anything seemed to have been occupied by a bunch of my classmates (primarily boys) laughing their eyes out. For the first time it seemed we had a lot of questions, and did our best to frame them in the most awkward ways possible. No wonder our teacher struggled, having imposed on herself the additional burden of omitting readily available scientific speech – words such as “penis” and “vagina”, which seemed to throw everyone into peals of laughter, making her doubly self-conscious.

To most of us it seemed a futile exercise, for we had already versed ourselves in this knowledge, albeit in a very different kind of vocabulary – through needlessly detailed slurs and abuses, which were not restricted to locker room banter, but cropped up everywhere, from the playing field to the school canteen.

I vaguely remember another attempt – this time a specialised children’s counsellor who came to talk to us about “something special”. These sessions were conducted separately for boys and girls and the counsellor had this to say: that it was only “natural” for us to feel certain emotions at our age. Predictably, my friends burst out laughing, dissecting and repeating each of these words. I on the other hand, sat baffled. I found myself increasingly incompetent at understanding exactly what “feelings”, “emotions” and “thoughts” this woman was referring to, why my friends found them so funny, but also, why they were supposed to descend on me so naturally? Perhaps it was because she was a “specialised” counsellor and hence never felt the need to clearly state exactly what was so “natural” about it. The only thing that seemed “natural” at that moment was hunger. I recall earnestly waiting for the bell to ring, so I could grab my lunch-box and get out of there. 

My ‘Girlfriend’ 

Consider another scene, sometime in those “charged” years we spent in “high school”. I knew someone whom I called my “girlfriend” – at least all my friends wanted me to call her that even before I began to think about it. I remember conversations which lasted for hours and the things we cared about, talked about and fought about: why don’t you pick up when I call? Why can’t I bunk classes for her sake? Why can’t we make grand gestures for each other’s birthdays? But my most vivid memory was feeling the question that lingered at the back of every room we entered: “Had we done it?!”

For the longest time of course, I tried figuring out the “it”. Don’t worry, I wasn’t so oblivious even then, that I didn’t know what “it” meant – I had seen A-rated films. But, I still had many questions about the “it”. As evident, biology classes had been no help.

My friends preferred to leave such wisdom to the darker underbelly of the Internet, or responded to any genuine curiosity with graphic humour that often involved some degree of violence for either sex. And even if you had a fair idea about “it”, there were all these logistics nobody wished to talk about. Do I make a move? Do I meet her halfway? When do I know she is halfway? What after the first brush? The first touch? The first kiss? The answer I found most acceptable came from Yahoo Answers: “Relax. It’ll just happen when it has to.” (“Natural”, right?)

So one fine day, we have been hanging out as usual. There is… a moment, between the fourth and the fifth period at recess. We’re locking eyes, we’re blocking out all the commotion in the room – most importantly, we’re safe from the view of the world (primarily, any teachers who might mistakenly think that coming for class on time would be a good idea). Pop culture tells me this is my chance and I should go for it. Cue in violins and other rosy image filters, and look carefully at the soft golden sunlight falling on our brown skins.

In my head although: Okay, so are we there yet? Does my breath smell of the parantha I just ate? Do my teeth have any of that chocolate cookie we shared? Won’t we look funny pouting at each other? Are my lips too dry? Is my tongue too wet? Are my palms too sweaty? Are her palms too sweaty? What if her hair gets in my way? And… Well, the bell rang and nothing happened. Or, I like to blame the bell in my version of the story anyway. We didn’t last for too long after that.

I’m sure we had ample opportunity to do something, but we didn’t. And I’m not so sure that it was because neither of us wanted to. I just told myself that a moral police force of teachers and parents, a strictly enforced regime of time-tables and exams, of “everything else” going on in our worlds – meant I would never be in a mood to do “it” so long as High School lasted. I was, as it turns out, wrong. Not about my chances of doing something in high school. Instead I think I was lying to myself about what hindered me from doing the things I thought I was ‘meant’ to do.   

A Different Kind of Love 

Consider now, the college campus. For a person who was anxious enough to be rid of the anxiety of making love, I sure enough ended up in the most ironic situation possible – our hub for bunking classes, the college canteen, was colloquially called “LP”, an acronym which stood for “Lover’s Point”. No pressure. I would keep assuring myself that it will come when it has to. It will come to me when I am with “someone special”, when we’re both in the right headspace and on the same page. We would just “know” what to do. 

 And I guess I did find many special people in my life at the “LP”.

We loved each other while sharing plates of chowmein. While warming hands holding cups of cheap coffee to counter the chill of the much romanticised Dilli ki sardi. While being there for one another through thick and thin, amounting to friendship goals, as much as Jai and Veeru do from Sholay. But I like to believe there was a different kind of love as well. One I expressed to someone while the sun set on Connaught Place, and we sat next to a Subway on the same block as one of my favourite bookstores. This love built on a spark was slow to brew – it came through WhatsApp conversations which lasted for hours, sharing books and essays, ranting and bitching about things and people we didn’t like, appreciating poetry and paintings alike.

It was a chronicle that came into being text by text, mixed with hurt and lots of speculation. It was a relationship slow to mouth itself in the terms demanded by that precious four letter word – for again, I knew what else lingered in the air. What was it to love someone if you did not wish to touch them or hold them sexually? If I were to call it “love” anyway, would it be fair to keep them waiting for me to cross that last lap?

There were neither clear answers to these questions around me – nor any precedents to show the way. I wondered (still do) if this was not indeed a necessary experience? How would I know otherwise that the longing to “be” with someone sexually is not intrinsic in me? If I loved someone with all the passion I could muster, all the care I did (and did not) put in, and could still be wary of holding their hand, caressing their lips, lying next to them… then surely I lacked the urge for physical intimacy in a very conventional sense. Surely, it was just not going to “happen” for me – no matter how right a person was and no matter how right the time was. And the most honest way I could have confronted this was to speak about it with this person.

This person, who had known me at my worst and my best; who for over a year, had inspired me and sought comfort in me, was the only person I could honestly rely on. But even then our words fumbled when we broached the subject. Even then we struggled to look the other in the eye, to talk about our sexual (dis)comforts openly. It did not seem right, whether sharing burgers or walking through a university campus, to seek out a candid conversation on what bothered both of us. We had been trained to think that talking aloud about such things, to converse about our sexual pleasures and discomforts with each other was not appropriate – and largely, we stuck to the script. Mumbling a few words here and there, and not looking each other in the eye. It fell apart eventually. Like all love, ours was an asymmetry, but not one that we could easily fit into. I felt lonely. I felt that I needed to pine after her company and our texts – as if attacked by a Shakespearean flu, I wrote verse after verse describing what we couldn’t be. Time and again, I reminded myself that it was okay. It was better not staying together, and looking for mutuality elsewhere, rather than staying together all the time and evading conversations regularly. 

Asexual? 

I have been told that I am probably an “asexual”. At one point I tried making a profile on a dating app for “Ace Folks” and was bombarded with a bunch of options to identify against (twelve in all – everything from “aromantic asexual” to “lithoromantic asexual”). I thanked heavens for option thirteen – “confused” – and moved on. 

 But there are moments when I feel that I am most probably, maybe not an asexual – and everyone should be free to play in this ambiguity, without having to affix ourselves in the scientific certitude of labelled attraction. “Love is love is love”: the chant many of my well-meaning left-liberal (even liberal) acquaintances have thrown my way. I am sorry to disappoint them, but love is almost never held at the same plane of passionate significance in our lives. They also say you just “know” what you’re attracted or not attracted to, much the same way straight and gay folk know what they find sexually appealing. It is a seemingly sound and a politically correct argument to make, one which allows for an apt rebuttal every time “straight” folk suggest: “But how can you know, if you don’t try?” In this procession of certainty, it might make us all a bit uneasy to accept the ambiguity of my sexual half-existence.

I suppose between being strictly platonic and “having sex” is a sea of sensuality – the intimacy of a friend hugging you, the snuggly sensation of surety in resting your head on a shoulder, the absolute pleasure in waking up next to “somebody special” with your clothes still on – and it should be possible to enjoy all of these sensations without privileging one over the other, without calling any one of these ‘the real thing’. I think it is this possibility of a non-hierarchy that can make loving truly radical.

A friend once hugged me unexpectedly, leaving behind a lingering memory that made me grin foolishly at multiple points in the coming weeks. Another time, the same person left me a text – replying to something I had sent months ago – making me gush uncontrollably in the middle of work. At some point I think, I even fantasised about us kissing each other in a silly daydream. It felt like all the irrationality of a Bollywood romance would plague me for days. But it stopped sooner than that. At some point I was quite comfortable letting it all go, perhaps to revisit the prospect again someday… who knows? I could be love-sick, I realised. But I could also heal myself more easily from a madness that wasn’t as all-consuming as folks made it out to be. More importantly, I think, this knowledge wasn’t naturally there for me to grab, but came as a mixed surprise.

Love it seemed, could be a fond memory, almost as delightful as eating a donut, and pass me by just as quickly. It could also be a poetic tragedy – sometimes maybe, to be forgotten completely. 

Strings attached 

Why these events stick out in my memory is not necessarily because I know better now, or want to go back and course correct. But rather, because while my lack of enthusiasm for sex has persisted, I am also aghast at our immaturity in talking about sexual desire.

My closest friends are often baffled at my surplus desire to comment on sex, love and all that jazz, given my non-existent ‘dating’ life. I can only scoff because, firstly, it would be very un-Indian of me not to comment on other people’s business and look at my own, and secondly, as oppositional as it may sound, it will only be in a truly sex-positive environment that I can speak openly about my lack of interest in the sexual. It will only be once the uneasiness is out that I can easily talk about what makes me uneasy. This holds true for all of us, from victims of harassment, to ones who proudly claim the “asexual” badge.

It would help a great deal if we can find a way, as a society, to bring in a sexual revolution that normalises talking about boundaries and desires, and possibly move on. And yes, I do want to move on, for there is a lot left in love to explore other than the sexual. I have had – relationships – for lack of a better word (but do they need a better word?), that have given me hope and support (emotional and physical); men and women who have uplifted me from zones of terror-stricken anxiety to feeling at ease with myself and my body.

At some moments, we have a tendency to be more intense with each other, to act like jealous lovers and spurned partners. At other moments I have been able to pull back and given them space to be with whom they want. Or taken some space for myself, without worrying too much about how the other person might feel hurt or dejected. But we could stand to be careful though, in not letting the pendulum swing over too much. Sometimes, the only ways in which the sexual is dealt with, within rigidly masculine circles, is through the grotesque: where the only way to deal with rejection is to lash out; and the only means to seek any intimate connection is to be purely physical.

Increasingly, it seems that being “cool” about sex means replicating such tendencies: jumping from body to body, not being curious at all, but acting so chill that you eliminate completely the will to pause and think – making it more a kind of violence than an act of hedonism. It’s almost funny how, in such cases, the only way to be sex-positive is to dial back a little, and consider the possibility of thinking about people as people, and not just as bodies.

This is not to rule out the possibility of sexual pleasure for pleasure’s sake, but rather to say that “meaningless” hook-ups and romantic encounters are not necessarily binary opposites. Between the two, pleasure may be discovered in many different ways of being with one another. It might, for instance, exist in knowing someone intimately, without ever having to sexually embrace them – finding pleasure that does not shape into any physical form or expression.

In a world where we’re increasingly told that to be radical you have to be okay with embracing the physical with no strings attached, we might be even more radical in straying a bit from the sexual. It might be radical, for instance, to cuddle and just that – to not cut all strings, but to look for other types of strings to attach.

While for some of us, straying from the sexual is not exactly an “option”, but rather a comfortable way of existence, for others it might prove an opportunity to think/fantasise more ethically and caringly about the ways in which we exercise our sexuality. 

Ishan is 22 and currently works at the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Ashoka University.

How My Relationships Made Me Question Pyaar, Azaadi aur Accountability

Is ‘demanding accountability’ just a euphemism for trying to control someone?

My first ideas about what a romantic relationship should look like emerged from what I saw around me as a child. I remember seeing disrespect and violence. I dealt with the painful reality of these abusive relationships by latching instead onto the fantasy woven by Hindi cinema of the 90s, of Raj and Simran romancing to “Tujhe dekha toh ye jaana sanam” in the snowy Alps, overcoming all odds, and Babuji finally saying “Jaa Simran jaa, jee le apni zindagi!” And thus I hoped that in the future, being in a relationship would set me free from my abusive surroundings. When my first boyfriend drove me through the beautiful hillside of the Guwahati-Shillong highway, for the first time in my life, I saw a glimpse of myself – my love for travel. I felt the breeze of love. I understood freedom for the first time, freedom to wander alone, and freedom from my extremely restrictive childhood. That eight-year-long relationship ended with emotional and physical violence. And my second relationship ended because my partner’s mother behaved condescendingly towards me and my family, and I objected to her behaviour. When I opposed the idea of her living with us after we were to be married, my partner – who disapproved of the work I loved because of my erratic schedule, the long periods of travel, and the fact that I wouldn’t be around 24x7 for our (future) family – told me resentfully, “Go have your freedom” – as if me demanding freedom was to blame for our break up. And that got me wondering. He wanted me to be accountable to him for my choices. But is ‘demanding accountability’ just a euphemism for trying to control someone? Did being in a relationship mean that I could never have freedom? Did being accountable to my partner in different ways mean surrendering control over myself? Or could there be an accountability that was positive and nurturing – and mutual? I decided to ask other people about their experiences of relationships. What does freedom in a relationship look like? Sofia* (29), an NGO professional, said that freedom within a relationship meant having a safe space, where her “instincts, expressions, and choices are respected and accepted; there is honesty and open communication; a sense of healthy dependence balanced with personal independence and most importantly, a space to be yourself, challenge yourself, and grow.” For Albeli* (22), an animation artist and a graphic designer, freedom meant being able to have solitude within a relationship once in a while. “Sometimes I like to cope with insecurities and rationalise things by myself. I think this allows for a lot more breathing room in my relationships with other people,” she said. And for Sonal (31), a filmmaker and a social activist, freedom took on the dimensions of not just emotional independence, but also – as a polyamourous bisexual woman – the freedom of choosing a partner beyond the accepted conventions of love and monogamy. She said, “When I would be in love with somebody, I sometimes had feelings for other people as well. So I used to keep questioning that love – is it really love, when I am also feeling things for other people? It’s only after accepting my polyamoury that I could accept that I was in love with different people at the same time. In one of my monogamous situations, I had to hear so much from my partner just at the mere mention of having a crush on someone. But in poly situations, I can sleep with someone and then have a healthy discussion about it later with other partners. There is a feeling of openness there.” And what about me – as someone who is far more comfortable with monogamy? What was my own idea of freedom? As a teenager, that was doing something that didn’t conform to the conventions that my parents laid out for me. Once, chopping off my long luscious hair, just to register rebellion against my mother, who used to cherish my tresses, seemed like freedom to me. Now it’s the ability to do so, without being so vengeful. Just out of sheer fun or to try out a new look. Within a relationship, I think my idea of freedom is losing the fear that I might be abandoned, especially if I do not match up to the imagined perfect version of myself. This is not a static space – the fear of being abandoned and betrayed by my most-loved ones still does creep in, but I am learning to understand and deal with the root of this fear. That’s been the most liberating part of my journey so far. The same person with whom I felt like I had found freedom for the first time brutally hit me for going outside his apartment alone one day. That day, I lost a part of – the part that grew up with him. He wanted to control me, but did not feel answerable – or accountable – to me for the toxicity in our relationship bred by his chronic alcoholism. I yearned for his love, his touch, and his understanding – I felt he owed them to me, but I got none of them. In our relationship, the freedom was meant more for him, while the accountability was more for me to bear. And as I learned through my conversations with other people, I wasn’t alone in wanting to correct that imbalance, to expand the expectation of accountability to demand it from him too. Nana* (27), a sound engineer, narrated how his ex-girlfriend cheated on him. The most painful part for him was that he was in the dark about how she really felt about him. Still emotional, he recalled, “Arrey mere saath itne saal thi aur mujhe pata bhi nai chala ki aisa kuch hua. As in, main kya tha uske liye! (She was with me for so many years, and I didn’t even know that this was happening. What did I even mean to her!)” He felt that “even getting the thought of being in a relationship means that you are answerable to another person in some way. You cannot be in a relationship and say that you are not answerable for your actions to the other person.” In his case, it was the lack of emotional accountability – including emotional honesty – that resulted in his relationship breaking down. Mandakini* (27), a filmmaker, also said she looked for emotional accountability to some degree. “There are a few basic things that I expect from the other person, like emotional support when I need it, or a basic sense of affection and camaraderie,” she said. “Being together comes with expectations that one has to clearly express, not assume.” For Sonal, accountability lay in realising and questioning the power dynamics of your relationship, and this can be an internal process too. “Your partner becomes vulnerable to you,” she said, “and in your anger, you exercise the power to hurt the person. There is a sadistic pleasure in that power and it is important to be cognisant of the power play, it can get addictive after a point of time if not checked.” She believed it is important to hold oneself accountable as well, like Sofia, who said that she chose to be accountable to her partner, as he did to her. So did Mandakini, who added that being accountable is fine as long as it’s something you choose for yourself, rather than something imposed on you. Mandakini thought it was important to do the simple stuff – basic manners and responsible behaviour – like keeping someone broadly informed of your whereabouts if you live with them and plan to be away or unavailable for a long period of time. But she did feel that women are disproportionately held accountable within relationships. She felt that women are expected to conform to rules about how they are supposed to behave and think, and not be ‘too independent’ – limitations that got in the way of her last two relationships. Considering that I too faced these unfair expectations in my first two relationships, I can only agree that our society ensures that in relationships, especially in heterosexual ones, women are expected to be more physically and emotionally accountable to their partners than men are. And perhaps that’s when holding someone accountable can also seem like trying to control them – when it’s a one-way expectation, and unquestioned ideas about gender play a part in that. Although Nana claimed that he doesn’t think women are held more accountable because of their gender, he said that one of his exes broke up with him was because she thought he held her “too accountable” to him. He said, “She used to live on the outskirts of the city, so I used to get concerned when she would party till late in different places. And one day, suddenly, she uploaded a Facebook picture with her ex. When I asked her why she had done so, her reply was, ‘I am not answerable to you.’” And as if joining the dots himself, he said about his cheating girlfriend, “You know, I myself was guilty of not telling her about a major part of my life – the substance abuse that I was into. She never knew about that.” Though he had expected honesty from his girlfriend, he realised that he too hadn’t been completely truthful about himself to her. But is there a way for freedom and accountability to exist at the same time in a relationship? Mandakini felt, “It’s knowing what is acceptable to your partner and what is not; and deliberately not doing something that would hurt them.” She thought it possible to have a balance between the two, while Sonal differed, saying that in everyday life, it’s far more complicated. “Mujhe lagta hai ki bolne ke liye ye bohot aasan hai, lekin aisa hota nahi hain waaqayi mein (It seems easy to talk about, but it doesn’t work out this way in reality),” she said. “When I am in a relationship, I would like to do whatever I want, meet whoever I want and have agency over my body. But in reality, jealousy and insecurities operate. Toh aap kabhi bhi uthke kahi bhi nikal ke nahi jaa sakte. Aap ko apne partner ko kabhi toh loop mein rakhna hoga. (So you can’t get up and go out whenever you feel like it. You will have to keep your partner in the loop at some point.)” Sonal recounted how she once worked on a project that involved travel for around 15 days at a stretch sometimes. Soon, her partner asked her not to go on such long trips at one stretch, but divide them into smaller ones. “It did affect my work, because I had to plan things very differently,” she said, “so was that person wrong in interfering in my work? I am not sure.” In Sonal’s view, holding someone accountable to you so that your needs are met, even if you don’t intend to restrict them, may end up restricting them anyway. We all want freedom in our relationships, to be ourselves, and to follow our dreams. But how do we ensure this for our partners? “To be free in a relationship, you have to learn to manage the interdependence healthily,” said Sonal. “You have to maintain healthy relationships with your family and you both must have friends who are independent and not mutual friends. Once in a while you have to encourage each other to meet your own set of friends. Also, your partner can’t be your counselor or your mother or father – your partner has to be your partner. You need to work very consciously on not mixing the two up. That is the best way to have a space for independence and usme accountability honi chahiye. It is only then that a relationship and freedom can have a possible co-existence.” For me, the conversations revealed that everyone’s expectations of freedom and accountability are shaped by their own personalities and experiences, and there isn’t a strict template for how a relationship should play out. In my own relationships, I initially felt that my partners were answerable to me, on my terms. If I wanted something, it had to happen. Say, if they weren’t free when I wanted to meet, or had a completely different perspective on something, I thought that they didn’t love me, or I would doubt myself, thinking that I was always wrong. But now I know how mistaken I was. I’ve learned that people can agree to disagree and still have a loving relationship, and that not all of our expectations of each other might be straightforward – it’s fine for things to not be simple. I think it helped me gain perspective when I spoke to people about their experiences and learnings too, rather than keeping my thoughts to myself. And from speaking to other people, I’ve come to realise that at moments like this, it is necessary to be kind and have healthy communication with one’s partner(s) – to figure out your expectations of each other, together.   *Name changed

Muh Bole Rishte - 6 People Describe Their Chosen Families

Society might say “Only family is forever”, but here are stories of 6 people forming their closest bonds, beyond blood.

In different stages of our lives, we hold many people dear. We enter into different kinds of relationships, and different kinds of loves with them. Though society might see some kinds of relationships as important, and some as unimportant, love has a way of slipping out of these neat categories, hai na? Family is often held up as the greatest kind of relationship there is. We are taught to put family first, and our parents, siblings, children and spouses are the people we are supposed to be closest to. (Don’t believe us? Just ask Karan Johar and Sooraj Barjatya!) Family is important to many of us. But is it the only way we form close ties with another person, or a group of people? If you look around, you actually see that people form family-like relationships in so many different ways. What makes a family? We all have our own ideas about this – for some, it might be the sharing of a living space and eating meals together. For others, maybe it is having a close emotional connection with someone you know who will always be there for you. Our relationships seldom stay static – some might wither away as you drift apart, and some might deepen with time, and a person you once met in a chance encounter might grow to be the closest person to you, whom you rely on and and with whom you share resources, or the ups and downs of life. We choose people to be our family and they may not always fit into conventional family roles, but we might see them as our nearest and dearest, nevertheless. To explore the different ways in which people form these relationships, we spoke to people about their chosen families. Here’s what they told us. “When my chela has chelas, I am their nani” – Sowmya Gupta, 39 I have two chosen families. The hijra community is my first chosen family. And the second is my colleagues. Because you spend more time in office than at home, so that becomes important. I come from a small coastal town in Andhra Pradesh. At the age of around 18-20, when I started understanding my sexuality, I went seeking out my community. When (given) family and society do not accept a trans person or a queer person, then you can find acceptance in the transgender community. Hum jaisa log, hum jaisa logon ko accept karta hai. The hijra family structure is interesting, because you don't only learn from those who are above you, but also from the newcomers. It’s like a chain, we support each other and learn from each other and grow together. The guru is the head of the family and everyone is under her. There are different levels though – the guru has chelas under her. For my chela, my guru is her nani, and when my chela has chelas, I am their nani. In the early 2000s it was difficult for a transgender person to get a job, so if any of us got a job we would host a dinner or lunch. In fact, I remember that earlier on, I used to contribute a part of my salary to a common fund that we had created to be used in case of emergencies. So that kind of support is also available. I used to plan annual dinners and get togethers – say on New Year’s or something. Now, we have a family WhatsApp group where we keep each other updated about our lives. I share whatever I am doing, whatever key decisions I am taking, and the family in turn shares their views on it, discusses the pros and cons, and so on. This is what family means to me – a relationship of mutual support. One of the first people I saw as family was Chintoo, an amazing cat” – Shals Mahajan, 47 I am not sure about the word family. Do I want to use it in the first place? Because in society the only way to make family is by birth or by marriage. If you are looking at relationships beyond that and don't want to follow those rules, you feel unsure whether you want to use that term. At different points we've used different terms – my familiars (after Alice Walker), or my intimates, or just my people or home or at one point, bubble. I moved very often while growing up and generally felt alienated from most of my peers for the longest time. So for me, my natal nuclear family were the people I was closest to, and I only saw them as family. In my twenties, after I returned to Bombay and  became part of a feminist and a queer collective, and felt a camaraderie that I had never felt till that point, I started thinking of people as more than just fleeting ghosts in my life. Before this, the first other person I saw as family was Chintoo, an amazing cat who came into my life at a time when I was severely depressed as a graduate student in Louisville, Kentucky in 1993. He was then a tiny kitten, barely a couple of weeks old. He was largely responsible for bringing carefree joy back in my life and for my survival and eventual completion of my degree. Of course I had the support of a few beautiful friends, but he brought something different to my life. When I returned, he came back with me. I had committed to him for life, his or mine, whichever ended first. And this has been the only time I knew that my commitment was for life. Later in Bombay, when I moved in with my partner, Chintoo came with, and the three of us became a household and family.  Chintoo was ill and dying when the Delhi High Court judgement on Section 377 of the IPC, that beautiful judgement that gave us more than hope in 2009, came. He was sixteen then. There was a celebration in the city that night and most people I know were there, calling us, wondering where we were. The two of us were home with Chintoo, and there with us were our closest friends and queer family, the gang from our collective (LABIA – a Queer Feminist LBT Collective). We all sat around celebrating, laughing, eating, drinking, and also feeling sorrow for Chintoo, knowing he wouldn't be around for the next meeting. He had been part of our endless meetings and hanging out sessions. I think somewhere that feeling – that being together, that is what home is. “My mom thinks my grandmother and Masterji are emotionally dependent” – Damini*, 22 My grandmother lives in Meerut in a small bungalow. She was widowed at a young age but managed to raise two kids with the help of family and friends, and dedicated her personal time to her passion for classical music. As long as I can remember, Masterji, who is around my mother's age, has lived in a tiny outhouse in the compound. He eats alone and has a separate washroom outside, but he has been an integral part of the family. He worked alongside my grandmother teaching music, and looked after her and the house much better than her children could. I always believed he was a member of my family, even if my mother now emphatically declares that he isn’t. I asked my mother about how he came there. My grandmother needed a teacher as she was doing her masters degree in music, so he came there. His own efforts to find housing had not worked out, and as the security guard at the time had just vacated the tiny outhouse of my grandmother’s bungalow, Masterji suggested that he would make a better guard and moved in. Since my uncle was away at college, Masterji was considered protection, as there was a man in the house. My mom thinks my grandmother and Masterji are emotionally dependent on each other. Sometimes she has suspected romance between them, but has never been sure. She says he was a friend most of all to my grandmother, and that she considered him to be her guru. I feel their relationship at this point is deeper than just friendship or romance or any labels we might want to put on it, regardless of the lines other people in the family may draw as to who is family and who is not. If it was up to me, family wouldn’t be just about blood. I’m not sure drawing these lines of family or not family even makes sense because those who care, stick around and become a part of your life anyway – in an unspoken unchangeable way. I think if someone cares about you beyond reasons of shared blood, you’ve got something better than family. “In our neighbourhood, we refer to each other as brother/sister, and it really feels that way” Raphael*, 26 I live in a community that is very close, like a large extended family. Here, we go to each others’ places frequently, and any kind of support that is needed, financial help, etc, is available. For example, if someone in my family falls sick in the middle of the night, even if it is 2 am, I can go to my neighbour who has a car and they will take us to the hospital. For that I am very grateful. It is strange that in many places people don’t even know their neighbours. I am not as close to my other family members who don’t live here as I am to my neighbours. We share our lives together, our problems and joys. Every festival is celebrated together – if anyone is making mithai for Diwali, mutton for Eid or cake for Christmas, they make it for everyone. On Christmas I end up making cake for upto thirty families. When my cousins who live elsewhere hear this, they get very shocked because people mostly make things only for close friends and family. They ask me, why do you do all this for your neighbours? But though our community is big, it is tight-knight like that. Ours was the first house to have a phone, so the others would come and use it, and everyone used to come to our house to watch TV. My granny used to accommodate everyone who came from our native place looking for work in Mumbai, for months she would provide them food and a place to live, till they found their footing in the city. Because of this, they refer to her as their mother and treat her like that. In our neighbourhood, we also refer to each other as brother/sister, and it really feels that way. We aren’t related by blood, but there is a lot of attachment and trust between us. “My muh bola bhai and muh boli sister make up my family” – Sunita Sabarwal, 48 Bharti and I are childhood friends, it’s been 45 years of our friendship. Even if I had a sister, I don’t think I would be as close to her as I am to Bharti. We’ve studied together, grown up together. We have evolved over time, but our thought process has also changed ek jaise [resembling each other’s]. I don’t have to say much to express myself in front of her, because she just understands. My daughter did not even know that Bharti was not her real maasi till she was in the 4th standard. My muh bola bhai Pawan (we were neighbours back in my hometown)  and my muh boli sister Bharti make up my family. Recently, when my mother died I just had to make one call and they both flew in from their respective cities immediately, and stayed with me for the next ten days, without my having to ask. Now my mother and father are gone but I don’t feel like I don’t have a maika (natal family), because I have Pawan and Bharti. It’s about who has been with you through your tough times, when you have been sad. I share a level of comfort with them. It’s not like your family can’t be like that, it’s just that everyone has to think thoda hatke. And it is possible, it’s not difficult. The thing is that acceptance is very important. If you chose that person then it's not like they won't have any negatives. But if you have chosen them, then you have chosen them with their negatives also, as you accept it with families you are born into. “My parents and their friends signed up to be neighbours forever” – Shepherd*,  21 My parents and Arun Mesho and Mashi were together in the US doing their post-doctoral research. They weren’t so close then. My parents moved back to Pune after I was born and Mesho and Mashi happened to do the same when Shubho was born. They got jobs at the same university, and lived in the university housing society together for 17 years. At one point, everyone living there was thinking about the future and looking for property. So four or five people from the society decided to buy property and build houses together. But my father backed out to look for something cheaper. When he decided that, Mesho said where Ratan Da goes, I’ll go. They bought a property together, so both literally signed up to be neighbours forever. They got the same architect to build their houses on adjoining plots. Shubho (who I consider my brother) – and I went everywhere together. Bengali class, music class, swimming. On Bhai Phota and Raksha Bandhan, he has to be there. The hardest thing for all of us to endure together was when Mashi’s mother died, because we saw her change after it. Mashi grew closer to my grandmother than my own mother was, so when she passed away too, it was like watching her mother passing away twice. Since we are a probashi (not residing in Bengal) family, our relatives have always been far away. So Mesho, Mashi and Shubho sort of filled in that place. I guess they went from being friends and colleagues to family friends. And family friends are family only. * Name changed

My Valentine To Milind

A digital altar for our collective fantasy of this effortlessly beautiful man.

 

Image Credit : Vinay Dahiya Photography

My First Time Taught Me How Not to Have Sex

As part of our #SexActually series, we asked people to write to us about their real-life experiences of sex. This author, 22 years old now and 20 at the time of the incident, tells us about her first sexual encounter with a boy, and how she moved on from it.

I was 20 years old and I hadn't had my first kiss.

This was a source of great embarrassment for me. And I worried that as time went by, and I grew older it would only become stranger and stranger. Most of my close friends were already having sex on a regular basis, and here I was with no experience except for a few drunk kisses shared with female friends.

But then came a wave of Tinder in friends’ groups.

All of us were on it, and so was I. It was a bit terrifying for me to venture out there with no experience. Here were people who were “down to fuck” while I honestly would like to say “let’s talk a little and take it as slow as high school kids”.

But I finally met R.

We met somewhere in Bangalore. After eating we sat beside each other under a tree, and I could sense the conversation was just a farce, he was leading up to kissing me. I didn’t even feel connected to him yet. But that was okay, by this point I just wanted to “get done” with my first kiss.

He then led me out of the restaurant and as we walked down the street, he asked me to come to a hotel room several times, each time I said no.

Then he spotted a park, and I was also eager for more making out so we went there. And as we made out his hands went right for my crotch. I stopped him.

They went up my shirt. I let that happen. But I didn’t like it.

He was roughly grabbing my breasts like he wanted to just tear them off of me. It hurt, not in a sexy way. Again his hands went for my crotch, I stopped him. And again, and again, and again, in spite of even telling him verbally to stop.

For 22-year-old me now, this would be a red flag: a partner not able to understand smaller moments of consent. Forget about even the politics of it. What disturbs me about all these moments when consent is breached is I imagine myself in the same position.

If a partner shows any discomfort, even the smallest sign, I pick up on it. I stop. I would find no pleasure in continuing something my partner doesn’t enjoy. This should've been a red flag, but I was none the wiser then, and so I met him again.

And I did like him a little.

He was funny. I was done with my first kiss. I had met a few other men on Tinder with whom things didn’t go very far, apart from kisses. And I thought I was ready for more.

But I must admit, the attitude behind it was still “Let’s just get done with it, let’s see how it all works so I’m prepared when the real things comes.”

I don’t find this entirely foolish. It’s alright. Sometimes you want to wait and sometimes you just want to go for test runs. It depends on you. But I didn’t feel like I was completely comfortable or in control with how the test run would go.

Honestly, even though I was eager to just try out the things that come after you take shirts and pants off, I wished for something slower, gentler, something revelling in the discovery of touch and another person’s body. When we entered the hotel room, he had my shirt and bra off in minutes. It was a passion I did not mirror. He was new to me. This all was new to me. I had told him several times that I wanted to take it slow. He had held my hand and said alright.

Then a few minutes into making out, he was pulling my pants off. I said, no. He looked away and frowned, saying, “Oh, I must be so ugly, that's why you don't want it anymore.” I feel a degree of embarrassment for not calling him out on his bullshit whining right then and there. But I don't know, in the moment I was so nervous and so tense that I used an age-old line which was true enough to me – it isn’t because of you, it’s me! But he continued his drama, and I gave in, my pants came off. With the same routine my panties came off. He would ask me why I wasn't getting wet.

By this time I was so confused and dazed by how things were going that I didn't know. It's obvious now that none of it was sexy for me. And that it should've been obvious to him too. And that his teasing lines about how it is because he is ugly or not good enough were ridiculously emotionally manipulative.

I still feel embarrassed for giving in to them so easily. But over time I have also tried to forgive myself for not knowing what I know only because of that encounter. When I read the story a girl recently wrote about having her worst date with Aziz Ansari, I cried.

I cried when she described him pushing her hand down to his dick. I cried about how she just gave him a blowjob even though she didn’t want to. I cried when she wrote about the “I hate men” text she sent to her friend immediately after. Because that’s what it felt like with R. I was into it, to an extent.

But it felt like for him, sex was for him. He had no sense of how I was feeling through it all, and couldn’t care less. He would through the night keep pulling my hand to his dick even when I didn’t want to touch him. He would push my head down even when I didn’t want to go there. He would use lube because I just wasn’t getting wet.

He would eventually penetrate me and ignore me when I said it was paining too much. After this night I did not want to be with men for a long time. I was left with this image of sex as something I couldn’t like. I was much better off with my own imagination and fingers. I should admit I felt disgusted with myself for a while.

As I realised the ways he forced me to do things that he should have had the sensitivity and ethics to never do, and as I realised my naivety in not recognising them. I felt like my friends would’ve called him out the first time he whined, “Oh, you don’t want to go further because I’m ugly.” But I have also forgiven myself.

It took that encounter for me to learn that it’s okay to be pedantically clear with how much you want. If you don’t want to touch any penises – you don’t fucking have to. (If he acts hurt or thinks you’re a prude, well, what-fucking-ever.) If you don’t want something in your mouth – don’t put it in your mouth.

In the age of online dating there’s a certain pressure to be open to “casual” relationships. I feel like my problem with the definition of casual that most men I have met on Tinder understand is almost emotionless. Showing any sign of affection is terrifying. But you know, I realised I can’t do this kind of casual.

It’s not that I want someone to be my “boyfriend” but I want care and affection. And I’m not shy to admit that openly anymore. Here’s a positive shorter story I’d like to end this on: it would take me two years to meet someone else.

In that time I would have brief stints with people that I never would want to take to bed. But with this person, the physicality feels spiritual. It’s in a way that leaves me at a loss for words, like I have no language for it. I want to touch him everywhere, with my hands and my mouth. I want him sometimes to take all my clothes off within minutes of the door being closed.

I love touching his penis and giving him blowjobs – for the two years after R I thought I would always hate it. And I love the way my he touches me everywhere. Everything in bed feels like an exploration, a learning and discovery of each other’s bodies – where someone is ticklish, where they have moles and birthmarks, the parts of their neck that can send them wild with sucking.

I feel like this is what I had always been looking for and will continue looking for in bed. This is what sex means to me now: a co-discovery, revelling in the discoveries of what their touch can do and what your own touch can do. I don’t regret “getting done with it” when I was with R.

I have learnt a lot from that encounter. Most importantly I’ve learnt to know what I want much better. I’ve learnt that it isn’t really sex that I care for if the other person is treating you like a blow-up. More than the moment of orgasm, this has become what turns me on the most, learning each other, responding to each other, sensing each other.

How I Grew Out of My Turbulent Teens

Life as a schoolgirl was about trying to fit in; to be seen and not seen; self-hate and self-harm. Talking about it to other people was the first step in a new direction

Being a teenager isn’t easy, that’s what they all tell you right? But it’s not until you’re in your mid-teens that you realise what they’re talking about. Or that’s what happens in movies anyway. In reality, we all go through difficult times at our own pace, as and when life throws it our way. There is no age to face a hurdle, it just happens. When I became a teenager, people warned me, as if instinctively, to not get depressed and have an eating disorder. That was my coming-of-age gift. Advice that I didn’t understand and expectations I had to live up to. This, however, had the opposite effect on me. As a thirteen-year-old, I didn’t know much about depression and eating disorders. I thought this meant I couldn’t be sad anymore, because that meant I was depressed. Trying to be happy all the time made me feel fake. Like if I was true to myself and allowed myself to be sad, I would be letting down the people around me. In an attempt to hide this, I stayed as far away from people as I possibly could. Being the ‘cool kid’ wasn’t in my blood anyway, but my fear of being called a fake kept me away from most people. I was so obsessed with the idea of wanting to be ‘average’ since I didn’t want to be the bully or the bullied. I never voiced my opinions in order to not stand out. I kept my appearance basic and kept to myself. I slowly became the outcast. This made me feel more and more left out and misunderstood. Along with all of this, I had a crush on the most popular asshole in class. He treated everyone like shit and got away with it without feeling an iota of guilt. I wanted to know what that life was all about. A life you could live for yourself, where you didn’t have to care about others' feelings. In my quest to be liked by this asshole, I began pointing out the flaws I saw in myself. For starters, I had acne when none of my classmates did, I was the tallest and heaviest girl in class and I slowly grew to hate it. For years I went around with this silent self-hate and since no one could see or hear it, they thought I was okay, and so did I. Thankfully, he left school soon after. With his departure, stories of bullying came to the surface. I felt ashamed to have had feelings for someone who hurt so many people, I felt ashamed to have wanted to be like him. This only added fuel to my fire of self-hate. I would change my body to look the way I wanted it to since that would make me hate myself less, or so I thought. And so, it began: looking up calories, counting, restricting, exercising, and throwing up. The weight began to come off and once again, no one noticed. Once I thought I had lost enough I would wait for the compliments. When they didn’t come, I thought what I had done wasn’t enough and continued losing more and more. I would celebrate at home by showing off my underweight BMI and skipping meals. When still no one noticed and I couldn’t lose any more weight without starving, the level of self-hate went through the roof. From my constant need to not disappoint people, rose a need to be perfect. I didn’t want to hide anymore, but if I would be noticed, it would be for being perfect. I began hating that I wasn’t thin enough for people to notice, that I wasn’t pretty enough for them to like me, that I wasn’t smart enough for them to praise me, that I just wasn’t enough. I started believing that people’s lives would be better off without me, that I was just a burden on my family and that they deserved someone so much better.  The only way I found to let this hate and anger out was to physically punish myself. I began cutting, and slowly, it became a nightly ritual. It wasn’t until someone told me that that was wrong did I realise what I was doing. They said if I didn’t want to hurt anyone else, why was I okay with hurting myself? To this day I don’t really know why it’s wrong. I only stopped because others made me promise. A couple years down the line, in the 8th grade, I realised that I liked girls in the same way I liked boys. When all my friends were talking about wanting to hug and kiss boys, I was thinking about hugging and kissing girls. In the beginning I thought that everyone felt that way, then I learned that others didn’t feel the same. I had felt this since I was about 10 years old, but never realised that it was different from the way others thought until I got introduced to the LGBTQ+ community. When I realised this, I didn’t think it was embarrassing or something to hide so I told all of my close friends. Luckily for me, only one of them didn’t understand and thought it was a weird phase I was going through. Two years later when I started dating a girl, I felt that it was only fair to tell my father about it, since he knew about all my ‘normal’ crushes and boyfriends. By this point, I had read plenty of stories about parents disowning their children for coming out, so I was very scared about how he would react to me being bisexual. Surprisingly for me, when I told my father, he said that it wasn’t something he could change so he didn’t have the right to complain about it or oppose. I finally felt like I could be myself around him and tell him everything, so my relationship with my father only grew stronger. This led me to being so comfortable with him that I opened up about my struggle with my self-harm and eating disorder. This was my first step in the right direction. I was made to see a therapist twice a week and a psychiatrist once a week to seek help for my issues. This, along with support from my friends and family, completely changed my outlook towards the world. I now realised I didn’t have to be perfect, that being ‘perfect’ wasn’t achievable. If someone asked me what I regretted about my teenage years, I wouldn’t say nothing. There was so much I could have done and so much I shouldn’t have done. But I do agree that my experiences have helped shape who I am as a person today. Even though I haven’t crossed the bridge from teenage hood to adulthood, I’ve found ways to cope with intrusive thoughts about disappointing others and self-hate and am looking forward to the future for once. I’ve learned that I’m worthy of surrounding myself with people who are good for me, people who truly care about me. It’s not like I don’t have bad days, I still do. But on those days, I give myself time to get past whatever I may be facing. I’ve learned that although it’s okay to have people you can depend upon, it’s always best to be your own hero.

My Male Friends and I Talked About Sex Constantly, But Not How We Really Felt About It

I’m trying to unlearn everything I’d absorbed in predominantly male spaces. It’s making me a better person.

Lately, I have been going on dates using apps such as Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, and Ok Cupid. I have been trying to understand how to navigate the dating space and the ways in which I can interact with the people I date. I am trying to reflect on how to practice kindness, empathy, and honesty in the relationships that I build with them. Some of this has to do with having new-found knowledge and realisations about the world around me, after completing a liberal arts course. In other words, when you start thinking about your actual life and actions in the light of the theory about rights, equality and power you are reading, you begin to ask yourself some searching questions. While it has been only 5-6 months since I began, I have learnt a lot over this period. I have learnt how much I actually know (or rather, how much I don’t know) about dating, sex, and relationships. During my days as an engineering student, my male friends and I talked about sex and about women constantly, but not in ways that were kind to us or them. These conversations involved sexist comments about women on our campus – how “hot” a woman was, how “bang-able” one was, and fantasising about what it would like be to have sex with a particular woman. We would share pictures of “hot” women with each other and comment on them. We would crack sexist jokes that involved caricaturing and objectifying the different body parts of a woman in many of our conversations and through doodles on our desks. “Boobs” and “ass” were words we used all the time. And there were conversations around masturbation predominantly through jokes. We would talk about how many times we would have masturbated, the different ways in which we did it, and shame the ones who did not know about masturbation. Instead of saying “get lost” or “go away”, we would say “go masturbate” (“hodko” – as it is said colloquially in Kannada).     The fact was, most of us hadn’t had real sexual relationships with women (at least in my circle of around 20 men). But, even among the ones who did, the conversations centered around the kind or number of blow-jobs that one would have received, whether it was first or second or third base, or if a particular porn position was tried out, or how the woman appreciated how long one’s penis was. We’d talk about the porn videos that we watched, the best porn stars, the size (in gigabytes) of porn videos that we had or had just downloaded afresh. But we never did talk honestly about sex and our emotions. We hit the bottle most of the times we felt lonely or disappointed because of rejection from a woman. We didn’t have conversations around our ignorance and apprehensions on how to have sex, around our physical and emotional needs of being cared, loved, validated, and held, on the ways in which we could deal with our libidos instead of excessively consuming porn, on the ways of building a nurturing relationship and handling jealousy, or the ways in which we could handle the breaking up of a relationship in a healthy manner. This was also the time when many of us weren’t being hugged, held, and provided other forms of physical affection by our parents who distanced themselves from us when we became adults. The only intimacy we as men could share was when we hung out together playing computer games, in bars, hanging out in college, and attending concerts. If one did not have a girlfriend or wasn’t dating, then one would be bereft of any physical affection. Any other forms of intimacy such as cuddling, hugging each other for long, holding hands, kisses were all sexualised and our homophobia prevented us from being intimate. (We would make videos about “gay” relationships with sexual undertones, post multiple Facebook statuses and comments laughing about how “gay” someone is or how one is of the “other” gender. All of this also meant that if there were times when I wanted to explore my sexuality with men, I would feel so overcome with guilt about just having these desires that I could never even allow myself to think about it, forget summoning up the courage to talk about it with my friends.) We could only cry in front of each other when we were completely drunk. After a year or so of being in college, most of us dealt with our loneliness, sadness, grief, heartbreak and anger predominantly by ourselves in our rooms crying, writing poetry, and distracting ourselves. While we hung out together very often, we rarely opened up, touched each other affectionately, or dealt with our thoughts and feelings honestly without the fear of being shamed, sexualised, or laughed at. We did not know about the idea of patriarchal masculinity, or that it had resulted in a loss of touch and intimacy, neither did we discuss this loss with each other nor were we taught how to deal with it by our parents and relatives. Right now, in the dates I go on, I am seeing the repercussions of growing up amidst a traditionally masculine space. It takes effort to identify the emotions I am going through at every point and then deal with my emotions in a healthy manner through constructive conversations. There is always an apprehension that I may not be good when it comes to making out and that I might disappoint my date. What if things go further, and I am not good in bed? Will my partner be okay with someone who is inexperienced, and who is still learning how to have sex? Is my inexperience going to be an impediment to having a relationship? These are things I sometimes feel fear and shame about. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand whether or not I am using my date as a distraction from my other needs, and confusing my need for love and affection, for a need for sex. At times, it is hard to be truthful and say that I am not interested in a sexual experience, and at other times I am not sure how to articulate my need for wanting to explore another body without alienating my date. But as I read about the #MeToo movement or different articles on feminism I see so many of these experiences in a different light and the need to explore a new path ahead.     Thinking of all of these things, my behaviour has changed. Every time I go on a date with a woman, when we are in a private space, there seems to be an unsaid pressure looming around on me – the pressure to “make a move” or to “make out”. It is, in fact, very hard for me to understand if my desire to make out comes from this pressure or if I truly want to make out. I had always believed that the man should make the first move. “What’s a date without hanky-panky?” is a thought that I always have had to encounter. In one instance, I chose not to “make a move” first. Instead, without succumbing to the unsaid pressure, we spend a marvellous time together filled with conversations and a movie. Once, I asked my date if she wanted to kiss, and she said yes. It felt liberating. While there is this notion that it is unsexy and ruins the moment to talk about these things before making out, I do believe that you can establish consent through conversations and being acutely aware of how the other person is responding to your move, and still make it sexy and romantic. Now, I have made it a thumb rule to try my best to talk about my feelings before and after sex. While I’m still uncomfortable talking about things like loneliness, existential angst, sexual desire, longing to be held, my limited experience of having had sex, and my limited knowledge on different sexual positions, I have realised that talking about them enhances the relationships that I share with my dates. Not making sex or making out the central purpose in my relationships with my dates also opens up other forms of relationships that we may not generally get to experience. One of my relationships now involves us calling each other when we want the physical presence of a human being around – either while doing work – or sleeping at night beside each other. Since both of us know why we are meeting and we have discussions around this, this enhances our well-being. It allows us to meet our needs of wanting human presence and touch. It allows us to feel less lonely the next day and more complete. We do feel energised and more productive on the next day whenever we sleep next to each other or cuddle. Lately, I have been trying to navigate orgasms. It has been ingrained in me (mainly through porn) that sex is centred on the man’s pleasure, that sex without the man coming is not sex. Most of porn videos have a set routine of some foreplay, an extended blow-job by the woman, different sexual positions mostly involving peno-vaginal intercourse, and then end with the man ejaculating on the woman. However, in all my recent dates, I haven’t come or felt the need to. I find sex more interesting when I try to focus on the pleasure of the woman I am with, either by trying to understand the ways in which she is responding to my actions through her body movements and her breath, or by just following what I am told to do instead of expecting things to play out like a porn sequence. And in doing so, I am able to reflect on what my needs are and thus delineate it from how I have been told how sex should be. Being this way challenges my masculine notions of sex – I have been choosing it consciously, but it has revealed new pleasures and helped me cope with some insecurities most men have, instead of brushing them under the carpet. I really enjoy providing pleasure to the woman I am with. So that means sometimes doing away with the traditional penis-in-vagina thrusting that I’ve been conditioned to believe is the standard, and focusing more on giving clitoral orgasms with my fingers, hands, knees or thighs. I have realised the importance of being constantly aware of how the person is responding and verbally asking if she would be okay with a particular move, the necessity for taking things slow and providing enough space and time for the woman to be able to respond. Here’s one more thing I’ve learned: I do not properly know how to have peno-vaginal intercourse. Most of the time, I do not know how to express this apprehension to the one I am with. Usually it is the woman who guides me. At times I am embarrassed that I do not know how to go about it. But I had never discussed this with either the men or women in my life, until I spoke to a male friend a few weeks ago. For the first time, I had an honest conversation with this friend and shared my apprehensions, fears, and doubts. We talked about our first sexual experiences, and discussed the fact that we are really unaware of so many different aspects surrounding sex such as how to put on a condom, how to navigate consent at different points during sex, how to talk about our likes and dislikes, how to have peno-vaginal intercourse, how to find the clitoris and the vagina, and importantly how to ensure a fulfilling sexual experience for both ourselves and our partners. We lamented the fact that we never had sex education either in our schools or from our parents. My friend explained that he had to surf the internet to understand how to put on a condom, how to have intercourse, and understand the best ways to have sex with a woman. We even talked about how masturbating for about 24-25 years and then finally having a sexual relationship affects the way in which we have sex. (Certain sexual positions make us come faster – and thus “last” lesser in bed – because we are used to masturbating in a particular way. At times we are so used to masturbating that we prefer masturbating over sex, and only that leads to ejaculation.)   We also touched upon the pressure to “perform” when it comes to sex. I told him something I had never ever spoken about before – that recently, when I was with a woman, I lost my erection as soon as I tried putting on a condom, and again as soon as I tried to put my penis in her vagina. He asked me why it might have happened, and said maybe it was because of stress. And I think that my sharing personal things opened up room for him to do the same. My friend told me that online, he had looked up how to last longer in bed. Apparently, if you first make your partner come, your confidence will increase, and then you can go on to have intercourse. He did tell me that there was a phase of about a week when he was coming too soon and that felt like a shameful experience for him. But then he immediately followed this statement with a grin, saying that he was able to get his mojo back and was able to last longer in bed after that. At this point, I couldn’t help but ask him if he had checked what his partner thought of all of this and if in fact her pleasure actually comes from longer intercourse or if she prefers other aspects of seeking pleasure. He mentioned that they did have a conversation about that, and that she was also very supportive during the time when he came too early, expressing that it was okay for it to happen and that he shouldn’t feel ashamed. And we found out that while in porn the pleasure is centred on the man, in our relationships we actually both enjoy giving pleasure to our partners in the way they want us to.     I felt relieved to be able to talk about these things with someone. After we went back to our homes, we both texted each other expressing how wonderful the conversation was and how great it was to spend time this way. And I realised that if I don’t bring such topics up and make myself vulnerable, I won’t ever get to have such conversations with men – they are unlikely to make that kind of first move! Right now, these times feel like the heyday of my exploration of and reflection on my needs surrounding care, sex, love, and affection. These are also the first few times I am honestly dealing with my apprehensions, emotions, fears, and doubts about sex, consent, relationships with myself and with the men and women in my lives in a constructive manner. I have realised that it is a slow process of really trying to understand how not to deal with loneliness – as men we are conditioned to deal with longing for physical touch, presence, affection and intimacy in a ridiculously traditional masculine manner through tonnes of porn, alcohol/weed, gaming and sports, conversations with men about everything other than our lives, or through sex disregarding our partner’s (or partners’) being and their emotions. I’ve learned that feminism is about practicing goodness, kindness, empathy, and affection – both towards oneself and towards others. These things may not make me very ‘manly’ by the warped standards I grew up with. But they’re making me a better – and I think happier – person. Sudhamshu is a 26 year old cis-male still exploring the spectrum of sexuality and a waking (never-woke) practitioner of feminist ways of being. Professionally, he is a researcher based out of Bangalore.     If you would like to share your story on Agents Of Ishq, please write to us at agentsofishq@gmail.com If you identify as a man, how has the #MeToo movement made you feel? Share your thoughts with us, here.

When a Workshop about Love and Desire Turned into a Raucous Party

 A few weeks ago, we travelled from Mumbai to Titwala, a small village about two hours from the city, to talk to a group of young women about love, desire, relationships and heartbreak. When we arrived, we had a challenge ahead of us: the post lunch challenge! The workshop was being conducted in a large room, with a screen on one side and gaddas placed against all the walls. The girls, sleepy after lunch and the day’s activities and reluctant to participate, were sitting scattered against the walls, using the gaddas as backrests. We knew that capturing their attention was going to be tough!   The participants comprised of around 200 students aged between 18 and 21 from the National Service Scheme (NSS) unit of Smt PN Doshi Women’s College. They were on a week-long service camp. They had been painting the local government school walls and planting trees along the riverbank nearby, and were camped at a local school. The classrooms where sessions were held during the day became the dorms where the students slept at night. With all the activities they were involved in, including cooking their own meals, we suspected our workshop would be quite a departure from what they had to do so far. Even so, when we got there it was evident that most of the girls were intent on napping. We later found out that this was because through most of their afternoon sessions, they rarely got the opportunity to speak about things that really mattered to them. The girls told us that more often than not, they were preached to rather than spoken with. “Most people come and give us lectures on this and that, and we get really bored, this is the first time someone has come and spoken to us about all these things,” one of the participants told us later. But despite their initial reluctance, the room was soon crackling with laughter, song, dance, and pure energy, transforming us all. Because when it comes to discussing love, sex and desire honestly, without judgement, without easy conclusions, who doesn’t wake up? Shaadi shenanigans We began the workshop with a question every young Indian has to confront and has a lot to say about: “Do you plan to get married?” And if so, would they choose a love marriage or an arranged marriage? Some girls just smiled coyly and didn’t respond, some jumped up enthusiastically to say they would pick a love marriage, while a few preferred an arranged one. Why love marriage, we asked. “Well, getting married without love is just for material purposes,” was one answer. “[In an arranged marriage] you see how well off that person is, what their job is and what their caste is, and pick them based only on that,” was another answer from a girl to whom love marriage seemed a way to combat such parochial practices. Another view was that love marriages ensure compatibility.   Some of the girls said there was stability and security in arranged marriages. A few said that people in love ended up eloping, and that just created a lot of problems for everyone. We decided to get a little personal. Have you ever been in love, we asked. The air warmed up. The room changed. Tentative smiles and furtive glances to gauge each other’s reactions went round the room. Those slouched in the corner trying to nap were peeking through one eye, interested in what the others would say. A few hands went up, then more. Some nudged their friends to raise their hands, some raised their hands for their friends. We, the facilitators, first raised one hand, then both, then raised alternate hands again and again. We were all laughing. So if everyone had been in love, they must have thought about sex, no? we asked. So what did they think? Was it ok to have sex? There was giggling and hesitation, they looked at each other, waiting for someone else to be the first to answer. They said that sex was something that gives a person pleasure. We observed a general lack of judgement in terms of how and with whom and when people had sex (as in, before marriage or only after) when it came to others, but also noticed that the girls tended to speak of others in broad generalisations – what should be and what shouldn’t be. When it came to themselves, they seemed more prim. There was a great deal of distance when talking about themselves, and some did express a clear sense of what they were personally were okay with when it came to their own values and boundaries that differed from what they felt was okay for others. One participant went on to share her feelings about one of the protagonists in the movie they had watched the previous night, Lipstick Under My Burkha. She felt that although the woman in the film was having sex, it was not something that involved her willingness or pleasure – the husband was using her for his own pleasure – and that was wrong. The students firmly believed that communication was a very important part of physical intimacy, and that rape and sex were two very different things. Biology se pehle, Biology ke baad One of the things we’ve seen in so many classes and workshops and conferences and projects about sexuality is that no one discusses sex, actually. It’s as if we criticise the unrealistic sex of mainstream porn, but don’t really touch the topic of sex – the mechanics of sex – ourselves! But I guess we aren’t Agents of Ishq for nothing. So we asked them about sex directly. At first, the answers we got from the students were very brief. Some girls in the front of the class gave us basic answers, probably out of a sense of dutifulness, to represent their group and make sure that the class responded to our questions. But since they all sat spread out, we tried walking around to gather responses, and heard more interesting things when we leaned in to listen to the shy and the hesitant who wouldn’t speak loudly. We found that the students were mostly aware of the basics of heterosexual penis-in-vagina sex. Some who may have been studying biology were able to describe it more clearly, using terms like “fallopian tubes” and “cervix”. Some admitted to not being entirely sure about the exact process of sex and making babies. So we played  “Mai Aur Meri Body” – a full blast Bambaiya ishtyle video made by Agents of Ishq in collaboration with SNEHA about how bodies are made, how babies are made, how gender is formed, how attraction happens, and what puberty is about. The fun music and animation completely changed the energy of the room. The girls were laughing and trying to sing along. The video mentioned pheromones, and we tried to expand on the idea of pheromones and attraction. We asked if any of them had been in relationships – and received a whole range of responses! Some people said yes, some no, and one participant went on to vehemently say that she had never felt love or been in a relationship. We then talked about asexuality, as also being a part of the spectrum of desire. As we talked about the idea of attraction being a normal part of life, just like the feelings that we experience when we like someone, the girls nodded knowingly. “She keeps talking on the phone for hours,” said one, pointing to her friend. That started a chain of more girls pointing at their friends and teasing them. Some were embarrassed and tried to shush their friends, while some simply laughed. Pyaar hurdles Until Main aur Meri Body, everyone participated just fine, but our discussion was still in traditional sex-ed territory. Then everything changed when we played the first Agents of Ishq podcast – suddenly all the girls were wide awake, intent, interested. Why? In the podcast “Lovezone Friendzone”, a 19-year-old called Lubna talks about how she fell in love with a boy who was dating another girl. She talks about regretting kissing him, about how she thought she loved him more than even her mom, and how he left her because she was not Marathi. Lubna talks about how much she cried over him, how she missed him whenever she heard an emotional song – and then, how she now likes another boy, one who gives her “waise wale feelings”. The girls, who until then had been constantly chatting among themselves, listened to the podcast with complete attention and even sang along! When we asked them if they thought this story was possible in real life, they said “Yes” in unison. Many of them associated relationships across caste and community with complications and trouble, and were supportive of the fact that Lubna had moved on and found someone else. At this point, the girls started sharing their personal experiences, about previous and current relationships, that were similar or related to what they’d heard in the podcast, such as, “One boy did the same to me, but now I like someone else.” For me, it was deeply encouraging to to hear them share things once the initial inhibitions were gone. Perhaps it was listening to other people’s stories and personal experiences that flipped that switch for the girls – the session became way more interactive with more girls eager to talk about their own lives once they’d heard something that felt relevant to them and that they identified with. Their interest (and energy) seemed to come from hearing about the lived experiences of people like them – young girls from traditional families. We also found that it helped to be vulnerable ourselves, and share our own experiences. When we told them our stories of love or heartbreak, they would chime in protectively with advice such as “Dump that person!” or “Forget about them! It’s not worth it!” and got invested in what we were talking about. When we moved on to talking about heartbreak, more hands went up than they did when we talked about love – the videos and podcasts had gone a long way towards drawing the girls’ attention and setting them at ease. Even though the workshop was very interactive, and involved conversation rather than instruction, it took these additional tools to act as opening points for these conversations.     One participant added that her relationship had broken up because her partner belonged to a different caste, and although she was able to convince her parents to let her marry him, she would have been expected to wear a ghunghat, and wouldn’t have been allowed to work or have any freedom while living with his family. She tried to negotiate these terms with the boy and his family, but they did not budge, so she decided to break up with him although she loved him very much. Breakups because of caste or differences in financial status seemed to be a common experience among the girls. Most of the participants felt that if the person you love makes you feel small, then they’re not worth it. Another popular sentiment was that if your love requires you to do something that hurts your family, then you must not do that. Not everyone agreed about putting your family first, but one thing everyone seemed to agree with was that it is great to love someone, but you should always love yourself a little more. The girl who had shared her story about leaving the boy whose family expected her to wear a ghunghat was a great example of this – when she spoke, it was wonderful to hear her discuss her dreams and ambitions for herself, and see her recognition of the fact that the boy’s family would require her to give those dreams, and her very sense of self, up. Hearing someone talk about choosing her dreams over her lover’s unfair expectations was a great learning moment for us all. This was an important moment in the workshop – after this girl opened up about her experience, more felt encouraged to share their stories with the group.   We also talked about heartbreak, and how if it happens, you should give yourself time to process it – talk about it, cry it out, stalk your ex a little if you have to. But if months go by and it doesn't get better, then take help. Slumber party to Dance pardy After the Lovezone Friendzone podcast, there was an electricity in the air. It felt as if our session had gone from workshop to raucous party. We played Qayanat Ka Romancenama – a podcast in which Qayanat, a young girl, tells of her amazing story that doesn’t end with her being with her lover. She talks about how her lover ultimately got married to someone else, but she is still happy to have experienced that love. Everyone was totally involved, singing (and some even managing some vigorous dancing) along to the opening song of the podcast so enthusiastically that they didn’t want to stop, and drowned out the beginning of the new podcast. When the closing song began, they started up the dancing and singing again and kept going for a few minutes! When they eventually quieted down, we asked them what the podcast made them feel. Many said that they felt what Qayanat did was right, that she did care for her parents and also that she chose herself. We spoke a little more about rejection and introduced the idea that one can move on from rejection in relationships just like we move on from the non-materialisation of other dreams or expectations.   We then asked the girls if they had been in a situation where they were not sure of their feelings – had they ever said yes to something they didn’t fully want to say yes to, or said no but they didn't mean not ever? Many said they had. That gave us the opportunity to play a video called “The Amorous Adventures of Shakku and Megha in the Valley of Consent” – Agents of Ishq’s popular music video in which two lavni dancers wonder about the nuances of consent. Given that the language of the video was Marathi, we felt that had greatly helped get its point across. They all cheered loudly when Shakku’s response to a man’s overtures in the video is a “maybe” rather than a yes or a no, and he says, “Of course! I can wait for you, baby.” With the girls still in party mode, we could see a clear shift from the beginning of the workshop when people’s participation and interest in talking about love, sex and romance veered from somewhat lukewarm to a fun-filled atmosphere by the end  – one that was embracing and joyous.     Afterwards, some of the girls sought us out, wanting to share the dilemmas they were facing, one-on-one. Most of the girls who spoke to us saw themselves getting married within a few years, if not immediately after college. Still, they gave importance to their education and their own careers and ambitions. Many talked about barriers to relationships such as caste and financial status, and some girls came up to say that they were glad to have the opportunity to speak about such things, instead of being lectured about things that didn’t interest them or weren’t relevant to them. At the workshop, they had been able to talk about matters that were so deeply a part of their everyday lives, but are not usually raised in everyday conversation. It wasn’t just the girls who may have had lightbulb moments that day! For us, the workshop was an unforgettable experience and we learned a lot ourselves. As we headed home discussing the day, we realised a key thing: frequently we all tend to think about desire, love and heartbreak as being very low in the hierarchy of things that are considered important to learn and talk about, while they are in fact very pertinent to young people’s lives, and the desire for sex is mixed up with the desire for validation, love, affections and intimacy. We need to accept that these feelings and experiences are valid, and perhaps even common. Removing the aspect of shame from the girls’ experiences allowed them to engage more openly with the issues that were talked about at the workshop. And the significant change in energy that the podcasts brought confirmed for us the importance of personal stories in helping one feel a connection to the subject being discussed. Perhaps we could receive no greater validation that day than to be given an enthusiastic and warm send-off, and to be told that it was the first time the girls had gotten through an afternoon session without falling asleep! We hope to have more sessions as fruitful and eye-opening for both sides. Particularly ones that involve dance parties!    

Sex Actually: It Was My First Time, and I Had Gotten My Period!

As part of our #SexActually series, we asked people to write to us about their real-life experiences of sex. This 23-year-old author tells us about her recent experience of putting theory into practice and why it will always be special to her. (23 then, 23 now)

    It was the first time for both of us. We were talking about how it's not wise for us to continue this relationship, but he ended up coming to my place when my parents weren't home. It was not a slow start. We went for it aggressively as we had missed each other a lot. (We hadn't met or spoken in a long time.) It started off with small moments like continuous and intense French kisses, which moved to the bed eventually. We were all over each other, and we had discussed sex for a brief while when he had decided to head over to my place. So, on his way, he bought some condoms. As we proceeded to oral sex, he asked if I am fine with having sex. I said yes, and both of us were anxious and wondering slightly if what we knew in theory was how it worked in practice as well. I was on top and since the vagina was pretty tight, we struggled to get in.     As if things couldn't get worse, I realised I was getting period cramps and went to the restroom to check. Yes, I had gotten my period! I remember reading on the Internet that sex during periods reduces cramps, and I asked if he was fine with proceeding. Then we resorted to the usual missionary position and he finally managed to get into me. The moment he entered was painful. There was a sharp pain passing through the body and entering my head. I almost thought of stopping him. As he continued to move back and forth, it became more of pleasure. The pain was gone and the session intensified as he varied his pace throughout the process. He reached his climax first but kept going knowing that I haven't reached mine. After a few more minutes of action, he saw the blood on his condom and was taken aback. I said it was probably my period blood along with some blood that might have come as it was my first time. We cleaned up and got back to bed where we were snuggling, thinking of how the conversation started and where we had ended up.     The best part about sex, apart from the climax, was the sweat on his body after all the work in spite of being in an air conditioned room. I could play with it all day. After sex, the small smiles and kisses are nowhere near to lust but full of love and admiration, which make them more special. One of the most memorable evenings in my life. Could be because it was the first time, or could be because it was that good. Whatever the reason, it is always special and close to my heart, even though we went our ways a couple of months after the incident.

Sex Actually: Memories of Mid-Afternoon Sex, and Losing Friends

“I miss our mid-afternoon candlelit Baby Johnson times” Maya (48 then, 48 now) This is not so much about sex, as the memories of sex. K, my ex-husband, and I separated four years back – fairly gracefully given that it was upon the discovery that he had been in another relationship for several years before that. However, as our child was young and we did not want it to be harder on her, we live fairly close to each other, meet often and do family things together. Our relationship is, by and large, cordial and supportive. K split up with his earlier girlfriend, and had a long-distance relationship for a couple of years. That ended as well, and he has started a new relationship with a very young married colleague. A recipe for disaster, in my opinion, but hey, it’s not my life. Since K and I are neighbours and our daughter is in the habit of walking over to his house when she likes, the new relationship means that new boundaries have to be drawn. One such random visit interrupted a romantic interlude, and I have been given strict instructions to keep her away unless by explicit invitation. What has taken me by surprise is the intensity of the memories that have come back. People’s sexual habits, I infer, do not change very much. K still likes sneaking out of office for mid-afternoon sex, still likes lighting a certain kind of candle, and clearly Johnson’s Baby Oil is still an essential ingredient. I am not – and haven’t been – in love with K for several years now, but suddenly this new romance is making me miss the mid-afternoon candlelit Baby Johnson times intensely.   “As the night wore on he teased and begged and pleaded and wore my defences down” Lavanya (26 then, 28 now) I met this boy off Tinder, and contrary to how you expect these things to unfold, he invited me over to his friend's place for a drink. His friend (and her partner) turned out to be really interesting people, and I remember discussing movies, books and architecture with them while Tinder boy nursed a fever and a glass of brandy. He didn't talk much. At some point I realised how late it actually was, and how drunk we all were. I was new to the city and bunking with a friend then, so couldn't really head back at that point, and ended up going to the boy's place with completely ambivalent feelings about him. Then we spoke some more, and he kissed me, and things escalated as things do with enthusiasm from both of us. Only, when push came to shove, he confessed he didn't have a condom on him. I promptly clothed myself and suggested we do something else, except as the night wore on he teased and begged and pleaded and wore my defences down, till there came a moment I decided I didn't really care anymore and gave in.   “I didn't know what to expect. I had never seen a naked male body before” Waspiana (22 then, 26 now) It was my first time. I didn't know what to expect. I had never seen a naked male body before. That night, the male body I saw happened to belong to my boyfriend at the time. I was curious. I admit I have seen too many Emraan Hashmi movies but porn was and is not my cup of tea exactly. So after some exploring and touching, I found there was nothing that exotic about the male body. I mean they have only one thing to use, mostly. And it happened that my then-boyfriend knew nothing about sex either, apart from porn. So the sex was disappointing and it hurt, since he could not find the right place to go in. And no, I didn't know that clits existed. Now that I am more wise and more experienced, I feel what a waste of time that night was…😀and how naive I was. Stupid actually, full of movie shit. Yes, sex is awesome when you know what exactly you want and how... After that night, I learned it’s all about pleasure.   “It was exactly how I have always enjoyed sex. And then he made the move that took me over the edge” Sex Goddess (28 then, 28 now) We met on Tinder while he was in town from the US. December in Karachi is lit because expats are in town and you know they'll leave and there is no obligation to keep your awkward after-hookup chat going. I only had one other hookup from Tinder, before this. That time I had booked the room myself and felt like a pretty cool bitch, in charge of herself and her sexual agency. This time though, the guy came with perks from his job that meant he could book the hotel room. I met him once on a date just to suss out what kind of guy he was. He seemed alright; respectful, fun, with a very homegrown sense of self that I was immediately attracted to. I can't stand men who live abroad and when they're visiting the homeland, pick fault with everything. He was eager to move things along but what I liked the most was how chill he was. "Whenever you want, let me know," he said. I took a day off work and he booked the room. When we met in the room, he immediately went for the kiss and we made out. I LOVE having sex so I am always enthusiastically down for anything. We removed our clothes and got comfortable, touching and feeling each other. He went down on me and got me sufficiently wet. And when I asked for gentle bites on my nipples, he obliged. Overall, it was exactly how I have always enjoyed sex. And then he made the move that took me over the edge. He put my ankles on his shoulders and thrust so hard, I had the wind knocked out of me. His balls slapped against my ass making satisfying sounds, and because I was so wet, he slid in and out easily. He held my ankles and moved me back and forth with no trouble. I moaned and cried out in pleasure. If anyone had been watching, we must have looked like people in a porno. When he came, he sort of fell over me. I didn't orgasm, but I felt fantastic. Later, we showered together and I told him to cum in my mouth and I would swallow. Earlier, we had had some snacks and while sucking him my gag reflex was so bad, I vomited in the shower (it happens, guys!). The cum-in-my-mouth gesture was to make up for that minor embarrassment and also because I love swallowing. But the night was not over for this ho! His level of chill was such that he said he had to go home because his mom was alone, therefore, I could keep the room if I wanted to call someone else. I actually did, so I agreed. I had two more guys over though I didn't have sex with the third one. I just wanted to talk to him, though he and I had hooked up before. I adore him but I felt fulfilled. We talked about books and other random trivia. I left the hotel room around 10.30 pm, after eight hours of fun sex, conversation and living the best life I could on a December day in Karachi.   “The next morning, I woke up to slut shaming messages from my friend and his girlfriend. He felt guilty and told her that we had sex” Overanxious (28 then, 29 now) My best friend from school and I made out for a bit during college. And after that we have both been in multiple relationships separately. Never had any feelings towards each other and never did anything more. He later started dating a former friend of mine and they were doing long distance when this happened. They had issues in their relationship and he was going through a bad patch and I was trying to be there for him while I was trying to work things out with my ex. One night he said he had finally broken up (he had been talking about it for weeks) and he was super upset so he wanted to get a drink. The previous night we had already been out as a group and I was really tired. But hearing him break down, I went out with him. We were both talking relationships and got really drunk. This was the time I had started therapy and he knew I was not in a good place and unfortunately neither was he. We decided to walk back home, which we have done in the past. On the way back he kissed me. I did not understand what was going on. We kept walking. I tried rationalising that it wasn't okay because he had just broken up and with someone very close to me. A former friend, but I really respect her and I have always hoped we would work things out. He told me that he was single and he really needed it and this would really help him. For me he has been my safe place for over 15 years so it all felt okay to me in that drunk state. So we came back to my place and while he was inside me I realised I didn’t want it anymore. By the time I formed a coherent sentence he was done inside me. I wasn’t sure of what to do. He left home. I had an I-Pill that I had got when I was dating my ex and slept. The next morning, I woke up to slut shaming messages from my friend and his girlfriend. He felt guilty and told her. The worst thing was someone losing all their trust and respect in me, and I did not ever want to be the cause of a relationship failing, let alone that of my two best friends. So I decided to face her. It tore me apart to hear someone so hurt thanks to me. And in all this I heard just a sorry from him, and nothing else. Funnily his girlfriend and I managed to resolve a few of our issues. The only good thing he had done in this was to tell her that I didn't want this at all, and it was on him. This guilt has eaten me up so much I decided to not work things out with my ex. I don’t have the guts to go tell him about this and he will never be okay knowing that I slept with my best friend. My friend was leaving the country for 40 days and so we decided to talk when he got back. He did get back and he never spoke to me. Every time there was a group plan, I found him missing. So one day when everyone was planning to meet I texted him separately and asked if he was okay with me coming and that if he felt uncomfortable I should be told. He cancelled and told me he wasn't going anyway, and we were okay. A few hours later he texted and told me he wasn't comfortable with me anymore. That’s it. I've got a "sorry", a random "happy birthday", and "I am not comfortable" – just these texts since he left my place. I have lost two of my best friends, the group I used to hang out with because I don't want to see him, and my depression is creeping back in full form. Worse, the trust issues I have been working towards resolving over the last few years have come back and hit me in full force, and I have taken this out on my other friend unnecessarily. The good thing is that those two are working things out and trying to get married. I am sitting scared, alone, anxious, and I feel that everything around me is crashing.  

What I Learned from Reading Erotica at Twelve

Is erotica a good intro into the world of sex?

I hadn’t yet been exposed to visual porn. So as a fat girl, I had the freedom to use my imagination in which women’s bodies looked like mine There are two things that sum up who I was when I was twelve years old: one, I was a ridiculously impatient kid who hated reading, and two, I was curious about bodies. I can’t say that the second changed much for me in the years that followed, but twelve was the age when my feelings about reading changed. Summer holidays were spent playing with neighbourhood kids until the sun went down, and reading books that we would buy during the highly anticipated book fairs that would pop up in our schools for a week (the most interesting week of our school year). Thanks to all my building-wala friends who would spend hours discussing the books they bought at school and my creeping FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), I decided to kickstart the habit of reading. My older brother’s room was a mini library. I assumed I’d find all of the books I wanted in there, conveniently forgetting that he was five years older than me and way past the Enid Blytons and RL Stines that I was looking for. I had all the time in the world to pick up the habit of reading, because I spent most of my summer days by myself. Both my parents worked, my brother was too busy teenage-ing around to be at home, and my grandmother would usually stay in her room for hours on end. One hot afternoon, I decided to go into my brother’s room to pick out a book. I picked up a bottle-green one titled Letters to the Penthouse XIII, thinking it would be a good place to start because it said “letters”, and letters are usually short. The first chapter was titled, ‘Someone’s Watching’. Doesn’t sound like a title meant for a love letter, I thought to myself. I kept reading, confused, and then I reached the paragraph that indicated that the book I picked up was definitely not about romantic love: “I made up some business cards advertising me as a voyeur, and asked the local porn video store to display them. The cards were on display for about a week when I received my first call, from a couple who said they wanted to make love while someone else watched.” Porn. Make Love. Voyeur. I kept going over those words to understand what I was reading. I didn’t understand what ‘make love’ was because love couldn’t be made; it could only be felt, right? I picked up the dictionary kept on my brother’s table and looked up the word ‘voyeur’. “A person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity. Growing up, watching TV shows and films where the hero would slowly put the heroine down on the bed, or watching the hero slowly kiss along the heroine’s arm as she made faces that were equal parts pleasure and pain always sparked something in me. Why did the heroine make that face? Why did the hero and heroine take a shower together? Why was the hug between them so...touchy? And most importantly, why would my parents insist on changing the channel every time such a thing happened? I would find myself attracted to ‘those’ scenes more and more. There was something about bodies touching each other in ‘that way’ that made me want to keep watching. Reading that letter in my brother’s room, my curiosity was piqued by the term “sexual pleasure”, even though I was confused about its meaning. I continued, for the next two pages, to read a story that involved graphic details about two people, a man and a blonde woman, engaging in something that made my insides tingle as I read the words. I remember feeling incredibly hot and bothered when I realised that the main character of the story was watching the couple do things to each other – it reminded me of how I would go back to ‘those’ channels, hoping to get chance to watch the man and woman touch each other. I wondered if that’s what I had to call myself now – a voyeur. I don’t remember reading full sentences because I was an impatient reader (who was now also interested in what was going to happen next because the words were making me feel things), but my imagination went through the roof while I read the story. …three of us were getting hot...kisses became longer and more passionate...Mike was grinding his cock hard against Nina...three of us went to the bedroom… I started shifting in my place as I read on. The story continued with the man narrating how he not only watched the couple do things, but also joined them when the blonde woman asked him to. Nina’s hand reached for her clit and began rubbing it lightly… Looking at me with half-open eyes and panting with excitement, she said breathlessly, “Touch me! Rub my clit!” I placed my hand on her inner thigh and moved it slowly to her waiting clit… The words ‘cock’ and ‘pussy’ didn’t make sense to me, even though it wasn’t entirely difficult to associate those words to body parts because of the way they were used in sentences. The word ‘clit’, however, threw me off. Were ‘clit’ and ‘pussy’ the same thing? He only used them when he was talking about the blonde woman, so maybe that was it? I continued reading. “I’m coming!” she cried wildly. “I’m coming, I’m coming now!” Her body stiffened and her pelvis lurched forward. Where was she coming when she was already there? I didn’t know why that marked the end of the story, but I knew her exclamations had something to do with it. When I was done with the chapter, I was left feeling intrigued. I was squirming while I read it – it was a hundred notches better than how I had felt sneakily watching ‘those’ scenes on TV. I thought about the tingly feeling a lot, but I knew better than to ask anyone about it. So, for the next couple of weeks, I would go into my brother’s room every afternoon, read a chapter, and put the book back in its original place. Each story would give me a new set of tingly feelings – the plot always had more than just a man and a woman do things to each other. I didn’t understand everything at first, but the best part about growing up was that all those words, terms and storylines soon made sense. I was sucked into a world where ‘making love’ and fucking were on equal footing; both were valid and exciting. This world was full of threesomes, voyeurism, BDSM, and all things that were considered far from ‘normal’. To my 12-year-old self, there was no single idea of ‘normal’. It was in a book; therefore it was normal. There was room for my imagination to run wild, and because the stories in that book were devoid of specific details about the bodies of the characters, I would involuntarily imagine the bodies of women characters to be like mine. All the things they did, I was convinced I could do. Being a fat girl, it is assumed that my body is supposed to be limiting. But there have been very few moments when I felt like my body was inadequate or incapable of giving and receiving pleasure. Although I never went in search of erotic literature after reading Letters to the Penthouse XIII, the Fifty Shades of Grey craze got me curious, and I read all three books in the series. I was in my first year of college by then, and I'd become a little bit aware of the fact that my body wasn't the 'right kind' of body owing to the comments I heard growing up. So even though I did enjoy reading those books and imagining myself in such situations, it wasn't with the same openness that I did that. But my body has never gotten in the way of me expressing my sexuality. If dated a guy and he said I would look prettier if I lost weight, it would make me feel bad. But I would immediately lose interest in him. Many years and encounters later, I’m still intrigued by sex. Maybe it has to do with my fascination with all bodies and the pleasure they are capable of. Maybe it has something to do with reading that book on a summer afternoon when I was twelve. All the stories I read had long, meaty parts with the woman character being pleasured, often with both the tongue and through penetration, and the ‘clit’ was the star of the show every time. With this content being my introduction to pornography, I walked into the world of sex and pleasure knowing that good sex involved pleasure being exchanged between the man and the woman equally. I was introduced to visual porn at thirteen – in the years following that, I would keep searching for videos that had scenes of women being pleasured by men. Funnily enough, I used to think men going down on women was a fetish because finding a porno with it was so rare! It’s a good thing, then, that I’ve also been fortunate to have been with men who not only understood sex the way I did, but also went beyond doing the bare minimum. I guess I could say that feminism had come into my life (pun intended) way before I knew it. Over the years, I tried locating the book again in my brother’s ever-expanding library, but I could never find it. Recently I went online in search of it, and found a PDF within seconds. Bless the internet, right?

a historic day

A short poem for September 6, 2018

   It's a historic day for us I refresh my Twitter feed again and again and it finally says it's done I want to cry but I can't my mother sits a few feet away unaware   later when the TV is on, there's silence I walk past, determined not to show anything on my face even as she looks at me from the side of her eyes I want to cry but I can't because even if I don't tell it seeps out of me and at some level they know but they are better than me at denial we share the same genes we share the same tactics   but I can feel myself struggling I let words slip out of my mouth sometimes Torn between wanting everyone to know and hiding till I die I talk about women and how beautiful they are cautiously, as if I am jealous I talk about how unfair it is for them to be denied the freedom to love I congratulate others while screaming inside 'I AM ONE OF YOU' but today suddenly impulsively stupidly I want to scream YES I LIKE GIRLS YES I DREAM ABOUT KISSING THEM YES I USED TO BE IN LOVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND I too want to sing songs about the girl who smiled at me the other day and made it all better I too want to draw pictures of curly hair and bright smiles and hands that touch my cheeks gently I too want to write poems about being heads over heels in love and gush about it to my friends I want to celebrate too   but I can't I want to cry but I can't So I wait   and at night, under the covers, I finally cry they are tears of joy and they are tears of despair I cry looking at the jubilant faces of people brave brave people braver than me who have worked for this who have marched the streets wearing their colours who have braved the disdain and violence who have refused to let themselves die inside It's a historic day for them   one day I will celebrate I will cry and they will be tears of joy only   Fig is a big fan of cats, studio ghibli and writers who can describe food vividly.  

Different Personas In Bed

Perhaps we adopt sexual personas to make ourselves feel more confident, or to make our lovers feel more confident. Some people adopt different personas as a temporary holiday from their real lives.

We have all heard people say ‘But that’s my home personality/office personality/ online personality!’ when you express surprise that they have done something that seems very different from their usual behaviour. Which made us wonder could it be that people have different sexual personas also? It’s not difficult to imagine that when you and your partner know you’re finally alone together that an electric current runs through you and turns your sexual persona on. When we express ourselves as sexual beings, we also have the room to take on personas that we may not actually adopt in other parts of our lives. You know what we mean. Perhaps some of us get more confident and dominating in bed, or perhaps we adopt mannerisms that are more bashful than we really are. Or we channel sexy people we admire. Perhaps we adopt sexual personas to make ourselves feel more confident, or to make our lovers feel more confident. Some people adopt different personas as a temporary holiday from their real lives. We spoke to some folks about the sexual personas they adopt, and this is what they had to say about who they are in bed or think they will be. Opposites only: “Outside the bedroom, my persona is of a leader: I’m always an organiser, the point person. When I’m in bed, I want to be the submissive, and I want her to control me. It turns me on like crazy, that someone would have the balls to do that to me,” says Punya, a Bangalore-based student who dates other women. “I know I'm so dominating and in control of what I'm doing with myself, even the way I walk, I would hit a person who looks at me too long. So, when someone can put me down, or put my wrists down and kiss me, that turns me on, what can I do?” She finds it confusing that the bedroom is the only place she allows herself to drop her commanding persona and adopt a more submissive one, but can’t seem to figure out why that may be. Sanya, a 25-year-old journalist based in Bangalore, describes herself as a “roaring raging feminist”, but says that she likes “all kinds of anti-feminist things” done to her in bed. “It’s so hard to explain. My soul and body love being humiliated in bed by my [male] partner. I like him to drag and throw me around, to hurt me a little, all to show his power over me in bed, which is the exact opposite of what men and women should treat each other like, and the opposite of how I demand to be treated outside.”   Thirty-year-old Delhi-based lawyer Arjun notices his sexual persona changing depending on how he’s dealing with other things going on in life. “I find that when I’m feeling powerless over other things, like at work or with my friends, I tend to be more dominating and commanding in bed. It’s not something I do consciously, but I notice it in hindsight. Maybe it’s an automatic reaction to compensate for what I am not feeling, or a kind of wish fulfilment of the way I want to be.”   So there’s clearly something about sex that allows us to take on different personas from our usual ones, but the reason could be different for everyone. Some just want to express who they’d really like to be, while others use sex as a vent for feelings they can’t express in any other way. Some may even use sex to uncover new aspects of their own personalities, which means sex is a great way to both express and discover yourself. Role-play: Some people adopt in-bed personas quite literally and obviously, like in different forms of role-play. Role-play is when sexual partners pretend or act like certain characters and enact those roles together in a sexual context, like a couple pretending that they’re two strangers meeting for the first time, or that they’re sworn enemies who’ve ended up locked in an elevator one cold night. You know, use your imagination. ;) Manasvi, who enjoys role-playing with her girlfriend, likes pretending to be strangers. “It helps you lose a lot of inhibitions. When you’re anyway pretending to be someone you aren’t, there’s less pressure to come across as perfect, or cool, or anything. You don’t worry about making a fool of yourself, because you aren’t being yourself! Any goof-ups reflect on the character, not you, or that’s how it can end up feeling when you think about it, so it allows you to feel a lot more breezy and confident in this new role. But you actually obviously know your partner, so there’s the comfort of that too. It’s like getting the best of both worlds.”   One-night stand persona: While some people adopt different personas to add “spice” to an existing relationship, others adopt a different kind of persona during one-night stands, or where they know they won’t meet the person again. “I’ve engaged in some complete invention on one-night stands, especially when I was younger,” says Arjun, “I once hooked up with a Korean lady at a debate tournament. That whole night seemed like something out of a book or a movie: There was lots of alcohol, nicely dressed people, and she says to me, come to my room. I had no idea what the standards in her country are, but I felt the need to try harder, to adopt the persona of a much more confident person. Subsequently though, I realised it wasn't sustainable with a person for the second time, because you can’t keep up an act for that long. The cracks will begin to show.” Some sexual personas, though, seem to be part of a more widespread social attitude. Sara, a Bangalore-based writer, feels people adopt deliberately uncaring attitudes on one-night stands these days, and that this seems to be the go-to persona people adopt on one-night stands. “There’s the perception that if you want to be with-it during a one-night stand, you have to be kind of coolly aloof and stand-offish towards your partner. You have to act like you don't care about them, as though you have to prove that you don’t want to be in a long-term relationship. It’s really strange. Just because you’re having meaningless sex, it doesn’t mean you have to treat the person like they’re meaningless too.” Playing to the (imagined) gallery: Taskin, a gay man in his early 20s, says that he rarely adopts sexual personas, but can think back to one time when he did just to please another person. “I was younger and I had just moved to Bangalore. For some reason, I really wanted the “jock boy-nerd boy” story. So partly to fulfil that wish, I started going out with a football player. Just to fit that experience into the stereotypical ideas of masculine and feminine, submissive and dominating. He’s from a village in Tamil Nadu, I am from one too, and I was building that in my head. I started imagining things that would be attractive to this person, including being coy and submissive, because I thought it would manufacture more pleasure for him. We didn’t end up sleeping together that night [for complicated, unrelated reasons] and only flirted intensely, but this interaction is the one time I remember pretending to be something [sexually] that didn’t come naturally, even if it was for a brief flirtation and we didn’t end up having sex.” Porn persona: Fortunately, or unfortunately, a lot of people recall taking their cues on sexual personas from porn. Of course, we often model many of our behaviours based on what we see on screen. Some of us may try to sigh and smile like our favourite Bollywood heroines, while others may try using lines they've seen their favourite stars use on screen. But when it comes to sex, a lot of people’s first point of reference is porn, and this can lead to some problems in real life. “When I first started having sex,” says Arjun, “I would try for this hyper-confident, hyper-masculine persona. I would say things like “Oh yeah, you like that?”, just silly nonsense I saw in porn. But when I started thinking about why I would do or say these things, and the root causes and forces making me find those acts pleasing, I stopped doing it, because I realised it was rooted in just porn and patriarchy.” Women report modelling their sexual personas based on porn too. “I always automatically start moaning and panting in ways that don’t feel natural,” says Ardra, a 26-year-old Bangalore-based media professional, “You know you're supposed to react that way because the women in porn are always moaning and screaming, and I worry my boyfriend will feel like he’s not up to the mark if I don’t react that way too.” Literary figures: If it’s porn for some, apparently its books for others. Greeshma, a 25-year-old media professional from Calcutta, says, “I read a lot of romance novels, and I’ve sometimes noticed that after a particularly good one, I bring in some elements of the character’s persona into my sex life. Not always, but I’ve noticed it happen a few times. I might change my posture or my hand gestures, the kinds of words I say [during sex] and the tone or pitch of my voice. I just randomly try to channel the character in some way. I have no idea why I do it. Maybe I just love the characters so much I want them to be part of my real life. Maybe I love the characters because they’re sexy, and I’m always trying to have sexy sex too.”   No persona, no cry: And of course, there are some who don’t really feel like they adopt sexual personas at all. Kaia, a 26-year-old freelance consultant currently based in Guyana, says that she behaves outside the bedroom pretty much the way she does inside. “Anyone who knows me even a little would know that I’m a very sexual being. The way I talk, the things I say, the way I move my hands and body and express myself, I think I’m always very sexual and in tune with my body. So, I don’t have to adopt any sexual personas, I think my persona is very sexual to begin with!”   Watch our new video on consent inside relationships :

You Should Wear Maroon For Your Skin" and Other Advice I've Ignored as a Non-Fair Woman

Why hide under drab colours? Bold lip art – bright colours, filigree designs, polka dots – are my jam

I love beauty jaunts. This is where I revel in having a body and a whole industry devoted to painting it. Recommended remedy for PMS, hard break-ups and bad days, in general. I started in the late 90s, freshly into adolescence and in possession of hard-won permission to paint my face. Naturally, I paid close attention to the leading authority on my body – the rest of the world. My first lipstick was the only shade everyone told me was “appropriate” for me – maroon. This is the colour I call India’s apologetic vanity. Lipstick reminds people that women have mouths (which can speak) and presumably most people don’t want to know that. So we are permitted one dark colour “for special occasions” that’s barely going to show in the evenings – when it’s deemed appropriate anyway. Women of every age are huddled under this concession colour. A paler shade may just about pass for someone fairer, but only so long as its not ‘too loud’. Because even with our lips, women are not supposed to scream. My ancestors hailed from rice country, with no connection to wheat, grain- or colourwise. So I didn’t fit on the melanin scale that ran from “gori” to “wheatish”. Everyone from fashion gurus to well-meaning neighbours wanted to rescue me from the dire plight of having an unfair and lovely complexion. Multani mitti and milk cream found great favour as India welcomed the fashion industry with its own “natural”/“ayurvedic” concoctions. Mismatched concealers were scratched into my skin in the hope that the reddening would look closer to something on the melanin scale. Fairness creams and burning bleaches were whispered about, behind the doors of girls’ bathrooms and beauty parlours. And finally, what could not be rescued, would have to be concealed. Hide, I was told, in dark colours, full coverage clothes and long hair. We dark girls, we’re taught to erase ourselves. I know what Michael Jackson meant when he sang, “I’m not going to spend my life being a colour.” The politics of colour is multi-dimensional. How often do you see a dark girl in shorts, singlet or a backless dress? How many of them wear their hair short? These unsanskari dressing choices place more of the skin on display. Vanity, already a trespass for women, becomes an unthinkable sin for those rich with melanin. But bright colours call to me, and this choice always comes at a price. Ae kaali, shouted a voice down the school corridor where I was shaking the rain off my neon orange raincoat. When I entered the college in a fire engine red t-shirt, two boys put on sunglasses, pointed at me and laughed. My electric blue work shirt entered the room before I did, with whispers and later, anonymous notes left on my table. Try maroon, I was told, or navy blue or brown because they’ll suit you. My fashion choices became a negotiation with a melanin scale that didn’t have room for me. I began pushing the boundaries first with brightness of colour, and then the colours themselves. One day a parrot green blouse with no makeup, another day black nail polish with regular jeans. Brighter reds became more acceptable in the 2000s and accessible to me. As an adult, I had more control over my dressing, albeit subject to social censure. I played my dressing like it was a game– how much could l get away with it while still staying within obvious boundaries? A bead necklace as a belt? A multi-coloured scarf around my handbag? And always, always bright colours. Always playing hide-and-seek with navy blue, black and brown. It gave me a lot of confidence. It frequently surprised (and occasionally angered) people. By my late twenties, I had expanded my distinctive palette to makeup. Gloss, glitter, fuchsia lips, icy-blue eyelids – I was screaming colour. It has never stopped disturbing people, friends and strangers alike. I came to be known as the Crazy Dresser. Yet, what struck me was that no one minded fairer-skinned people wearing these things. As metrosexuality descended into our ranks, the men leading the charge were all pale-skinned. I often felt like the sole flag-bearer for visible brownness. Other shoppers would stare with open hostility as I reached for the sparkle section, while striking up great camaraderie with similarly fair-hued strangers. The salespeople would try to push me towards the skin creams counter, promising to “cure this awful tan” and always, “You should wear maroon for your skin.” I’ve realised that the shaming system needs one important ally to work – your own self. Shame had no currency if I refused to buy into it. So what looked good to me, became what looked good on me. My need to rebel faded and I was able to embrace colours and styles simply because I liked them. There are no browns in my cupboard (I have so much on my own skin). But fluorescent green? Sunshine yellow? Hot pink? Hello Picasso! Every one of these shades finds a welcome spot on my personal shade card. Last year I happily adopted the bold lipstick trend. Blue, did you say? Move over Rihanna, I see you your bold colour and raise you funky designs. My Crazy Dresser self surfaces on my lips in the form of stripes, polka dots, filigree work, even comicbook art. Give me black and white and I’ll turn that into a chessboard on my lips. Or a yin-yang symbol. My lips don’t hide or even whisper. They roar. Recently I bought a gold lipstick, hoping to try a ‘bejeweled mouth’ look. To my surprise, the lipstick wouldn’t show at all on my skin, no matter how hard I swiped. I realised the shade was the exact same hue as the colour of my skin. I know now that colours don’t ‘look weird’ on my skin the way the fashion industry describes. It’s really, really hard to overshadow gold. And I have a natural supply of it all over my body. All bodies are works of art and mine just happens to be framed in gold. Beauty jaunts are public parades for my royal skin. Are you coming to watch? Ramya Pandyan, also known as IdeaSmith, is a writer, blogger and performance artist. She runs a creative community called Alphabet Sambar and is co-founder of SXonomics, a feminist band. Ramya tweets, blogs, Instagrams and Youtubes as @ideasmithy. WATCH OUR NEW VIDEO ON PLEASURE, CONSENT AND RELATIONSHIPS! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY_F5RO-wps[/embed]

I Thought Dye-ing Young Would Make Me More Desirable. Twenty-Three Years Later, I’m Ready to Stop

Trying to hide white hair now seems like an avoidable agony

 I'm fat, fifty-plus and ninety percent white-haired. I've been dyeing my hair for the last twenty-three years, and I'm sick and tired of having to colour my hair every week. When I was a schoolgirl, a would-be-fashionista friend asked me whether I bleached my hair, as it was a very light brown colour in the front.  It was the 1980s, and I had never even heard the term “bleach”. When in my twenties those same strands of light brown hair began to go white, Indira Gandhi-style, I panicked. To have white hair was to be old and undesirable. So I bought a sachet of Kali Mehendi for the Rs 3 (Godrej hair dye was available too, and a safer option, but too expensive for me at the time) and very happily amended nature’s course. At the tender age of 24, my dyeing days had begun. As I hit middle age, all my friends were dyeing their hair too. A uniting fear is that white hair is taboo and vaults us up to the status of a desexualised Mataji. Having white roots peeping out right in the front is frowned upon. It indicates letting oneself go. It is like a red flag signalling defeat. So, one finds us scurrying around, checking the shelves in the supermarket for not only the ammonia-free salon-look hair colour but the accompanying shampoo and conditioner to go with it. The more affluent ones spend thousands in beauty parlours getting their tresses streaked in hues of brown, gold, burgundy so that their hair too followed the fashion trends. Colouring one’s hair is the easiest cosmetic procedure to counteract the encroaching lines and wrinkles. As long as one has a mop of jet black hair a la Dev Anand, it declares to the world that you are still young and healthy – and by extension, desirable. Infuriatingly, for me, my husband is blessed with genes that have kept his hair and figure youthful, despite being nearly a decade older. I, on the other hand, have had to reluctantly resort to strange acrobatic exercises in order to look younger. For all my peers who dye their hair and are reading this – you know what I'm talking about! You prepare the colour, apply it while contorting your whole body so that maybe this time you might see the back of your head (and ultimately entrust it to God), wait around with a head full of chemicals desultorily watching TV, then you rinse, shampoo, and condition. The whole process is a tedious ordeal. Sonam Kapoor is lying when she chirps 'Hair colour is fun!' DO NOT believe her. And when I think of the approaching Delhi winters, when the mere thought of taking a bath is abhorrent, and I resort to once-a-week showers, the idea of battling for an additional hour in the bathroom with hair dye seems like avoidable agony. And then last July, something happened that pushed me a step closer to stopping entirely. I had a brain aneurysm, and was laid up in a hospital bed for ten days (getting operated upon and fussed over), which threw my hair-colour-schedule off balance. Strapped down in the ICU with tubes all over me, touching up my roots became a tad difficult. A month went by. My hair grows pretty fast, so soon there was a solid inch and a half of white roots showing below jet-black hair. I used to glance at the mirror – "Ugh" – glance away, and groan, "God, I've got to colour my hair eventually." The interval became longer and longer, until I spontaneously decided that enough was enough. Here was the perfect opportunity to give up this nuisance for good. This was a simple decision for me to make, but I had no clue as to how I looked in the eyes of others. Post-operation, lots of folks dropped in to see me. And to them I posed the question "What do you think? I want to stop colouring my hair". I was hoping they'd say encouragingly "Oh, wonderful! You look much better already, dye is harmful for your hair, etc etc" so I would feel vindicated in my decision. But instead, most people looked at me askance, and their immediate reaction would be one of shock, horror and an underlying sense of betrayal, "Oh, you colour?" in spite of my visible roots. Pat would come my response: "Yep. I started going white in my mid-twenties, just like my daughter." They'd say, "Oh really? Well, it's not looking bad, but I think you should carry on colouring." So I was disappointed in them and they were disappointed in me. Apart from my husband and daughter, everyone expressed a faint sense of disapproval, as if I was breaking away from the herd. On the phone with my mom, I hopefully repeated the exercise. I sounded out my plan only to be met with "Tor dike aami takate parbo na! Aami benche thakte-thakte tui shada maatha korish na!" (I won't be able to look at you! Don't you go white while I am still alive!) As if me going white made her twice as old. And to be old for a woman is somehow the worst possible fate. Her reaction just strengthened my resolve, most of which I ascribe to my innate rebelliousness – whatever my mother says, I must do the exact opposite, whether I'm fifteen or fifty. And as I’ve grown older, age no longer feels like a terrible fate that needs to be disguised. But the process of letting yourself go grey means measuring every day how much percentage of each strand is black or white. In frustration, I asked my hairstylist to just bleach it all. He recoiled and said, "No, no. It'll make your hair very rough, just let it grow out". Haircut it was, then. My plan was to chop it so short that only the white roots remained, dreaming of pulling a Nafisa Ali, who shaved off her hair in Tirupati and said goodbye to hair colour. My daughter wailed "Ma, you'll have to get a buzz cut. You'll look like a baby bird or worse, Salman Khan!" I relented, but sneakily looked out for a chance to rebel. During an unplanned visit to a mall, I came across a glass booth advertising 'Express Haircuts for Rs 99!' All the hairstylists inside looked suspiciously inexperienced, but what did I have to lose? In I went, dragging my daughter behind me. I got the most horrendous haircut ever, but now, as the haircut has grown and settled, I am left with a proper penguin mop, fifty-fifty black and white just like a chessboard. I am reminded of a poem I read in a British children's magazine when I was eight and I had never heard of hair dye. I am a little penguin short and fat. White is on my front part, and black is on my back. With my life experience now, I'd like to make some amendments. I am a little penguin, white and black I have stopped colouring and I'm never going back. That’s how I am, that’s how I look, and that’s just fine with fifty-plus me. Sumita has been a teacher for over 24 years. Now, she goes to remote, offbeat places and writes about her travels. Have you seen our new video on consent inside relationships yet? Come, enter the beautiful universe of Ishq Nagar

What My Live-In Relationship Taught Me About Consent

She wanted to say no, but felt compelled to say yes. She would signal how she truly felt, but he would pretend not to understand. Consent proved tricky and elusive, until she developed the muscle she needed to say 'no'.

 I live and work in Mumbai, and the reason I want to continue doing that is because it’s far away from my hometown, where my parents live. I grew up in a smallish Tier 2 town in India, which still reminds me of all the restrictions I had while growing up. Like the fear of being seen with a boy in a public place – “reputation kharab hone ka dar”, even if we were just talking casually. So when my mom found out that I had moved in with my boyfriend (she gathered this after quizzing my domestic worker), I knew I was in for a lecture. I had not intended to tell my mother just yet, because I wasn’t sure of my relationship with this boy and things were moving too fast (we had only met three months before, and had been dating just a few weeks). But super sleuth that she is, she caught my lies pretty quickly. “So what do you intend to do?” my mother asked, as part of the ‘the serious talk’ that followed. I said, “I don’t know yet, but I enjoy his company.” “Send me a picture of this boy,” she demanded. I told her I didn’t have a photo. “This boy” was 15 years older than me, bald, with a big stomach, and rich. He wasn’t exactly the picture-perfect guy my mother had been dreaming of for me (she pictured someone tall, slim, and handsome. The only part she would have approved of was his money.) Unfortunately, my parents are very judgemental and try very hard to ‘fit in’ in the social structure. For them, a live-in relationship is blasphemous. I didn’t want to hear her judgments at such an early stage of my relationship and thank god, he was not on social media! My mother would have stalked him straight away. When I met my new boyfriend, I had recently changed jobs, and had just exited a two-year relationship after a lot of struggle. My previous relationship was the first time I had had sex with someone, and the combination of my first time getting physical and the passionate love I felt for that guy led to strong feelings that I wasn’t able to get beyond easily. He was a playboy type and was dating another woman simultaneously, and I knew this from the beginning, but I was addicted to the feeling of being with him. Looking back, I think he was one of those narcissistic bad boys, whose attention I loved getting. For the last year of our relationship, I struggled to overcome this addiction and finally after a friend motivated me enough, I quit it and came out of it. My new live-in boyfriend was my boss at my new job. He could see that I needed attention after a difficult breakup, and showered a whole lot of it on me. For starters, he called me to a 5-star hotel, took me into the kitchen (he knew the chef) and cooked a lavish meal for me. The meal was clearly bait, and I fell for it. I once overheard him giving advice to a friend – You gotta make the move when the girl is all impressed and needs a shoulder to cry on. Well, that was my state at that time. He would also give me advice, saying, “You need to get under someone to get over someone.” After the meal, he kissed me and invited me to his room. I said, “Okay”. I knew what I was heading into, but I was still numb from my last breakup and wanted to take revenge on my ex even if it was just in my head, by sleeping with this man who I did not desire at all. He quickly undressed and started kissing me and rubbing his hands over my body, while I stood there still, looking out of the window, as if this torture was my punishment for making bad choices in life. It felt like torture because I didn’t know him enough – or at all – to want to do it with him, and he was only the second person I was getting physical with. I think I was faking liking him, just like we sometimes fake an orgasm. So he probably thought I was enjoying it, but I was not. It’s not like he didn’t want to pleasure me. But I was not ready for a pleasurable experience as I was still grieving breaking up with my previous boyfriend. We got naked but did not end up having sex, because I was drunk and I passed out. I woke up naked in his bed and saw him sleeping next to me. I wore my clothes and slipped out without telling him. I know that is probably the worst way to start a relationship – I was never able to articulate what I truly felt, and in a way, I had been paralysed by it. Because he spent so much money on that first date, made a personal effort and did various small things to make me feel impressed, I think I felt obliged to enjoy it, and so faked it all the time. This pattern has been pretty prevalent throughout our relationship. What followed after that first date was loads of affection showered over me, dinners at expensive restaurants, and consensual sex. Though I did not feel great having sex with him, I started to grow fond of him, so it mattered less. I don’t think he is bad at sex – I don’t think anybody is bad at sex, people just like different things. I also feel that a natural chemistry has to be there for two people to enjoy sex. We didn’t have that chemistry. We talked about what we liked, but it didn’t help and sex always seemed like too much effort and was not pleasurable. Later, I started avoiding sex as much as I could. I don’t know when exactly we moved in together, because we were simply sleeping with each other everyday – but it was at his house, of course, which was in an expensive neighbourhood. My new office was very far from where I stayed, so I decided to search for a house closer to my workplace. I gave my landlord notice, assuming I would be able to find a house in two months. But with all the dinners, flirting and getting to know each other, I didn’t have much time left to look for a house. My boyfriend said I could stay with him until I found another place. So I moved in with him, temporarily. But he never wanted me to leave. Every time I would go out looking for a house, he would get clingy. Then one day he formally asked if I wanted to continue to live at his house. Living with him didn’t seem like a bad idea, only because I might have been able to save some money, which I had not been able to do even after seven years of working. If I’m being honest, if I had more savings or had found a good place for myself to stay, I probably wouldn’t have moved in with him so quickly. But the muscle I needed to say ‘no’ wasn’t fully developed yet – growing up in a way where relationships are hard to be open about, makes it hard to have confidence and a habit of speaking about them. It has been around two years since we first started living together. There was not a single day that I had not questioned my decision of moving in with him. It’s not as if ours was a terrible relationship – over two years I had grown to become very fond of him. He was much older than me and loved me like a child. He adored me, cuddled with me, was loyal and intelligent, things I had not experienced in my earlier relationships. But our relationship also felt claustrophobic – he knew about every moment of my life. If I was not with him, then he would ask me where I am, who I am with, when I will come back. All those questions bothered me, and I didn’t want to answer them all the time. I felt guilty if I spent any time without him, as if I felt I was letting him down by enjoying myself with my friends, while he was stressed out and working at home. I could not call my friends home, as there seemed to be a status difference between him and my friends, and he did not gel with them. I couldn’t bring myself to leave him, nor was I able to be with him fully. I think that being 45, he was looking for a companion and a long-term commitment, which is why he had always been few steps ahead in this relationship. He asked me to move in so quickly, and after four months of moving in, he gave me a diamond ring and called it a commitment ring. I refused to accept it, but he forcibly kept it in my closet. Then, three months later, he pushed me to make him meet my mother, then he made me meet his parents. He announced to all his friends that I was his fiancé. I never wore the ring despite his insistence, which I thought was a good enough signal that I wanted to take things slow, but I am not sure if he understood that signal. There are several good reasons why I didn’t want to marry him, the first being the power differential. I didn’t feel like an equal in this relationship. There was an unsaid authority and I felt obliged to do a lot of things so that he didn’t feel bad. For example, I was not able to say no to small household chores. Or if I wanted to go out with friends, then I had to build up a story of how I should say this to him. Then there was the sexual incompatibility – even after two years, we had not reached a stage where we were able to enjoy sex with each other. And I was worried about being judged – I thought my friends and family would not be kind about the age gap, and would think that I probably compromised for money. I also know I neither spoke up nor left so I was perpetuating my situation. But leaving scared me, because there is the pressure of being 31 years old and unmarried. Though I feel it’s great to be single, because you have the freedom to do what you want, I am worried about being single. Sometimes it worries me that I am not meeting social milestones like marriage, babies etc… what if I regret not doing it later? Since I’d been with him, I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet other people, because my world and 95% of my time was filled with him and his circle of friends and work, which we do together. That made me think that I would probably never find anyone better than him. Recently, my mother had the ‘the serious talk’ with me again. She asked me, “What do you want to do?” Again, I said, “I don’t know, but I enjoy his company.” She said,“You are ruining your life. Either marry him, or leave him. We cannot accept this live-in relationship”. I was quiet, thinking, and then something came over me and I said to her determinedly, “Whether I live with someone, or live alone, marry or not marry, have sex with several men or with just one, is my choice.” I knew I was not doing anything wrong living with someone and I had the right to make my own mistakes and learn from my experiences. We continued to live together and I had been forcing myself to make a decision, but there was no easy answer. When we finished having sex, I still had a feeling of guilt overcome me, like my parents were right there frowning at me. Of course I know my guilt was not just about my parents judging me. I myself judged the situation and how I came to be in it, I judged myself for lying all the time – whether it was to the world, to my boyfriend about whether I had an orgasm or how happy I was with him, and perhaps to myself, about why I should stay. So, there you have it. I was afraid to tell people about our relationship because I was scared about what they would say, and I was too terrified to leave, because I would eventually face more judgement ahead as a single woman. I didn’t know whom to please and I second-guessed myself constantly, and it’s probably why things stayed the same for so long. When I exited my first relationship, it was on the urging of a friend. This time, I made the decision to move on, on my own. When I finally gathered the courage to move out, I poured my heart out to two of my friends, who were there for me when I needed them. About two months ago, a week after my birthday, I picked up my stuff from his house while he was away and moved to a friend’s place. Then I found a house for myself in the next ten days and am now living on my own. I met him for coffee a day after I moved to my friend’s place, and told him that I needed to break up with him. We had a long emotional talk, in which he said that he was somehow expecting this. He tried a lot to convince me to stay, but I had made up my mind. I was scared to live without him, and unhappy while I was with him. Looking back, I had been so caught up in worrying about everyone else and what they thought, that I had smothered what I wanted for myself. What I honestly want and how to get to it is something I’m still learning. But then I remind myself that it's okay. Its okay to test out love and sex, even when there isn’t a perfect ending in sight. Love, just like life, is confusing and drawn out, and takes time to figure out. The important thing is that we try to do so and keep moving forward with our new understandings. SEE OUR NEW VIDEO ON CONSENT IN RELATIONSHIPS! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY_F5RO-wps&feature=youtu.be[/embed]  

My Exes Live in a Sexy Nexus. I Love them All

We need our exes like we need our brothers and sisters and favourite cousins to remember who we were

We need our exes like we need our brothers and sisters and favourite cousins to remember who we were  I told a friend recently that I tell all men I meet nowadays that I love them. My friend scoffed, social service? Which is funny but it is not that I tell all the men I meet that I love them, literally. It’s just that I feel kindly towards the world lately. I feel particularly kind towards my exes. This is a strange feeling. Usually, I try not to think about the things they did to me, the things I did to them, the things we did to ourselves when we were together. All these years it has given me that feeling of wanting to change the channel when someone on TV is doing something embarrassing. Until, as I said, recently. I have had some years of being loved expansively – and continue to be loved expansively – by a kind man, and I suppose I am passing the parcel. Years ago my friend B, five years older and hugely tolerant, witnessed for months my tears about breaking up with the boyfriend of the time. Underneath all the crying, the rationalising, the arguing back and forth was the feeling that this was meant to be. We were meant to be together, my boyfriend and I, sharp and funny and hot-pink wearing, lean and curvaceous, mean and obsessive, we were meant to be together. But B just listened. I didn’t know he was listening to a similar stream of tears from his sister at the time. The sister’s lover had been horrifically abusive. After some months he told me about his sister. B said to me, “Once in a while she will say she remembers how long and beautiful his torso was and I have to nod along.” He was grimacing and laughing as he said it. I laughed along. Because that man I couldn’t believe had left me had a long, perfect torso too. Us short girls and boys who were left behind have to think lovingly of those long torsos and laugh. Because when you lose ridiculous beauty you have to embrace the ridiculousness, the beauty and the loss all at once. Anything else is a way to bitterness, and who wants that when you could just run your hands up and down yourself and feel that body again. Fifteen years after we last met, the memory of his toothy grin, his near-edible lower lip, jolts me with a shot of pleasure. Because I bit that lip on the way to a gathering of Very Important People from our world. Because we never made it to that gathering. We did what we could in that car since I had a boyfriend and he had failed to mention he had a girl waiting for him at home (you can see where this was going). When I am old, I will remember skipping dinner with the Important personages and the stop-start-stop make out in the car. I will remember his attempting to nip at my butt in a meadow full of tall grass some months later, stumped not by my squealing but by the tourist bus that stopped next to the meadow right then. I will remember showering in a little box of a bathroom with the door open because we couldn’t bear to close the door on the wide open valley, because we were vain babies and because in the lines and curves of our vain bodies we had made what seemed an invincible private world on a mountain top. I will remember. And perhaps he will remember and no one else will. No one else will know that wood nymph phase of ours.   We need our exes like we need our brothers and sisters and favourite cousins to remember who we were. They know that the scar on your inner thigh is from jumping badly over a barbed wire fence, how you became the person who would rather die than go to dentists, the person who wishes they were tolerant towards people who don’t get jokes but isn’t. How did we become who we are, miserable and cranky and joyous in this particular way that we are? Only the Shadow knows. And that cousin. And that ex. I live a quiet life now in a 9-to-5-ish job. I have mutual funds. In the memories of my exes lie a feckless woman who travelled across the country following her nose, following the tingle in her pussy, following a sexual shudder. Now this makes me sound like that woman Robert Palmer sings about: She's unavoidable, I'm backed against the wall She gives me feelings like I never felt before I'm breaking promises, she's breaking every law She used to look good to me, but now I find her Simply irresistible   And I wasn’t. I was dweeby and badly dressed and greasy. But I also posed languidly, nakedly on a sofa while talking on the phone, while behaving as if I didn’t know that my boyfriend was taking photos with an ancient SLR. Somewhere in the world is a crumbling film roll with my breasts at 25, my toes at 25, my nose at 25 and a pussy simultaneously hesitant, simultaneously filled with bravado. Us un-pretty girls can’t sit neatly waiting like jasmine in a string. We have to fly out like crows, loud and incorrigible and hopeful that someone will see our sleek, black wings and fly with us. So rapid is us girls’ progress into obsolescence, pretty or unpretty, that at 28 I felt cynical and sad and convinced that it was all over. Enter the ex that every one deserves. Kind, charming, energetic. Staying just long enough to remind you of the starburst that is romance. Staying just long enough so that you don’t mistake mutual fun for mutual funds. He was younger. Five years younger. Wooh, it felt a bit precarious but not really since it happened in the manner of a high-wire trapeze act and there was no time to think. I arrived in Bombay on work. He had pinged me a few months ago on a dating site and I had been friendly, not imagining that he and I had any thing in common. On the day I arrived in Bombay he called to say why don’t we meet for a drink. Outside my friend’s house I hopped into his taxi and he said something and I said something and we didn’t stop talking for the next five days. But there was no indication in that taxi right then moving slowly through the furthest suburbs that we were going to engage in a week of activities that would warm me a whole decade later. We went to a club and in half an hour we were tearing at each other on the dance floor in ways that in my experience happened only in the movies. You know that scene when the door slams open and the couple explodes into the apartment pulling at each other’s clothes, banging into walls, all the while lips attached to each other for air, oh god, air, aren’t we kissing so we can keep breathing? We hurtled out of the club, wild-eyed. I was covered in hickies and sticky with sweat and determined to find a horizontal surface right then. We returned to my friend’s home and comically had sex standing up. Also that night, in another event that I had assumed was a stupid creation of stupid movies, he fucked me very hard and I enjoyed it. But the force of each of his er… thrusts made me slide away from him on the cold floor of my friend’s living room. He’d pull me back under him, thrust again, and I would slide away again. He told me afterwards that he enjoyed what he assumed was my obvious playacting at reluctance. I didn’t correct him not because I was protecting his feelings or because I wanted to maintain the sexiness of that fuck, but his participating in what he thought was silent role-play turned me on like an electric shock. In the week that followed we made out in the ferries out of the Gateway of India, we made out in the trains, we made out in the courtyards of restaurants, on the warm hoods of cars in residential lanes, on the pokey sharp rocks of Bandstand, joining the spread of lovers like another penguin couple in Patagonia. A hijra warned me that chikne kanjoos hotein hai and gave my boy what we now call side-eye. He, I realise now, was just as used to thinking of himself as a crow and not a jasmine bud, chikna that he might have been. One afternoon that week he reached for me with audacity that makes me squirm right now as if I was still in the backseat of that taxi. He slid up my skirt and pulled down my underwear and thrust his thick fingers into me. The inside of the taxi flooded with my dirty sea, dirty Bombay, dirty sex smell. The taxi driver raised his nose and our eyes met in the rear-view mirror. I tried to close my legs and my boy barked at me, “wider”. I looked out of the window, the city passed by sedately and I came, bucking, gasping, speechless. That ‘wider’ was the only word we said to each other from Churchgate to Bandra. My younger boy is an older boy now. On social media I see that his rough edges have all been polished away in some process that is mysterious to me since we have never really met after that week. I tried to stay in touch but we had nothing in common and he knew that. It made me morose then, but it was just greed. Now I see his DP in suits and that familiar, sweet, snarly, indie dog smile and I feel flooded with goodwill every single time. Now this too sounds like I am one of those ladies who believe that the universe takes care of you and the universe has a reason and let’s drink green tea. Not at all. Sometimes when I broke up with each of these men or when they broke up with me or when we drifted dead-eyed and slack-mouthed away from each other, I was sad and angry and bereft and worried that I had somehow tried to eat those men with my crow maw and they had gotten away. But when one kind accountant (not an actual accountant – just the equivalent in the dating world) indicated with greater frequency that he was thinking of me in a permanent way, I could only think of getting away. He was faultlessly generous and cooked and drove and laughed with crinkling eyes at my jokes. I had seduced him effortlessly and with equal ease persuaded him that it was okay if our fluids leaked onto his sheets, we didn’t need towels. I ran when I got a whiff that he was attempting a bloodless marital coup. When I heard of his prompt marriage to a suitable bride I rolled my eyes. All the afternoons I had rolled my eyes behind a book when he read out random things from the newspaper and I worried about my sliding into marriage with a Victorian Daddy-Knows-Best? Escaped! When I bumped into him many years later I almost didn’t recognise him. For one whole minute. Then I felt so instantly fond of him, of his pastel shirt, his daughter in a bouffant frock and his crinkling eyes. And all I could remember was the afternoon he did turn up at my doorstep from another city because he had heard in my voice a bleak sadness. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a re-run with our exes? To have an afternoon, an evening, a night with fingers entwined and knees touching each other and heads on the same pillow. To smile and smile and smile at each other and the men and women we used to be. Loving our exes is a second chance at loving our past unwieldy selves. Once more, in the words of Robert Palmer: She deserves the applause, I surrender because She used to look good to me, but now I find her Simply irresistible, Simply irresistible When I think of exes, I don’t think of just my pastel-shirted accountant who wanted to marry me. I also think of the boy who I thought was an accountant – equivalent and hence without danger. We went out on just three evenings, but he held my hand every evening and ate grapes from my cupped courtesan palms while we hung out at a bus stop. I also think of the boys who didn’t really want me, who thought of me as a safe, uninteresting accountant-equivalent on stray days out of boredom or loneliness. Once there was a man who was handsome in a way that made young women and old women sit up and smile fondly at him. I had the hots for him in fits and bursts. Between the fits and bursts I looked at him and saw him for the strange uncle-ji he was. But in the fits and bursts he made watermelon juice in my tiny kitchen and took me for long motorcycle rides and swam in the sea. In the fits and bursts he threw a party and looked on as all the younger men of his entourage flirted with me. I wore a long midnight blue dress spangled in silver and was more moon than crow that evening on his roof. The other boys laughed at my jokes and leaned in and my handsome pack leader looked on. In the reflection of their warm eyes he warmed to me and put his arm around me. I found him dog-in-the-manger and also human and sighed for both of us. After another party, this time at my house, I led him by the hand to my tiny bedroom. The house was bursting with people but I was sure that we had a bubble to fuck in. Except Akela the wolf pack leader, sans audience, he didn’t want to fuck me. Perhaps he didn’t want to fuck at all generally, but then I could only think he doesn’t want me he doesn’t want me he doesn’t want me. But crows don’t give up that quickly. I worked a smile out of my dejection and unzipped him and sucked his cock. I was astonished at how even his penis was handsome and glossy and fine-smelling like something in a very expensive bakery. He enjoyed it a little but wanted me to stop. I wanted to cry, I remember, but I was the girl with the party house and us girls with the party houses don’t cry. And uncle-jis are kind in their own way. He held me to his handsome, glossy, fine-smelling chest and we fell asleep. I woke up still in that warm embrace. We never kissed ever in those months of his trying to decide what to do with me. But waking up that morning, I smiled and was ready to say goodbye. Again, not being a green tea drinker, I like to tell the truth. Like many women I have had one or two truly terrible exes. One of them stopped a hair short of hitting me, but perhaps if he had hit me it would have helped me leave quicker. I remember his truly excellent multilingual jokes and Tamil songs he sang on cold winter nights in our car and his tears every time he thought of my leaving in the abstract. (My leaving in reality or all the horrible things he did that made people run away didn’t make him cry). He was a terrible human being and he broke my heart every time I looked at him. He was an ugly, bitey, snappy dog that no one else would feed but which bit me anyway. His sheer unlovableness kept us together. We had violent sex and violent role play and I felt dirty and unlovable too. When I left him I threw myself into being a high roller in the boy casino. I threw the dice, I played blackjack, I embraced the slot machines. On the phone, on chat, in bars and buses, drunk and sober, at night or during the day I was ready to roll. I kissed boys and groped others and held hands and danced to songs one other fellow made me listen to long-distance on the phone. It took six months and a dozen men to feel clean and springy again. This year I bumped into a boy I had loved sincerely and disproportionately a decade ago. He doesn’t fall into a category that I have a name for. He is not an ex. We played magnet-magnet attraction for years without ever doing anything. On a doomed day I told him that I was in love with him and he laughed like I was telling him a funny story. I did cry that day. Desperate to leave my lonely life I latched on to the man who would later turn into my violent ex. I tried to say goodbye to the magnet and he did just enough of dog in the manger, showed just enough contempt for my pursuit of romance, that I swore off him for many years. But in the last few years when we have met in short, passing encounters, I feel pure, undiluted love and swear that I feel the same back. Saying goodbye the last time we met I kissed the side of his neck as I hugged him. All the times I felt I could have just turned my head and kissed him that evening, I was grateful for the people around us, grateful for the unforced calm swirl of love inside me despite a familiar tingle in the pussy (bad pussy, bad. I’ve missed you so).
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2023/09-September/11-Mon/Hugging%20magnetic%20ex%20v3.jpg]]
On the way home, I had an ignominious thought. Did he know that the tingle has never gone away? His touching, his stroking, his side-hugging, what was it in aid of? Was my neediness still transparent? But the truth is that I am no longer the nervous job applicant waiting to be picked after interview and group discussion. Back when I hung about waiting for him to ‘pick me, choose me, love me’ nothing from my strange life entered our bubble of erotic tension. I was careful to keep it that way. But now as I told dirty anecdotes from my life I could hear the scales re-aligning. I was no longer the sweet handmaiden (or the best imitation of handmaiden I could do). We could both be Ulysses back home after many years with dirty sailors and raunchy sirens. We could both be Penelope left behind with the tapestry and the suitors. And each time he touched me, I remembered the impulsive pussy rioter I once was. My need, past or present, transparent or opaque, didn’t feel as shameful. If I hadn’t loved him desperately as I did then who would I be now? To badly mangle the words of another song “God blessed the broken road that led me far, far away from you” My magnetic attraction may strictly not be an ex but he is definitely an erotic time machine. One of those east Europeans said, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.” I think the most painful state is wishing that my particular Ulysses and I had a taxi cab ride in the past. That would have made the future infinitely more tolerable and sparkling, even though the present gleams like the wine-dark sea. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit, said one of those Latin speaking dudes. Meaning, perhaps someday it will bring pleasure to remember even these things. And it has and it will. Anna Kini loves Hyderabad but doesn't live there, loves women but doesn't sleep with them and is not called Anna Kini.

'I Hope that My Art Replaces Judgement with Acceptance'

I express queerness through my art, then it exists with all the politics and the complexities that surround it, whether it’s social or it’s personal.

An illustrator talks about art, identity and queerness As a queer person, making art that draws on who I am is a necessary way to express myself. I work in brand and strategy, but I have a fine arts background, and do illustration outside of work, including for the queer magazine Gaysi. It helps me connect what I do for work and what I do for pleasure, and yet keep it compartmentalised between day-to-day and personal expression. For me, queerness is a term that stands not just for a person’s identity as an individual, but for a collective consciousness, a shared existence that is beautifully complex, layered and inclusive. My work, accidentally or consciously or both, tends to reflect this. What does it mean for me to be a queer artist? Truth is, I’m not sure if I’d be any other type of artist. If art is an extension of your context, then I don’t see myself showing the details of a relationship between a man and a woman, for example, because I don’t know it as a straight person would. So the real question is, am I a queer artist, or just an artist? When Hayley Kiyoko released her album Expectations and the videos for it, everyone started called her “Lesbian Jesus”. And one of the questions she’s asked often, is, why do all your videos have girls making out in them? And her response is, “Taylor Swift sings about men in every single song and no one complains she’s unoriginal.” That’s why I think that if I express queerness through my art, then it exists with all the politics and the complexities that surround it, whether it’s social or it’s personal. And when it’s art, I feel like it’s not necessarily bogged down by the other things that normally happen when you exist as a queer person in the world. Say for a moment that I’m a fierce trans woman who wears my identity very visibly as I walk down the road. I’ve steeled myself somewhere about encountering awkward or even hostile glances or comments or other reactions that no one should have to bear or cope with. But when I express a trans woman as a subject in art or illustration, people stop, look and for a moment, even if for a moment, lose that sense of judgement or prejudice and look at it for what it is – something beautiful, expressive, human, real. And if you do that enough times in art, the hope is that it smoothes away judgement and replaces it with openness and acceptance. When I do something that’s commercial for a client, I’m relying on their insight and their experiences of making that particular project for them. It’s not something that I’m always deeply entangled with. But when it’s something like working for Gaysi or producing any other queer output, I am drawing on my own wealth of experiences as a queer person and I think that I can offer a particular insight that someone else might not have. In that sense, it’s also an opportunity to create work that’s rooted in an Indian context. Cultural contexts are unique to each person and I find this particularly strong with Indian artists, because our influences are vast, varied and both global and local at the same time. So there is an opportunity to create something specific to our experiences. For example, the cover of volume 3 of the Gaysi Zine showed a kirana store with various objects that upon closer inspection have queer undertones to them. They're not far from say, misspelt matchboxes or daily odd items that we engage with. If there’s a common thread in my commercial and non-commercial work, it would be detailing. I think there’s a sense of trying to tell a story in the smaller things that possibly ties any sort of work I do together – across design and illustration. I don't always succeed, but trying is the goal! When I first started doing illustrations around 2010, visual queer content was scarce. In many ways, queer themes in modern India have always existed, but I feel that there used to be pockets that still weren’t really exposed. I’d always looked at queer content and felt that the intention was there, the content was there, but the quality wasn’t always quite there. Perhaps this is because it didn’t come with generous budgets, or sponsors, or support. I think today things are very different when compared to even three years back. Now, there’s an explosion of queer content around us, there’s a lot more conversation around being queer, and it’s a lot more vibrant and a lot more interactive. Homegrown does a great job of diverse, insightful content, Queer Ink is adding to films and video content in a significant way, and publications like AOI, The Ladies Finger, Mint etc are not just queer inclusive, but perceptive and responsible in the way they’re pushing boundaries on gender and sexuality. The last illustration I did for Gaysi was the cover of volume 5 of the Gaysi Zine, called ‘All That We Want’. It used elements that represented different pieces within the issue, but seen as an illustration in isolation, it also wasn’t overtly queer. That’s because there have been people – artists, writers, activists – over many years putting in work to establish strong context. It’s because there are people out there fighting to make our world more queer, that we don’t always need to have cut-and-dried portrayals of what it means to be queer. For me, personally, in terms of inspiration, there is one publishing house whose work and roster of artists are incredibly special – Blaft. From the Tamil Pulp Fiction series to Kumari Loves a Monster to Times New Roman & Countrymen, their work is irreverent, beautifully rooted in a South Indian context and combines literature, art and design. I always go back to their list of books when I need some inspiration. Another artist I had the distinct pleasure of working with, and believe will blow up to be an important illustrator (if she isn’t already), is Sanika Phawde. Intelligent, incredibly detailed and original, I love looking at her work to remind myself that detail and spontaneity is everything. I believe in making art that is a reflection of myself. But although it has to feel true to me, a lot of what I do is for the people who see it. I want them to relate it, and find that it feels true to them too. I want them to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of reassurance and hopefully, some sort of warm fuzzy feeling in their guts. (As told to Deepika S) Karishma Dorai is a communication designer and illustrator based out of Singapore.

Isn't A Whatsapp Love Story A Real Love Story?

Could you fall crazily in love with someone you've never met IRL?

 It all began last summer, when I came out as gay to an old best friend, and confessed that I had been in love with him for the last four years. It was a time when I was just beginning to come to terms with my sexuality and was learning to be unabashed about my feelings. And the moment I confessed, I felt relieved and proud, for I had finally freed myself from the crazy obsession I had had for my friend and could finally go back to focussing on other things in life. Everything was going to be fine and dandy soon. Or so I thought. About 10 days later, I registered on Grindr. Anyone who has ever used it would know that most people on this app (including yours truly) are almost always horny and are on a quest to pacify their raging libidos. But on that particular night, I was not horny, for a change. I was just trawling through profiles to probably find someone to have a decent conversation with. And I hit pay dirt – I had finally found someone who was talking in full words and sentences. (Did I mention that yours truly is a stickler for good grammar?) Here’s the thing: for the entire of the latter part of my teenage life, I’ve lived in Vijayawada (which I proudly endorse as the “de facto capital of Andhra Pradesh”). And I do not know how the gay community on Grindr in other cities and metropolises works, but in my city at least, grammar is the last thing one should expect on platforms like these. Now, I’m nobody to judge these people because I’ve myself been a part of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am situations a lot of times. And grammar does tend to take a backseat. Maybe that’s why this guy – let us call him SS – seemed different. Almost out of the place. And I’m sure he felt the same because he constantly kept asking me if I actually belonged to Vijayawada! I almost bullied him into giving me his number, which he reluctantly did. And before I dialled his number, I checked it on Facebook and instantly found him. What struck me the most about it was his profile picture, which was quite dapper. Sexy, to be honest. I was thrilled and instantly called him up. “Hello”, he said. I still remember how I was immediately smitten by the distinct, deep and manly voice of his, that had a hint of light-hearted boyish charm.  Our conversation was stilted for a brief period where we did our introductions. This was not the first time that I was talking to a stranger. I have done this at least with a hundred of them. I’ve lost count of the number of strangers I’ve had explicit and raunchy conversations with. I have wild hormones to soothe and phone-sex always comes instantly “handy”. But with SS, it was different – something told me that I wanted more than just a one-time conversation with him. In the conversation that lasted a little over an hour, I learned he was a younger medical student from Vizag. Now, under normal circumstances, I’d avoid talking to guys almost two years younger to me, but this one was an exception. And being a student of Biotechnology, nothing turns me on like a medical guy does! Plus, it particularly helps when the medico you’re talking to is super-tall and pretty. He seemed cocky: he went on about how “he’s so done with being the popular guy in college” and how he was tired of being offered money for one-night stands and how he just wanted to become “invisible” from all the attention he was getting on a daily basis. Now, I usually would not touch someone so narcissistic with a barge pole, but it is not every day that I run into such quirky people, besides, he showed considerable interest in me, so I was happy  to make an exception. I don’t have people “perpetually throwing themselves at me” but I have a fairly decent dating résumé. I study in one the most sought-after colleges in the country (so I’m smart enough, I guess) and can keep people hooked with my conversation, if only for a little while. I remember feeling dizzy with happiness even after the conversation that night. And the hangover stayed for a couple of days. I wanted to talk to him again, the following night, but I decided to wait. I wanted him to reach out to me first, because that way I’d know for sure that I had passed the litmus test of appeal. And fortunately (or not) enough, I got a text the day next, on WhatsApp. I checked out the profile picture – great dressing sense, hair to die for, and hot. Now here’s something about me that I need to confess. I’ve long been insecure about the way I look. For starters, I’m not fair skinned, which does not get me past the dating criteria of a lot of people I usually run into. Also, I was once a heavy child so I’ve grappled with weight issues for a considerable period of my life. And I still suffer from that PTSD. I wear specs and have a mild unibrow. Back then, I had very low self-confidence. (Now, it is practically non-existent.) But trust me, the rest of me is perfect! That night when he called me, he asked me for my picture after coyly thanking me for all the praise I had showered on him for his killer looks. “I’m sceptical about sharing my pictures,” I declared, and I never actually showed him my pictures. To his credit, he never really pestered me either. Like all the subsequent nights, that night we promptly discussed our lives. I was hesitant to reveal much, but he opened up totally with me. We discussed everything – from his insecurities, crushes, academics, favourite cuisine, to his sister’s health issues and his disdain for middle-class people. By now I had discovered that the guy I had taken a liking to was a self-absorbed snob. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he thinks travelling in trains is what poor people do. I’ve always taken pride in being brought-up in a middle-class family, but somehow talking to him made me feel worse about my existence. It occurred to me that there was a whole big world out there with  people like him I had no idea existed. I never really called him out on the things he said because by then, I had already taken a liking to him. Nevertheless, the more I talked to him, the more careful I became about the topics I’d pick up to talk about, because by then it had become clear to me that we were totally different people: he is a western music freak, I barely know any singers or bands; he is nocturnal, I prefer waking up early; he is a fashion freak, I can barely wrap my head around any of that hogwash, he’s the shehzada with first-world problems and I am someone who feels guilty for splurging on an overpriced cup of coffee. Maybe these differences brought us together in the first place, but I still found myself being selective about what part of me I presented. Before I could realise it, talking to him had become a part of my daily routine. Conversations went on until 5 am. Sometimes 6 am. And we’d text each other during the day whenever we found time. He’d tell me how I was the only good thing in his life (he still had no idea how I looked). He’d tell me how he wanted to “protect” me from the world. He’d also tell me how he wanted to inflict pain onto me so that I could go to him and he’d console me. How sadistic! Strangely, the sadism seduced me. He’d spend hours on end discussing how he wanted to cuddle and just make wild love to me. And before I realised it, I had already said “I love you” to him multiple times. And on some lucky occasions, he reciprocated too. It took me a while to comprehend that I – as unhinged and frivolous as that might sound – was madly in love with someone I hadn’t met in real life. He badly wanted to meet me, but I kept refusing because I told myself I didn’t want to ruin what was already there. Plus, it had taken a lot of effort to find him – he was my escape from the mundane. Jeopardising all of it by actually meeting him was a risk I was unwilling to take. The dream was so perfect. I think it was mid-August when I realised how this dalliance with him had begun harming my academics. While my classmates were burning the midnight oil, preparing for GRE and TOEFL, I whiled away my time talking to my aashiq. My rational brain told me how silly this was and how we probably wouldn’t even like each other if we met in real life. Every now and then, I would text him saying it was better to break-up than to further this shaky “relationship”, but he’d just not acknowledge it. Until that day, when I decided to finally break it off – completely unwillingly of course – by telling him how someone in my college had asked me out and how I wanted to date someone “real”. Perhaps it was my insecurities playing up again that made me want to break it off before things went south between us, or perhaps it was because I was trying to take control in a situation where I felt I had little power. He broke down that day. I remember feeling so utterly miserable listening to him cry. A part of me wept. But another part of me was secretly happy because his tears told me how much he cared for me. Or so I thought. We did not break up that day. And things were slowly getting back to normal. But this time I felt something strange. I noticed how he’d simply stop talking to me whenever he went home to Vizag. I later cracked the code. This was because in college, he was surrounded by not-so-cool people: the “village bumpkins”. And talking to me was a way of avoiding them. And once in Vizag, in his own habitat, surrounded by his own kind, he’d no longer need me. A week before my birthday at the end of August, we decided to make our “relationship” serious. “We are a thing now,” he said. “Yay, I officially have a boyfriend now,” I said. And we still hadn’t met in person. Truth be told, all of this was bitter-sweet at best and agonising at worst. The thought that I could not have had this person stick around for this long without the shroud of anonymity I enveloped myself with, made me feel like an imposter. I felt miserable. But I promised myself I’d hit the gym and by some miracle, transform myself into an archetype of handsome. This was after all, not just a question of my feelings for him, but my self-worth – a sliver of which still existed at that point. And then came Ganesh Chaturthi, and SS went home. And as expected, no texts or phone calls came. Right before the clock struck 12 on my birthday, I was nervous and excited because, for the first time in my life, I had a boyfriend on my birthday. Calls poured in from all over. But his call never came. Not even a text. I cried myself to sleep that night. I woke up to a “sorry, my alarm didn’t go off, happy birthday” text. That night, I lost my temper with him for the first time; I told him I was sick of being his agony aunt. He told me he didn’t like me anymore. That night had more in store: despair descended on me when I got to know that SS had also been texting a classmate of mine, who is gay too. This classmate had no idea I was gay and that I had a thing with SS. I came out to him and urged him to show me the texts he and SS exchanged. It was sickening to see how SS had shamelessly flirted with my friend. I felt nauseated when I found he’d used same flirty messages for both of us. We broke up. And patched up again twice before finally breaking up. Today, when I reflect upon the entire episode and try to rationalise it, I wonder if it was love, or if it was just the helpless feeling of self-pity and my exaggerated inferiority complex that made me think I’d never find someone so good ever again, even as I grossly overlooked my own worth. Cutting all contact with him would have been a sane idea I feel, in retrospect. But I was so deeply attached to him, or rather the persona of him that I perceived, that I couldn’t let go of him. He continued talking too, because hey, who does not like it when you get such entertainment and drama and attention? I was fully aware how toxic this was. A part of me genuinely wanted to be free of him. But I wanted the person initiating the split to be me, and wanted to bask in the evil satisfaction of making him feel sad for losing me. My GRE was just round the corner and I needed time to breathe, so we stopped talking for a few weeks. I thought this separation would make him miss me, but I got to know he’d moved on and that he was talking to two other guys. And how it was not serious but “just time pass”. That is when I realised what I had been all these days. TIME PASS. What else could it be, I told myself, feeling like a fool. The pain was racking. I felt devastated and there was no going back. I wanted help. I wanted to heal. I had zero control over the things I was doing. I surprised myself one night by coming out to my parents. I was doubly surprised to know that my conventional, conservative Brahmin parents were okay with their son being gay. But that did not help me heal. I was practically going mad. I found myself weeping everywhere, every day. It was not just a blow to my heart, but to my self-esteem too. I ruined my GRE and my Masters applications. I sought counselling and therapy, but that didn’t help much either. It’s been five months since we broke up and a part of me is still broken. Maybe he was right when he called me an “emotional wreck”. As I crystallise my thoughts, I realise how SS is extensively flawed too. I could totally write an essay on why he is so not the right person for me. He unleashed all of my insecurities, while I put him on a pedestal. But in elevating him, I had vastly undermined my sense of self. I’m still learning how to not let things and people do that to me. So, okay, this is mortifying, but recently, he started talking to me again and I responded. I thought I was totally over him, but my friends told me that when I got sloshed the other day, I kept chanting his name through the night. AAARGH! Words cannot express how traumatised I am by the whole episode overall. But I still very much am fond of SS. Even though, sure, love is all kinds of crazy – I know I have a long way to go in all sorts of ways. My story is still a work-in-progress, even as I write it. It was only last night that SS and I were considering going on a date! Now what happens next could jolly well be the plot of my next story. Sai Krishna is a nonpareil gossipmonger, full-time ogler of cute guys and a part-time Biology student who hates people who smother samosas with sauce. 

Sex Actually: Ecstasy, Anxiety and the Fear of Being Judged

Sex, as it actually is.

“‘I hereby withdraw my consent,’ I said laughingly, hoping that it would lighten the situation and get me out of having to do it” Nancy (25 then, 28 now) I had two serious relationships in college, and somehow they were both with feminists. Both my boyfriends happened to be loving, respectful partners who listened. So naturally, I graduated believing that all relationships functioned on the concept of consent. And then I embarked upon my first casual relationship. He was an old college friend, a few years older than me. We were good friends for a while, and then he started to pursue me relentlessly. My initial polite rejections gave way to point-blank refusals, which led to him dropping all contact with me for a few months, after which he apologised profusely. He said he wanted to be friends, so I invited him over. He volunteered to make dinner and explained in great detail how to make a spaghetti aglio e olio, something I could whip up in my sleep. Nevertheless, I smiled graciously and told him I was impressed with his cooking skills. We decided to watch a movie afterwards. Barely two minutes into Star Wars: A New Hope, he turned and kissed me. I was surprised, but I thought to myself, well, you’re bored, and it’s dark, you don’t have to look at him. And he’s not even a bad kisser. So I went with it. It was a less-than-satisfying experience, but how did it matter? So I put the laptop away. We tried to have sex, but apparently the condom was getting in the way, so how about trying it without “that encumbrance”? I refused, but he insisted, “Come on, just a little bit,” and tried to thrust himself in without waiting for a reply. I quickly shifted my position and said, “Sorry, I just don’t think it’s going to happen tonight.” “Alright, but promise me I’ll be your first.” “You know I can’t make-” “Promise me it’ll be me and no one else.” “But I don’t-” “No, just me.” “Umm no, not making any promises.” I felt rather empowered in that moment. We continued with our arrangement for a couple of weeks. He threw several adjectives my way to compliment virtually every part of my body, and the best I could come up with for him was “I like your arms. You have strong arms.” He loved hearing that. He also loved it when I went down – sometimes he would even ask for “one for the road” – but rarely bothered to reciprocate. One day, he asked me, “So, how about swallowing?” “Umm, no, I’m not really into that,” I replied. “Yeah, I understand.” Twenty minutes later, when I was just about to resurface, he held my head down and I was forced to take in a mouthful. Strong arms. I managed to shove his hand away and get up, though. I felt sick and revolted, but 10 minutes later I found myself telling myself that he was just caught up in the moment. So I went to bed next to him, woke up the next morning and saw him off. The next time he wanted me to do that job that he enjoyed so much, we were in his car, in a public place. I said I wasn’t comfortable with the idea. “I hereby withdraw my consent,” I said laughingly, hoping that it would lighten the situation and get me out of having to do it. “Oh come on, just go down quickly,” and with that, I felt my face being thrust towards his lap, with no warning as always. However, this time, I wasn’t going to give in. I sat up. “There are people around, this isn’t going to work. Why don’t we just drive around and chat for a bit?” I asked him. “Nah, it’s late, I have to get home,” was the frosty response I got. So he dropped me home, leaving me with the realisation as I watched the red Civic zoom away, that I was done. This ship had sailed. But he still called me one last time, a week later. “I can’t stop thinking about your legs.” “Please stop, I’m done with this. I’m not doing this anymore.” “Oh, but why?” “Because I don’t want to.” “But why?” “Because I say so. I don’t want to have anything to do with you again.” “Oh. I see. Okay.” “Good, so take care and—“ “Can I have a last picture of those legs?”   “I begged and screamed at him to stop lest I died of pleasure and when he did I screamed at him again to keep going” Maya (24 then, 24 now) I met this guy about a decade back. I had a major crush on him in high school and he had always been majorly out of reach as he had a girlfriend back then. Anyway, we were good friends and we lost touch as time went on. Oh, and he knew I liked him. Fast forward to last year, when we met again, he has become hotter than he was back then. We reconnected, I felt he was flirting with me a great deal, and so I walked up to him and told him that I wanted to fuck him real bad. He obliged within a few days, but I did not cum that night, possibly because I was too tensed up or something. A few days back I spent another night with him and this time, my god this time I came. Again, and again, all night, as he hungrily looked at my face while I was cumming, holding me tight, and occasionally devouring my mouth. I did not know my body could handle this much pleasure, my legs turned to jelly. Honestly I didn't even know the female body was capable of experiencing that many orgasms one after the other. I begged and screamed at him to stop lest I died of pleasure and when he did I screamed at him again to keep going. I went back home with a bruised elbow and knee and a sore clit and have since been thinking about the night non-stop and this man who I've known since childhood who was naked in my arms making me cum again and again in a city far away from where we met for the first time.   “I felt a need for change. I fantasised about having sex with some other unfamiliar body that would wrap me in ecstasy” Ginger (35 then, 42 now) Being a married woman with two children, sex after 15 years of marriage had become a monotonous activity. However innovative we were in trying out positions, I felt a need for change. I fantasised about having sex with some other unfamiliar body that would wrap me in ecstasy and leave an aroma on my body that I am not used to. Though I had no particular person in mind, the desire to act upon my fantasy was so compelling that I started to look around for opportunities. When I moved to my new neighborhood in a hill station, I luckily landed up staying next to a charming man who seemed to show interest, or I imagined so. Anyway without much waiting, I dared to flirt with him and in no time my inappropriate feelings were reciprocated. With chats going to and fro and our frequent stolen kisses on and off, we were desperately ready to take it further. Just that we did not have a place, as he was also married. We could not risk finding a room at a hotel as he knew most people in the town. But as luck would have it, we found a divine abode, literally. A cozy place up in one of the hills with a leveled area just enough to become a bed next to a very small temple. The temple had no visitors but us. The whole routine to end up at our ‘sex abode’ was exciting. We would ride our respective bikes and I would carry a blanket to spread at the place and then our bodies found a new meaning for our existence. His kinky ideas and my enthusiasm to comply found no bounds. He awakened my sexual demons and took me to a world of paradise. My body danced with pleasure at ease with intense intimacy making me forget the world around me. I adored every part of his body and his dick was one of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen. The shape, size, colour, texture were perfect to me and so aesthetically beautiful that I had wanted to make a painting of it. I loved blowing his hard on and sucking it dry. I almost seemed to have a slight obsession and a parallel relationship with his gorgeous dick. Making out under the open sky on the cold days and evenings was so surreal. The smell of the trees around, the strange sounds of insects, the dim lights from far away, the chill, making us move closer and his nakedness engulfing me wholly was more than I had asked for. We had spent many such evenings with each other and each time my body felt more alive. One of my most treasured memories from this unison was when he was inside me gently pushing and pulling himself like in a rhythmic waltz and as I lay underneath him, submerged with his skin and sweat while pushing my hips in tune with my insatiable greed, I was watching the full moon surrounded by the crystals of stars in the pitch dark sky and wondered if the time could freeze here, right at that moment.   “When you lose your senses and you cannot even form a thought about how much you're enjoying yourself, it is time well spent” Miss J (21 then, 23 now) It was the first time I had sex and technically I wasn't a virgin because of a stupid vaginal tablet I had used for a yeast infection, which did the job of tearing off the hymen. I had known this guy through OkCupid, we had our first date at a literary fest, we made out and met a couple more times. The much-coveted space of Lodi Gardens was our haven. I was eagerly awaiting the sex and well, the day came when we did it. As soon as he penetrated me, I was screaming with pain. I had never in my life felt this much pain and tight at the same time. And he comforted me throughout, he didn't move so that I could get used to the girth. In the end, after screaming "Fuck, pull it out, I can't," we ended it. But I didn't want this is to be the memory of my first time. So we made out and I got wet really soon. He asked me if we should try again and I said yes instantly. This time, the pain had subsided, and my oh my, did I love 'feeling full'. As soon as he started moving, I felt euphoric. There are no words for that feeling. The constant movement, and him kissing my neck, it was just fucking amazing. We had sex plenty of times after that, but this moment always stays in my mind. When you lose your senses and you cannot even form a thought about how much you're enjoying yourself, it is time well spent.   “I still think about the sex sometimes and I find myself missing the feeling of being held against his body as we fell asleep” Jay (29 then, 40 now) We were casually dating although we lived in different cities. I would travel over the weekends to see him. He wasn’t the first one and he certainly isn’t the last but he made me squirt like a fountain! His unbridled passion and his quest to please were second to none. We would spend hours in bed exploring. Over a period of time, as we got more comfortable with each other, the sex got better and kinkier. Aside from the beyond awesome sex, he was generally an arsehole and there was too much casual sexism, casteism and ableism to make it work and eventually we parted ways. I still think about the sex sometimes and I find myself missing the feeling of being held against his body as we fell asleep, bodies languid and limbs intertwined after very satisfying sex.   “I think I was always worried that I would be judged if I didn't go with the flow” Oppo (30 then, 31 now) I was visiting my then friend, who is now my partner, in the USA. He wanted to cuddle and I agreed. I was jetlagged and had difficulty sleeping the first night. So I was tossing around on the bed while his arms were wrapped around me. We were attracted to each other and the next thing I know, we started to caress each other. While we were making out, I ASKED, "can we not have sex please?" What I wanted to SAY was "I will not have sex." I remember the shocked expression on his face. He paused, and gave me a lecture on consent before continuing what we were doing. While I understand consent, somehow it didn't translate into action. My limited physical intimacy with people didn't help either. In hindsight, I think I was always worried that I would be judged if I didn't go with the flow. Even though I consider myself a feminist, it's surprising how in my head some of the beliefs never translated into actionable thoughts.

How Dancing Helped Me Fix My Broken Heart

There is no gender in dance. Pick your gender for today and tomorrow if I ask you to switch you should be able to do it .

 Every year-end, I chalk down a New Year’s resolution list. Mostly these are, in no order of priority, love, relationship and work goals. Of course, as tradition demands, I land up following only a quarter of the list. There was nothing different about my list for 2009, except that I had just moved to Mumbai on a rainy October afternoon with seven cartons, a dream job and a broken heart. There were people that had to be impressed and a heart that urgently needed some fixing. I was working on a serious redevelopment plan. I was sure that once I did a bit of rewiring in the love department, everything would fall into place. I am not the kind of person who can make tall claims like, “I will never fall in love again.” In fact, I am the one breaking the line to get onto the Ferris wheel! I needed a good plan, a plan to experience love without being in a relationship. The plan arrived in the Sunday newspaper. A local dance company was inviting people to join their next batch for salsa lessons, and the most important bit was that you could join even if you didn’t have a partner. This was going to be my plan! Salsa was going to cure me of my heartbreak. Why in the whole world did I think salsa was going to heal my heart? I’m not sure about others, but dancing gets me high and makes me a very happy person. It’s almost like sex. You know it first in theory, and you have seen it, but actually doing it for the first time is strange. And then you try the steps. Some things work, some things don’t. You find what works best for you and the days your body, mind and soul are in complete sync, the ecstasy you experience is inexplicable. I remember being introduced to the phenomenon when I was four years old. My mother had a weekend ritual. She cleared the centre table in the living room, switched on the softer lights, and invited all of us to join in for a dance. Boney M, Whigfield and the popular Bollywood number of that week were played over and over again until we were hungry for dinner. It was in this living room, watching her move like no one was watching, that I fell in love with dancing and what it does to your body. She of course spread the tradition to our neighbours and we had weekend dance battles, literally. What fascinated me the most was how everyone felt so sexy and the prerequisite was to pull out the beautiful in you and show it off. Who wouldn’t want to do that! On a Friday evening, I arrived in blue slacks and a pink sleeveless top for my first salsa class, nervous and very excited. This was going to be my first partnered dance. I had romanced Lord Krishna in Kathak classes before and other people at a disco or party, but the idea of training to dance with a partner made my heart skip a beat. We all did a little warm-up exercise first, and then our drop-dead gorgeous instructor announced, “Everyone will dance with everyone in turns. There is no permanent partner here. Everyone needs to understand different rhythms and adapt or not adapt to them.” Even Aastha channel doesn’t make the secrets of life sound so simple. We started dancing and I touched another person’s body for the first time in this city. The warmth, the nervousness of another being so close to me was strangely reassuring. “This plan is going to work,” I was thinking to myself when the instructor said, “Change”, and as my smile grew wider I switched to another body. That first month was like learning to walk for the first time. Being held by someone, the touch was healing in ways I hadn’t imagined. I danced with different people in the class. There was a boy who always avoided conversation because his English wasn’t very good and he refused to converse in any other language. But when he danced, he was Patrick Swayze from Dirty Dancing. He was a charming lead, who always made eye contact at the start and never sighed if the connection was not established in the first minute. He gave himself and his partner time to connect with each other’s bodies. He once told me that he had been to many salsa socials, even before he joined the class. He loved dancing but wasn’t sure how to be around others at the socials. His way of making friends was by talking about his Alphonso mango orchards. Yes, our man was very rich and even though he didn’t speak much English, mangoes were his ticket to the ‘scene.’ Every year he sent boxes of mangoes as presents to the instructors and other people he thought were important to be acquainted with. I also made some new friends. One guy, a financial consultant, a regular on the salsa socials scene, stayed close to my house. He often called me over to his place to practice. He confessed to me once that our teacher had told him that he didn’t have it in him to be a dancer. My friend was ‘practice makes a man perfect’ type of guy. Over the years he had worked on a formula to perfect his style, create a rhythm. He went to every salsa social and practiced at home. When I went to his house the first time, his mother, in her nightie, climbed on to his bed and recorded us dancing, because he had asked her to. He kept records of every practice session to watch later and fix his mistakes. He loved his job, but couldn’t imagine hanging out with other financial consultants after work. He had identified salsa as a way to meet ‘interesting people’. He once mentioned in passing that regular dancing had made him aware of women in ways that he had no clue about earlier. I never probed further. I always felt that the only time he talked from the heart was when he was dancing. He was still awkward, but comfortable in his skin when he led. Salsa socials were what I looked forward to the most. You met so many new people. You danced with one person; song change, switch, and then on to another body. It was like speed dating. Except you hardly exchanged names or your likes and dislikes. You both just moved your body to the music, tried to understand your partner’s moves, and hoped to create magic. Those first few months I met the kind of guy who held you like you might break if they let go, some who only cared about the steps and kept turning you until you felt dizzy, some who just wanted to touch you, some who could lead a beginner and a professional with the same sexiness, and some who just had a lot of fun. Yep, I met all types of guys. You had to run to the ladies’ room to take a break, because there was no way a woman could do that when close to the dance floor – someone always wanted to partner her. I met a junior instructor who started venting as soon as she saw me. “Why can’t they understand, I don’t want to dance. I want a little break. I have been dancing for the last 10 songs and those boys expect me to keep going to practice their lead. Assholes!” Here’s the thing; in salsa, ballroom dancing, and basically all partner dances, one person plays the lead, while the other follows. If you are dancing with the opposite gender and are a girl, you will only follow. When I reached my intermediate level I started hearing, from the instructor or my partner, “Follow the lead”, “Girls, stop thinking and let him lead”, “Switch off your mind”. I would often feel frustrated and complain to my boss at work about how I didn’t want to be led all the time during salsa lessons. My problem wasn’t so much about the method of leading and following, but that I wanted to lead at least half of the time. And it wasn’t like all boys wanted to lead. Some would have preferred if the girl led. They looked terrified at the prospect of spinning their partner and taking responsibility for it. When I started out, I was appreciated for my musicality and rhythm, but soon I had become the girl who wouldn’t help the guy improve his lead. “You knew about the form before you joined,” was my batchmates’ usual response to my exasperation. I don’t think they understood what was the fuss about. Dance, over the years, had taught me to come to terms with my emotional side. I think awareness of your body through movement does that to you. Like everyone else I had good days and bad days and it all was summed up with a dance. When you dance with another person for the first time, there is a conversation that takes place, which is baggage-free. You are just required to be empathetic, the way you touch each other expresses that empathy. This conversation had started healing me, healing my broken heart. As we learnt the basics of salsa and moved to the dance part, I was hoping for some sort of collaboration. The human touch that had started to heal me was now missing some sort of secret ingredient. I don’t remember why I stopped going for my classes or the socials. I guess I was having a great time at work. My heart was healing. Mumbai had led me to trust myself to take that perfect turn or shine sometimes. Many times I danced alone, but I was searching for another dance. I was still chasing the high. This time, I chose street jazz and landed up in my first class once again. Every dance studio has a wall of mirrors. They say you become a better dancer if you can watch yourself move. I was doing a partner dance before, so I spent most of my time looking at my partner. Initially, looking at myself was a bit overwhelming, but I took it upon myself to romance myself this time. Street jazz is a fusion of hip-hop and jazz. It is inclusive in style, with techniques from ballet, but also borrows a lot from various kinds of street dancing. At this class, we danced the workout, the walk, the ‘what you looking at’ look. We had bodies of every size and every age. From hip rolls to jazz walks, we weren’t allowed to think that we were any less than Madonna. “There is no gender in dance. Pick your gender for today and tomorrow if I ask you to switch you should be able to do it without thinking about it twice,” we were told. I think I was falling in love again. Salsa had shaped my moves in a very feminine way. Street jazz gave me a chance to re-define that femininity, to one that suited me. As I discovered my own body, many times during class I was transported back to my mother’s living room. I had a new pair of eyes through which I saw the dancers in that room. They all seemed to surrender their bodies, heart and minds to the dancing, be it with themselves or their partners. I had begun to do that too during my classes. Then I moved to another city, and attending a salsa social when I had just arrived felt like an initiation ritual that must be performed. One evening, very reluctantly, I landed at a salsa social. It felt like déjà vu, except that I also felt like a different person – learning a solo dance form had made me whole in ways I still don’t understand. I was asked for my first dance for the night. The moment my body touched his, my mind made mental notes about his stance, perfume and feather-like touch. I was happy to be taken on a journey, and the rest of the night I floated like a boss from one body to another. You will never win Unless you give in These lines from Mýa’s famous song “Do you only wanna dance” have started to reveal themselves to me these days. I am no longer sure if I am entirely convinced by the lead-and-follow kind of dance. Maybe it’s not for me? At least, not all of the time. But I have also felt how the designations evaporate the moment you sync with your partner. Then there is no lead or follow. It is just sex. For now, I am content and know that I have found love and love has found me. To figure out the rest, I will dance my way through the rest of my life.   We would like to thank Salsa India for allowing us to shoot the Salsa social at Summer House Cafe, New Delhi. 

Thoughts You Can't Avoid When Your Long-Distance Relationship is Doomed

I suppose one of the perks of being in a long-distance relationship is that you can foster a few pimples which pixelate into the rest your skin on Skype.

 I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the rustle of the papers pinned to my green board. I dreamt that the equations on them were having sex and producing more equations. Some meta equation driving the equation proliferation. Of course, there was nothing too surprising about the concept of equations having more action than me. All the instant food I’ve eaten in the last few days has rolled into a ball in my stomach and is trying to roll right back out. Maybe if I had just had some ice cream, the ball would feel happier staying inside my stomach, stagnating in cold milk. Alternatively, I can help myself in other ways and find my lost friend sleep. Fall slowly into a rabbit hole like Alice and be pulled out of it like Malootty. Why won’t Shashi Kapoor on my Bombay Talkies poster stare back at me with the same intensity with which he stares at his heroines? Probably because of the big pimple on my nose filled with the slush of ink and paper from the references I haven’t read for tomorrow.   I suppose one of the perks of being in a long-distance relationship is that you can foster a few pimples which pixelate into the rest your skin on Skype. Belle and Sebastian sing to me, “It’s a nice day for sulk”. It really is. When we first started dating at university last year, the exam anxiety was worse and I had grown all sorts of things like cabin fever, a hyperawareness of my racial identity and a “critical attitude” towards everybody and everything. I suppose it’s one way in which “international” students attempt to cope in angrezistaan. My partner on the other hand was comfortable with himself and his surroundings, and tried his best to help me find comfort by cooking for me, inviting me to social things and subjecting me to Bollywood movies. Then he graduated and moved out, but I had another year to go. Prima facie we were a couple that subscribed to the cliché of Indians who hung out with Indians abroad, but really, we had nothing in common except for sometimes the way we felt when we read the news. And it was really beautiful, then beautifully banal and then just banal. Doom gloomed over our long-distance relationship. If we were to meet in India again, in a budget hotel again, they would tell us, without looking at me, a linear combination of the following verse; “Please carry a valid govt. issued address ID proof (PAN cards not valid) with address not in the same city as the hotel” “Sir, what is your relationship with madam?” “This is a family hotel, Sir” “This is corporate property, Sir” “Sir, you are only residents of foreign countries, but you aren’t foreigners” “Sir, why don’t you book two single rooms” I would get irate and try to bite off one of the receptionist’s heads, only on principle of course, not because the sex would have been worth it. I know it wouldn’t be, especially if I add a non-zero risk-weight to getting a UTI. Honeymoon cystitis, the gynaecs distastefully call it. Pfft.   Next time I date in India, I should remember to call Stay uncle instead of listening to that song again. I have to say Blaze uncle’s marketing mails are strangely endearing. Great, now I can hear my flatmate having one of those sorry day-report calls with his long-distance girlfriend, except that he is actually laughing about something. What could possibly be funny during exams? My toes are sweating but its too cold to stick them out of the comforter. A matching model is what I had to solve in yesterdays exam, a model in which women had more bargaining power than men, as it turned out. A little examination tokenism by the three white men who take our development econ class. Maybe I should read something. The happiness of other people does feel illicit to me now, let me read that. No no no, I cannot add homesickness to the equationsickness. I’ll go for a walk instead. Nothing can be more calming than indulging myself in my solitude and whistling the theme track of Thoovanathumbikal.

Sex Actually: Of Broken Vaginas and Negotiating Consent

New stories of women's unforgettable sexual encounters.

 Over the last few months, we’ve been discussing the violence that happens as sex, the violence that happens in sex. If we want to change the interactions inside sex, especially heterosexual sex, we believe we have to talk more about sex actually. We have to talk not just about the concepts around sex,about what happens in sex, the sexism and misogyny as well as the respect, pleasure and mutuality, not only the concepts around sex. We have to be able to say what works for us and what doesn’t and make that a normal part of the world. Diverse women’s diverse experience of sex and their diverse interpretations and responses of their sexual experience should inform discussions and understandings about sex. That is why earlier this year we started the campaign Sex Actually in collaboration with The Ladies Finger. To get that conversation started. We asked people to contribute a story about a sexual experience they couldn’t forget – awful or awesome or ho-hum.

The stories came in a steady stream - and we published a two-part series in March. But the stories haven't stopped. So we are back with more accounts - this time in a 4 part series.   “We quickly undressed each other and that's when I remembered my broken vagina” Sharanya (27 then, 27 now) I was convinced that I had a broken vagina. How else do you explain the fact that while I had had sex with a couple of boyfriends and a couple of non-boyfriends over 10 years, only three of those encounters had resulted in penetration (once by a boyfriend, twice by a non-boyfriend and never with the others) and I had orgasmed a grand total of two times (and not through penetrative sex)? I wanted to have lots more sex and lots more orgasms but my vagina wasn't cooperating. I kept comparing myself to other women's sexual experiences. How come everyone else seemed to be able to have sex so easily? What was wrong with me? I had almost resigned myself to my broken-vagina fate (Yes, I realise how ridiculous that sounds. I was neither very sexually experienced nor very sexually liberated. I have a long way to go on this path to being woke, as the cool kids say). Cut to: I met a boy online, we spoke on WhatsApp for two weeks (I wasn't really looking for anything romantic having just broken up with a boyfriend; he was happy to go along with that), met in person and realised that despite our (my?) platonic intentions, we were intellectually, emotionally and physically very attracted to each other. The next time we met was two days later. I went over to his flat where we binge-watched an excellent TV show and ordered some food. I was going to catch a train back home after dinner but thought I'd watch one more episode. All the while I was there, he had made absolutely no move. We were even sitting on separate sofas! Had I imagined the sexual tension? Was this actually a platonic date, despite our previous WhatsApp based confessions that we had a crush on each other? I needed to know. I also needed to get the kissing out of the way so that we could get to the being comfortable part of this dating thing. If it was a date. I don't usually make the first move because I'm usually semi-convinced it's all just platonic. But he wasn't making one either so something needed to be done. After dinner, we finally sat on the same sofa, and continued to watch the excellent show. He then asked me if I wanted to cuddle. I did. So we did. Might still be platonic, I thought. Friends could cuddle, I suppose. So I kissed him. He didn't seem aghast so I thought okay, not platonic. We cuddled some more, kissed some more, and he realised it was getting late. He asked me whether I wanted to stay over or if he should drive me to the train station so I could catch the last train home (later he told me that he prefers to let the girl make the first move so that he's sure she's completely comfortable and not pressured into doing anything. He's much more woke than me, this boy). Staying over wasn't in the plan. But the show was good as was the cuddling and kissing. I said I'd stay and we finished watching the show. Then, what began as a very enthu make-out session ended with him carrying me from the living room sofa into his bedroom (it felt so absurdly filmy that I couldn't stop giggling). I had inadvertently stumbled into one of the cool kids these days situations with the "Netflix and chill"ing. We quickly undressed each other and that's when I remembered. My broken vagina. Maybe it'll behave itself this time, I hoped. I was very into this boy and really needed it to cooperate. Reader, it did not cooperate. We tried having sex and failed. I had to tell the boy about my (to me) shameful secret. He didn't think it was a big deal. He whipped out some lube, but even that didn't work. So we kissed each other goodnight and went to sleep. The next week, he came over to my house. There was no lube, but some penetration happened and I was very excited. It wasn't wholly successful but it was a start! My vagina seemed to be coming around. The time after that, disaster struck. My vagina was on strike. Oral sex, lube, different positions – we tried it all. But my legs involuntarily stiffened and penetration wasn't working out. I really wanted to have sex with him and I really wanted a normal vagina. I suddenly became so upset that I couldn't even make eye contact with the boy. Even though it had only been two weeks since we first met and four weeks since we first started talking, we had both realised that we were falling for each other way too hard. I'd never felt that way about anyone before and I was convinced he would never want to have sex with my difficult vagina again. Even I didn't want to have sex with my difficult vagina! As I continued to refuse eye contact and hid under a blanket, he forced me to emerge, hugged me hard and told me in no uncertain terms that I was being a silly fool. It still wasn't a big deal, we had only just started having sex, and we had a long time ahead of us to try and get it right. I didn't need to freak out, he didn't see it as a problem, and he was definitely willing to wait and keep trying. And now would I please stop hiding and not go to sleep upset because he couldn't stand seeing me so dispirited. And that's when I knew for sure what I had only suspected for several days. Not only was I the sort of girl who accidentally Netflixed and chilled, but I was also the sort of girl who, despite all her reservations, had accidentally found herself in whirlwind romance territory. I had fallen madly in love with this kind, woke boy. And if he was willing to be patient with my vagina, so was I. I stopped mentally hurling curses at it, kissed the boy, and went to sleep. The next night, my vagina decided to work like it has never worked before. No lube, no oral sex, no fancy positions required. I was so surprised and delighted that I couldn't stop laughing during our first properly successful time, cheered loudly at the end, and couldn't wipe the big stupid grin off my face. The boy was also startled by how quickly my vagina had cooperated but was more delighted at my unadulterated happiness. Apparently, all my vagina needs to work is for me to be emotionally close to (and possibly in love with) the penis owner. So not exactly broken, just possessing very high standards. Which is still bullshit because it makes any one-night stands or more casual hookups nearly impossible. But I think this boy makes up for it. We've had lots of successful sex since then. I myself haven't been quite so successful in the orgasm department, but like the boy once told me, we have a long time ahead of us to try and get it right. (In case you were wondering, the show was called Glow. Great for Netflix binge-watching and great for Netflix and chilling).     “She whispered into my ear that she loved me. All I could say was, ‘I know’” Lisa (37 then, 38 now) I walked out of an dispassionate and manipulative 12-year marriage and found myself right in the middle of a bitter divorce. Fuelled by long-standing craving for all things intimate and maybe some love, I led myself, eyes wide open, into a functional relationship, where the driving function is sex and a partnership to explore its different forms. The relationship filled the void of several years of absent sex, but it did nothing to help experience the feeling of being loved. Three years I struggled to keep the emotion of love at bay and to not wait for reciprocation. I worked at understanding the concept of compartmentalising emotions though I feared I wasn’t capable of it. Last year, our explorations led us to begin swinging as a couple. I had opened up enough to talk to my partner about being bi-curious. The first couple we met, the girl and I hit it off pretty well. We connected within the first few minutes of us meeting and I found that I was a natural at flirting with a woman. On the way back home we couldn't keep our hands off each other and by the time we got home the men were ignored. That night we had sex with each other’s partners and as a group and eventually just the both of us. When she and I made love, she whispered into my ear that she loves me and she asked me if I felt same. That has remained etched in my memory, for I could not say it back to her, ‘cause that night I had realised I had just compartmentalised an emotion. All I could say was, “I know”.   “I was on my period. We had sex and I felt disgusted by it but he did not” Amiya (21 then, 27 now) We were both 21, in college and really close friends. I secretly desired him, he told me later he did too. But we never admitted it until one day when we were alone in my parents’ house, and discovered how our lips and our bodies felt on each other. A few days later he fingered me, it was the first time someone did that with consent, and god! The pleasure. We both had never had sex before, but he was reluctant to have sex right away and wanted to wait. So we did everything else, he fingered me, went down on me, and I went down on him. Then the one day we felt that we had to do it, but I was on my period. He said he did not care and we had sex despite the fact that I was bleeding. He said it was a part of me being a woman and he cherished all of it. I felt disgusted by it but he did not. It was good but frankly I was traumatised by the sight of the blood and for some reason he was not.   A couple of days later when my period got over I went over to his place again. We had sex again. We did it on the corner of the bed, the study table and the floor. And I can’t forget the way he looked at me. Like magic, after 10 years of being together, he still looks at me like that and I still go back to that day when we bunked classes to end up on the floor, being loved like everyone ought to be once.   “Negotiating consent in a long-term relationship like a marriage is something nobody wants to talk about” Mandakini (27 then, 32 now) Post the Ansari case I have been trying to make sense of much of this conversation. I initially read it with significant disappointment. I have been a huge fan of his work – his comedy, writing and his show. I have liked his goofy takes on life and have gushed at having this wokeboi on our team. So when I read about it, my first instinct was to find loopholes. To say hey, come on. It wasn’t that bad. Thankfully that passed instantly. I still breathed a tiny sigh of relief when I read his apology. And then I got sucked into the chatter of social media and buzzing WhatsApp groups. The overwhelming verdict there was to say that it was just a bad sexual experience and not a case of assault. And that if she didn’t like it she should have just left. Much joking about how we will now need contracts before sex lest we be accused of rape. And much table thumping and woohooing with viewpoints which said that #MeToo had gone too far. I hated it. I hated everything about these conversations. But it was through these conversations that I unpacked and carefully examined consent in my own life. I think negotiating consent in a long-term relationship like a marriage is something nobody wants to talk about. While consent in hook-ups and short-term relationships has much written about it, the only conversation about sex within marriage is about marital rape or bad 'not tonight darling, I have a headache’ jokes. So through my marriage (which has now ended), sex was a prickly issue. Differing libidos and differing needs. I think the fault here is more with the idea of monogamy. But that is a different conversation. So whenever I said no, I don't feel like having sex, there would be sulking and grumpiness. No violence in what we normatively understand as violence. But there was this whole emotional manipulation which I had to deal with, and which often made me just have sex even when I didn't want to. The incident I really remember is one where we hadn't had sex for a few days and I had to go meet some friends at a house party. And just the idea of negotiating that was stressing me out. Because the discussion would absolutely be about how we haven't had sex for so many days and how there would be no sex today and how we would probably have no sex the next day because I would be hungover. So I did it. I had sex. Sex was my gate pass. There was absolutely no pleasure for either one of us. I mechanically did the deed and got out of the house. I do not yet call myself a survivor of sexual assault in marriage because it is painful to go there. Painful to even think of oneself in those terms and acknowledge that. So yeah, more conversations about everyday consent, please?   “This torture only stopped when I threatened to go to the police and his parents with the email he had written to me” Ahenbla (16 then, 25 now) I was 16 when I got into a relationship with a boy I liked, from my school in Delhi. I felt like I was in love, and that he loved me too. Soon after, not yet 18, he persuaded me to have sex with him. I agreed. It was consensual. What followed for the next five years, however, was not. Essentially in a long distance relationship, he came to visit once every few months. During those times, he forced himself on me, forced me to indulge in sexual activities in public, forced himself on me on the street, commented on the kind of clothes I wore, got angry when I said, “No, I do not want to have sex,” went off his rocker when I interacted with other men, ridiculed me saying I had no male friends, and introduced me to his mother, who body-shamed me. One of the times we had sex, he clicked pictures of me WITHOUT my consent, filmed me WITHOUT my consent. He told me about this only when five years later, I broke up with him. He threatened to misuse the pictures and videos, threatened to come down, and/or send people to Chennai (where I was studying that time) to fix me, wrote me a nasty email comparing me to rotten fish, whores, sluts, and accusing me of being a terrible daughter who had no sense of “compromising for the family”. This torture only stopped when I threatened to go to the police and his parents with the email he had written to me. For years, I lived in fear, blaming myself for not speaking out, speaking to my friends or family, for not exiting such a toxic relationship. I opened up about this abuse to my best friends only last year. When he and I broke up, all our mutual friends from school, by default, questioned me, persuaded me to get back with him, blamed me for not understanding him and letting go of such a great guy. The most ridiculous bit was that I felt the need to explain myself. Not a day passes when I don't shudder thinking about everything he subjected me to, while he saunters about in his circle of friends, pretending to be the good guy. We don't talk now. We're not in touch. But I deserve to live my life peacefully, without being afraid of sexual intimacy, with men who respect me. And this is my closure.   “I was both excited and curious. That first time we made out was the most awkward thing I have ever done” Zena (33 then, 33 now) My partner and I were quite turned on by each other from the very beginning and had great chemistry. The first time we made out was very early into our relationship. It was also the first time for me. I was both excited and curious. That first time we made out was the most awkward thing I have ever done. It was at a fairly isolated place. We were sitting on his two-wheeler. We started exploring each other, and one thing led to the other. And in no time we were down on each other. The fact that it happened so fast and so early into our relationship still gives me goosebumps, though we are not dating each other any more.  

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Girlfriend

There is only so much that can be romanticised about a long-distance relationship and the magical reunion that'll fix everything.

Lips pursed and incisors out like a rabbit, he was making a face on the video chat. The screen froze because of my unreliable WiFi, but I could still hear his voice—"So handsome, am I right?" From laughing hysterically to just staring at the screen, within moments I was consumed by this overwhelming sense of sadness. Was it always going to be like this? Recently, I got back with my ex-boyfriend. The kind of advice I expected to receive from friends and family when he first messaged me was, "Girl, you broke up for a reason." Instead, all my loved ones unanimously opined, "You are so going to get back together." I brushed them off—this was just a harmless reconciliation with an old flame after a two-year hiatus. Soon enough, proving everyone right, we made a trip to Thailand. As if working on a puzzle, we put our relationship back together. We first met at Chemistry tuition in Class XI, where he sat ahead of me. Sporting two ponytails and a nervous disposition, passing the subject with minimum grades was my only aim, I wasn't really there to make an impression. We interacted for the first time when he added me on Facebook in our first year at separate colleges in different cities. When we finally met, we shook hands.   Over the long-drawn months that we didn’t see each other, Facebook chats and awkward Skype calls kept the momentum going. Somewhere in between, he had called me up, heaving on the phone, nervous, yet getting straight to the point. That he loved me. That I could take all the time I needed to think about it and he would wait for me. I had just joined my first job and he had three years of law school left when we decided to try long distance for the first time. S and I have a history. Of fighting and breaking into laughter moments later. Of liking the same food, disliking the exact same vegetables and sharing an all-consuming love for coffee. We constantly aspired towards cracking the best 'that's what she said' jokes and agreed to disagree on who the winner would be. He made me feel invincible, like the best version of myself who could laugh freely and eat without thinking about her burgeoning waistline. One of the first few times he met my parents, he told them that my inherent ability to put pen to paper would take me places. And I sat watching them—in rapt attention, finally convinced that their daughter was not a complete loser. Shortly after that incident, I went abroad to pursue my Master’s, leaving him in the lurch. Homesickness, a classroom where no one looked like me, the frigid cold of North East England had somewhat convinced me that I needed a clean break from my past to unleash myself into this strange, unchartered landscape. I had broken up with him repeatedly over phone, emails, WhatsApp messages that stretched into essays. My words had left him in deep throes of depression after I had paraded across continents to seek a new truth. Sometimes, picking at the scabs of old wounds does more harm than good. Almost two years had passed when S got in touch with me with a harmless, “Hey, What’s Up?” message past midnight. I jolted up from my bed in anger because earlier when I had tried checking up on him, his dad called up my mother so that I would leave him alone. Now, the hesitation in his voice was apparent, yet this was him reaching out to me. The girl who had broken his heart, but whom he wanted in his life nevertheless. Inevitably after reconnecting on foreign shores, I told him that I loved him and my admission didn't feel out of place. I was extremely self-aware about repeating my old self, making promises I couldn’t keep. The guilt was exacerbated by his steady admission, “I never stopped loving you.” It was like coming home after an exhausting long hike and being greeted by the most comforting hug there is. And yet again, we were back to the same place. Long distance 101. Him in Yangon, Myanmar. Me in New Delhi, India. Words getting lost and found in the stretched oblivion of sketchy internet connections, blurry selfies compensating for actual moments lived in each other's presence, and voice messages offering us respite when our fingers ached from typing out every minute of our day. I am still third-wheeling on outings and house parties with my couple friends, he is still expertly avoiding the Indian expats who try their best to dissuade him from moving back to the country. In moments of acute frustration, I clasp my hand into a fist, open it, and back again, trying to remember how his touch feels like. I use his old Burberry perfume hoping that I smell like him. I try to remember as much as possible, so that every time we meet, I don’t have to begin the arduous process of getting to know him again.   There is only so much that can be romanticised about a long-distance relationship and the magical reunion that'll fix everything. Then, of course, it is back to square one. Sometimes all you want to do is reach out to the other side of your bed and find him there. And not have dinner in the deafening silence of your room. You want to live in the present, rather than wait for an elusive future that promises to be slightly better. And yet that very idea is the one you cling on to. In dire moments, when I complain about my situation, my single friends tell me, "Be grateful. At least you have someone who loves you." But it is not just being loved, it is the loving that is like fodder to my hungry soul. More than what I receive, what is it that I can give to this person who was ready to wait in spite of my mood swings and misdemeanours. What makes him so sure that I won't take off again? The loneliness of a long-distance girlfriend. We are trying to work the logistics out. But it is a long-drawn battle; time stretches itself like a rubber band, expanding till the horizon. And then it just snaps back to the pliant, harmless thing in the palm of my hand. Him coming out of the Arrivals gate. Me smiling my widest smile. We can do this.   Amrita loves milkshakes, feminism and all things bookish. If she is not writing, reading or obsessing over Trevor Noah’s dimples, she’s probably trying to brush up on her eyeliner skills.

I Stopped a Man From Harassing a Young Boy on a Bus, Because it's Happened to Me Too

Think about all the hotel rooms, offices, malls, streets, building blocks and so many other places all over the world where similar things might be happening at this very moment.

 I am sitting on a bus next to the aisle, watching people inside and outside. The weather is lovely. My new sunglasses are on. My ride is quite long and in a while, I see this 14-year-old boy coming in and standing in front of me. Next, I see a 50-year-old man doing the same, but standing right behind the boy so close that the young one has to physically resist. The old man stretches both hands to the grab handles above, locking the way out for the boy. Now, being a kid, he tries to move a bit, gets nervous, sweats, sighs, rolls his eyes. Nothing works – the old man does not react and ignores the kid’s body language. Seeing that, I turn my face to the boy and as if he is with me, I say (very strict): Come, stand next to me. The man looks at me but the only thing he sees is his reflection in my big new black sunglasses.   He unlocks his hands and the boy is able to move to my side. I can see the relief on his face. There is someone on his side in the bus. He is not alone. Unfortunately, I know exactly what the boy is feeling at this very moment. Fifteen years ago (plus or minus), a drunk man who was sitting next to me started slowly putting his hand on my knee and obviously was not thinking of stopping there. It was a summer day. I had a window seat, hoping to get some wind on my ride back home from school. Sun was burning my skin through the bus window. It was so hot I had to keep my hand up to cover my eyes from harsh rays. In old days, we had no AC buses, so my red face started sweating immediately. I was wearing a black skirt that ended slightly above my knees and a t-shirt. When this man sat next to me, I smelled alcohol and turned my face away towards the window. In some time, I noticed he had kept his hand between me and him on the seat. Then he touched my knee. I looked at him but he was looking towards the opposite side. I was too shy and embarrassed to even ask him to move it away. I started breathing heavily and didn’t know how to react. I moved my knee a bit away, but he used this movement to slide his hand a little higher. The whole world seemed to be one big burning hell. I desperately started looking at people for help. But no one seemed to be bothered by him as much as by the heat. When I looked at him our eyes met and I saw how high he was. His half-closed eyes were looking through me. The only thing I could say was: Please, take your hand off. I remember the reply that came out of his mouth along with the smell of alcohol: Alrighty. But it wasn’t going to be alright ever, was it? Can a broken mirror be put together again? I was shivering despite the heat, petrified that he might follow me till my flat. The burning anxiety of the incident stayed with me like a cold volcano waiting for the next crack to form. Now, with this scene in my head, I lean towards the boy: Someday, some man, most likely woman, will need your help more than you needed help today. You understand? He nods. It was one bus in one city in one country. Think about all the hotel rooms, offices, malls, streets, building blocks and so many other places all over the world where similar things might be happening at this very moment. You know why? Because molesters know that they won’t be punished. Because they know that no one will delay her/his walk to office or school to report him. And if it happens in your family, what shall you do? Will they believe you? Or will it be buried under the heaviness of family ties?   You think the old man who got down from my bus didn’t take another one? This year was crucial for so many women who came out and told their #metoo stories. It has turned big industries like filmmaking and television upside down. Many men of different professions stood along with us despite knowing it might harm their own interests. The more we hear people speaking or standing by us, whatever their gender, the more we get the courage to speak ourselves. And sometimes it is a simple thing that’s needed for us to do one by one – to do for someone else, what you wish someone could have done for you. Samira Kidman is an Azerbaijani film editor who studied at FTII. She is based both in Mumbai and Baku.

What Is It Like To Have Sex and Love With Both Men and Women

Sex with men and with women is actually very different but it’s difficult to articulate the difference in sensation.

 I realised I was bisexual when I was on a musical tour. I had a brief relationship with one of the men in the group. I was in my early 30s. I didn’t realise I was attracted to him or recognise the feeling was romantic or sexual till later. It began with an unexpected connection, a special intimacy even if unfamiliar, in a safe, comfortable situation. He is a man of compassion, intellect and taste. We were roommates as per the room-sharing plan across the cities we toured. I remember some mornings in our room when I would be catching up with work in my laptop while he would be meditating sitting on the bed. It was effortless – the cohabiting, and companionship. He had a grounding presence. I was more outgoing. Some nights I would return to the room late after a raucous evening with the cast and crew, and find him in his bed with a book. We would close the night with a conversation and turn in (on our respective beds). He was thoughtful, attentive and engaging. I felt special, I had forgotten the feeling in those years after my separation from my ex-wife. A friendship had grown between us. And perhaps by the third city, the beds had joined. That’s when I discovered that I could have sex with men. Recounting it now sounds like it was a logical progression. It wasn't really. It was just easy enough to give in to it. There were somehow no big question marks about what I or anyone else was to make of this or about who I was or had become at its behest. The traveling company we were with, allowed us to be openly surprised, amused and excited about this new sensation we shared. That we were away from our maiden contexts helped. But also, the readiness with which everyone around us celebrated our adventure, I now feel grateful for. At the time it was just a habitual wonder laced with jokes, jibes and new rituals, all in unending mutual amusement. I suppose if a sexual act had happened when I was younger, then I’d have known for sure that I was sexually attracted to men but it just never happened. I had deep friendships with men as with women and they remained in that zone. I never had any sexual curiosity to try something with a man. Or maybe there wasn’t an occasion for it. The relationships that actualised early on were all with women. And when I was in a relationship, my mind stayed within that relationship. Through my 20s, I was with just one woman and we got married when I was 29. Within a year and a half, our marriage crashed but it had nothing to do with my sexuality. In fact, my first relationship with a man was probably 4 or 5 years after my wife and I separated. I’m now in my early 40s, live in one of India’s big cities and work in a creative industry. Now, I’m in a relationship with a man who I live with.   How I discovered my sexuality I assumed I had crossed over after my first time with a man. I thought chalo ab gay ho gaye hain. And when I became openly ‘gay’, my old friends and associates were curious. So, that whole period was about ‘chalo, now Aatish is gay. Who’s the man he’s seeing?’ and so on and so forth. After my second relationship with a man I met an Australian artist – a woman – and we became lovers. I realised, well, okay, I’m still drawn to women as well. I hadn’t thought of myself as bisexual. I don’t think the term was much in currency back then. I hadn’t met anyone who was bisexual. Till that time, in my early 30s, my relationships were outcomes of who captured my imagination at any given point in time. There was no space left for anything else. It wasn’t a situation where my antennae were out and I was responding to signals or vibes from everybody. Psychologically, I was the kind of person who was thinking inside a situation once it had begun. So, when this attraction to men period began, it seemed to kind of fill up my life, which is why it was a surprise that I was attracted to the woman from Australia who then became my girlfriend. How it affected my sense of masculinity This whole notion of masculinity versus something that is not masculine enough is an awareness that I came into only after I discovered this other side to me. The whole issue of masculinity became a subject of some thought only after I became ‘gay’ so to speak. And all this happened so late in my life that these issues didn’t necessarily inform my sense of self in a significant way. This is not to say that it wasn’t something that didn’t concern me or didn’t come up in conversation but it remained at a relatively superficial level. I remember, in the beginning, a friend of mine would insist that I wear more colour to communicate my interest in men. I’ve always liked whites and I wear black sometimes but I’m not really prone to a lot of colour in my wardrobe.  But I must say that being with men has made sure that I keep up with my physical regimen. I noticed that gay men are much more body conscious and I became more self-conscious about how I looked.   There was more acceptance than prejudice I eventually gave up trying to call myself gay or not gay or bisexual. If somebody was to ask, I’d just say I’m with a man or with a woman. In my experience, gay men are highly suspicious of bisexual people. It’s been easier for me to negotiate the straight world, socially. The kind of prejudice that I’ve faced has been from gay people and I found the greatest amount of acceptability and flexibility among my straight friends. At one point, I began to date a boy and a common friend of ours warned him, “You know Aatish, he'll go this way and that, so just beware.” While he may have had my then-partner’s best interests in mind, I was annoyed at the time about this odd response to the announcement of this new development in our lives. I think I’ve only ever processed the coming out aspect through the cinema I’ve watched or the people I’ve met through my second boyfriend who's an activist. That period for me was revealing of how central one’s sexuality can become to one’s sense of place in this world. This wasn’t the vocabulary that we even engaged with at the time. I came to appreciate that I got lucky with the way I discovered my own bisexuality. When it happened, we were travelling, we weren’t even in India. We were in a little bubble with the entire toli of this musical, doing a few cities in different countries abroad. There was a lot of love and acceptance as well as jokes and curiosity among the group but there was never disregard. So, in a sense, similar to when children are given a lot of love, they come out as reinforced adults, the same way, I supposed if I had received some strangeness from people around me, I may have approached all of this differently. But thankfully I didn't have to go through any arduous drama. I knew what it was to have a sexuality away from the dominant paradigm but it didn’t disturb me in any way. Relationships with men and women are different on an operational level If there’s a difference, it’s in the way that the relationships play out. I grew up in a world with rules about men and women and how they should behave in the world and lived through 20-30 years of osmosis. For most people, regardless of whether they self-identify as gay, straight or bisexual, I think those same rules play out in relationships. There were some operational differences, but connecting with a person for me, has been a function of where I am personally, professionally, spiritually. It’s been easier to be more authentic with women, more vulnerable, which some have even found attractive. With men, I’ve felt like I have to be more of a ‘man’ to woo a man. While my openness has met with desire regardless of who I’m with, vulnerability has often meant weakness with a man. Men don’t like that in themselves or in others. We probably play out the gender patterns we grow up around, no matter who we go to bed with. In that, I’d say that my own sexuality has been more a mirror to me than a lens. Some of the gay men I’ve been with have been acutely aware of their masculinity or what position they occupy within their perceived notion of masculinity. They’ve happened to be  less fluid than one might expect. With women, I think, I am compelled immediately into a position of nurturing, at times ignoring my own needs, making it difficult later on in the relationship. I think it would be accurate, in my own experience, to say that being with a woman, inspires in me a need to look after the person. This can be oppressive for the other person, and could be presumptuous on my part. But my desire to step forward in doing the best I can to make the other person feel well is the primary response I’ve felt when I’ve been with women. With men, it can go many places, depending on who the person is, what the dynamic is, and who you become when you’re in a romantic situation. I’m less confident with men. It probably comes from a lack of sureness of who I should be when I’m with a man. It’s not a calibration that is very set in my head. If it works out or seems to be working out, I’m grateful. Chalo, things are working out, somehow the energies seem to be balanced and it’s falling into place. But when I’m with a woman, I feel like I know what I’m doing, what I want to do and it’s easier for the other person also to figure me out in that way. Easier for them to figure out whether they like it or not, and what needs to change.   Pleasure is common but sex with men is rarely fluid Sex with men and with women is actually very different but it’s difficult to articulate the difference in sensation. Both are pleasurable. With men, it’s probably more informal. It's more familiar terrain. The sense of occasion is underplayed. It’s seldom that the roles are fluid with men. But, while you’d assume that because there’s a familiarity with the physical type, it would be even playing ground with men, it’s not. The roles are often well-defined. When they’re not, it’s more fun though. With women, there is a default setting but within that, the playing field is wide and open-ended. The default-setting is usually that of a ‘flower and gardener’. I find I'm almost always the latter. In fact, I realised this for the first time when I had sex with a man. Suddenly I was the flower. I loved it. I tend to change in response to who I’m with and what the energy of the moment is. When I’m less assertive, it's put off some men. Women have been certainly more turned on by the idea of a flawed man in me, than men. I haven’t found an alternative to monogamy If you are bisexual, people assume you’re not monogamous. If you are monogamous, you have to make a point of it. People will approach you even if they’re not going to be brash about it. Hitting on somebody’s girlfriend or wife is not considered cool but hitting on someone’s boyfriend is still seen as different. As a norm, monogamy seems forced to me. Having said that, I have experience of being with an individual for long periods of time. While in principle, I think it would be good for human beings to come up with a format that allows patterns other than monogamy in the world, I will admit that I haven’t arrived at that format and, hence, regardless of how often I may be drawn to different people at given points in time, I stick to monogamy. You relate to other people primarily because of what you need. So, for me it has almost always been about whatever needs of mine have been fulfilled at different points of time. At the end of the day, for me, it's always about the person and how they make me feel. And then there comes a rare moment when your imagination is taken over by the other person. It's about them now and I'm happy to follow where it takes me.   Aatish Basu dabbles in the performing arts and works in a creative industry in one of India’s metropolitan cities.

I Dreamed of Having a Suhaag Raat Straight Out of the Movie Kama Sutra. My Actual Experience Was Nothing Like It

It’s been a decade since I had sex with a man.

It’s been a decade since I had sex with a man. The last time I did was with my husband, whom I divorced. As a young woman of eighteen, I watched the movie Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love directed by Mira Nair. Kama Sutra is a tale of love that also speaks about the art of love-making. I thought it would be considered taboo for me to watch this film, in the way that I had been cautioned not to read novels by Jackie Collins as she spoke openly about sex. I came from a family of academicians and my parents were professors. My only focus had to be on studying: Maths, Science and – most important – Moral Science, an ICSE special subject on character building. So by the standards of my parents and society, I shouldn’t have been watching Kama Sutra at all. Rather, I should have been watching Jhansi Ki Rani, Robin Hood or Jai Santoshi Maa. At eighteen I was intrigued by the name ‘Kama Sutra’ itself, and decided to watch it so that I could learn to make love well when I got married. The movie started with Maya and Tara, a maid and a princess who were best friends and also rivals. While Tara the princess was tutored by Rasa Devi in the art of love-making, which she couldn’t use to her advantage, Maya the maid embodied the art. I am a classical dancer, and I too dance to narrate stories with the rhythm of my body. With each melody my steps can decipher the language of love. I have sensual features and can turn a man on with my moves. In the movie, both Maya and Tara danced in front of the king, and I dance in front of an audience. Sometimes the audience may be children, sometimes adults, but it makes no difference to me. Raj, the debauched king in the movie, needed sex but ultimately fell in love with Maya, as she had in her the intoxicating passion of her soul. I felt in tune with Maya, I felt I could caress and kiss the man who would be my husband, I would moan when I made love, feel the touches that a woman needs from a man, take in the whiff that could send me to a heady dawn, until two souls became one, nestled in as close as two spirits can be.   At eighteen, I wanted to be in arms of my man, who would caress my neck, touch my earlobes. I wanted to let him leave the love bites on my breast, my nails shredding his back, as I say that is love. I wanted to be that lover who everyone would want to love. But I wanted all this inside marriage, with a husband. I thought I would like to drape myself in a saree and look like a bride, a red bindi on my forehead, flowers on my velvet hair tied in a bun. That night he would come, lift my chin; he would wrap me in his arms as as I trembled. I would feel that I was Maya with my lover Jai Kumar, whose hands would caress my cheekbones, touching my lips with his, enter me in all the positions explained in the book and shown in the movie. He would lift me off my feet and carry me to the designated bed for that first night of mine. He would undo my blouse, his hands on my legs, my back arching in anticipation as was Maya’s when Jai umar touched her breasts, knowing well where his fingers would reach. My head would brush against the pillow as he entered me, the first moan escaping my lips. Then, at twenty-two, I got married. I asked my husband to watch Kama Sutra with me. He said he had no time for it, but he had time for his friends with whom he went for movies. He did bring blue films home and asked me to watch porn with him, but I longer felt I was Maya and he Jai Kumar – rather, a mistress of that king Raj whom he could fuck, but not love. I wanted to watch Kama Sutra again, I wanted to teach him how to love a woman. I didn’t want to watch porn as I knew it spoke about intercourse, while all I wanted was love. He felt he was too intellectual and he did not appreciate such stupidity in the name of sex. Looking back, on the first night of my marriage, there was no sex at all. During the reception I had tripped on some stairs and bruised my legs. My legs hurt, but he paid no heed and went off to sleep. The very first night, I understood he was arrogant. I felt that earlier when we dated, but I was in a rush to get married and ignored his abusive nature. The next day my friend called to ask how my first night had been. I was telling her made-up stuff based on scenes from Kama Sutra when my husband snatched the phone from me and slapped me hard. He didn’t speak to me for the next three days. On our honeymoon, he was furious when at the hotel reception I asked the manager to give us a room suitable for a newly-married couple. Again, he stopped speaking to me and after punishing me for three more days, he tried to have sex with me but it was a disaster.   I could never talk to him about sex. We stayed married for eleven long years, but only on paper. I spent five years with him and my life was a living hell. I attempted suicide not once, but twice. He got me pregnant. I was a young woman, and other men looked at me with eyes full of lust. But I felt like I was being used as a doormat, and not treated as a woman to be loved. Although we had a love marriage, I left him like Maya – walked away miles away so that he could not find me anymore. I watched Kama Sutra again, this time as a single woman who needs love and wants to be loved. Sex unites bruised souls, can ignite love in a person who has been unloved for decades. It is a balm for wounds and scars that haven’t healed. It can keep a relationship stronger with the power of love, for I say love is incomplete without sex. I still search for my Jai Kumar, I dream of him, I dream of a house where we will make love, where he will kiss me passionately, where he will love me completely as a woman. But that is just a dream, not a reality. In real life, I watch Kama Sutra alone and I am Rasa Devi, who can teach the art of love-making through my dances, my mudras, my emotions. I am Rasa Devi, not Maya anymore. Rimli Bhattacharya has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in supply chain management. Her writing has appeared in several magazines, engineering journals, blogs, the Times of India, and in the anthology Book of Light. She is also a trained Kathak and Odissi dancer and is based out of Mumbai.

Why Flirting Without Agenda Matters: Lessons from the Caribbean

There is a way to verbally and non-verbally gauge another person’s interest without harassing them. It’s called flirting

There is a way to verbally and non-verbally gauge another person’s interest without harassing them. It’s called flirting, and Americans (as I’ve noticed since moving to the U.S.) are incompetent at it. Flirting without hurting flourishes when sexualness and sexuality are diffused through a culture—when every person is understood to be a sexual being of one sort or another, but a sexual being who grants access to their presence and their body at their discretion or even passing whim. In that milieu, flirting is fun. It’s jokey. It’s play. It’s circuitous and circular. It is not linear. Words and feelings ebb, flow, dip, peak, return. In the Caribbean—and the diasporic Indo-Caribbean, my natal home—jokes and the musical Anglophone-ish wordplay that flowers from colonial British English, and plantation Hind(ustan)i, and hidden Yoruba, and conquistadorial Spanish and French, are what give us life. Chatting up most Caribbean and Latin American and some Mediterranean people is fun and funny, a smooth and sexy duet replete with mutually flattering ripostes and empty of pettiness and minor insult. It is fun. There is laughter. There is consent. There is respect. There is, above all, generosity. Both love gladiators glide away from the interaction feeling good and beautiful and special. The air is thick with verbal and pheromonal pleasure and the smugness of temporarily boosted self-esteem. Imagine nonk-jhonk banter that is not oriented toward a single linear outcome or consumable consummation. A goal is sex or romance, yes, but the greater goal is pleasure in play, verbal or otherwise (rishta remains not a goal at all; that is for later, not such beginning stages). The journey towards love is the achievement, and indeed the skilled talkers fall a little in love with each other even if they never see each other again. As the witty repartee unfolds, the lovers have time and space to think about their choices, and decide what is next. Whatever choice each person makes, it is whole and free. We in the Caribbean are never in a rush, sometimes to our detriment, as we are also never on time for anything, including and especially our own weddings.   The Caribbean, Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica have serious gendered, interpersonal postcolonial problems too: rampant domestic violence is one, suicide is another. We are materially poor. And yet there is a freeness that women have, to be sexual or not as they wish; to dance suggestively and sexually to soca, chutney, and dancehall reggae music in the street at Carnival, and return to temple, church, and mosque the next day, with judgment from the omnipresent Third World aunties, but without fear. But I live now in the United States of #MeToo, in the Year of Our Lord and Savior Trump, where no one is having any fun. The Dear Leader proclaims through wife and deed and the daily unearthed grotesque footage of his misspent decades that women are but bodies: pornstars and beauty queens and models and foreign brides upon whom he enacts his coarse and mediocre sex. Every day the sexual malfeasance of another public figure is exposed. Even so, we were jolted when the accused was Aziz Ansari: immigrant achiever of the American Dream, and more importantly in certain quarters, famous Person of Indian Origin, not to mention famous sort-of Muslim—despite his infamous haram pork-eating and agnosticism. Aziz’s case divided women in a way that other sexual assault exposés had not: questions were raised about the young woman’s choices and the timing of her exit from Aziz’s clutches, and the extent to which he did or did not coerce her; accusations of fame-mongering were made. Everyone was harangued and emerged weary. White liberals and white feminists—having enjoyed the sanitised multi-ethnicity of Aziz’s millennial hipster Netflix show Master of None, in which he showed a marked penchant for romantic liaisons with white women—became some of his staunchest defenders. They studiously avoided mentioning that unlike most of the other male accused, Aziz was a brown man and nominal Muslim. It was too dangerous to expose him in this political era: what if, illogically, he were deported to his parents’ Tamil Nadu even though he was a born US citizen? Thus Aziz was reinscribed as the Muslim and foreigner he had no wish to be.   In Aziz’s United States, romance is high pressure and high stakes and easily wounded egos and passive and active aggression. There is no dance. There is no play. Moving on with a smile and no hard feelings if romance doesn’t result from a brusque, begrudging, often inebriated opening line or two is an impossibility. If, in America, in an appropriate social, non-professional space, a woman tries to banter and flirt like a Caribbean person, the recipient ordinarily takes the salvo as an immediate sexual invitation, or the scene remains a party of one, her chatting to the proverbial brick wall as he or she swigs a drink and looks around for a less talkative sort more amenable to immediate groping. Prolonged pleasure remains elusive. As per their international reputation, Americans talk a lot—but about themselves, and they don’t listen. Flirting is a conversational skill emanating not just from quick-wittedness, but active listening. Instead, male dating gurus (Aziz is one too, with his 2015 pop-sociological state-of-dating and advice manual Modern Romance: An Investigation) teach other men in need of “game” all manner of unnecessary deceptive tricks and exploitative coercive techniques: notably the manipulative strategy of “negging,” the old backhanded compliment that purportedly lowers a woman’s self-esteem so she is more receptive to sexual advances. And God help you if you are a woman on the dating apps. Romance in the US is capitalist and transactional. Americans are terrible about giving compliments, the backbone of flirting. Both giving and receiving simple feel-good flattery feels onerous to an American, as if something is being taken from them: even romantic interaction is fraught with the need to return the overture in a quantifiably equivalent amount.   The New York Times reported recently that over a third of millennial men and women in the U.S. believe that it is harassment if a man compliments a woman on her looks. This happens when the compliment is a transaction that embarrasses and obligates both giver and receiver; and when, in a culture that is puritanically and coercively regimented into sexual and nonsexual zones, people do not understand the nature of a compliment: that baldly telling someone about their body is not the same as subtly praising dress, effort, and lovely personality characteristics. I have no exotic solution, arising shimmering from the Caribbean Sea, to fix a romantic culture of harassment, non-consensual sexual interaction, and overwhelming fear of both other people and rejection. But Caribbean culture offers these invitations: be generous. Listen before talking. Flirt more. Give more. Demand less. Take the time to play and decide. Pleasure will come, and there are many kinds of pleasure, not all sexual. As for me, I plan to survive my exile from the Caribbean and the American winter of my discontent by advertising that I am here to give you and receive your compliments in a non-work environment. Boy/girl/person, you are so smart, and so beautiful, and so am I. Aliyah Khan is a teacher, writer, raconteur, makeup connoisseur, and lover of creatures great and small, living in the American Midwest and dreaming in many cities and continents. Ramya is a geographer who loves to draw. 

Why I Believe Love is Like Quantum Physics (But in a Good Way)

The strange similarities between love and the theory of quantum entaglement.

Ishq par zor naheen, hai ye woh aatish 'Ghalib' ki lagaaye na lage aur bujhaaye na bane (Ghalib! Love is a fire that lights itself and dies out of itself, beyond our wills.) Let’s accept it, we have been trying to understand the business of love since time immemorial. From poets to philosophers, we have tried just about everything. This enquiry has led us to literature, poetry, psychology, sociology and whatnot. But here we are, still trying to get the basics right. So perhaps it’s time to study the matters of love and relationships in a different light. The light of the Universe! Why do we fall in love? Is it like planets and other celestial bodies falling under the invisible force of gravity? What if stars are in a polygamous relationship with planets? Perhaps what we call a solar system is a beautiful cosmic relationship, the kind of relationship poets write poetry about. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo speaks these lines in the balcony scene: "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." Much like Ghalib’s ‘aatish’, Shakespeare's poetic metaphor for love is a function of heat or fire. Brain science tells us the inside story: like any other intense emotion such as anger or sadness, our blood pressure and muscle tension increases, which stimulate sweat glands, and we feel hotter. Neurobiologically speaking, the association of love with heat (and by extension, stars, which are giant balls of fire) appears to be more literal than metaphorical. The night sky, for me, is a poetic symposium of stars, planets, moons and satellites—artificial or otherwise. In the infinite darkness of the cosmos, their perpetual movement weaves poetry and patterns, a love of a different kind on the fabric of space-time. I heard the universe as a romantic ghazal sung by Mehdi Hassan. The stars talk love to me. I can hear the murmurs of the planets and rustling-rumbling of satellites, as they orbit around the sky, sixteen times a day. Perhaps, as the song from Khamoshi goes, “Aasmaan ko bhi ye haseen raaz hai pasand.” When people fall in love, they experience all sorts of feelings that are difficult to rationalise. Einstein once said that if the laws governing quantum mechanics were correct, then the world would be crazy. Well, Einstein was right—the world is crazy, and so is love. In the early 1920s, the scientific world was in the middle of one of the most heated debates in its history. The radical and bizarre theory of “uncertainty” forever changed the way we understand the Universe, and at the center of this debate was a battery of Nobel Laureates and some of the brightest minds of the 20th century—Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck and Erwin Schrödinger. The Wacky World of Quantum Physics In 1935, Mr Schrödinger (whose kittens were at the same time dead and alive) coined the term “entanglement”, which led to the development of a counterintuitive phenomenon called “quantum entanglement”. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon wherein two particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space; a change induced in one will affect the other, much like Bollywood’s proverbial dramas with twins. Does it remind you of Judwaa 2? Me neither. But it certainly highlights the scientific accuracy and acumen of David Dhawan.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Whatever happens to one particle can have an impact on the second, even if those particles are billions of light years apart. It’s like two particles in love—like soulmates, defying the “till death do us part” rationale; a love story at the smallest scales imaginable. Einstein was uncertain about this uncertainty and he initially dismissed this theory, calling such “impossible” and famously derided quantum entanglement as "Spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance." He also refused quantum ideas, because “God”, he said, “does not play dice”. Scientists have proven beyond just about all doubt that it works, and now we are very certain about the uncertainties of the quantum world. Your GPS, lasers, smartphone, or the computer you are using to read this couldn’t exist without quantum physics. Almost every modern electronic device is a consequence of this bizarre theory. The newest technological innovations today were made possible by the study, all those years ago, of two particles in “love”. A Euphoric Entanglement Called Love Love and quantum physics are completely unrelated subjects, yet strangely parallel. For starters, they both are mysterious. Two people can fall in love, much like two entangled subatomic particles, even if they’re nowhere near each other. Catching each other’s eyes for the first time across a busy metro station, or in a crowded room of strangers, or on social media, when they are thousands of miles away from each other. That’s the thing with love and quantum entanglement—age, distance and the value of Pi seem nothing more than just numbers. Long-held beliefs, what society approves of, the notion of right and wrong, logic, and rational ideas don’t seem to hold any ground when it comes to love or the quantum world. Spooky? I say not. Quantum entanglement is perhaps the purest form of love—it’s quantum romance. If you think of two lovers living at the opposite ends of this planet, the shared emotions, the sense of belonging, the way they perceive each other despite several thousand miles of distance, is nothing short of entanglement. Distance means so little when someone means so much. Breaking Einstein's cosmic speed limit barrier, our thoughts and memories span a thousand miles in a fraction of a second. The poetic equivalent of “spooky action at a distance”. You can’t define an entangled particle on its own; both exist in a continuum, much like in a relationship where neither of the two lovers is complete on their own. They complete each other—like non-separable halves of the same entangled entity.

Credit: Shocking Science / The Daily Galaxy

That one person in the world who knows you better than anyone else. Someone who makes you a better person... actually, they don't make you a better person—you do that yourself because they inspire you. Theirs is a force so powerful that it motivates you and leads you to the path of self-discovery and awakening. It’s like a reflection of yourself, a custom and tailor-made soul for you. It doesn't matter if you are in the same city, country, Universe or in fact, in the same dimension—you'll always find one another. As if the bond between these distant souls is pre-celestial, older than the Big Bang and stronger than any ionic bond chemistry has ever contemplated. Love is an utterly complex concept, yet so beautifully simple, just like quantum physics. The uncertainty, the chaos, the randomness, the lack of any predefined ‘plan’ is what makes love so beautiful. Maybe it's much more interesting to live with the willingness to embrace uncertainty, to live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. The kind of love I seek—and what I think everyone else seeks—is beyond the reach of right and wrong, it pushes and pulls you, at the same time. My idea of love carries a scientific undertone, and I subscribe to the many worlds interpretation which posits the existence of an infinite number of “You and I” continuum in an infinite number of universes, and at least in one of those universes, we are together as a whole. Quantum physics also suggests that we are made of particles that have existed since the universe began. It also suggests the most poetic thing I know about physics: we are all stardust. We couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t died. Don’t know about Jesus, a star in the backyard of the cosmos died for our sins. You see, those particles traveled 13.7 billion years through time and space so that we could be together. If not in this universe, maybe in some other universe, on a bright sunny day in February (Farvari ki sardiyon ki dhoop mein), I am reading Mir, or perhaps Carl Sagan, to you. Are you even listening to me? Salik heads the Social Media Communications (aka Ghalib-in-Chief) at Talk Journalism and he can be found tweeting about Poetry, Physics and Ghalib @baawraman  

Sex Actually 2.0 :

Stories of women's sexual experiences and thoughts... continued.


A note from us

Over the last few months, we’ve been discussing the violence that happens as sex, the violence that happens in sex. If we want to change the interactions inside sex, especially heterosexual sex, we believe we have to talk more about sex actually – not only the concepts around sex. We have to be able to say what works for us and what doesn’t and make that a normal part of the world. Diverse women’s diverse experience of sex and their diverse interpretations and responses of their sexual experience should inform discussions and understandings about sex. This is why we started the campaign Sex Actually in collaboration with The Ladies Finger – to get that conversation started. We asked people to contribute a story about a sexual experience they couldn’t forget – awful or awesome or ho-hum – in this anonymous form. This is the second edition of the stories that we received. Half the stories are here – half are here at The Ladies Finger. These stories are published under pseudonyms. We will publish more as they come (all puns are intended because like the clitoris they have no purpose except fun), as you send us more.

The Stories So Far

  I froze when the shopkeeper asked me what size. How was I supposed to know my boyfriend’s condom size? NAME: Priyanka AGE THEN: 18 AGE NOW: 22 My first (and as of today, the only) boyfriend and I have been together for four years. And it has been a wild ride from confusion to contentment. Both of us had never had sex before we got together, and when the moment arrived one hot, sweaty February afternoon, as luck would have it, the only condom we had came out of a condom piñata at a birthday party. And it most certainly tore from our desire to try this thing called sex. So we took a break and walked some distance to a medical shop where we stood about a 100 feet away from the shop, arguing about who should buy the condoms. It was very frustrating, we were very embarrassed and it did not help that we were standing in public giggling furiously and debating all at once. Eventually, I decided enough was enough, and marched up to the shop. And then stood there for ten more minutes to escape the crowd which had gathered. I managed to choke out the word "condom" at the shopkeeper, who proceeded to laugh and ask me what size. I freaked out. What size? I didn't know my boyfriend's condom size. We hadn't researched that much. The shopkeeper then said "Size, matlab three ka pack ya ten ka pack". I almost fainted from relief, mumbled three (rookie mistake - never buy three the first time you're having sex - you will ALWAYS make a mistake and waste at least one condom), grabbed the packet and ran back to my boyfriend as the shopkeeper laughed at me... Only to run straight into three friends who then asked us what we were up to and commandeered us into a leisurely chat about ice cream as we stood fidgeting with the condom shoved down my barely-there women's apparel standard size pant pocket. What I had imagined to be a private, romantic affair had turned into a series of unfortunate events and we hadn't even started yet. Phew! Finally, we managed to evade our friends and go back to the house to do the deed. It was hard (pun intended), messy, and slightly painful, and I didn't orgasm but it was so much fun and I was entirely sure that if virginity weren't a social construct, then this was perhaps the best way to get rid of mine. The act of sex was followed by a rude five minute long knock on the door, a serenade courtesy of my boyfriend's roommate. With this interruption, two of us decided to follow our first time having sex by talking a dust-ridden walk to the nearest Subway for lunch and we walked silently, no words really necessary. The poem I have written about this exact moment is titled "Alchemical Reaction" and it reminds me that every time I reminisce about the first time I had sex, the one thing I always remember most vividly, is how on the way to Subway, I tripped over a rock and let out all the air I had been holding since we had sex. I had been holding my breath because even though it had been crude and confusing and hella giggly, I had also done it with someone I genuinely liked, and would go on to love. My boyfriend has since then created a wonderfully safe space for our relationship and sexual encounters. It’s been four years since we first had sex, and he still asks me for permission even to kiss me. He is so aware and conscious about how I am feeling, and even the slightest discomfort on my part means that HE WILL STOP. We didn't have sex for the first three months of our relationship because we were too lazy to buy condoms, and because we didn't have any, he never even bothered asked me to have sex with him. It was just that simple. And it still is. And sex always feels the same, alchemical - like breathing in air made up gold dust and pure sunlight. -- I wondered why he was carrying on, when I had expressed so clearly with my body that I wanted to stop. NAME: Neha AGE THEN: 19 AGE NOW: 25 I was having sex with my boyfriend after a really long time. I was in college, he had moved away, and come back for the weekend just to meet with me. We checked in to a hotel (under his name, I snuck in later). We hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and had sex as soon as the hotel door closed. We smoked some weed, and started to have sex a second time. But for some reason, the only image I could see in my head was of a comical pot-bellied frog-monster touching me instead of my boyfriend (don’t ask). I went completely dry, which was unusual, and which he immediately picked up on. I wondered how he was feeling, how all this was affecting him. It was affecting him quite badly; he seemed panicked, and immediately started touching my body more forcefully in an attempt to get me more excited or into things. It didn’t work at all. I was trying to get into it and will my body into getting wet, and simultaneously picking up on his worried signals and worrying about those too. I don’t know why I didn’t just say that it all wasn’t working for me, and that we should just stop and try again later. Instead, I eventually decided to lie completely still, naturally (to me) assuming that he would see my total lack of participation and movement as an obvious sign of my unwillingness to carry on. Unfortunately, he seemed to take it as a sign to increase the force and velocity of whatever he was doing in an effort to make it feel good for me, which in that moment, I remember feeling quite taken aback by. Why was he carrying on having sex with me, when I had expressed so clearly, I thought, with my body and body language that I wanted to stop? But I don’t think he thought of it like that. He genuinely thought that I wasn't moving because I wasn’t being pleasured, or pleasured enough, and that the way to evoke that pleasure was to touch with more force and pressure. Uff. I later spoke to a male friend who brought up the phenomenon of women going perfectly still during sex. He called it going “deadfish”, and said it was the worst thing that could happen to a man’s sexual confidence. He thought it happened because girls were feeling tired or awkward. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know the half of it, that it was indeed a sign of feeling tired and awkward but so, so much more than just that. -- When the next orgasm came, I could feel myself loosening up from within. It was as if I had been repressed all my life. NAME: KarmaSutra AGE THEN: 25 AGE NOW: 25 I knew it was going to happen a long time before it did. I just hadn’t zeroed in on when, but I think he had picked his opportunity well. He knew I would say yes, I thought I would not. He came prepared. We got talking, and a frisson of electricity crackled between us. I knew I had lost. But it felt like I won. I’d wanted him the minute I laid eyes on him that evening. At least he didn’t know that. He wasted no time in grabbing my waist and pulling me into a kiss; it was so quick that it caught me off guard. His audacity shocked me. Within a few seconds though, I was moulding my body against his to return his kiss. He was eager to remove my clothes, I was equally eager to undress him. In a flurry of seconds, we were both naked and I was on top, never breaking our kiss for too long. We took turns taking charge, but suddenly he flipped me on my back, taking on the role of dominator. I trusted him completely, he made me feel safe. He smiled at me and put his fingers inside me. In just a matter of seconds, I had started moaning. The sensation of an unbridled orgasm was new. He watched me with a hungry expression, intent on my pleasure, kissing me as if he needed it to live. I felt worshipped. I entered realms of pleasure I had only read about so far, it was the kind of sex I had only read about in those trashy books. It was overwhelming. Intense, yet fun. Passionate, yet gentle. It was the middle ground of middle grounds, but the best one of them. I was terrified it would be a letdown, as new sex can be. Jumping into bed without building intimacy is rarely a good idea, but this was intimate from the get-go. Lucky me. My next orgasm came, and he kept kissing me, murmuring words of comfort. I could feel myself loosening up from within. It was as if I had been repressed all my life. My third orgasm came, and this time I saw genuine enjoyment on his face. Never before had a guy cared for my pleasure. By the end of this dreamlike night, my legs had turned to jelly. I was sore from all his ministrations. I was all too aware that it may never happen again, too, but who cares? I had finally experienced the mythical multiple orgasms. It was amongst the best encounters of my life, and it forever changed my idea of sex. I no longer think that it is about control or letting go of control. It’s about relaxing into your partner, and learning to accept every bit of your wonderful self. -- As I rode away, N texted, “I want to eat you now”. The addict was suddenly on full alert. NAME: Iravati Kohli AGE THEN: 28 AGE NOW: 28 B 4,366 miles away from everyone I knew and everything I held dear, I was dying. I had woken up, naked, with a desperate urge to pee, to discover that every joint in my body was being fed by a needle, which in turn were being fed by machines, beeping insidiously. The initial shock notwithstanding, I slowly nursed myself back from a life-threatening disease, gingerly stretching out my toes into the European autumn, as I started every day promising myself to take it easy. My conversations with B had kept me going during my stay at the hospital. I remember telling her that I had a fresh perspective on life now, given that I almost died. I will never wear a bra again (I don’t). No one cares about my nipples showing. I remember her going LOOOOL at that, adding, “Dude, imagine the amount of D you’ll get, now that you’re willing to let go of some of your inhibitions!” I left the hospital with an utter disdain for bras, and something else. Sex addiction. Initially, rehab consisted of eating right, sleeping enough, obsessively carrying water and munchies everywhere I went, looking up phone numbers of the closest hospital every time I so much as sneezed. I did not even notice the amount of time I was spending on Tinder, swiping away, telling myself, “yes this is life, this is you living life.” It was not until I had met three different men on two consecutive nights that I realised something was up. This exhausted clusterfuck was not exactly my usual dating scene. Panic set in as first response. Thankfully (or maybe not), I had had significant experience with mental health issues. Having waded through clinical depression, acute body image issues-related eating disorder and general anxiety, I immediately called for help. Dr. Decker, ageing and kindly, also frustratingly twinkly, was amused at my self-diagnosis. I patientsplained to him that I was severely disappointed with myself because I fell ill, proving years of suspicion amongst my family that I was utterly incapable of taking care of myself. So far away from my support systems, I was susceptible to constant loneliness, and in my search for validation, I had stumbled upon Tinder and the easy-breezy availability of the momentary but intense attention that sex allowed. Dr. Decker, green eyes twinkling, gently agreed to the fact that I did have a propensity for addictive behaviours, however, I should not go so far as to call myself a sex addict yet. Like a spoilt first-worlder, I asked for medication – at least “relaxants”! – and vented to B. C I met C the night B left Europe. She had flown down from New York, just to check if I was really alive, I suspect. We had spent five days doing all kinds of shady shit, calling each other “queen” and marvelling at banal things such as “Woah look at us drinking Prosecco and stuff, who will say we used to bum cigarettes at North-East Dhaba”. It was glorious. The night she left, I came back to my apartment and the loneliness just crawled all over me like a swarm of spiders. By the time C had agreed to come over, I had already ordered him to get ice-cream, coke and something salty, like chips. He arrived with a half-finished bottle of cola, a hit of cocaine and a bagful of dildos. I was so disappointed in myself, and frankly I just wanted him to leave and have a cry on the phone with B. But then, I started talking to him, finding it surprisingly easy to open up to this strange dude with lovely hair and huge hands. His willingness to spend time giving me head, and actually letting me talk through it, was disarmingly nice. I don’t remember getting so much head, ever. And I had dated women. Over the next weeks, I would constantly be surprised by his willingness to meet me, to have intense sex through the night, sleep over till 5 pm in my house and be kicked out, only to be back around midnight. I treated it like an enjoyable vacation – he was adorable, he actually liked my sarcasm and general bitchy countenance, he rolled me cigarettes, and he listened in rapt attention to my lectures on how liberal politics was going to be the end of the world as we knew it. That one time, I taught him Nancy Fraser while he went down on me, and every time I would lose control of my speech, he would kiss me down there and gently rumble against my pussy – “go on”. It was not until I went over to his house for the first time, and ended up staying there for what seemed like a week, that I realised this was going to get complicated. In a sexed-out state of bliss I had asked him, “You are so lovely, can I keep you?”, only to be presented with this gem – “Yes, for a while”. I most certainly did not expect the small but significant heartbreak I experienced at that. I kept up a running commentary with B, and she was very concerned that I seemed to be on tenterhooks about this absolutely random man I had picked up out of the blue. “Just chill dude, he’s a fuckboi, we’re meeting in Cal in like a week, we’ll sort it out.” N The short trip back home had already turned into a nightmare, what with my university basically telling me to fuck off, don’t come back pliss, we don’t have time for you. Delhi had given me a terrible cough, which Cal garnished with an epic nose-block. I met B in Park Street and she witnessed my C-obsession first hand, dispensing sage advice. “Dude, he only calls you for sex, matlab he is fuckboi only, na? Tum apne pe dhyaan do behen, white boys can be damn haanikarak.” We went to Sephora and put provocatively glittery lipstick and shitloads of makeup for free. And then we ate rubbish food off the roadside and had bhnaarer cha by the gallon. Bombay was going to be nice and warm, a tiny little holiday I was really looking forward to. Touchdown at Chhatrapati Shivaji, and my phone basically exploded with surprisingly eligible young men and women on Tinder, all extremely charming, annoyingly woke and feminist and willing to get interested. The addictive streak was completely eclipsing the fact that I was here to meet my baby nephew and my sister. I shouted out at B, “DUDE BOMBAY GIRLS ARE HOTTTT”, and she obliged with a plethora of the peach emoji. I spent the first night feeling adored by a handful of ally-types, really driving their woke bae-ness home, till I basically snapped and gave it to one of them. That was N. I silkenly accused him of everything between mansplaining and using allyship for sexual purchase, and at the end of this ritual humiliation, asked him out for a beer. I arrived at the burger joint he had suggested horrifyingly late the next evening, my last night in Bombay, and was surprised to find him still waiting. We never got a place there, and moved swiftly to some pub next door. The conversation seemed to go on for hours, and when we left the pub, I just kept walking, and he fell into step next to me. We walked down a deserted road in Andheri, tiring out our vocal chords, electrified by our sexual arousal, frustrated at our inability to address this properly. I decided to take an auto home – I was not going to waste more time trying to keep my arousal at bay when he was so restrained that he almost seemed uninterested. As I dropped him home in the auto, I asked if he would like to be kissed, and witnessed him crumble, shakily wailing “Yes, please”. The first kiss, supposed to be the last, as I was heading home and heading back to Delhi in three hours, felt sadly like a gift – me giving something out of pure kindness, after a long day of repressing our feelings. As I rode away, N texted, “I want to eat you now”. The addict was suddenly on full alert. I bullied him into taking me to the airport, offering to give him a blowjob in the cab, which he graciously refused. We kissed, channeling our frustration at this ever so short encounter into each of our kisses. It was hot. He kissed my neck, my ears, my shoulders, and I caught fire. I had forgotten that Indian airports did not let visitors inside without a ticket, and my plans of having sex with N in the airport loo had to be changed to having an incredibly intense conversation about his family over coffee before my flight. I typed out my hourly update to B, receiving the most “queen” response ever – “Dude, enjoy it while he is still calling you hot and shit, cuz this ain’t nothing serious. Hope you had sex.”   J J called himself a “Dallu”, a Mallu born and brought up in Delhi, woefully lacking in the famed Mallu male appeal. He was hot. That was the only assessment I had of him. By this time in my India trip I had been so thoroughly mindfucked by family crisis, unsure professional future, physical illness (I was still struggling with keeping my immunity up), managing my sex addiction, impending deadlines, missed deadlines, and C and N, I was fully booked up in the emotions department. J was breezy, younger, terrified of me, and eager to please. He was also hopelessly Delhi, trying to pay for dinner and drinks as if it would somehow help his cause. Acting out a massive cliché, he took me to Mahabelly, a Malabar restaurant in a South Delhi mall, where apparently the rest of his church had also come for dinner. Between stuffing our faces with erachi and avoiding detection by the entire Malayali-Christian community in Delhi, J stared at me hotly for long and torturous moments. Usually silent, and pretty much in awe of my loud and seemingly confident persona, J surprised me by sharing his dreams and details of his life which felt very intimate. He wanted to open up a restaurant in Kochi at 35, just like a dozen other Mallu men I have met, and had unbelievably difficult daddy issues. In a weird daze, still humming Karukara from Mahabelly’s self-consciously Keralite soundtrack, we dragged each other into a park of Eucalyptus trees and dry-humped till my pants almost came off by themselves. That’s when he broke off – “This seems…indecent.” I gave his head a condescending rub, asked him to pray before he slept and go to confession the next day, and zipped up my jeans. Three hours later, I was on a flight back to Europe. B The first day back in my own apartment, shielding myself from the punishing winter, I slept for what seemed like a year. I suppose this was my body’s way of dealing with my overwhelmed mind. I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Decker later in the week. I tried to piece together the things I did on my trip back, the people I actually met, the conversations which were worth remembering. My mother, my dad, sister, nephew, my aunt sick with cancer, my old grandmother. My ex. BA debrief. C had messaged as soon as I had landed, telling me he had missed me. I lied to him – “I missed you too!” We were going to meet soon, and I wanted to avoid having a conversation about the hickeys on my neck. Waking up from a disturbed sleep, groggy, unsure of the time or the continent, I gossiped with B hard about some misogynist bastard Leftist dudebro who wasn’t letting his super awesome wife take a prestigious job because it would hurt his fragile ego. I told her, “I think I’ve had enough of Mallu boys for a while”, and then we jointly drooled over the owner of Mahabelly, and then the owner of Gunpowder, Mahabelly’s precursor in erachi-starved Delhi. “So then, your ideal life would be on a beach, with a hot Mallu man cooking for you and rolling joints for you and having sex with you through the day.” “Yes, please. Hubba hubba. Or…or with you, somewhere.” “Dude.” “You are my longest-term relationship, B. You know that.” “Yeah, we should really take our ‘homestay in Santorini’ idea seriously.” “Yeah dude. And you know what? Fuck this shit. I won’t fucking care about all this C and N and J and shit. What’s the point? I know I’m supplanting some epic hole in my life with this stuff. None of them seem to be into me in any case. I am hardly at an age when I need to have self-confidence issues afresh! I mean, I just miss you man.” “Love you, dude. I miss you. And shut up, you’re like damn hot. Hope we end up in the same city. Also, I’m looking for cheap tickets AS WE SPEAK. SUMMER’S GONNA BE EPIC, MOTHERFUCKER!” I’m still dealing with the sex addiction. C, N and J message, occasionally, sharing some banal shit that have no consequences for my day. I cheerlead B through mental health emergencies. She returns the favour. I’ll head to NYC in the summer, and we plan to go Tindering together, which should be fun, but also humbling. B’s super fucking hot. But we’ll cross that mental health bridge if and when we get there. For now, I’m not looking for any more letters of the alphabet. -- He begged and pleaded until I decided I really didn’t care anymore. NAME: Lavanya AGE THEN: 26 AGE NOW: 28 I met this boy off Tinder, and contrary to how you expect these things to unfold, he invited me over to his friend's place for a drink. His friend (and her partner) turned out to be really interesting people, and I remember discussing movies, books and architecture with them while Tinder boy nursed a fever and a glass of brandy. He didn't talk much. At some point I realised how late it actually was, and how drunk we all were. I was new to the city and bunking with a friend then, so couldn't really head back at that point, and ended up going to the boy's place with completely ambivalent feelings about him. Then we spoke some more, and he kissed me, and things escalated as things do with enthusiasm from both of us, only when push came to push he confessed he didn't have a condom on him. I promptly clothed myself and suggested we do something else, except as the night wore on he teased and begged and pleaded and wore my defences down, till there came a moment I decided I didn't really care anymore and gave in. -- We were two virgins figuring it all out together. NAME: Radhika AGE THEN: 18 AGE NOW:  20 This is the story of the first time I got laid. It was a long time coming (pun intended) and with a guy I absolutely adore. There has always been a dichotomy in how I've felt about sex and how I expressed it. When I was in school, I had the image of the typical good girl and felt pressed to maintain it. But I remember that there never were any honest conversations about sex in my peer group. One time the resident mean girls asked me if I had ever seen porn. I answered, "Me, no!” with the most profound look of disgust I could muster. That was a lie. In college there was a freer environment but one that was often dominated by men making crude jokes about sex (and the cool girls gently chuckling along). When I started dating this guy, I found that I was definitely more into the sex bit of it than him. I was kinkier in the confines of my mind than he had ever been. But for the first time, I felt myself being whole. I didn't have to separate the bright happy Powerpuff Girl part of me from the one that loved sex and existed as an underground alter-ego. I was whole. We went to his house where we kissed the only way we knew how. He would later ask me if he was a good kisser. I'd say, sure, but I don't have any other standard for comparison. We were two virgins figuring it out for the first time, but I have never felt so comfortable doing something like that. He was gentle and considerate throughout, something that I hadn't believed possible in all my trips through the porn on the Internet. We had to figure out the condom bit and believe me, it can be tricky when your head is that full of chemicals. We took part in the motions of sex though we didn't have enough experience to actually be good at it. We loved everything that led up to it and laughed through the experience. When I was attempting to give him a blow job, he caressed my face. It was comically tender. It wasn't the mechanical thrusting of a man pushing his dick into a woman's mouth. It was to see if I was comfortable and I really was. We lay together for some time after and I remember feeling that I could lay like that forever. I don't think I could have asked for a better first time. -- I think about the green chilli incident whenever I see a perfect sex scene in a movie, because I know sex in real life can be funny. NAME: Ubon AGE THEN: 26 AGE NOW: 31 This was shortly after I got married and my husband and I moved in together. We had very different work timings and I usually got home just around dinner time, he had a few hours free before and after dinner but worked late at night. One day I came back home to find that he had made some spicy curry and rice and we ate it with great enthu. Since he had no client meetings later that night, we decided that it was time for some romance. Fortunately and unfortunately, he likes to bring me to an orgasm first using his hands. As he started doing this, my “nether regions” started to burn. I ran out yelling and dumped a lot of water on myself. Then we realized that in an effort to be efficient and organised my husband had cut up a whole bunch of green chilies to freeze that evening. Washing his hands twice with soap had not been sufficient to prevent my burning loins situation. I think about this whenever I see a perfect sex scene in a movie because I know that sex in real life is often funner and funnier than what we see in reel. -- The next time we had sex, my knees were all messed up. I guess it was only fair. NAME: Ekta AGE THEN: 21 AGE NOW: 22 In July last year, I was in London for a summer school. I was hanging out with this dude I had hooked up with a few times, a year previously when he was visiting Kolkata. He was taking me to his place in Kent, and I started getting frisky with him in the car itself. He stopped the car in what felt like the middle of nowhere. It was completely dark. I thought we had reached his place. But he couldn't wait. He led me into the forest and lay me down on the (very wet!) ground. There, we fucked. It was funny. I couldn't stop laughing because I was on a wet icky forest ground with who-knows-what creatures under me, and I could see the moon through tall trees. Bet it messed up his knees. But the last time we met, I had fucked him on top of a stone water tank on my friend's terrace and that had screwed up my knees for a good few days. I guess it was only fair.  -- Read more accounts on The Ladies Finger.

Sex Actually: The Sexual Encounter Women Say They Can't Forget

Women make sense of their diverse sexual experiences.

A note from us

Over the last few months, we’ve been discussing the violence that happens as sex, the violence that happens in sex. If we want to change the interactions inside sex, especially heterosexual sex, we believe we have to talk more about sex actually – not only the concepts around sex. We have to be able to say what works for us and what doesn’t and make that a normal part of the world. Diverse women’s diverse experience of sex and their diverse interpretations and responses of their sexual experience should inform discussions and understandings about sex.

This is why we started the campaign Sex Actually in collaboration with The Ladies Finger – to get that conversation started. We asked people to contribute a story about a sexual experience they couldn’t forget – awful or awesome or ho-hum – in this anonymous form. Here are the stories people sent in the first week. Half the stories are here – half are here at The Ladies Finger. These stories are published under pseudonyms. We will publish more as they come (all puns are intended because like the clitoris they have no purpose except fun), as you send us more.  

The Stories So Far

Graphics by Debasmita Das

In his dirty talk, he said he was an awesome sex machine. Now here was the moment.

NAME: Chitra
AGE THEN: 25 AGE NOW: 38 This guy I met on a dating site pursued me for a few weeks hectically. He was a bit strange because he was five or six years older and had a job with some responsibility but seemed to have all the time in the world to pursue me on email and sms and on the site’s chat thingy. He had a very effective line of dirty talk that got me very hot and bothered. Which is why I decided to meet him. As a person he seemed rather charmless or maybe I am saying this in retrospect because what happened with me and because I heard from a few other women he slept with. No, I don’t think so truly he was rather grey. And I was really meeting him for sex. When we finally met, he picked me up in his neighbourhood and drove me to his house. He had lots of books in his living room that overlapped somewhat with stuff I was interested in. I pulled a book off a shelf to look at. He began to feel me up sort of like round the book, over the book, under the book. It could have been sexy but I just remember feeling ki ye ho kya raha hain and why so urgent bro. Then in five minutes he backed me through his house to his bed. He took my clothes off very rapidly with great efficiency. I was still in slow-mo so not feeling anything, not even angry, you understand. Then I think he gave me head briskly kneeling next to the bed and I suppose I must have stared at the ceiling. And swiftly came the moment of penetration. The thing I forgot to mention in that his dirty talk there was lots of sophisticated implication that he had the perfect penis and that sophisticated direct statement that he was an awesome sex machine. Now here was the moment and he sort of penetrated and then exited just as rapidly. I looked up to enquire if sab khairiyat etc but he was looking lost in space. He said: I feel haunted by the ghost of my ex-girlfriend. I felt bad for him for exactly one minute because before I could even extend any sympathy he had begun the reverse hustle. Ten minutes later I was back in my clothes and out of the house and he was driving me back to my place. It was all too clinical and neat for me to throw a big, giant hissy fit which I should have. Not because he didn’t want to have sex but because he was behaving like I was the Aquaguard salesman after he had pursued me for weeks. I don’t remember if we continued communication briefly. We might have because I am sure I felt a lot of pressure to be cool. I see him once in a couple of years because we now have common friends and he finds it hard to make eye contact. I am viciously chatty. I don’t think he is like that because he is embarrassed. I think he thinks he is a sex machine but he is just not good with women or perhaps even human beings in general. He was good with dirty talk on text. He’d make a good app. -- The next morning I found myself Googling, “Did my boyfriend just rape me?” NAME: Rita K AGE THEN: 22 AGE NOW: 27 My sister used to make this joke about me. “You’re, like, the de-virginator of Mumbai or something”. This was something of an exaggeration. What it meant was that by age 22, I had had a few decent experiences with sex, all of them with men trying it for the first time. Sometimes it was great, and sometimes it was a little bit dull. Nothing excruciating, often sort of fumbly, but mostly earnest and sweet. Unlike most Indian parents who either don’t talk about it at all, or load young women up with the heady cocktail of shame-pregnancy-log-kya-kahenge-apocalypse, my dad had explained sex to preteen me as “something nice two people do when they love each other”. Well that sounds neat, I thought. So when I decided to start having sex, it was with a teenage boyfriend I loved very sincerely. We waited for a respectable amount of time into the relationship , talked extensively about our feelings before and after, and read every article we could find on contraception via web browsers in incognito mode. I explained smugly to my still-unsexed girl friends how we avoided first-time pain with seamless expertise. I was well on my way to a happy, fulfilled, sex-positive, feminist lifestyle. A few years later, I met this guy, let’s call him Hari. Hari was my awkward engineer friend. Hari listened while I cried for months after my great teenage love found his own (other) great teenaged love. Hari was especially interested in hearing about my exciting experiences with sex. When we met, Hari sometimes stared at my chest, but became abashed and stopped when I told him I had noticed. Hari was sad when he asked me out and I said I didn’t see him that way. Hari was angry when I kissed someone else. When I told him I had slept with this someone else, Hari called me a bitch and stopped talking to me. But Hari and I eventually became friends again. We dated other people and a few years went by. One day, Hari and I went to a party together. “Don’t hit on me, okay, there are lots of single women here,” I told him. But Hari and I got very drunk and made out. That night he took me home. On our way there, I said mildly, “Oh, are we going to have sex then?” Hari said, “Yup”. After dodging it for years, I found that hooking up with Hari was not as terrible as I had imagined it would be, and I was surprised and relieved. One of the first few times we were having sex, Hari lay back in bed and said with a smile, “Now serve me”. I stopped and looked up, sure he was joking. “Say that again and you’ll never see me naked again,” I said coquettishly. “Don’t bring feminism into the bedroom, you’ll ruin sex,” he replied, dead serious. I rolled my eyes and thought, “Ruin sex for whom, I wonder?” But Hari wasn’t a bad guy. Sure we sometimes disagreed on whether the friendzone was fair or not, but he had come a long way over the years. At least he had stopped saying, “It isn’t rape, just surprise sex, haha.” I was quite sure where the power in this relationship lay. I was young, skinny and conventionally attractive. He was, let’s say, a little less sought after. Sometimes I would joke and cruelly tell him I was doing my social service for the month by sleeping with an awkward engineer like him. Eventually, we fell in love. I apologised profusely to him for that jibe, and for not coming around to dating him sooner. Over the next year, Hari and I had lots of arguments about politics, and lots of sex. Hari didn’t really like condoms, so I went by myself to a gynaecologist for the Pill and the lecture that comes free with it. There was nothing especially tender or thoughtful about sex with Hari, but it was alright. I remembered the things he told me he liked, and pretended to get just a little more excited than I actually was when he tried his newest moves. None of his newest moves included mastering the clitoris. “I think you should do this yourself,” he would say, after a few minutes of prodding about. “Don’t worry about it,” I’d say smiling. Unfazed, Hari would continue heroically to the main event. After he had had his orgasm, he would ask me breathlessly, “Did you?” Sometimes I would say yes, and sometimes I would say no. Either way, Hari would kiss me, then roll off me and fall asleep. The point of sex isn’t the orgasm anyway, I would tell myself, and fall asleep too, a little while later. Eventually, I just started saying yes when he asked. He did ask every time, though. That was thoughtful. The years went by, we moved in together and Hari started to become less interested in sex. That’s normal as a relationship goes on, I thought. Maybe Hari just can’t keep up with me and I have unrealistic expectations, I thought. When I tried to bring it up, he said talking about this made him feel emasculated and said dolefully that he could never make me happy. Sometimes he said it was not me, that he just felt too lazy, had watched too much “fucked up” porn, or had trouble with his body image. I felt guilty for pushing him, and told him how handsome and attractive I thought he was. I bought nice lingerie and got really fit. But I noticed his disinterest was especially evident when I tried to initiate sex. Not when he wanted it, though. He got sad if I said I was tired, so I decided I was not that tired after all. Wasn’t I the one harping on about how little sex we were having? By this time, we only had sex when Hari decided we would. In moments of anger, I would try to tell him how I felt I had no sexual agency or control over my body, but feminist jargon had never been the way to Hari’s heart. He would roll his eyes, then hug me and promise to make it better when I cried. If I said I was sad that maybe he didn’t want me any more, he would show me how much he did by tossing me around the room. “I wonder if this is what being raped feels like,” I once found myself thinking casually, before chastising myself for being insensitive to people who really do get raped. One day, in one of these displays of masculinity, Hari called me a slut. I froze for a second, but didn’t want to ruin the mood. Later, while we were watching The Handmaid’s Tale, I paused the episode, “Hey do you think maybe you can avoid that word you used yesterday, I don’t particularly like it.” He said, “It was just something I said in sex, you’re impossible to please. Okay okay fine, I won’t say it.” I gave him a kiss and hit play again. Eventually, Hari decided we were to have sex mainly while I was asleep. The first few times, I thought it was kind of sexy. The next few times, I realised I really just wanted to go back to bed. One night, I thought maybe if I appeared to still be asleep, he’d get the hint. When he didn’t, I let him get on with his business, to spare his feelings, while hoping he would be done soon so I could go back to the nice dream I had been having. In the morning, I wondered why I felt sort of sick inside. I decided to do what I usually do when I have awkward questions, and Googled “Did my boyfriend rape me last night?” The answers were inconclusive, but a bunch of self-help forums told me I should just tell him frankly how I had felt. That evening, I was especially quiet when we were both home after work, and Hari noticed something was up. “Are you sad again? Is it about sex?” “Umm. Okay don’t get mad, I’m not saying anything drastic, but I sort of feel like maybe you didn’t…I guess, what I mean is that I think maybe you didn’t exactly have my consent last night.” “Oh.” “Look, I know you were really sleepy, we both were, but I guess I just didn’t feel very good about it when I woke up.” “Oh well, I’m so sorry I made you feel that way. What are we eating for dinner?” “Hmm, maybe do you want to talk about this some more?” “But I said I was sorry, I was also really tired, I won’t do it again, obviously.” “Yeah, sorry but I feel really upset and confused about what happened.” “God, stop making me feel like a rapist man.” “Okay okay yeah, you’re right, never mind. Let’s order something nice?” Hari and I dated for a few more months after that. In that time, we had plenty of sex while I was asleep. Sometimes I said “stop it” a few times before he would listen. Sometimes I got up and went away to pee and waited till he was asleep again before I lay down again. Sometimes I said nothing at all, and let him finish. The night before he broke up with me, I was woken up for sex, and he softly called me a slut one last time. I didn’t fight it, and plus, I was the one who had wanted us to have more sex. After all, sex is something nice two people do when they love each other. -- The minute we tried to engage in intercourse, he would lose his erection. I wasn’t put off by that at all. NAME: Some Girl Bose AGE THEN: 22-23 years (you know how things are) AGE NOW: 25 years This was my first relationship, as in, I had said yes to a guy for the first time in life. Within two weeks, I realised he was possessive, but also liked discussing his ex. This confused me and frankly, I wasn’t that intense about the relationship yet. So I was losing interest pretty fast and in another week or so, it was a friend's birthday. Now, we all belonged to one big circle of friends and he was childhood friends with the guys in the group. So at the party, we told everyone that we broke up (kind of). He said it sadly enough for his bros to take action. They insisted we put our differences behind because we were “gorgeous together.” By now everyone was drunk on Old Monk rum and people were congratulating me and him for making up. It was the weirdest thing. Suddenly they put us in a room and asked us to “talk it out”. That is when the trouble began. He started kissing me and groping me while professing his love, while all I could smell was his rum-soaked breath. I did not want to make out because I had been forced to patch up with him by the others and secondly, this wasn’t how my first kiss was supposed to happen. It was extremely uncomfortable and I just couldn’t make it stop. I wasn’t rude to walk out, I don’t know why. And the worst bit, I later realised, our friends, mainly his bros, were all watching from the window and cheering loudly. Felt the most humiliated ever. I was casually hanging out with this guy during my last semester of college, but I like taking things slow when it comes to sex, so I pretty much only engaged in everything upto oral sex most of the times. It was only once we ended up moving to the same city after graduation and ended up in a relationship that we tried to have penetrative sex. But the minute we tried to engage in intercourse, he would lose his erection. I wasn't put off by that at all. Intercourse doesn't do much for me anyway. And I never shamed him or even tried to pressure him into intercourse. I just kind of went with, “hey, if this isn't working, let's try something else”. We weren't trying to have kids, plus at the end the big O is what mattered and there were a lot of other ways for both of us to get there. But this guy kept on making it seem like it was my fault. I was too tight, or I wasn't wet enough, or I wasn't stimulating him well enough. He made me buy lube (he was stingy too but that is another story), but lube wasn't going to do anything for a flaccid penis! The fact that he blamed me for his inability to hold his erection was really not okay. I knew it wasn't me, but clearly he was insecure about it so I let it go. Had I had lower self-esteem, I would have probably believed him when he made it seem like it was my fault. He eventually, a few months later, accepted that it was his performance anxiety that caused it. And when I told him about how it was shitty of him to make me feel like it was my fault, he didn't seem remorseful. We are no longer together, for this and a lot of other reasons. But I learnt how toxic masculinity is. I learnt that he was only trying to put it on me so that I would lose confidence and as a result stay with him and not go looking for sex anywhere else. I learnt how men put their emotional burden on women and how frustrating that can be for women. I learnt where I should draw the line for myself when it comes to this kind of manipulation and shirking of emotional labour. -- We knew we weren’t heading anywhere with this, and could go our different ways without feeling burdened or hurt or sad or extra. NAME: Anonymous So, a conversation about sex. Finally a conversation to be shared not on Whatsapp with my best friend, or reflecting on it after a couple of drinks of cheap whisky. Sex can be so many things. It can be good, great, terrible, regrettable, hot and heavy, god fucking ugly, meaningful, not at all so, confusing. But this encounter is nothing like that. It was so normal that it took a while to make sense. I always wanted to share this experience because of how unspecial it was, in a nice way. To give the reader a little profile, I started having sex with my first boyfriend when I was around 16 (not an easy thing to accept by the way). He was a nice guy and we dated for 4 whole years. In time, things got bad, our paths changed and we became different people, accepted different distractions and ended up having a lot of bad, pathetic, gross, teenagery sex (the prolonged break up sex thing we do, that!). I moved out of Calcutta, where everyone knows everyone, a small incestuous set up that it had offered. I had sex with a vengeance after that. Lost a bunch of weight, which made it easier to be woke, walked with confidence (only so much that the city of Delhi can offer you) and without waxing my legs. I ended up meeting a lot of nice people— interesting, ambitious, creative etc etc. So, here is the thing, sex is always so loaded. It means so many things and it somehow comes with these swiftly changing codes and norms based on reactions and observations or whatever. Heteronormative sex, that’s the weirdest shit, in the last decade I realised that nothing was sacred and neither were the dumbass values that I had in my mind and they are changing everyday. The nuances are breaking and building, this beautiful and exciting beginning of a process has probably caused some minor inconveniences. I have been lucky enough (though this should be normal) to have at no point of time ‘had’ to have sex. If I ever didn’t feel like it, I didn’t do it. Things have worked out for me like that. But a good one night stand has left me confused or in agony or left me in a strange mood of self-hate and introspection. Quite a few times. But you know a thing or two about the usual set-ups, right, when sex is a possibility. I went to a bar one day, without the intent of picking someone up, being picked up, or pretending to be picked up or any of that. I went with a few of my friends where we ran into some of her friends from college and some other guy. Some-other-guy, the tag along, was extremely good company. We talked over the music, not the typical “singled out, lets go a corner and talk about whatever the fuck you think the other one is interested in”, but just nice conversation. Snappy and aware of the things in the meme world. So we all hung out and someone called us over to their house to continue the merry-making. The perks of having friends in South Delhi is that they have 4BHK houses and a fully stocked bar (not that we would be doing anything about it, just stocked bars make people happy) and Bose speakers while their parents have a weekend in their farms in Chhatarpur. I love having South Delhi friends. They also drink Old Monk. So we went back. We all talked. A few failed attempts at drinking games later we all decided to play a song we really like. I played Marinade. Not a lot of people know that song but guess what some other guy, the tag along did, and we sort of looked at each other and thought “kindred souls!!!” (read: potential lay for tonight). The people got drunker and the songs got sadder and a friend went on a Tinder date at 3 and everything made sense and it felt really nice. So, some other guy asked if I want to go back to his place. I blamed convenience because he lived close to campus and had a spare mattress. The prospect of not having to go anywhere alone in Delhi at night overwhelmed me with gratitude and I agreed. He was taking his car out and I requested politely that we take an Uber and we awkwardly waited for the cab to come, discussing our favourite brands of cigarette (Benson versus Classic Regular, psht!). We went to his place, tidy and minimal, film posters of shit made by Fassbinder, Ozu, Ismail Rodrigues. So here I am at his apartment, after an overbearingly silent Uber ride where all the ghosts of sex mates past paid a visit. What if my breath smells, what if his smells, what if his dick is crooked to the left, what if he wants me to play dead, what if he doesn’t have protection, should I leave right after or stay for breakfast but there I was with a magical surprise beer in my hand looking at film posters. So, some other guy asks me to wait while he comes from the room and I sit and wait contemplating the loaded-ness of modern day casual sex. Fuck, what if I fall in love with him tomorrow. What if he does. Shit shit! I was sure I was going to see a naked guy wearing only his socks standing in front of me with his hands on his waist. People do that shit a lot. But here he was with a laptop and all the clothes he had on and slippers and no socks. I was shocked. Apparently his Uber ride silent thoughts were about all the cool videos he wanted me to watch. He made me coffee so I be less drunk for the non-adult entertainment segment of this show and I was oddly so happy, not relieved. I totally wanted to do it, the word for the feeling would be ‘chill’. I felt really chill about the situation. We laughed and laughed and cried from laughing. Smoked a beautiful joint and went to the terrace for the sunrise. It took too long and we came back and laughed some more. He asked if he could kiss me and I said something completely stupid that conjured about a bunch of crickets to lend me some sound effects so I proceeded to kiss him first. It was a very good kiss. He asked me if I wanted to go ahead with it and again I said something completely awkward (read: mai toh kabse hu ready taiyyar) and I am sorry, bad humour helps me deflect questions that have straight answers). We did it and we laughed and we got confused and fumbled, we moaned and gasped and I came and so did he. Then he said something nice, while we dramatically smoked cigarettes like we’re in some Godard film, some other guy also feels the pressure like me and he didn’t know how to go about it. We were not going anywhere with this and it was all going to be about right now and we would go our different ways but without feeling burdened or hurt or sad or extra. The only thing we would have in common would be Marinade and the hangover we would wake up to. He slept. I went to the bathroom, saw my reflection and didn’t feel a thing. Not a single thought. Woke up to some strange sounds. He was in his kitchen. “Get me my coffee, bitch,” I said. Followed by forced laughter at the comical role reversal of gender stereotypes. “On it. What do you want for lunch?” he asked. “A quickie,” I said obviously punning on the word cookie but not wanting either. He laughed at my terrible sense of humour and my perseverance as well. I said I have to go and he agreed. We hugged and added each other on Facebook and let ourselves be. Now, a few years from then, we still share memes and songs, wish each other on our birthdays and if we run into each other, we chat. I had sex. It felt really good and it wasn’t all of those other things sex used to mean to me. This sex meant nothing, not that bad nothing (with the exclamation mark) but the nothing nothing and that was the best part. We had coffee, food, ungodly amounts of alcohol, sex, more coffee and a nice day. I don’t go about looking for that in general. It happened and could happen again or not. All these possibilities reinstored a certain faith. Sex for sex not for intimacy, vengeance, procreation, anger, horniness (maybe a little), violence, love, friendship, nothing. It was two consenting, aware, well-adjusted (well sort of) adults. That’s my sex story. Boring sex rocks! -- He was my professor. He was 40 years older. Name: Sensitive Bitch Switch AGE THEN: 22 AGE NOW 27 When I was 22, I entered into a relationship with a professor who was 40 years my senior. He wasn't good-looking by any conventional measure, but he was charming, wealthy, well-known in arts, journalistic and academic circles, and had, by his own admission, the biggest private library of Marxist literature in the city. Classes with him were unremarkable, but he would frequently exhort us to ditch apathy in favour of some kind of rebellious fire that he proposed we then channel towards "political causes". On sultry afternoons, my female classmates and I would titter idly about which one of us he fancied. He fancied more than one of us, but I think I was the only one in my class that he slept with. He sent some of us naughty, but also plaintive messages indicating longing. In the insecurity of my early 20's, I often found men desirable when they desired me first. So I responded first tentatively and humbly, and later with passion. We went on a couple of dinner dates soon after the course formally ended. He called me to his home. The first time I went we lay in each other's arms amid tall piles of books, kissing feverishly. He called my small pointy breasts beautiful and sucked on them -- a peculiar but also pleasurable experience for me, because I felt like I was a hot babe in a too-tight dress who was nursing an old man in a blue film. I had just finished reading J M Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and I spoke to the professor in a haze about the parallel between the novel's central characters and us. That first time, we did not have sex. The second time he called me over was after we had sexted for a couple of days. I asked if he had condoms with him. He said he did not use condoms and that he had never so far got any of his female partners pregnant. I said I was concerned about STIs. He said he didn't have any, and didn't I trust him? After all, he too could suspect me of having an STI. But I was a virgin then. I reminded him that I could not have had an STI unless it was congenital, in which case I would have been symptomatic years before I was 22. I bought Durex condoms under the bright lights of a local cosmetics store and went to his home but he wouldn't use them. I remember lying beside him on a mattress and saying, "This goes against everything I've ever been taught about sex." But we undressed and had sex. I was uncomfortable and tight because I anticipated pain. He admonished me to relax, penetrated me with his fingers and tongue and then his penis. When we kissed, I tasted my own blood. He climaxed quickly and withdrew before he came. When he had recovered, I asked, "Was that it?" This wasn't an expression of condescension. I high-fived him in juvenile euphoria. It felt liberating, of course, to have sex, even if it wasn't my most thrilling sensual encounter. I know from conversations with my female friends that they felt a similar high when they lost their virginity at age 17 or 20 or 26. I remember savouring the blood on my panties later that night. I remember feeling the power of a secret. But in the years since, I have acquired a deep sense of regret towards that moment of capitulation when I agreed to have protection-free sex (the professor and I had unprotected sex on numerous later occasions too). It is another matter that I have frequently since tested negative for STIs (though I haven't screened for HPV). The thought does cross my mind that if an educated and —to borrow an Orwellian phrase — lower-upper-middle-class woman like myself could disregard the most fundamental aspects of her education (namely, self-protection) because her charismatic partner told her it was a 'bourgeois' thing to do, how many times do other women also put themselves at unnecessary risk? It really did come as no surprise to me that the professor's name was on Raya Sarkar's Google Document, but I did feel wave upon wave of anger and nausea. I did not put his name on the list, but I sympathise in full with whoever did. There have been many important conversations on the subject of sex, power and consent since the Harvey Weinstein moment, but I think that relatively scarce attention has been paid to the circumstances in which consent is ventured. My relationship with the professor was what would broadly be termed consensual. But what does consent mean in situations of gross power inequality? Power, as everyone knows, unfolds along several axes simultaneously, manifesting according to differentials in caste, class, gender, social and scholastic capital, age, and seniority, among other things. Is there space for love and respectful admiration when one partner is so clearly more vulnerable than the other? How do we assess or quantify vulnerability anyway? Surely powerful cis-men could also claim that they are vulnerable? In other words, does the opening up of this conversation into further nuance actually compromise its politics? -- That was the first time I had multiple orgasms. He got off his knees, looked at me and said “thank you for dinner”. NAME: S AGE THEN: 21 AGE NOW: 27 I had recently had sex with my boyfriend for the first time. While I was never a prude and had engaged in other kinds of sexual intimacy, penile-vaginal intercourse had not yet happened. When I was 21 and in B-school, he came to visit me in my city (we were in a long distance relationship) and we booked a hotel and spent 3 days going at it like bunnies. Soon after he turned emotionally abusive. However, this story is not about that. A fellow student, who had more or less ignored me for 3 months, suddenly developed an interest in me. And before I knew it, we were sending each other text messages in class and coordinating when to bunk so we could fornicate in our hostel rooms. One look from him could set me on fire. He was the first person with whom I had multiple orgasms. He was the first person I had met who thoroughly enjoyed going down on women. He also helped me discover my own sexuality by teaching me about my own body. While all the sex with him has been great, the one incident that sticks out is this. It was evening/dinner time. Most people were in the mess, eating. He walked into my room with no warning. Locked the door behind him. Asked me to take my pants off. He went down on me like I was his sole source of nourishment and he was famished. I was moaning into a pillow because our hostel walls were thin. That was the first time I had multiple orgasms - maybe about 4. He then got up. Looked at me. Smirked. Said, "Thank you for dinner" and walked out of my room. He didn't take his clothes off. He didn't expect any pleasure in return. It was that simple. It’s been 6 years since we first had sex. The fire I feel in my loins when he is around is still the same. We have fallen in and out of love with many other people, but our sexual chemistry stays strong. I can be in love with the most amazing person in the world. But my body will always crave his. -- I sent him the Aziz Ansari article. He responded with the NYT article on Aziz Ansari only being guilty of not being a mind reader. NAME: Yo Tambien AGE THEN: 20 AGE NOW: 23 We met on Tinder, and spent a night together in a hotel. Neither of us had discussed our expectations for the night, or whether and what we thought our relationship was. I should mention that while we initially connected on Tinder, we spent several weeks talking day and night to each other before deciding to meet. We were drinking, sitting on the same bed. I did feel attracted to him but also unsure - I'd never quite been in a situation like this. And then he kissed me. I kissed him back, and things just continued on from there. And then he tugged at my shirt and took it off. I remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable at how things were going. I wasn't a virgin, nor was I a stranger to hook ups, but it just felt like it was going too fast. I asked him to slow down for a while, and we did. The rest of the night is blurred in my head, but it went like this: we kissed some more, he took my pants off, then I put them back on. Then he seemed very disappointed, almost impatient with me for not being able to make up my mind. Suddenly, I was scared and confused. I was in a room with a guy I didn't know at all and I had nowhere else to go. I had already kissed him, expressed some sort of sexual interest in him. How was the night going to go? He didn't force me into anything, but for some reason I felt like by kissing him in a hotel room, I was expected to go ahead. So I did...We kissed again, this time I took my pants off and didn't put them back on. We slept together and it was alright - he was a nice guy but it wasn't earth shattering. The entire time, this voice in the back of my head was telling me that this wasn't ok and I just wanted it to finish soon. Outwardly I was enthusiastic, almost afraid to show him how hesitant I was. I've thought about this a lot. Especially since the Aziz Ansari story came out. In my case I don't blame him exactly - he was not as persistent as Ansari. But it pains me that I was so conditioned that I thought I had no option but to sleep with him. It pains me that I didn't feel comfortable saying no, let's just cuddle; The fear that I was possibly being assaulted and forced to sleep with him, propelled me to do it anyway, with fake enthusiasm: at least this way, I could control the narrative. I often ask myself why I felt like I had no other choice, and I don't really have an answer. But perhaps it's because I've always been told that there wasn't another choice, because I knew that no one would be sympathetic to my circumstances. You chose to go to a hotel with him - what did you expect? On another note...I continued to see this guy. Many months later, we met up again in another hotel room. This time, we had sex once, after which I wasn't really in the mood and put off his advances. And he was irritated - angry, even! But I was more confident in myself and told him I didn't feel like it. In fact he was pushier the second time, but I held my ground. I refused to let him make me feel bad about saying no. While he didn't physically force me to do anything, there was something very discomfiting about the way he kept on making jabs at my refusal to have sex. I think men should be more mindful of that - it isn’t only about physical compulsion, but about the subtle belittling that occurs when women don't do what men expect them to. Of course, that isn’t confined just to the bedroom. That was the last time we saw each other. While it took me a while to put my finger on what exactly bothered me about our encounters, I feel like I've become far more confident about saying no. I'm proud to say that since then, I've only had very consensual and generally excellent sex. I sent him the Aziz Ansari article and told him it would be good for him to read it. He responded with the NYT article on Aziz Ansari only being guilty of not being a mind reader. I suppose only one of us learnt from that experience. -- Ever since, I haven’t had sex where I haven’t asked to be choked. Name: Brishti AGE THEN: 21 AGE NOW: 22 The first time we kissed, we were both drunk on bangla (local alcohol you get in Kolkata) and had had raw onion with it. It was the best, most disgusting-tasting first kiss ever. Another time, we were having sex in her bed. She was seeing another dude at that time and she would talk to me about him. He was a total misogynist asshole, you know, the kind your body is instantly attracted to and to your mind that's a warning sign to stay the fuck away. One of those fuckboys. But she would talk to me about him in bed and that was fun. She was on top, and she asked me if she could show him something that he does to her that drives her crazy. I said yes. She proceeded to hold my neck, gently choke me and tilt my head back. It was incredible. I felt super turned on, and as though a light had gone off somewhere in my head. I had never been choked before, and I haven't had sex since where I haven't asked to be choked. It was amazing. I remember going down on her, tasting her, and being very surprised because her thigh tasted sweet! I couldn't stop biting it. Later, we hung out naked in her balcony under the moonlight/streetlights. It was great. -- I felt sexually alive. With each part of my body feeling gratified and touched and satisfied.
Name: Jennifer
Age at the time of story: 38
Age today: 42
I had only a couple of dating experiences as teenager, but then I had an arranged marriage at 22, and had no sexual experience before that. I didn't know what to expect other than I liked kissing my past boyfriend. My husband didn't like kissing and due to my lack of sexual prowess, I didn't even recognise for years that he had erectile dysfunction at his ripe age of 26. I made do with oral sex and no intimacy but had two children by some miracle. Things were sexless and boring. He didn't want to find a fix. I knew in my heart it was over.
I ventured into the world of online dating. Landed up finding a man who happened to be from India too. Yes, I live outside India. He was younger by 3 years, divorced and no children. I felt drawn to him, but not due to looks.
He was a stranger, we'd exchanged fake names. We met and watched a musical and then, went to his place and not knowing it will be a sexual encounter on the first date (Didn't know that website we'd used is mainly for sexual dating.) I resisted but landed up enjoying the oral sex and then the real deal sex. I was 36 and married 14 years. His long penis inside me, hard and deep, was the first time I understood what my body had been missing. It was easy to fall in love with a stranger with the hormones that surged with him cumming inside me (dangerous but was in my safe period, so didn't want to miss this one, who knows if I experience it again or not). The warmth I felt was something else. Then the hormones calmed down and I did realise we had little in common. But I did have encounters with him again and again. There was this one time, overlooking the river from his apartment lying down after sex on top of him, with his penis still inside me, dusky skies and it was so awesome to have experienced it. I felt sexually alive. With each part of my body feeling gratified and touched and satisfied. I had no regrets, for I knew, whether I found another partner or not, that moment I came to a decision -- to walk out of my sexless marriage and it has been the right decision.
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People Call Me 'Pervert' Because I Like Sex

They can laugh and shame me all they want, but it's through sexual relationships that I learned how to build trust, seek consent, and stop judging

They can laugh and shame me all they want, but it's through sexual relationships that I learned how to build trust, seek consent, and stop judging.

I had gone to his home to get some new software. He told me where the necessary material on his computer was located. He was my friend who was about a decade older than me. I copied the whole folder and ejected my pen drive. I came home and saw a “New Folder” among all the other folders. In that folder were some books in pdf format. One of them was “Kamasutra” illustrated and written by Anne Hooper. Later on, I found that the original “Kamasutra” by Vatsyayana was also in that folder. My fourteen-year-old hormone driven teenage desires got an outlet for release. What I didn’t know was that it would take me another half decade to make use of that sexual wisdom that I had begun imbibing at that age. That day marked a new beginning in my life as a sexual being and since then, there has been no looking back. We are surrounded by a shame culture. Ask your parents where you came from and you’ll get an answer. That answer will be incorrect which you’ll obviously realize at some point in your life. The biggest trouble I had while growing up was not the lack of sex education by parents and teachers. That trouble was lack of sexual freedom. The freedom to be open and honest with your sexuality and desires with yourself and people around you without the fear of being humiliated or shamed, that to me is sexual freedom.   The first time I was judged as horny, was at the age of 12. A girl who used to show me her poems was my close friend. I wanted to kiss her plump lips. I didn’t know how to take things ahead, so I told her my intentions to see if she too felt the way I felt. Sitting here and writing this I still wish we had kissed each other rather than the girl getting her seat changed by informing the class teacher. Not responding to someone’s desires is totally your choice but shaming them for their actions leaves them scarred. Ever since then, I’ve faced numerous accusations of being a pervert. For example, one girl told me you are only into physical stuff. If giving and receiving pleasure is vulgar and obscene, call me a creep. When my body was growing, hormones were flowing, and I was full of sexual energy, I had no safe outlets for my bodily urges. I had to confine my feelings to my thoughts and not speak about them or act on them. There was a conflict between the messages I was receiving through my head and what my body was heading towards. Whenever there was a scene in a movie that involved undressing or kissing between a couple, it was fast forwarded by my parents. I wanted to sit with girls in school but teachers had strict rules to not indulge in inter-sex bonding. Then there was our Hindi teacher who was of the opinion that a girl and a guy can never be friends. They can be friends by creating a boundary of intimacy between them, I wish I could tell this to her. While the guys around me were busy watching porn to learn about sex and human bodies, I had my focus on the books that I read and re-read for two years. Over time, a lot of my beliefs were shattered. I came to understand that the mere act of penetration and ejaculation by a male is not sex as they show in porn. To me, sex is a way people connect with each other by willingly coming together to give and receive gratification without feeling pressured to perform in a certain way. My sexual experiences taught me that every person has their own pace to get comfortable enough to bare their bodies. I also learned what arouses me and felt secure in sharing with my partner. Having a biological sense of a vagina and a penis and intercourse is one thing and knowing when to stop, building trust, having consent and being non-judgmental are totally different things. I learned the former from my science teacher and understanding of the latter came through my sexual experiences. Books never told me that flavored condoms were suited only for oral sex and not for vaginal penetration. My parents didn’t tell me what was that sticky fluid that used to leave marks on my underwear whenever I read erotic magazines. I had no idea why I used to feel a tingle down my belly when a girl touched me. My questions eventually led me towards answers.     I had people around me in school and college who used to debate on pre-marital intercourse and virginity of a woman, oral sex, sodomy, homosexuality in guys and other topics that surrounded sex and body. Their world was very different than mine. My journey into sexuality had taught me things that were very different from what others believed. If a girl wants to have an abortion, that’s not disrespectful towards society, it is her personal decision. If I am sexually deprived and regularly masturbating, it is not something I should feel shame about. Eventually, I found my path towards sexual freedom and let go of the beliefs and ideas that did not match with my personal values around sex. Everybody has the choice to be sexual if they want to and how they express themselves is unto them. My friend had unknowingly gifted me a book that largely contributed to my sexual wisdom. I wish he succeeds in practicing the art of lovemaking. I wish we all make love and let our bodies be open to give and receive pleasure. Irrespective of the surrounding hypocrisy, we have a choice and that rests with us. After all, we belong to the land of Khajuraho temples and Gita Govind and Sangam poetry and of course, the Kama Sutra. If we will not make love, who else will? Arpit Chhikara wakes up every day to do something productive but ends up writing one crappy page of art to keep his writing muscles in shape. Having a life that is some parts boring and some parts interesting, he does storytelling and volunteering to make better use of his free time.  

Dating an Older Woman Made Me Take Myself and Relationships More Seriously

It made me do a lot of prioritizing and reorganizing. It was stabilizing.

 I was 25 when we met, Mahima was 45. She had two young kids and was single. The kids knew I was dating their mother, it wasn’t a big deal for them. I suppose they were too young to find anything shocking, and I’m good with kids, so I was just their friend. When my relationship began with Mahima, it was all about sex. We met through mutual work friends at a networking lunch in Delhi, I was working in journalism, and, at that time, she was working as a secondary school teacher. I flirted with her the way I flirted with, well, everyone back then, I was just a single guy in my 20s. I didn't expect her to feel anything about me, though: she was a hot older woman, really smart and independent, highly opinionated and with so much lived experience, and I didn’t think I had any chance with her. She invited me over for a drink one night a few months after we first met. I really thought it was going to be just that. I had a drink, and at some point noticed the sexual tension was just so thick between us. She kissed me, I kissed her back. I wasn’t expecting to sleep with her even then—I thought it would go the usual way, you know, we’d kiss, back off, circle around each other a bit, and maybe after four weeks really get into it. But after about a full minute, she looked at me and said, “Take my top off.” We fucked like rabbits that night, from around 10.30 to 5 in the morning. At one point, when she was on top of me, she whispered in my ear, “Tell me how old you are,” and of course I did. At the time I remember thinking it was so weird. Later that night, she told me that she had been fantasising about me for a while. She said she’d been thinking of me the last few times she played with herself, and that sometimes she’d be talking to me about some completely different topic and would just find herself wet. She told me that at that time she wasn’t really expecting a relationship like this, and certainly wasn't looking for one. Now, she suddenly found herself with a younger guy she liked, had good conversations with, and who had the stamina to try out a lot of things she wanted. She told me once how it was nice being with a guy who was still raring to go even when she was tired, which was definitely something she wasn’t used to after her fairly desultory sex life over the last decade. We tried all kinds of different things that she initiated: masks and dressing up and role play, sex toys, kinky stuff. It was different being with her because she was so sure of what she wanted and really knew her own body. The sex was great and it was less of a hit-and-miss. For me it was really interesting to experiment and try new things with a grown woman who knew her body. We’d experiment a lot, have sex outside: there were lots of things she seemed to want try out with me for the first time. We didn’t talk that much about our age difference. It’s an awkward conversation to have with someone when you’re talking about how very old they are. On the other hand, she would keep reminding me how young I was through jokes or casual comments, but we didn’t really discuss it in a deeper way. She had so much more going on in her life than other women I’d dated, and I found her naturally more interesting to be around. It affects every aspect of the relationship: the things you do, the way you hang out, the conversations you have, everything is just more interesting. With most other women I've been with, our priorities were more transitional, almost flippant and frivolous, but here I had a person with actual responsibilities. In this kind of situation, there’s less room for reckless stupidity in your professional life, in how you manage your time or handle your liquor. Mahima was much more independent than other women I’ve dated, but also restricted by her other responsibilities, like her job and her two kids. This cut both ways: sometimes it would be frustrating, like she’d wake up at 6 am and leave, which would be a pain in the ass because there were some mornings where I’d just wanted to cuddle and stay in bed, wake up relaxed and have breakfast together, sweet things that would never happen. Trying to plan something in the evening would always clash with some class or something else. On the other hand, it was also great because it ensured that we maintained some sense of space. Otherwise you're in each other’s face all the time; here there would be a guarantee that you’d be completely cut off from each other for some part of the day, so it made the time we spent together quite special. My experience with Mahima changed what I look for in a girlfriend. I’m not going to date a girl who has nothing going on in her life. At one point it was cool to have these slob stoner girlfriends, but that’s something I’m definitely not into anymore. I’ve realized it’s just such a waste of time and space. Mahima used to have a very full day, from 5 am to 7.30 pm before she would come to me, and didn’t need me for every single thing in her life. We’d do things together like watch movies or go for early morning walks, but we’d mostly hang out with her friends, not mine. I didn’t feel like my friends and she would get along, or have anything in common. My friends, especially at the time, were a bunch of stoners and debauchees, and I became like that when I was with them. We would drink too much, or all night, end up late to work and not be very productive. It was a lifestyle she disapproved of wholly, so it just seemed like it would be uncomfortable to hand out with my friends. I didn’t mind hanging out with her friends, though, a lot of them were really interesting people who were focusing on their really interesting careers, like senior journalists, actors, screenwriters. But I did feel odd sometimes hanging out socially with some aunties and uncles and always being the significantly youngest person there. I also felt that they’d keep talking down to me: anything I said, they’d respond with some of their lived experiences, or tell me patronizingly how I would think differently ‘later’. A lot of her friends, especially the single women or the women who’d been single for a long period, had their own experiences of being with younger men. It’s quite common, actually. So initially they would keep telling her, oh it’s just a phase, it’s just sex. But they grew to like me. From the way she was with her friends, I did get the feeling that she thought I was a catch. In my mind, though, I was the lucky one, but still it made me feel nice. How often do you have someone who’s proud to show you off? My friends didn’t know I was dating her. I felt her friends would be more accepting of our relationship because they’d had similar experiences, whereas to my friends it would be fairly alien, and they’d probably just fetishize it. I don’t know actually, but I just felt they wouldn’t be very supportive and their responses might be isolating. I never told my parents officially that I was seeing her, and my colleagues didn’t know about us either. I felt again they wouldn’t get my relationship with her. I thought it would seem unprofessional, but I’m not sure if I would have hidden a relationship with a person my age from them. It used to frustrate her, not being able to be as open as she wanted. I think at her age and in her position, with her life so sorted, she didn't need anyone else’s validation or approval, and so was less concerned about what people would think. I was still young, and felt insecure about doing this very openly. I met her family too, her kids, her brother, aunts and uncles, her parents. I met her kids first because I ran into them when I dropped her home, and as they grew fonder of me, the kids would mention and talk about me, which got the rest of the family curious. Her parents weren't particularly fond of me, though – I was so young and had a beard and was a journalist. After about a year of dating, I began to draw back. That’s one thing I noticed about my experience of dating an older woman like Mahima: being so emotionally invested in someone at a later stage in their life made me keep thinking about my own life and future and where I was headed. She had a future to think about, and was interested in one with me. But I absolutely wasn’t. I wasn’t willing to be open because I didn’t think the relationship was serious enough to merit putting in this kind of work, and taking the risk of being misunderstood to preserve it. I kept feeling there wasn’t a real future with Mahima for many reasons, like her age and the kind of settled life she already led. I don’t know what exactly my parents would have said, but I don’t think they’d have been overjoyed. At the time, I was thinking, my partner will soon be in her 50s, and I’m investing all this time in her, and what is it going to lead to? It might have been different if she’d been 10 years older than me  and didn’t have kids. But she was 45 and had two kids – I felt she was firmly entrenched in a family and a lifestyle that I couldn’t see myself committing to at any point soon. I also felt that it wouldn’t be too long until health became an issue, and a fear that I would soon have to move into the role of a caregiver rather than partner. I think resentment would have crept in: wouldn’t I feel that I was [wasting] the prime of my life, while she’d already gone all the way? So when it came to thinking about the future, it cut both ways. On one hand, the relationship felt like a break from my real life, because it was liberating for me to know I didn’t have to think about this relationship two or three years from now, because I knew Mahima wasn’t the person I was going to start a family life with. But on the other hand, being around her also forced me to think of where exactly I was heading in life myself, and I kept having to face the finality of knowing my future wasn’t with her. Was I wasting my time? Sometimes I would actually meet other interesting women my age, and when I met someone I liked, I always knew there was more of a future with them than with Mahima. When I told her how I was feeling, she was pretty upset. She said things like, “You’re only 25, what do you care about a future? Just chill and enjoy life.” And: “When did you become such a conformist?”, which was a fair question I guess. She suggested that we see other people and also continue doing this, and I agreed, but somehow it wasn’t working out. At one point, she even suggested having a threesome to spice things up and keep things interesting, but I had to draw the line there. We broke up, but ran into each other soon after, and started hooking up again. We hadn't seen each other in a while, and she’d occasionally message just checking in. One night we bumped into each other at a performance and we ended up sitting together and chatting. It was clear that whatever happened, both of us were still attracted to each other, but I mistook it for just sexual attraction and so in my head neither of us wanted anything serious.. She said, “Let it just be about sex,” but then it became apparent fairly quickly that it wasn't just sex. It was clear to me that it needed to stop, and I broke it off again. Dating Mahima shook me up and made me realize I needed to take more control of my life, and forced me to consider where I was heading. I did a lot of growing up with Mahima: she would look at me and say, “You’re doing xyz – like, say, mixing my personal and work lives too much – and I think it’s stupid. Here’s why it’s stupid, and here’s what I would do.” She wasn't judgmental about stuff, she would just say these are things you need to watch out for, your work and your health, you're an adult now and you can’t play around. It made me do a lot of prioritizing and reorganizing. It was stabilizing. Mahima and I aren’t really close anymore. I'm still professionally acquainted with her because we work in the same industry now, so every now and then she sends people or work my way, but it’s very rare. I know that after me she tried dating a guy close to her own age, but she said she didn’t like the experience and came away feeling shitty, because she just wasn’t ready to date again. After we broke up, I dated a few other people, and since I had something so recent to compare to, I realized I just couldn’t date people anymore who are a fun time but don’t bring anything new to your life, or don’t have enough going on in theirs. I think if I met Mahima now, things may go a lot differently between us, because she’s still a really special person, and I’m a lot more sorted in my lifestyle and priorities. My whole life is less chaotic because I’ve grown up too. A thoroughly disillusioned journalist, Barnath now spends his time badgering errant media houses for outstanding freelance payments, while drinking the cheapest coffee on the Khan Market menus.

Curious Cat or Sleeping Dragon: What's your position on positions?

Is the definition of good sex many-positions wala sex?

Some people feel that the more positions you go through during sex, the better the sex must have been, that the definition of good sex is many-positions wala sex. But have you ever felt like your lover was trying to put you through a very advanced yoga class? Like you were being tossed and turned when all you wanted to do was lie back and enjoy the moment? Or maybe you were one of those who wished your partner would get in step with you, instead of just lying there. For some, it’s the extreme acrobatics that may seem daunting. But for others it’s the thrill of finding something new that they really like. While some are convinced that nobody can twist themselves into so many shapes, others want to try new positions out immediately. Whatever it is, we all seem to have a position on sexual positions. Read on to see what yours is called. The Curious Cat Position Curious Cats will try anything once. They love trying out new sexual positions for novelty. For them, every new position is a fresh thrill. “I like new positions because you never know what’s going to work!” says Payal, a biomedical researcher. “It’s a gamble. Either it’ll be weird and awkward, or really interesting and let you access a unique combo of body parts, or maybe just give you a great new view. It’s a 50-50 chance whether it will work, but since we’re talking about sex, I’m willing to take that bet!” Krishnan, a 20-year-old student based in Hyderabad, says he loves the spice different positions add, and definitely thinks multiple positions add an extra layer to the fun. “Each position can make it feel like you’re with a new person altogether.” 26-year-old Dyuti says changing positions is like finding different ways to experience pleasure, and the discovery of new, unexpected positions that work is worth the exhaustion. The Sleeping Dragon Position The Sleeping Dragon crowd are the opposite of Curious Cats. They find the idea of changing positions distracting, annoying and unnecessarily energetic. Pavithra R, a 29-year-old media professional from Bangalore, mournfully recalls (with some traces of trauma) that when she first started having sex, it felt like she was in a couples’ figure-skating contest. She recalls being flung about in a variety of positions that she just wasn’t into. “I think because we were so young we had the feeling that sex is itself such a rarity that this is the moment we need to try out everything we’ve ever seen and heard. It was exhausting.” Sleeping Dragons feel like changing positions continuously actually makes it harder for them to enjoy sex, and say they need to stay in a particular position if they’re to have an orgasm. “I know what positions work for me,” says Pavithra. “There are a couple of others I’m [genuinely] willing to try but not for long. I mean, I don’t want to waste time barking up the wrong tree.” Pavithra mentions that she doesn’t like being roughly positioned while having sex. She recalls, “There’ve been moments when he’s flipping me over and I'm like ‘okay, you need to relax, I'm not a roti that’s done on one side’!” The Slo-Mo Snail Position There is a small subset of people who like using different sexual positions, but as a “chill-pill,” to slow down and delay activities. Vinay, a proud Slo-Mo Snail and lawyer based in Delhi, says, “Sometimes, if I’m too ready or feel I’m going to orgasm earlier than her, or earlier than I want to, I initiate a new position. The process of changing positions gives you some time to cool off [delay orgasm], and that also helps the sex last longer, which is always good. Plus, I know I find it harder to cum when I’m on my back, so sometimes if I think I’m going to finish too soon, I just flip onto my back to last longer. It’s definitely good to last longer, so I guess changing positions during sex can make it better if you do it judiciously.” The King of the Jungle Position This group is the philosophical opposite of the Slo-Mo Sloths. For those with king of the jungle aspirations, positions just help in the race to the top. When you know a position works for you, why bother with anything else? 27-year-old Kayla, who works at a flight company, says, “I know I can squirt if I’m on top or in cowgirl rather than missionary. So, I initiate that position and try to ride it out and cum first, before he can get on top or naturally take whatever position works for him, cum first and ruin my chance of coming at all. It’s almost like a precaution.” She uses positions to make sure she gets her own orgasm out of the way herself, so that she can focus on pleasuring her partner later. The Head-Butting Bull and Look Away Lion Positions For one half of this group, liking or not liking a position depends precisely on whether they are facing or not facing their partner. It’s easy to expect that many people have a fondness for sexual positions that bring you face-to-face with your partner, as it makes you feel connected to the partner, and makes for a more emotionally charged experience. The other half are people who lean towards sexual positions that don’t have you facing your partner. When asked, they reply that it’s exactly because they don’t want their partner to see their responses. “I love doggy style the best,” says Neeti, an architecture student. “Firstly, because it hits a nice spot, but also because they can’t see your face. I’m pretty sure I make an ugly face naturally during sex, so I have to try to control my expression to make it look like I’m having fun but still looking sexy when he can see it. Doggy style really lets me let go.” There does seem to be something about face-to-face contact that makes it hard to keep up appearances or ‘fake it’. It can make for either an intimate or uncomfortable experience, which is why people tend to have pretty strong feelings around this particular position. The Pair of Penguins Position Did you know that penguins mate for life? That would probably give them plenty of time to try all the positions they ever wanted. The stage of the relationship plays a big role in what positions humans are up for trying too. While some end up trying out lots of positions right at the beginning of a sexual encounter, others like to save the experimentation, and the special, intimate stuff, for later on in the relationship. Manav, a gay software professional, recalls how good it felt to figure out which few positions worked with his long-term partner and says that there’s beauty in the discovery with someone you trust, “We soon fell into a comfortable routine of five positions. We would be in one position when we started and in another to finish, like following steps. These were the positions that worked for us as individuals, or maybe for us both as a couple, as a unit.”  Some people feel more comfortable discussing new positions in long-term relationships. There’s more trust and vulnerability, and less fear of failure, so you don't feel the need to have sex that looks perfect, and risk trying out something that may fail. Ritu, a 38-year-old journalist, says that as she’s grown older and “raised her standards,” she’s only willing to put in the effort of trying new positions with close partners. “If I’m casually hooking up with a person or something, I’m usually pretty boring about new positions, and prefer to stick to the basics [missionary, doggy-style]. But if I’m in a relationship with someone I care about and they tell me about a crazy position they want to try, I’d be willing to go along with it even if I wasn’t convinced, because I care about them.” The Mama Bear Position Some people choose certain positions while trying to get pregnant, thanks to the many urban legends about positions that help you conceive and even those that help conceive a boy! Of course, once pregnancy is achieved, some couples report that the new state of affairs has forced them to try new positions, some of which even become beloved hits upon discovery. But most pregnant women (or women who have been pregnant) agree that sex during pregnancy can be precarious enough without shifting into hundreds of positions. The Performing Seal Position Some people think that sexual positions equal sexual knowledge. Many women seem to suspect that their partners are trying to show off when they routinely initiate a flurry of positions. Mina, a 24-year-old student who dates women, says she encounters Bookworms amongst women all the time too, and thinks there could be a simple reason why people believe this. “With a new person, there’s always more pressure to impress, to show them I know more positions. It’s like, I’ve done a lot of different things before, and so I'm doing it here also. Knowing a lot of positions speaks of your previous experience and so automatically of your [sexual] skill. The more easily you flow into each position, the better they know you've done it before.”  

Meri “Baingan” Wali Story

My bainganwali story took place in Delhi, declared one of the unsafest cities in general, but for women in particular.

 I think of this as meri bainganwali story - my eggplant story. Yes, like the emoji. My bainganwali story took place in Delhi, declared one of the unsafest cities in general, but for women in particular. After a long day at work, I decided to go meet a friend. All I wanted was to chill, zone out and forget about the day. I caught an auto-rikshaw, plugged in my earphones, and settled down for the ride. My auto driver had other ideas though, and asked me a question. Auto wala: Issme gaane bhi bajatey hain? (Does this play music?) Me: Haanji (absent-mindedly) Yes Auto wala: (not really pausing) tabhi log shaadi kar lete hain.Saath mil jata hai, pyaar banta hai. (This is why people get married – to have a companion on the road of life, to have love). Me: haanji! I sighed, resigning myself to resisting an unsolicited lecture from him on the importance of marriage etc. Still, for some reason, I decided to remove my earphones and hear him out. Perhaps, being a psychologist, it’s an instinct that comes naturally – to listen when you feel someone wants to talk. Me: Haanji! Par akela rehne mein bhi koi burai nahi hai! (Sure. But being single is not exactly bad either) Auto wala: Pyaar miltey rehna chahiye. Aapne kabhi dekha hai jawan ladkiyan, apne se bade mardon ke saath kyun rehti hai? Kyunki un me zaada stamina hota hai.Yeh jo chinki ladkiya hoti hai woh  hapshi mardon ke sath kyu jaati hain? Kyunki, unka bada hota hai .Tabhi toh unko chor hi nahi paatin. (One must keep receiving love. Have you seen how young women are drawn to older men? It’s because the men have more staying power. Or that chinky (a prejorative for North Eastern) girls prefer black (meaning African) men?) I realised then that when he said pyaar (love) he meant sex. Reflexively, I checked to see if the auto was not taking a different route from my usual one. He wasn’t. Auto wala: Auraton ko satisfy karna bahut mushkil hota hai. Aurat aag hai, aur marad paani. Mard ko aurat ko satisfy karna aana chahiye. (It’s very difficult to satisfy a woman. A woman is fire, man water. A man has to learn to satisfy a woman). The conversation felt inappropriate for obvious reasons. To avoid it, I quickly called-up my friend and started talking to him loudly to communicate to the driver that I was alert, not off my guard.   I got off the call as my destination neared, hoping that the auto wala had taken the hint and wouldn’t try to talk to me again. But that was not the case. He continued. Auto wala: Aap hi sochiye, agar main apni biwi ko kush nahi rakh paya toh woh mujhe kisi aur ke liye chorh degi, aur society mein meri kitni badnami hogi. Aapko pata hai meri biwi ko kush karna aasaan nahi hai. Kabhi kabhi toh raat bhar ungli karni padhti hai taki woh satisfy ho jaye. Ungliya dard ho jati hai par main inkaar nahi kar sakta. Kabhi kabhi toh jo lamba wala baingain (eggplant) hota hai ussey mujhe apni biwi ko satisfy karna padhta hai. Warna who mujhe chorh ke kisi aur ke pass chali jayegi. (I mean think about it – if I can’t keep my wife happy, she will obviously leave me for someone else and that I will be socially humiliated, right? Let me tell you, she’s not exactly easy to please. Sometimes I have to finger her all night till my fingers begin to ache, but I can’t deny her. Sometimes I use that long eggplant to satisfy her otherwise I feel she will leave me.) I was shocked at what I was hearing, but also a bit compelled, perhaps voyeuristically! Thankfully, by this time we had reached my friend’s place and I hopped out quickly I was honestly caught between this tussle as to my own capacity of listening- as women or a psychologist. It kept me moving in one direction (as a psychologist) and guarded and stressed in one (as a person). I told my friend about the story – and in fact I have narrated this story to many of my friends and it always caused amazement and consternation. In fact many even share this story further. Some think the driver was crazy. Some call me crazy. Many have asked me why I didn’t get off. Didn’t I feel scared and worried? Obviously, They felt concerned for my safety. So I ask myself again - how did I feel? I didn’t feel unsafe, scared or worried. As a matter of fact, I completely relied on my instincts and my instincts were not sounding off any alarm bells. I was alert, sharply aware of my surroundings, assuring myself of my safety. To be honest, I didn’t feel weird listening to his story. In fact I found it an honest confession of his inner most desire. Yes, women are easily scared – with some reason –and maybe someone else would have reported him or called him deranged. But would you say the same for a person if they discussed the same thoughts inside the four walls of a clinic, a hospital dorm or a therapist’s room? That’s why I didn’t find what he said  dirty or cheap but an honest conversation about “Sexual Desire”. Maybe I didn’t find what he said offensive because I myself am a Postgraduate in Psychology with an interest in desire, pleasure and madness. I have always placed Desire AS central to human existence and of great psychic valuation. This was clinical outside the clinic for me, desire outside just sex or body! So why should what is ok for me in one place become not ok in another, I wondered. But even outside my professional identity, another question comes up for me in this context. I have attended many talks and conferences on sexual pleasure. We talk about desire and pleasure in the safety of a classroom but never in public or open spaces. Almost as if the Public – as a space, as an idea of respectability and worth -  has the right to deny the agency of desire and private feelings. We are conditioned to believe that some things are cheap and dirty – and that cheap and dirty is a threat. But I think women also have good instincts to gauge that for themselves, based on the situation they are in. Threat does not lie automatically in a stranger talking to you about sex, especially if that stranger is of a different class and caste, sometimes lower than ours. Threat is also something we learn to sense – we must learn to sense if we want to move beyond demonizing sex and men – because that unease of threat could exist even in your own living room, no? For me, I go back to this story time and again to try and understand the meaning of desire. To question the difference between clinical and non-clinical. The agency of pleasure and desire in a clinical set up is such a paradox to me. In a clinical setup it is considered safe and valued, and criminal/mad in a non-clinical set up. Personally i don't have a conclusion to this story as i often visit this story to understand different layers in which both our behaviors manifested.  Instincts- the ring-a-ding-a bell in the pit of your stomach is saying something to you. Is it possible for us to learn to understand what the voice is telling you? I wasn’t carefree during that incident, but I wasn’t off-guard. I was very much in my place, just not cluttered by conventional notions of what is thought of as cheap and dirty and so, a violation.  So the question arises: can we see other people’s desires without a cluttered view in which our own desires are already suspect to us? Because I allowed myself to be still without judgement through this experience, I feel my own views on sex-talk changed or shall I say a movement or break happened for me from what is respectable and what is not.   Here was a man’s own preoccupation with satisfying his wife – can this be a valid topic of conversation in a non-workplace atmosphere? I have afterwards asked many of male friends about it. It seem to matter to men to be assured that their partners are sexually satisfied. They like it when their partners express pleasure in being sexually comfortable and satisfied. Expression is liberation! Yes, it should not be against someone’s consent. But for me, it was worth thinking for a moment, about my own reactions, not only the auto-driver’s actions. I know it is not for everyone – but this was my baingan wali story, and my baingan wali journey. Henna Vaid, lives in Delhi and makes a living by working in Mental health projects for NGOs.

LOVE, SEX AND KHICHDI

I just wanted to hold him tight and never let go. I wanted to make sure he would come back and I wanted to scream at him for untangling the ‘not’s in my chest.

I am 22. Bisexual. Bipolar. Chronically Anxious. Developing feels for a straight man I met off Tinder. I am as millennial as they come, as you know already from the title. Which is ironic, because I still indulge in hand-written letters, believe in a love that is forever, want to adopt children and grow carrots in a farm far away in a beach-town. ----- Like most Tinder dates, I expected decent sex and under-decent conversations (developed for the sake of not making the other person feel like a vibrator with a voice). He came over at midnight, and from what I remember- it was an impulsive decision to call him over which he complied with. I opened my door to a cute lanky brown boy with cropped hair, and I knew straight away the sex was either going to be hot or awkward. He is the trope I grew up fantasizing about, and would have fallen madly in love with 2 years ago. But those 2 years happened and my mental health hasn’t let me feel positive emotions for a while. I have been with a couple more people since, and hence the hot details of the hot sex aren’t what rush to my mind when I think of the first time I met him. I do remember the fact that he smoked during a break only because I had told him about my libido that rages at the smell of nicotine. I remember how his hands felt on my ass, and I remember how I felt when he didn’t stay over: I wanted to fuck more, I wanted to keep kissing his arm softly, I wanted to breathe into his skin, I wanted morning sex. That’s how I felt. Skip past some generic texts exchanged, a couple of hot-headed blocking from my end, a few missed calls, a text that said ‘later Prerana’ and an apology from my side to the part where I met him another time recently; probably after 2 weeks from first seeing him. As had happened the last time, he came over late at night: the perfect time to fuck and pretend to be more than strangers. We obviously had sex, and this time we tried a blindfold that came (off) before he did. Despite my extreme case of low BP, back issues due to anxiety and the surprise upset stomach that had taken over my life that night, the sex was good and I liked feeling his sweaty body against mine. I liked how his breath smelled of weed and how cute he was when I had said, ‘I just puked’ while we were kissing. We fucked from behind and we fucked by the window and we fucked on the mattress and he came and then he suggested we get ice cream and go to the dockyard near my place. By this time in the night, my mind forgets the binaries of social conduct- oscillating awkwardly between ‘Fuck off babe, we are just strangers’ and ‘Hell yeah! I will even adopt children with you, my carrot farm person’. I didn’t oscillate at his suggestion though. I did want to go to the dockyard with him. I did want to know if he ate his ice-cream super-slow or super-fast. I did want to know what it felt like the first time he had masturbated. I wanted to sit by the waters and watch him watch the world. Amidst all this- was a conversation, where he asked me what my kisses meant post-sex because they ‘felt different’ to him. I wanted to whisper to him how the kisses meant that my anxiety was temporarily shut; that my chest was learning to feel light again; that I was beginning to accept compassion; that I wanted to love and be loved by a stranger I had only met for the second time. Instead, I kissed him more because honestly, that’s all I wanted to do for the rest of the night. I wanted to kiss him like I meant it and I wanted him to accept my lips and touch me like he meant it. I am not sure if the latter happened. For the first time in months, I was curious about another human being. My chest grew lighter at the idea of this curiosity. I wanted to give myself another chance to feel positive emotions. And so, we rode around on his borderline-hipster-borderline made-of-my-wet-dream yellow Vespa and even though I have been more romantic in the past years, I feel like I did good. We couldn’t make it to the docks or buy ice-cream, but we got chai at 1 am and I caught his eyes looking at me while I (almost) looked away. What a cliché, right. My 19-year-old self would have cum just at the idea of such a night, but my 19-year-old self also wasn’t diagnosed with a mental health issue that couldn’t let her feel her own veins when falling in love. I didn’t know what I felt that night, but I invited him over (again) after the ride. He was skeptical earlier, but a little lust for ghar ki khichdi and ‘We can hang. With our clothes on’ seemed to be a great lubricant. He stood opposite to me in the lift, and when I tried kissing him- he looked for a CCTV. I hadn’t even thought of that. I just wanted to kiss him in as many spaces as possible, because I knew the chances of meeting him another time were bleak and my heart needed something to remind it of its own capacities. He served himself the khichdi while I insisted on heating the chicken I had cooked. We went into the room and made some conversation about things I’m forgetting now. He did say the khichdi gave him enough energy to fuck again, and so we went at it. Ofcourse the sex was great. He even ate me out and I came – which hadn’t happened since the last girl I was with- so I wanted to simply hug him and thank him for how great my next few days were going to feel. Especially since my my mental health diagnosis, I have forgotten what it feels like to have a slow song stuck in my head while I walk alone on busy streets. What must that feel like: liberating, lonely or lustful; I would only know in the days that followed. ----- As is ritualistic of Tinder conversations, we also talked about the other people we were seeing; while I told him about the other two in my life, he said wasn’t sleeping with anyone else even though there were some willing to do that. I would imagine. He is a pretty brown boy who wears those circular hipster specs, and makes music for a living. ‘Why haven’t you slept with the others?’ I asked, partly out of curiousity, and partly out of the need to continue the conversation and not let him leave my arms. ‘Because I recently started liking someone. Not sure where it is going, though.’ He said. I remember him smiling while saying this, but I guess it was just the high from weed, sex and khichdi. I was confused: ‘But you’re sleeping with me’. ‘I like you,’ He justified, looking away from my face. When he didn’t stay over this time, I didn’t feel hornier. I wasn’t craving sex. I didn’t want morning sex. Actually, I did want morning sex, but that was meshed amidst a feeling of wanting to kiss him a ‘Goodnight’ and hug him a ‘Good-morning’. I wanted to cuddle and I wanted to spoon and I wanted to lick his back in the middle of the night because I remember how my licks bothered him in a playful manner. I wanted to lick him clean of all the damage he seemed to laugh about earlier that night. I felt like a trope: broken boy and his manic pixie. What a romantic glitch in my otherwise feminist life. My politics of condemning this particular trope is one of the reasons I am apprehensive of relationships: ‘What if I end up indulging in excessive emotional labor only because I have been structured to be the ‘caregiver’ in a relationship?’. I don’t know, none of these apprehensions seemed to have cropped up that anxious midnight. I just wanted to hold him tight and never let go. I wanted to make sure he would come back and I wanted to scream at him for untangling the ‘not’s in my chest. It's been a week since that happened, and the ‘not’s are still dangling loose- but with some added ‘K’s. Prerana only understands the language of words and sex. On days she wants nothing to do with either, she tries to paint Queer/feminist art, cook regular Indian sabjis and stare at her cat do nothing but sleep for 20 hours straight. (Only thing 'straight' she appreciates heh)

LONGING IS THE SPICE THAT MAKES A MEAL OF SEX FOR ME

Longing is a spice. Its essence pulls you close, teases the appetite at the slightest taste. What is love without longing?

Longing is a spice. Its essence pulls you close, teases the appetite at the slightest taste. What is love without longing? For me, nothing but two individuals carefully analyzing what they want and ticking off checklists that they have curated over years of experience with people laced with the fear of emotional entanglement. When I met AD on Quora and scrolled past his posts, it seemed like he had his life in complete control. His calculated solutions to life’s problems didn’t make them appear like challenges at all. For a moment, I felt he could hold his emotions by their nerves and ask them to behave. For a moment, I was even assured about his holiness where he took people’s issues seriously and really claimed to walk the extra mile to resolve them. Only a man with a golden heart is capable of that, isn’t it? It was even more intriguing to learn that at his age (nine years lesser than mine), he seemed so clear about what he wanted while my struggles to unknot my thoughts always ended up as disastrous decisions. So I followed him and he followed me back and the conversations moved to Messenger where all that we spoke was about sex minus the longing, minus the love dope theory, and minus the emotional weight of it. Just the carnality without the maska of sentigiri. When he said “Nothing is inseparable in this world”, it broke my heart. The word ‘separation’ is a depressant I have avoided and it seemed like AD was clear about convincing me to grow up. His focus was sex with a poet type (me) and my aim was to break the emotional barricades that he put up before reaching out for my bordered territories. Why wouldn’t he invest his emotions in me? “I have burnt my hands already with two serious almost culminating-in-marriage relationships. The heartbreak isn’t worth it. So all I expect from you is awesome sex.” When I asked why me, “For one, you are a writer so I am hoping you won’t judge (tough logic). Given that I have read your work, it seems you are a passionate person.” But I knew that he wanted me because I was married, was cool to talk and was definitely ‘experienced’. He calculated that my own restrictions would ensure that I would also steer away from any emotional entanglement. He was too young to understand that what I wanted was a piggy bank that could contain all of my feelings without displaying it to the world. His predetermined caution meant he was simply unwilling to relish the free-falling, mind-boggling high that longing and love can bring – as a flavour to savour, not an indication of commitment. But I thought, I would try this anyway. I was new to fling-ing. It is a fun game where as soon as emotion leads your carnality, you call it quits. Something like losing a couple of drags of a lit cigarette before getting caught in the act. Fling is a simple change in partners, and lots of exploration. But my issue was that I looked for a ‘connect’, that typical Bollywood style of spark with music and heart skipping a beat. A possible duet-in-making. I wasn’t restricted to hitting the orgasm every time (not that I wouldn’t have loved to) but was also keen on the emotional intensity that would make it all worth it. I hated AD for his cultivated indifference but loved him for the few hours of freedom that came along with a few cigarettes, booze and of course, the orgasm. I had my priorities on these, done right. My love-hate relationship with him was beyond my own surface understanding. While I loved to see him shaken up every time he met me, I hated him for the way he tried to change my attitude. He was clear about the sexual priorities while I clung to him like a dramatic Nirupa Roy, just refusing to forego my emotional intensity. What kept him coming back? Of course, I knew I was good at the art of sexing and that one reason is good enough to compensate for a lot in a relationship. Sex is also strangely intimate, especially when the ratio of hate and love is on a weird range. Flinging is addictive because it is light – that’s the key. It is so easy that it feels like you are a solo traveller breathing in freedom as you wander off to destinations of your choice. But without longing, it feels a little pointless to me. You carry the fragrance of your favourite flower, but never allow it to linger around. My question to AD was constant – “Why wouldn’t you allow yourself to be madly in love with someone? Why is the heartache that follows a heartbreak so bad? Doesn’t that show how vulnerable one is? And can any of these emotions be substituted with some good times on the phone or great sex?” He would tell me I am old school. That I still cling to outmoded face-to-face conversations, long handwritten letters, preserving rose petals in between pages of classics and preferring old melodies on the record player. Hence, longing for his voice, his touch, his words, none of that made any sense – it’s all supposed to be passe. If I felt I was getting a faint whiff of longing, either I had to quit or move to the next person. Guess, I was not built according to those flinging specifications. I still prefer the idea of being in love, wounding my ego when rejected and making the most of it when I am offered a small portion. So, if sex was to be a hearty meal then ‘longing’ would be an ingredient I wouldn’t care to miss. I would relish it without missing out on any key flavour that would make the hunger feel good and also would make me crave for more without counting the calories. I would rather not keep a score on that and make the whole experience of love-making a lavish spread to be savoured till the last bit. Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in the garden city and works as a content writer for a living. The illustrator's works can be found at www.doodlenomics.com

Mard, Mann Aur Jealousy: 5 Men Talk about Dealing With Unusual Jealousies

Unusual jealousies men experience and how it affects the way they look at themselves as sexual beings.

The neighbour’s superior car, your friend's picture-perfect life on Instagram, someone standing with a guy you’ve had a crush on, a former classmate finding the love of their life when you’re still single — these are things that can make most people experience different shades of jealousy. But jealousy uncoils like a snake at the base of our sexual feelings too. The occasional ‘hmph, you find her more beautiful than me?’ or the ‘don’t talk to him’ are common to hear in a relationship – and to hear about.. But these insecurities about someone from outside affecting your relationship are not the only type. Some forms of jealousies are unusual enough to slip our notice, especially if not discussed openly and so, are left unaddressed and unexamined. Societal conditioning that discourages men from engaging with their emotions also fuels some deep-seated jealousies, which can spell trouble for mental and sexual well-being. Here are some unusual jealousies men experience and how it affects the way they look at themselves as sexual beings.   JEALOUS OF MY GIRLFRIEND'S LOVE FOR HERSELF DURING SEX In the past, women have told me I was a loser for not knowing how to properly touch them. Raunaq, 33 years, male, heterosexual Talking to new people scares me, and meeting them is even scarier. So dirty talking, consensually, with women on Tinder was a great sexual outlet. Whenever a woman would talk about meeting, I’d unmatch. This didn’t work with my ex. She was easily the wittiest and nicest person I spoke to and it was I who ended up asking her out. But when we started dating, I became jealous of her, particularly of her skills in bed. I didn’t have too many skills myself, so every time I orgasmed, I’d feel ashamed and angry that I didn’t have as much experience. My experienced girlfriend has been having sex since she was 18, whereas I only started a decade after her, at 28. In the past, women have shamed me for being a loser and for not knowing how to properly touch them. "Why are you so awkward?" they have asked me. I was waiting for the moment when my ex would also shame me, but it never arrived. Once, when she tried a new move in bed, I just yelled at her which made her cry. I was jealous that she knew something in bed that I didn’t. I tried to keep my jealousy under control but failed. You can’t just suppress years of insecurity in one go. She tried to understand why I was making things so difficult, but even talking involved letting go of my insecurities, which I wasn’t willing to do. She then gave up on trying to talk to me about my jealousy and broke up with me. Now, I’m working on it, building confidence with the help of a therapist. I still feel jealous when I think of my ex, but the voice is less loud in my head now. But only after spending two months without her, I realized that my jealousy was not at her sexual experience but at her emotional confidence in her sexuality. I loved sex, whereas she loved herself during sex.   JEALOUS OF MY GIRLFRIEND'S INTENSE MUSIC FRIEND I never took much notice of this guy at first, but eventually, I started resenting him. Sagar, 29, male, heterosexual I have always been possessive — I’ve been told it’s not a nice thing, but it’s just my nature. Three years ago, I was dating my best friend and I honestly thought everything would be great.Except, I’d forgotten how extroverted she was. She would always be attending indie music concerts and parties, while I’d just stay at home and watch movies. Her favorite gig partner was her college friend. They almost had this silent musical code between them, having grown up listening to the same type of music. I didn’t know half the names he’d (her friend) mention — Ramones and Charlie Parker and all. — as I only doted on old Kishore Kumar songs that I’d listened to with my dad. I never took much notice of this guy at first, but eventually, I started resenting him. One time, I forced myself to go to an album launch of an electronic artist in Mumbai.It was like watching someone working on a laptop, live. But she and her friend were thoroughly enjoying themselves. I felt a huge stab of jealousy and left without telling them. She looked puzzled when I complained to her about it, but whenever she tried to include me, it felt like she was trying to spare my feelings. So I just went back to being jealous of her friend even though there was never anything romantic between them. But the fact that she shared what she loved with him irked me no end. My jealous sulking ultimately got to her and we would fight for petty reasons.Eventually, she broke up with me, but it didn't affect our friendship. We just realized that as best friends, I feel less jealous of other people in her life. At least now I don’t have to pretend to lose my mind at the next Radiohead album.       JEALOUS OF MY PARTNER’S HANDSOME EASE I don’t like that men like my boyfriend better in threesomes. Karan, 18, male, homosexual I was terrified of having a threesome, but my bisexual boyfriend was very interested in it. We are in an open relationship, so we are free to have sex with anyone besides each other. My partner is super handsome — many girls from college flock to him. Some of them go home with him and some don’t. None of this ever bothered me, until the threesome topic came up. I decided to comply and experiment, even though I wasn't ready for this. My boyfriend, however, is two years older and is less terrified of having more than one man or woman in his bed. Although I was terrified, I wanted to please my partner. So did the man he brought home for the threesome. My boyfriend's guest wouldn’t even kiss or touch me as much as he did my partner. I felt so jealous and angry, but I didn’t say anything. The second time my partner brought home a girl for a threesome, I yelled, “Have you forgotten I’m gay?” I was insulted and felt jealous again. But it wasn’t just the physical rejection that made me jealous. I was jealous that my partner was so much more likable. Even the people he had sex with (alone) would sit and have long conversations with him, but this never happened to me. I also felt stupid for being jealous of my own boyfriend. So I decided to have a conversation with him about it one day after a jealous breakdown. He understood immediately and stopped bringing men home. But that still didn’t stop me from feeling jealous. It was only after continuous conversations and by confronting my feelings that I feel much better now. I might even be open to a threesome sometime soon. But this time, on my own terms.   Jealous of my boyfriend's EASY identity AS A CIS MALE I seek validation the way he gets it from people. Ameya, 25, transman, homosexual Dating as a transman has not been easy for me. At parties, people would look at me strangely and talk behind my back. Everyone would flirt with each other but somehow not with me. But meeting my current partner changed everything. During our courtship, he never really focused so much on me being trans, as much as on me just being. So it’s very difficult for me to tell him that I’m actually so jealous of him. As a cis male, he has no trouble being accepted for who he is. How do I tell him multiple rejections have made me very insecure? Plus people’s reactions don’t help. One time, he introduced me as his boyfriend to his colleagues and they give him a strange look, almost as if to say, “Tujhe aur koi nahin mila kya?” I try to cope with this by reminding myself that my partner did not ask for this treatment.  I tell myself that I can’t find a better person than him, not just because he accepts me for who I am, but because he doesn’t reduce me to my sexuality or gender. But still, I seek validation the way he gets it from people. I don’t talk about this to him because I’m afraid I’ll lose him. One good thing did come out of house parties (which are always aplenty in the fashion industry we’re in). I met some more transpersons and talked to them about my feelings and realized it's totally okay to feel this way. They recommended a lot of books about sexuality in transpeople and it gives me confidence in my choices, the most important one being him.   I INSISTED ON POLYAMORY AND THEN GOT JEALOUS OF MY PARTNER'S FLUIDITY I’m all for channel surfing but I still wanted to be the primetime lover. Sahil, 29, male, heterosexual I lived in Russia for seven years and its dating culture changed the way I look at relationships. Women in Russia are very forthcoming about their intentions and it’s very common to be in polyamorous relationships. So I tried it out and fluidly dated multiple people at the same time. Any primary partner I had in Russia came with zero drama. When I moved back to Bangalore last year, it was quite an adjustment to the culture here. I started dating this girl I met through a mutual friend because she was polyamorous and shared my sensibilities. It was amazing. I’d found it hard to find other Indian women who were that open about sex. However, it turned out that I had not figured how deeply traditional I myself am. Apart from me, there was this one other guy she enjoyed having sex with. They used to work together in the same software company. I had no problem with it till I realized that she spent more time with him than she did with me. I got super jealous. She started getting emotionally close to him and enjoying his company a lot. They’d go out to movies and drive around the city. The kind of poly relationships I’ve been in are ones where you have one primary partner and then you have secondary/tertiary partners. I felt like I was no longer her primary partner — her ex-colleague was. When I tried talking to her about it, she laughed it off. But I was still jealous. I realized that I was fluid sexually but not very fluid emotionally. I wanted her affections all to myself and I wanted to be her primary partner. In my past relationships, I’ve always had a primary partner, some sort of an anchor. Without it, in this relationship, my jealousy took over. We drifted apart soon enough. Not because of that guy, but because we just lost interest in each other. Funnily enough, even after we broke up I couldn’t digest the fact that she’d sidelined me for him. Right now I’m questioning where I stand with polyamory, and more importantly, where I stand with emotional jealousy in polyamory. I don’t want another such episode of jealousy with someone else.

WE MET ON GRINDR. NOW THE INTIMACY OF THE SEX WE HAD MAKES IT HARD FOR ME TO FORGET HIM

Some loves are sexual, where emotion, body and connection become powerfully joined in the intimacy of sex more than anything else. It is an intoxication, a nasha that’s hard to forget, because it runs deep.

 It was 2013 when AD and I matched on Grindr. It was just another casual encounter that would start with asking each other location, preference and most importantly pics. From the beginning I have always used my own pictures. Since I am discreet, many like me, warn against using my real pics but then my logic is simple. The only people who would know I am on the App are those who are on it themselves. Bhagwan ki daya se I’m quite decent looking, so I do get a good response. I don’t approach though, only respond to those who approach me. So anyway, I met him on this app. He was in Mumbai for a limited time, interning at an office close to mine. We quickly moved from Grindr to WhatsApp and there started a mesmerising silsila of Voice Notes and pictures on the phone. It was very romantic. He would often say things like “Mujhe toh tumhara nasha ho gaya hai…” (You intoxicate me, I’m under your spell). “I can’t keep my hands off you.” And he never did! Soon the time came to take this offline. After about a week or ten days of exchanging mesmerizing audio and pictures of each other, we finally decided to meet. I was to pick him up outside his office in Dadar. We met and kept meeting. I had never ever experienced this rush before in my life. He would finish work and just scoot over to my office. I would give him WiFi access and he would wait in one of the cabins at the reception of my massive office till I was done. I would wrap up as fast as I could and we would dash off in my car to the romantic getaways of south Mumbai. All the while as I drove, he wouldn’t keep his hands off me. Not even when we got out of the car. Whether it was Marine Drive, where we sat listening to music and facing the sea, or at Scandal Point or the TATA garden in Breach Candy, or a movie theatre in or the nondescript countryside-like precincts around RC Church  – he would kiss me and make out at the slightest opportunity, without making it awkward for others around us. He would steal those moments very skillfully. One time is still stuck in my mind. It must have been mid-June of 2013 – the always erratic yet sometimes romantic rainy mausam of Mumbai. We were parked in the lane opposite the Tata Garden. We’d bought some shrikhand at Breach Candy. In the car, he asked me to smear a bit of it on my lips, and proceeded to lick and eat it off my lips, very many times. Often we would have a snack at the reasonably priced Status Restaurant and drive around some more before I dropped him off at Churchgate station so he could go to his aunt’s place in North Mumbai. The hardest thing for both of us was this moment of seeing each other off.   A Whole New Meaning Of I’m So Into You – Anal Sex But our courtship didn’t just end at kisses. He meant to take it further. Full intercourse. Something that I hadn’t really done before. He’s younger than I (25 to my 34) but far more street smart, and he knew a lot more about sex than I ever did. Although, he came to my big city from a small town, between puberty and adolescence he’d seen, heard and experienced several facets of sex, that were still unknown to me, early in his life. Between the two of us, he was the quintessential ‘top’ and I was the ‘bottom’ — everything between us also was like a stereotypical 'boy'-'girl' relationship. He had wooed me into meeting him, and now, sleeping with him seemed like a natural extension of what we had between us. We'd become great friends who loved to spend time with each other outside the bedroom as well. So, after almost a month of regular meetings, when the time finally came for anal sex, I felt I had to rise to the occasion (though he was the one who needed to be erect, ha ha). I’d always imagined it would be painful, and it was. But I had a guy who took every care to not hurt me, and most importantly, a guy I actually wanted to have that kind of connection with. It happened. He penetrated me. Finally, I had penetrative sex for the first time and climaxed the way I felt I should. It was a bitter-sweet experience. Bitter, because after all it is every bit as real as a tool going up your arse, and sweet because of a mental and emotional frisson it gives you. If done slowly, correctly and regularly one comes around to enjoying it. He explained the importance of being clean externally and internally before trying it out. He also ensured that during foreplay, my opening was relaxed and ready to be penetrated and tried out different positions so that we could do it successfully. In every sense, he has been my sex-mentor. He was the one who introduced me to a gel called Xylocaine that, when applied to the anus, makes it numb to pain. He was also the first guy whom I enjoyed giving a blowjob to. His full lips made every kiss to every part of my body extremely stimulating and special, since I also experienced an emotional connection. He was smart enough to use protection and both of us knew there was no other way.   But, everything wasn’t as smooth as I'm making it sound. Since I had no prior experience with anal sex, the first time had its share of problems. The first and foremost is not being prepared for the penetration itself (mentally and physically). So initially, I couldn’t let him, but we tried different positions and he was slow and sensitive so finally it happened, doing it sideways. The biggest issue is being clean from within because it could really lead to some unsavory stains on the condom which can be a put off. I was determined to get there out of a feeling of intimacy and intense connection. But now in hindsight, I think, maybe that feeling wasn’t mutual. After that first time, we had intercourse like this exactly six times more and I could feel his passion to penetrate me diminish each time. Much as I wanted to become his best bet in bed, little did I know that for him, it was essentially and always about moving on. After those few sexual encounters, we would only go till a certain point -- of foreplay, like kissing and having me go down on him. Then he’d retreat. He would put off going further each time, often saying he was not in the mood. Maybe that was already the death knell, I don’t know. Since typically in many gay male relationships, sex plays an important role. While our sex life was in limbo, his affinity for erotic chats with other men, and fantasies of conquering new bubble-butts started to irk me and made me feel inadequate. The one who had inadvertently led me into this new carnal game had now abandoned me with all my new cravings, which I felt only for him. ‘Rim’ Jhim Ghire Sawaan The idea of being rimmed deeply — where your partner makes passionate love to your butt and gently opens you up (with fingers and tongue) for the final intercourse, the urge to give your partner the blows that give him a full erection, and the great satisfaction of taking an act of sex to its final outcome (climaxing with penetration) — was like getting a glimpse of intimate delights and then being learnt and left in the lurch, half-way to paradise. Sure, I continued to get a lot of attention from others, but my heart and body were still set on him, perhaps more so because I felt this lethal combination of passionate attraction as well as a sense of betrayal, all mixed together with an inferiority complex, while he looked around for other partners (even if it was only on chats, as he claimed).   Dammit, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai…Still! Even as all of this unfolded, we remained inseparable, and that was what led me into a spiral of ambiguity. We spent all our time together. We kissed, cuddled and practically lived with each other. We claimed to be each other’s biggest priority, even as the wholesome sex had flown out of the window, taking my peace of mind along with it. One night, I slyly checked his phone and came across chats where he said he wanted to rim a guy “for at least an hour”, marry another, and wanted to make one in particular “his bitch”. It shook me. And also woke me up. We had a loud fight. Then another time, on a drunken night, he admitted to meeting a guy who was so thin that he’d lifted him up and fucked him. He seemed to have little qualms about revealing this even as we continued to feel friction because there was no such action between us. But we didn’t want to let go of each other just yet, so we continued being together almost everywhere. After a while, though, it all became too complex for me. Yes, there was no sex but we did have our share of kisses and cuddles and intimacy in bed. The PDA was over, but genuine concern for each other was and is still there. At the same time, him wanting to do things with others; the same things that I sought from him, drove me up the wall. The relationship (if I can call it that) started to diminish after almost 2 years when he finally moved to another part of the city for a job. While we met much less, we still chatted everyday. I ‘tortured’ him for not being physically interested in me, and kept badgering and nagging him about his interest in others. What really made me insecure, jealous and extremely terrified was the thought of him giving intimate pleasures to some fair slim twinkie, a PYT who I felt was laughing in my face, able to enjoy what I sought from this one man and couldn’t have. Interestingly though, by now, we had several common friends who were all on a WhatsApp group and met on regular outings, so we somehow still managed to speak to or text each other every day. Sometimes we think of sex and love as different and maybe they are. But some loves are sexual, where emotion, body and connection become powerfully joined in the intimacy of sex more than anything else. It is an intoxication, a nasha that’s hard to forget, because it runs deep. Today we are in different countries and I still chat with him on WhatsApp. We are still part of that common friends group on our phones. And we follow each other on social media. But when we chat privately, it almost always turns into a bloodbath of words, because I still cannot get over the fact that he’s just not that much into me anymore. PS: He always ends it by saying that I’m very attractive and there’s nothing wrong with me and any guy would love to have me, but it’s just that he cannot do it more than a few times with anyone. Nice try, I want to say to him!   Complex Character is the guy who chose commerce over arts. He now writes, sometimes gets paid for it. He loves to travel but sadly his job doesn't take him places. 
The names and characters appearing in this post are for representational purpose only and the post has no bearing on their sexuality or health status.

Are We Together or Broken Up? The Agony of Ambiguity.

I was afraid to straight up ask him for an answer and he didn’t have the decency to be a bit clearer.

These Delhi boys, I tell you. If they weren’t so pretty to look at, I’d never have any reason to talk to them. Maybe it’s a case of sour grapes, but my troubles also started with this Delhi boy who turned my life upside down. It’s very difficult to explain this to classy log, but I grew up in a part of Mumbai that was considered very “uncool”. In my school, boys and girls didn’t talk to each other freely. I come from a world of friendship bands and boys with spiked hair. If I tried to talk well in English in school (which I was very good at tabhi also), I would be teased saying “bohot shining maar rahi hai”. So coming out of that world into a world of ‘Netflix and chill’ was a massive culture shock. I’ve never even held hands with a boy in school without being terrified that I’m doing something wrong. So it was very dizzying how in college everyone seemed to walk arm-in-arm, kissing in libraries and deserted corridors. It took me quite some time to get used to all this khula khula pyaar. Right after college and a massive break-up (a toxic, three-year-long relationship), I was done with boys. I didn’t want these ladke-vadke. But that was the year I met Sanket. I was at Pune’s NH7 Weekender festival in 2013. Mere liye western music was growing up with Linkin’ Park and Enrique Iglesias. Suddenly, at this festival I was listening to indie music. I was surrounded my all these “cool” people in bandanas, hippy shorts and hipster sunglasses. I felt very out of place in my normal t-shirt and cotton pants. I was at the electronic music stage and I was losing myself to the music. That’s when I spotted Sanket dancing next to me. He was so pretty my eyes hurt. Brown eyes, cute beard and a jawline to die for. He was also alone and didn’t care that he was. Our eyes met. We smiled and suddenly we were not alone anymore.. We hung out together the entire day. We had a palpable chemistry. My friend Divya (who joined us later in the event) told me, “Karu, I don’t like the way he looks at you.” I smiled naughtily, saying, “But have you noticed the way I look at him?” She looked shocked. I know what she was thinking — I was thinking the exact same thing. My sudden sanskaari, ek-zindagi-ek-boyfriend-vrat was broken. I was so attracted to Sanket that I just wanted to have sexy time with him all day and all night. We rushed to stage after stage together, holding hands, brushing arms, massive PDA-ing. The tension was only building every other day. The festival was full of gorgeous, fashionable women who looked sure of themselves. But Sanket, who I could tell was a ‘player’ type, only had eyes (and hands) for me. I was so flattered and brimming with desire. We hooked up on the third day of the festival in his hotel room. I was so nervous. Outside of my ex, I had no measure of what good sex could mean. What do you do when you have sex with someone who is not your boyfriend? I had sex after so long that night, it was almost like the first time. And my god, was it glorious. But what do you say to them the next day? I didn’t know what the cool protocol was. After spending the night, I left for Mumbai and he, for Bangalore. After a few weeks, he moved to Mumbai for work. He called me and said he wanted me to show him around the city. I knew what that was cue for. I showed him around, all right. That first night in Mumbai was like Weekender all over again. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. I spent the night in his apartment, sexing, touching, talking and more sexing. Uff, his akarshak chehra. We started having sexy time every other day. Every weekend was full-day sexy time. For the first one month, I didn’t care about anything else, but the glorious sex. I realised there was more to my sex life than what my ex-boyfriend showed me. It was so liberating, you know? One night, after sex (four times, hehe), Sanket and I talked our time away. We jammed and discussed life, love, science and everything under the stars. For the first time, I took notice of how smart and nice this boy was. Suddenly I understood that I wasn’t seeing anybody but Sanket. I realised I really liked spending time with him. The boy I was sleeping with was a good catch. But we were not in a relationship. I was too afraid to ask him where we stood. What if it made him uncomfortable and he decided to distance himself from me? Plus, yeh cool types se kaise baat karte hain about serious matters? He was always so nonchalant when it came to discussing his emotions. The fact remained that I didn’t know what to call this. Relationship bolun ya nahin? Sex buddies? But Sanket always insisted it was not just sex for him. Then what do I call this? But seven months into this, I started noticing that the frequency of our sexcapades reduced. We wouldn’t hang out so often. We’d go out less for drinks. I didn’t want to sound too pushy so I didn’t outright ask him what’s up. I waited for him to call. But he didn’t do it. This went on for three months. Still, in my head, I was still “seeing” Sanket. Around that time, I’d made a new friend, Anchita. She was very headstrong and kaafi open about sex and everything. She told me she had slept with this Bangalore guy in Andheri. She said she’d met him through a mutual friend and that it was great for her. They’d hooked up only once. Then she told me his name is Sanket and showed me his picture. It was my Sanket. I was so shocked and hurt, I broke down. Sanket had slept with her while leaving me hanging about our relationship status. Somewhere in all that anger, I felt ashamed. Ashamed that I had been so needy. How could I expect him to be only with me when we’d both never even talked about it? I felt very small because I could not be so de unattached and cool like Anchita or Sanket. I also felt extremely rejected. Maybe he didn’t find me attractive enough anymore? That day I outright asked him to meet me and talk about this. But he only texted me saying, “You’re a fabulous friend and I enjoy our time together.” So I was not more than a friend to him? Toh phir what is all this sexing? I felt even more ashamed that I couldn’t separate sex and relationships.   But a part of me also knew that I didn’t really want a relationship so soon after my break up. Slowly, I began to feel like I was being a hypocrite — I didn’t want to commit but didn’t want him to see other people. And even more slowly I realised that above all, what I wanted from Sanket was an answer — Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? But I didn't know how to ask for it without feeling small and uncool. I avoided him like the plague for the next few weeks. We’d constantly bump into each other at music gigs and dinners (we had a large pool of mutual friends). I remember this one time that I hid in the bathroom of a concert venue when I spotted him. It took me half an hour to come out of there. But he seemed to have no trouble adjusting to our “break up”. My sisterhood of gossipy friends told me about all the girls he’d been going out with after me. Another friend told me that she had talked to him about this and he’d exclaimed ki “Karishma and I broke up ages ago!” Acha?  I didn’t get the memo. Here I was thinking (and hoping) there’s still something between us. I thought we were together but never “together”, that we were seeing each other but not exclusively. So, it was even more difficult to deal with his absence. I had no clue what to even call this. With my ex, it had been a clear relationship and a clear break up. I had tangible things to work with. But here, I had no name for this feeling. I was feeling terrible, jealous and angry at the same time. And I felt like I could blame nobody and no one. I could pin my feelings to nothing. Our mutual friends told me he’s polyamorous. I didn’t understand all that. But I wish he’d tried to tell me. I felt dumb and stupid for missing him so much. I missed the talking and I missed the sex. He was the first guy I’d opened my body to after my ex. Sanket literally threw me into the world I live in now. A world of fluid relationships and great music. But yeh ambiguity kya hai? I wanted to tell him ki tum sabke saath sex karo lekin tell me at least where we stand. Remember that Hindi song, Iss Pyaar Ko Main Kya Naam Doon? Well, iss break up ko main kya naam doon? I honestly don’t know how I got over this. It took me six months! Most of my problems with Sanket arose because I was afraid to straight up ask him for an answer and he didn’t have the decency to be a bit clearer. It was because I didn’t have the confidence to. I was so conditioned to being the "good girl” and had such a massive case of imposter syndrome, of being caught as a secret behenji that I was afraid of losing all these cool people, primary among them, Sanket. But as I got to really know people in my circle I realised everyone is vulnerable in their own way. The imposter syndrome applies to everyone. I taught myself to communicate better and I figured out what I wanted out of sex and relationships — clarity, not commitment. I forcibly put myself out there. Met more boys, had more sex and spent more time with friends. I avoided Sanket at gigs no more. I forced myself to face him. This was my home after all, how long could I avoid him? But that besharam would try to flirt with me even after months of our “break up”. One time he asked me to come home with him after bumping into me at gig. I just stared at him and walked away, laughing. I realised after all those fucks, I finally had no fucks left to give him. Karishma Shetty works as a writer in Mumbai. She wishes PR firms stop calling her.

My First Break-Up Was Nothing Like The Movies

We just sat down, wringing our hands. I said, “We have to confront reality. I don’t think we should be together anymore.”

 My first relationship was a cutesy Archies card-type romance in class 12. I liked a boy in another class and told my friend about it. Naturally, she went and told him. And after two weeks of flirting, he finally asked me out. We had our highs and lows, but mostly, it was a lovely time. He was really smart, a good speaker, and a wonderful human being. The conversations we’d have were always delightful. I could talk to him about anything. No euphemisms when I had my periods and no hiding what I was feeling. I’d share poetry with him, and he’d share his writing. Till date, he’s one of the most feminist people I know. Even our quieter moments were nice. When you’re in a relationship, you get seen in a certain way — the other person’s goof-ups become your goof-ups. I remember, once, he was asking a question at a public event, and instead of saying ‘curious’, he said something that sounded like, ‘curiouser’. Though it was an insignificant mistake, people jeered at me for weeks -  “we’re very ‘curiouser’ about how you put up with somebody who doesn’t even know proper English.” He was the house captain and I was in a rival house. Once, I was sitting in a classroom and he decided to have his meeting there. And, of course, people looked at me as if I was the bad guy when he was the one who refused to step out because he wanted to stay around. So, it’s little things like these that got annoying. Sometimes, I often found myself asking him to give me time and space, but he seemed to have difficulty understanding it. For instance, exams were very difficult, and he was leaning on me for support. But when I’m stressed out myself, I find it easier to cut off from the world, finish what’s on hand, and then get back to everything else. I didn’t feel like I could emotionally be there for him. If I’m angry with somebody, I tend to retreat, weigh out everything I’ve heard, and then respond. However, he would want me to talk to him immediately. So, asking for space would mean telling him, “Hey, I don’t want to talk to you on the phone today. I’ll see you in school tomorrow, and then we’ll talk.” Sometimes, it would mean, “I don’t want to talk to you for the next three-four days. Please let me be alone till then?” But he was always there. I’d try to draw into myself every once in a while, and not talk about things, but he’d say, “No no, let’s discuss that.” I just wanted to be alone and introspect, but he never understood that. It’s not like we never discussed these issues. We did. He once said, “You require space and sometimes I get worried and indulge in talking to you. I end up not giving you what you need and that’s unintentional.”   “How long do you need,” he’d ask me. I’d say, “I don’t know.” He was also about grand gestures, very Bollywood-like. It’s not a bad thing, but I’m really shy so it would get awkward. He asked me out by getting down on one knee in front of my friends. What a nightmare! And on our three-month anniversary, he wanted to do that again, in the same place. “I’m going to leave right now if you do that,” I told him. He didn’t really gel with my friends, and I was always trying to engineer and smooth out conversations between them. I was trying to split my time between my friends and him equally, trying to keep my teachers happy, and my grades together. I guess I was also trying to be that ‘perfect’ person for everybody. But it was mostly the internal rift that made it worse. I once told him I felt really suffocated. Bad idea. He was so teary-eyed after that, and I felt terrible. I liked to keep things too honest, and that probably also hurt the relationship a little. I was going to leave the city for college in a couple of months. We spoke and realised we didn’t want to do long distance. I didn’t want to be one of those people, constantly on the phone with someone back home, while also trying to experience a new place at the same time. I also believed that at my age, being physically present in a relationship was as important as emotional presence. It wasn’t fair to him either. So we decided to face the circumstances and make a decision. On that day in April, he came to my place. We just sat down, wringing our hands. I said, “We have to confront reality. I don’t think we should be together anymore.” I talked about how I wanted to leave the city, see the world, and have a fresh start. He was distraught about it. I was sad that he was so troubled. He also fought me initially. He said that he loved me and that we should be together. We’re gonna conquer mountains together, etc etc. By then, I had realised that we weren’t ready to talk about ‘love’, and that I hadn’t fully meant it when I said “I love you” to him. I knew that no matter how nice it is over the phone, it would get ugly later on. “Why don’t we talk more often?” would come up as a complaint after I moved. We discussed the possibilities of long-distance — how many times in a week would we call each other? How was it going to work? What if we found someone else? After all the discussion, I said, “We’ve been thinking about this since December, but you know it is coming. Don’t try to fight it.” We admitted to our faults in the relationship. We started discussing how the relationship was holding him back as well. He knew this all along, but he was just holding on. So, even though he was very reluctant, he agreed that it was the right thing to do. Of course, we both were very sad and we cried, but none of it was ugly. We decided we would continue to be friends, but things were very awkward for some time. When I moved out, he sent supportive texts that said, “I’m there for you. Good luck.” Later, we continued to be there for each other. I was mildly relieved when the breakup happened. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, but so much was going on in our lives, and the breakup made me feel free.   Post-breakup, everyone said that I was the ‘bitch’ in the relationship because I broke his heart and that I should’ve continued the relationship. On the other hand, some people from my friends circle who I didn’t even talk to regularly told me that I made the right choice because they didn’t like him in the first place. I refused to participate in any of these conversations. In contrast with all this drama, our breakup was so mature. After we broke up, there were some misunderstandings. He leaned on a mutual friend for support. When I was talking to her before I left town, she said, “You shouldn’t have treated him that way.” She wouldn’t really tell me she was hanging out with him, and I couldn’t understand why she had said what she had. I had to piece things together. Over the next few months, while I was away, I wished I had dealt with it better, though. So on my winter break, we met and clarified everything. I’ve gone through other breakups after that, and they were terrible with a capital T. This one guy I dated kept putting off the break-up. He fled to another city after telling me we needed to talk, made me wait for days, and then said, “Oh, I totally forgot!” When he did confront it, he just told me that we needed to end this, and that we should probably not talk to each other again (because he got back with his ex-girlfriend). This wasn’t at all the case with my first breakup. It wasn’t a one-person show. We both talked and listened to each other. I really value it. It set a precedent for how good and mutual parting ways can be between two people. Today, whenever we meet, conversations are really natural. We talk as if those eight months of ups and downs didn’t happen, and I think that is because the breakup was so comfortable. Even after some time, I could sense that he had feelings for me. My friend was of the opinion that because I’d moved to a new place and met new people, I had distractions to help me get over it. He was still back home, with the same friends who would continue to bring me up in conversations. I guess it was harder for him in more ways than one. But now, even though we don’t meet each other much, we are FB buddies who tag each other in memes, so it’s all ok. That’s how you know it’s good. A humanities student, Nandini is an artist and a Bharatanatyam specialist. When she’s not cheering for the women around her (and fangirling over Aditi Mittal), she’s busy being an active voice in campus politics.  

I was the Abusive One In My Relationship. My Break-up Taught Me To Change.

I’ve realised that there is no purpose to just feeling perpetually guilty. What I can do now is never treat anyone else the way I treated her.

 Our relationship was a roller-coaster ride from the get-go. I met Rashmi* in college (we were in the same class), and we started going out in the second year. It was a typical college romance. Since I used to be involved in a lot of extracurricular activities, I mostly missed classes and she would help me with academics. We’d roam around during the holidays, and go out for movies. We stayed together even after college, dating from 2009 to 2015 — it was a long and serious relationship. We were both extremely possessive, intolerant about each other’s behaviour, and were emotionally abusive. Simple issues would get complicated, and we were just very out of sync.   After college, we both started working in Kochi. It didn’t matter what we did, being together was most important for us. She was very caring, but she just couldn’t trust me though, and she didn’t like me talking to other girls. I’m an introvert, and she wasn't. She was very open, even in public places, and I found it really uncomfortable. That’s when the situation would get particularly bad. I’d try to console her, and occasionally, it would work.   Once, at a crowded bus stop, she was upset about something and started crying. Since some people started to notice, I suggested that we move away. People even followed us for a while. I can’t handle such situations, so I just took her to a restaurant. She met my (female) best friend once, and soon after, they had a fight about her being my best friend. There were multiple such instances, and she would keep nagging. I tried to not even hear it, because it would just be the usual stuff: “Why did you go with that girl and stand there?” or “Why are you not spending time with me?” For me, what she was saying was mostly irrelevant. Sometimes I’d listen to her, and respond. Then I’d stay calm for a while and my silence would begin to bother her. If we were arguing over the phone, sometimes, meeting up would solve the issue. If it happened in person, and the problem persisted, physical touch would also sometimes calm the situation. Her focus would never be finding a solution, or discussing the problem and trying to sort it for ourselves. That irritated me a lot, and the next day, she’d be back to normal, as if nothing had happened. When I’d feel like there was nothing that was making things any better, even for small problems, I’d cut her off for a while. And that would be emotionally frustrating for her. She’d try to get in touch or show up at my place. I’d lose my temper sometimes. Which was when I slapped her on two separate occasions. Every time I recall it, I'm filled with regret for not having controlled myself. The first time I slapped her was during the last few days of college. I was involved in organising our farewell, and was constantly running around, trying to get things done. I think she was going through a tough phase then. She probably felt like it was the end of an era, feeling like she’s going to miss me. She probably had questions about meeting now that college was over. But at the time, I was unaware of this. She wanted to be with me that day. And I understand — now, I understand. But that day, both our emotional states were particularly different. She continued to worry, and I continued to filter her out. We were arguing on the college grounds, and I felt I couldn’t take it anymore. I slapped her in the face. It has been many years since it happened and I don’t remember all the details, but I apologised to her, and promised her I wouldn’t hit her ever again. We eventually made up.   I remember that I felt sorry I had hit her, but not very guilty. She felt hurt, but she didn’t speak against it. She never brought it up and demanded an apology from me, after the incident. She was okay about me hitting her. Later on, there were times when fights got out of control when she’d tell me to “hit me, and solve it.” I remember now that she once told me that her father used to hit her. I think she thought it was okay for a boy to hit her, especially if it was her husband or father. I don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think I have the right to abuse or beat up someone, but in that situation, I hit her and that was terrible. Why did I stay with her though things were so complicated between us? I cherished the moments that happened after the fights. I remember, once, she had moved to Bangalore while I was still in Cochin. I didn’t answer her calls for a day while we were in the middle of a tiff, and the next day, she came from Bangalore to meet me. And right then, when we were together, it would feel like everything was sorted. We enjoyed our time together, and we were always there for each other. We were generous in our give and take. We shared that feeling of “there is someone with me, for me”. She was probably the only person I had really emotional or deep conversations with. The second time, I hit her in a public place, where I find it intolerable if someone cries. I feel humiliated. I feel like I am not in control of the situation, and usually, don’t know what to do. One year before the breakup, during one of our fights, I was working on a project site where I knew a lot of people. She found the place somehow and came there. I didn’t like that at all. I got unbelievably angry on seeing her and hit her. I apologised later, again. But it was getting very toxic for us. We couldn’t focus on our work, and we held on to each other only because there was some love. Just for those good days, we were going through many more bad days. So we ended it in June 2015. I think in a very large, deep sense, I only felt truly guilty about having physically abused her, a few months after the breakup. I don’t remember exactly when it happened. I saw something in a film that portrayed violence. I was crushed. I remembered that that was something I had done — I don’t think of myself as a morally bad person — and so I had that revelation. I apologised to her twice after the breakup by writing her detailed emails expressing remorse and apologised after we got back in touch.   We didn’t talk for one-and-half years after the breakup, but after that, we engaged in occasional conversation. She still says that she misses me. Sometimes, I feel terrible that we had to leave each other even after going through so much and putting in so much effort. It would’ve been ideal to have stuck with each other, and treated each other better. But I also know that it’s over. I don’t think that we weren’t supposed to be in a relationship. We both were supposed to have such experiences, but I guess, we were not meant to be together for long. I’ve realised that there is no purpose to just feeling perpetually guilty. What I can do now is never treat anyone else the way I treated her. I’m not too emotionally expressive and never used to call home very often, though my other friends would communicate with their parents a lot. I think this is partly because of my upbringing and partly, my inherent personality. My parents wanted me to be emotionally independent, and not be too attached to my mother after a certain age. As I grew into myself, I began to be detached as well. I’m never as vulnerable on a daily basis, as I am when I’m in a relationship. Maybe that’s why I behaved the way I did, but I’m trying to change. For me, constantly communicating wasn’t necessary, but now I understand these things a little more. Now, I always look for these signs of compatibility when I’m attracted to someone. Inside me, I don’t know… I feel like there’s still the other person, who cuts people off when they get on my nerves. But I think I can try. I should try. *name changed

Dil Google Google ho gaya AKA how I internet stalked my way through a break up

I’d scroll down from post to post, to find semblance of a love lost. As though trying to relive our time together by scrolling down will undo everything that happened to us.

 “Hum sirf ek baar jeete hain ek baar marte hain pyaar bhi ek baar karte hai aur stalking…. bar bar karte hai" Every time a dramatic event happens in my life, I hear a Shah Rukh Khan dialogue in the background of my mind. Shah Rukh Khan told me it was okay to love and lose and yearn. I believed him. (I believe everything Shah Rukh Khan says). He would watch his Paro from the shadows, unable to touch — alive, but barely. I understood his toxic craving for the woman he loved a little too well. Back in 2012, I met somebody who made me go weak in my knees. I fell in love with him and I couldn’t believe this sona munda loved me back. Mummy ne bhi kaafi baar chai pe bulaya. All was well, until Priyanka happened. She was a classmate of mine in college. I knew she had a crush on him but Akshay and I were not dating each other back then, so I would just hide my jealousy. So when Akshay and I started dating, and he would talk to Priyanka, I was uneasy. But I trusted him and blissfully spent day after day in his company. One day, he told me he loves Priyanka. I just sat there staring at him. Main kya bolti? What do you say to the love of your life when he no longer loves you? I knew that if I wanted him to be happy I had to break up with him. “Jaa Simran, jee le apni zindagi.” Magar meri zindagi ka kya? I now had a gaping hole in my life left by his absence. It was one thing to break up, but letting him go? That was a whole different task. I missed him beyond words. After he was gone, I turned to the closest thing left to his presence — his Facebook profile. I woke up every day and checked his profile first thing in the morning. Through his Facebook photos, I held the ghost of his presence close to my heart.   But even that ghost was changing before my eyes. Akshay had never been a social media bug. All of this changed with Priyanka. A few weeks after our break up, he posted selfies with her with #love and #happiness. It tore me apart. He never posted pictures with me na? Was I never his #love? Did I never give him #happiness? I finally had come to the painful realisation — Main inti khaas thi hi nahin. “Udne ki baat parinde karte hain, uske toote hue par nahin” But for some reason this only increased my yearning for him. Yeh letting go hai nahin aasan. I’d scroll down from post to post, to find semblance of a love lost. As though trying to relive our time together by scrolling down will undo everything that happened to us; as though it will make me feel less lonely. His social feed became my refuge, my one shot at escaping reality. But my heart was still alone. One day, during my marathon scrolling session on his Instagram feed, I accidentally liked his picture with Priyanka. I was so mortified that I threw my phone away, only to realise that I’d broken it. The fact that I’d broken my phone worried me less — broken phone meant I could not unlike the picture and he would know it. After that incident, for two days, I stayed away from his profile. I didn’t even switch back my phone. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t take phone calls from anyone for those two days. I just spent my days in bed, crying. I watched too much TV to avoid thinking about what had happened. It was bad that I was left for another woman but it was worse to think that he knew I was following his life. I wish I had stopped there? To escape my own feelings, I now obsessed about something new — Priyanka. Priyanka’s profile became my new refuge. P-P-P-Priyanka became my K-K-K-Kiran. I was filled with glee when her photos got only a handful of likes. I laughed cruelly at any of her unflattering photos. Everything she did, I compared it to myself. She liked beaches, I hated them. She likes dressing up, I hated dressing up. It made me wonder if this is why he left me. Because he liked someone who dressed up for him, knew how to put on make-up, understood fashionable things. Maybe I was not 'ladki' enough for him. Internet stalking Priyanka destroyed my self-confidence. After stalking her, for the first time in my life, I tried to put on makeup. The result was a lot like college Anjali’s disastrous attempt at makeup in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. After all, how could I compete with perfect Tina? Months passed. Just as I began getting tired of self-inflicting myself with a daily dose of pain, the internet came running to remind me of his presence. Our mutual friends would tag us in posts, friends would dig up other photos to make fun of. But sabse zyada, pictures posted by happy couples on my timeline would trigger me into start going through Akshay’s profile again. It felt like the universe was encouraging me to keep running back to his online presence though it was poisoning me. “Kisi cheez ko agar poore dil se chaaho toh saari kayanath tumhe usse milane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai.” Thanks, Kayanath. I really didn’t need this. Every time I stalked him online, I’d cry. The pain was overwhelming. The loneliness was unbearable. It affected my job, as I would Google him even during work. After that, I would no longer be able to work. This went on for a year. It reached a point after which, there was no option but to gradually stop. I got tired of going through his happy life and comparing it to my unhappy one. Tired of the physical toll it started taking on me — I had pimples and dark circles all over my face. I was fatigued and tired. I know ki this was not just because of my endless internet scrolling and that the heartbreak was the larger issue, but this scrolling was a drug jiske side effects were showing all over my life. It was sheer exhaustion that made me stop. Slowly, as I stopped, my confidence grew. I started exercising and going out and meeting new friends. I realised that just because one boy decided to not date me, it didn’t mean I was undateable. My mother and sister — their constant affection — also helped me. It didn’t slip ma’s  notice that I was miserable, but I never had an open relationship with her. But she knew, like mothers do, that I was going through a bad phase. For the first few months of my break up, ma made all my favourite food — kachori, kaanda poha, fish curry and rasmalai. It was the only way I’d even bother to eat properly. She cared for me physically so that I could focus on getting better mentally. Didi knew the whole ordeal because she’s my best friend. She would come home early from work to spend time with me. She held me and let me cry on the days I broke down. She took me out for movies. She volunteered more often to act as a mediator when ma lost patience with me. Eventually, I searched for Akshay less, I yearned for him less. I understood that I had lost Akshay, but more importantly that I had lost my confidence in myself. My yearning for him automatically came down. My search history eventually stopped showing Akshay’s name. When I look back, I feel like I could have done this thoda differently. But it’s easy to say this from a place of sanity now, but then it was madness. Sometimes, when I’d sit alone I’d feel strange that I did all of this shamelessly. It feels bizarre, actually. I’ve come a long way from being that person. But now I feel that my dignity is not even important when my mental health was at stake. I would not do this Google-waala madness again because I do know better now. But I refuse to look back in shame at what I did.   My toxic Googling helped me understand that I had lost someone I loved, but I gained my own self in return. “Kabhi kabhi jeetne ke liye kuch haarna bhi padta hai… aur haar kar jeetne waale ko baazigar kehte hai”  
Anuradha D'Souza is a chef and a baker. She likes big buns and she cannot lie.

my mother does not know i am wearing her sari. how long must I hide?

poetry and poetic prose by soz

my mother does not know i am wearing her sari, that my body does not find a home being a man or a woman, only changes sides on the binary to feel at ease with myself. at the prayers held after my grandfather's death the audience sat in two groups. i only wanted to sit in between because on this spectrum i fail to find a spot for me. so i sat with my grandmother instead, holding her as her grief did not come out as tears and the audience was killing her with a facade of pain they did not feel. my mother does not know i buy her saris only because i want to wear them and i hope i inherit them. like old books, kept over decades, her saris will be old enough to have a smell distinct from that of dust. my mother does not know the sins my body has committed and she thinks that my body is a sanctum sanctorum, that god lives in me and a breath of another man on my skin will defile me. i want to tell her, "your god is too weak." she still thinks her son is only a breath away from god, that god will still hold him when he dies but god is busy, he is not thinking of me, I do not think he even lives. when i dream of telling my mother of my secrets, opening them one after another as knots entangled in a string of rope, i often dream of her holding me as i cry. when i think of telling her of my sins right from childhood, as a boy aged 9 wearing knickers in secrecy, her knickers on my body behind closed bathroom doors, i think of her understanding me, saying, "it is okay". when i think of opening another knot, telling her, "for that night i groped your breasts, i am sorry. for the next morning tears, i am sorry. i often wanted to come and tell you how sorry i was but i could not gather enough courage and for that, i am sorry. it still haunts me." when i tell her this, i want her to hug me. most of my life i have lived without my mother’s hug. i have often found my mother's hug in a lover's touch but it is just not the same. when i think of my body, i think of my mother, i think of how my body resembles her more than my father. i wake up to realise, we live in a reality which does not value honesty and vulnerability. i know, my mother will never accept me as a part of her own, as a son when she knows my sins. but what i do know is this we all house secrets we never reveal and when we do, with our words we kill                   with and in tenderness, vulnerability, intensity and love, soz

A Thousand and One Stories of Coming Out

I learnt that people are always jockeying for power and invariably looking for that one thing to pick on you about. In my case, it is my sexual orientation

Let me start, as I would start the first time I meet anyone, by introducing myself. I am a 23-year-old half-closeted gay man living in an India which is still largely homophobic. Well, that’s more than I would tell most people – because I wouldn’t mention I am gay right up top. I write about sex for a living – which is to say I am a journalist who writes on topics related to sex and sexual health for various publications and blogs. You know how it is right, we tend to speak more about someone else’s sex life than our own. When I tell people what I do, some people think I write porn. Some people think I’m a pervert. I think I do my bit to dispel myths and taboos and make a healthier society.  But a lot of what people think is to do with their discomfort with the idea of sex itself. Then you add sexuality which is anything but heterosexual coupledom and the discomfort triples. Like most gay people who choose to come out of the closet, I’ve had my own journey of coming out to different people at different times. Personally speaking, coming out has not just been a process, it’s been a feeling. To me, it is an emotion, a thrill I seek and an adventure or transition I have learnt to embrace myself with and feel good about it. An LGBTQ+ person doesn’t have to come out of the closet -  they can live their lives in secrecy and never let you all know what’s behind that face. Some straight people might never even understand why it’s a big deal but I think it is important given that everyone assumes by default that everyone is straight. I think it is important to come out and kill that dangerous assumption. For yourself, for your self-assurance and your self-worth, coming out matters, I believe. The feeling I would get every time I came out was exclusive. It was like I’d shown my true self to someone, my full self, my real life and my identity. I also learned a lot about others during the process. Not everyone is empathetic towards your orientation. Not everyone is indifferent. Ex-girlfriends think I am making it up to get rid of them. Haaai Allah! Jhoot kyu bolna! One girl actually thought that I am pretending to be gay just so to be around her. Extended family dismisses it as flu that will go away with time. Some close friends have the craziest reactions ever. Those you’d expect the least to understand get by easily. I thought I had to go through a series of episodes with my parents for them to finally understand me but it was all very casual. Just a dinner table conversation and they said, “We already knew! We have raised you!” Not everyone is this lucky, mind you! I think my inspiration to come out to others started with a positive response from my parents. The tough nuts in my life to crack were not my family but my friends. Weird, right? When I came out to the guys who I’d been flirting with all night with those cheesy lips and kisses smileys on WhatsApp ended up saying they hates ‘gays’. We hate your grammar dude! (ha ha) Some friends tried to tell me with novelty that they knew others with similar interests just so I could hook up, while I tried to tell them that technology like Grindr is fast enough for hook ups and that I wasn’t seeking their assistance but acceptance. The best reactions are from religious friends who blame my appetite for meat and affinity to the western world as the reason for my sexual orientation. These dear friends also give great conversion therapy solutions like marriage, watching porn, going vegetarian, meditation and converting my faith. Some go a level further and question whether my family is gay (it’s not a religion, my religious friend). Others ask me whether my siblings are also born gay. Some ask how do I like it there? Others just have vivid pictures in their head and shocked expression on their face. At a house party last year, my roommate invited his friends to celebrate a milestone he had achieved. He is a successful young entrepreneur and has been featured in a couple of magazines and news shows. So, his circle of friends is also very niche and entrepreneur-ish – read ‘cool’. Before we began drinking, I was clearing the table in the living room and chatting with the guests, all straight and male. One of them (a founder of multiple companies) whom I had met a couple of times earlier and been a little friendly with, suddenly, without any context, jokingly asked, “Hey! Are you gay?” That was my moment. Without any hesitation, I responded, “Yes, I am! Happy and gay both!” This was the first time I came out to people in a group, in a new city. I wasn’t whispering my coming out in the ears of friends. I was exposed here. Out and loud.  How did I feel? It felt like I finally let go of an alias and was telling everyone my real name. His question was definitely bothering and intrusive but he wasn’t the first one definitely. Many people in the past may have wondered and jokingly asked but I never answered. His directness might seem crude to some but somehow it led to a sense of empowerment and pride in me. My sudden outburst of honesty was a new and interesting experience to me too! On a sharp winter night of October 2013, my close friends and I were in a train to Rajasthan. I was feeling very empty and alone. I’d been battling a crisis in my head for many years and I needed closure. I summed up the courage to finally let someone know. We were on our college trip and I summoned my best friend to the coach door. I stood patiently holding her shoulders. She almost thought I was going to ask her out. She was a bit nervous. When I finally confessed my sexuality to her, she smiled strangely and told me it was okay. Then, the very next day, she told her boyfriend about it, as if it were an event, not a confidence. I was furious. Her boyfriend meanwhile, took to staring at me every time we met after that. Awkward! He wasn’t the first ‘straight’ man who stared at me, of course. There have been, still are, many. Out of lust or jealousy, may be? On that train, I also came out to a couple of other girlfriends I was close to. One of my friends, who also fit in my ‘bracket of difference’ (She was from the UAE and had a strong middle eastern accent) was actively listening to all my confessions from the upper berth. Being gay is not very different from being fat or being dark. The feeling at the crux of it is similar. People will shame you for whatever doesn’t fit some ideal norm they’ve built in their head. When I was done with all my confessions, she got down and just walked away without any reaction. Did she just ignore my only moment of attention? Was she awkward but trying to overcompensate with nonchalance? At the beginning of my coming out journey (wow! I’ve already made it sound like tirth-yatra), I couldn’t come out easily to boys who were straight. It was quite embarrassing for the ‘man’ or the ‘bro’ in my stiff and rigid body to let another ‘bro’ know. “How could I?” I would think. “How could you?” they would think. So as queer as I got, I wrote blogs on Tumblr to let those lovelies know that I liked them. I shared all the posts on the internet, took part in online and offline conversations and also started actively making friends from the community for the first time. I would share the links of the blog with my straight male friends under the pretext of showing them my writing skills. They would completely ignore that and jump straight to the confrontation on the sexuality issue. Obviously, that was the goal. Some were shocked and some were smart. Some are still blocked! Hahahaha! Trust me, both were important, both were an experience. I was bold and full of sass initially. I remember passionately asking a minister to legalise gay marriages at a conference where I got only 20 seconds to speak. Obviously, that also made it to my friends’ joke list. That’s another thing. Coming out will never put an end to the jokes these straight people make at chai and sutta corners. We go to these corners too! We never talk about you! That’s all those shady cis-stalls are made of. Judgement, prejudice and a feeling of incompetence. However, you feeling indifferent to all the jokes makes all the difference. 

 Finally, coming out to other gay yet closeted people is also another tragedy. Some of them are so confused and misinformed that it gets really funny. Sometimes I think they deliberately test you before officially offering you an acceptance hug. Some common but senseless doubts within the queer community are, “When did you realise? What made you realise? Have you ever tried the other way? Are you just this or that too? You don’t look like this? Are you married? When will you get married? Will you meet me after you get married? Will you make me meet your wife?” Dude! Stop your wild imagination there. Pleaseeeeeeeee! It is getting to a point that’s beyond our control. How do you attempt to solve these queries? You just tell them, “Darling, I am equally queer and clueless as you. It has been this way or maybe I was born this way.” 

 Over the course of years, I have been called so many names (gay, gud, fag, chakka, homo, kinnar, man in a woman, madam, pussy, gudwe) that it’s actually helped me learn more about the gender and sexuality spectrum. And mind you, these words have come from people I thought I was close to! There’s so much variety in our society that only those who love the difference of similarity (read queer, fluid and straight allies) feel the need to come together. That’s what makes it a community, right? You feel safe, familiar, social to each other who give you the space to be yourself and still understand and respect your choices. That I think holds if you are LGBT or even straight but queer in some personal choice. I’ve also learnt that people are always jockeying for power and invariably looking for that one thing to pick on you about. In my case, it is my sexual orientation. Earlier, every time someone called me fag, it would break my heart. Now every time someone calls me anything, it swells my heart with pride. The world is the same, if not changed. But what matters is how you look at it. As a kid, I felt so embarrassed about the difference between straight guys and me. I grew up in denial. I was constantly belittled by family or friends for being ‘soft’. Growing up, I realised denial is not a gay preserve. There’s denial in heterosexuality too. Among boys who gleam with a smile in their eyes when anyone comes out, cis-men who have a bulge (please don’t ask me where) around openly gay men, loverboys who’d fight with their girls and jealous homophobes who cannot be as confident. Being at home with your sexual self is a journey of coming out for every single person, in a way. Coming out is not easy, both for the person coming out and to the person they are with, because we have been living with ignorance and misnomers that homosexuality is abnormal, wrong or a mental disorder. It is challenging, high on emotions and it does teach you a bit about the world around you. It’s almost like tripping on acid, okay not that bad, but somewhat that way. I am learning to get better at this, one incident at a time. Hope it’s easier with you too to accept, cherish and move on whatever you identify yourself with. Roshan Kokane is a 23-year-old journalist from Mumbai. He loves to read, make new friends and travel. When he is not making friends or travelling, he is usually sleeping at home. You can reach out to him on Twitter at @roshankokane3

Why I'll Never Stop Masturbating

I accidentally discovered orgasms at 14, and began a thrilling solo trip

 I had never really read much on women’s masturbation till very recently. When I did start reading I was disappointed to find that while there is a lot of advice out there, hardly anyone was saying what I am about to say; which is, I love masturbation and recommend it to everyone! I discovered an orgasm quite by accident when I was about 14. I didn’t know what it was for many years after, but I knew I loved it and I wanted to experience it often. We had just moved into a ew house and my room had a bath-tub and a hand shower. It was that day, abetted by the force of the water gushing between my legs that I discovered my clitoris; and we have been best friends since. From there it has been a journey from self-discovery, to self-love (or should I say self-lust) to a sizzling sex life. As a teenager, I shared a room with my younger sister, so on nights that I would feel like ‘making myself happy’, I would either go for a long soak in the bathtub or wait for my sister to fall asleep, so I could explore in bed. These explorations were not just about reaching orgasm but also about learning to touch myself, recognising that I liked how my breasts felt in my hands, and that my waist and neck were pleasure hotspots. Sometimes it was not even about the body, I would lay in bed, close my eyes and imagine I was a queen, or a warrior, a doctor or a musician, really anything I wanted to be that day; and an incredibly hot guy (who has no face by the way) would do lovely things to me in exotic locations. I remember characters from books I was reading or shows I was watching would invariably find their way into my fantasies doing marvellously sexy things their creators would have never imagined for them. As I set my mind free, it showed me what my fantasies were. My favourite discovery though was that I could climax without touching myself, just gently rubbing my thighs together did the trick. I didn’t discuss it with anyone though, almost because I felt like I had discovered a secret to the human body that no one else knew. At that age, I had come across disgusting references to men masturbating; in jokes or bad teenage ‘comedy’ films but since no one mentioned that a woman could do it too, I assumed what I had found was rare, precious and exclusive to me! It was a few years later that I learned about the official existence of a female orgasm. I will admit I was a bit let down that I didn’t belong some secret superwoman club, but it seems that women who reach orgasm during sex are still the privileged minority as compared to men for whom it is the norm. I have been in a happy, fulfilling relationship for almost 12 years and I orgasm every time we have sex; more than once! I do credit my partner for being an attentive, sensitive lover, but the fact that I genuinely look forward to our sexual encounters and relish the mutual enjoyment of our bodies is key to every (ok, almost every) experience being special. I still masturbate regularly; just like I have interests I pursue without my partner, I also feel the need to stimulate myself physically, without him. I travel extensively for work, and the allure of the white hotel room bed is too much for me to resist. I have done it when I have not been able to sleep in a train, and the need to be super quiet is so exciting. I also enjoy masturbating now in our bedroom, the memories of previous orgasms between those walls and the anticipation of the ones to come are both incredible turn-ons. Just last Saturday, the partner went for an early morning bike ride and I stayed in bed for some toe curling action of my own. I take such pleasure in it that I would expect most women feel this way. I realised this isn’t necessarily the case when I was at a friend’s bachelorette in Bangkok last year. We were a drunk bunch of girls who have known each other for years and were playing a game of ‘Never have I ever’. As the night went on, the declarations became more and more brazen. From sex in public places, to weird positions, it was a tell-all like never before. What amazed me though was that even in our inebriated state, most of the women were shy to talk about masturbation. Some had never touched themselves and others said they had tried it but it was not something they ‘needed’ since being in relationships. There were very few of us who sang drunken praises for masturbation. Zohra Sehgal, veteran actress and choreographer said at age 97, ‘Sex is very important for life to get going. I still want it.’ and I hope that at that age I still want it too. I think we underestimate the impact a satisfying sex life can have on our relationships with our partners and ourselves. The pleasure of being able to discuss freely how we like being touched and what we don’t like, I feel, also creates an environment where consent is actively sought and nothing is taken for granted. No way am I saying that masturbation is the magic pill for a happy relationship, but it levels the playing field to a certain extent, leading to more open, honest relationship outside the bedroom!! The lover and I are often called ‘love birds’ and accused of ‘coochie-cooing’ everywhere, because of the physical and emotional intimacy that is apparent in the way we are with each other. I love Samantha Jones from Sex and the City. I think it’s in the movie that she says to her partner Smith, ‘I love you... but I love me more. I've been in a relationship with myself for 49 years and that's the one I need to work on.’ I love my partner unconditionally but loving myself that way is a whole different ball game. Growing up in an environment where I had to stage a protest to wear a sleeveless top, short skirts were completely out of the question, and I had to shave my legs secretly, I was taught that virtuous women do not pay so much attention to their bodies. For the longest time, I only appreciated and loved my body in private. I guess the fantasies allowed me to enjoy the physical sensations almost like it was happening to someone else till the time that I began to feel like it was normal. Masturbation was strangely freeing for me; it helped me reinforce that my body is beautiful and deserves pleasure. It does so much more for me now as an adult, especially when I am being critical of my appearance or trying to adhere to an impossible standard of beauty. It is a time when I don’t judge my body or dissect it into pieces I like and pieces I want to change. It also calms me down mentally on stressful days and can help me get to sleep. Just like a massage, or a day at the salon, is a way of showing love to our bodies, touching ourselves in a way that makes us delirious with joy is an important self-care strategy. My partner sometimes makes jokes saying if I get too good at pleasing myself sexually, I will not need him anymore. But it’s quite the contrary; feeling good about my body and knowing what feels good to my body makes me a more sexual creature, which only increases my desire for sex with my partner. Acclaimed artist and all-round goddess Frida Kahlo said, ‘I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better’ and how could I not be inspired! Vasundhara is a passionate development professional, a reluctant chartered accountant and believes in the power of education to change the world. When not occupied with work, she can be found exploring new lands, languages and food. Bhavya Kumar is a design student/freelance illustrator based in New Delhi. She is a body-positive, sex-positive feminist with keen interest in history, social theory, and ginger ale. 

How Gujrati Porn Made Me Realise I Was Asexual

The way I was not feeling anything while watching porn, I did not feel any kind of attraction and sexual desire for anyone either.

 One day I saw an intriguing tab open on the computer screen of a close relative and out of sheer curiosity began reading it. That is how I discovered porn. I was 17. Being a Gujarati medium student throughout, my access to the English language had been mostly limited to school text books till then. So unlike some young people, I had not discovered pornography through English language sites online. Also, before that day, my introduction to the world of sex had been in more indirect ways. First there were the stories published in the Women’s Special supplement of a Gujarati newspaper. These usually had some ‘masaledaar’ description of a married woman falling in love with an unmarried male member in her neighbourhood. After a full-on escapade, the woman would eventually repent and go back to her husband. Illustrations accompanied the stories - always a couple, heterosexual, cis-gendered - making out or sleeping together. Today these sketches have been replaced by photographs. Poring over these explicit pictures and words, I would wonder whether people actually do all these things, like kissing and ‘sleeping in each other’s arms all night.’ But these pictures didn’t affect me or turn me on. They were there like any other pictures to me. Then, there were school biology books. Like in many Indian schools, in ours too, sex education was: Chapter 16 of the 10th grade science textbook, reproductive system, and limited to ovaries, ovum-sperms and coitus. There was only one sentence which remotely acknowledged the existence of the clitoris and its exclusive function of providing sexual pleasure to women. That was all the indication I had to understand that sex can be for orgasm and pleasure, not only reproduction. The textbook, full of English words translated to Sanskrit, could not teach me anything more than how the babies are made. Last but not least, advice columns of Gujarati newspapers. God alone knows who writes the questions but they were all women describing their problems during sex such as vaginal pain, lack of lubrication, inability to conceive and so on. I learned the word ‘Sambhog’ as the Gujarati word for sex through these columns. While reading these queries, my discomfort regarding my gender assigned at birth would surface. I had been gender nonconforming ever since I remember, a sort of “tomboy”– never wanting to be the stereotypically feminine ‘girl’.  These columns reinforced my feeling that being a man is easier because men didn’t seem to have any problems when it comes to sexual intercourse either. I had not heard about things like erectile dysfunction, low sperm counts, etc at that point of time in my teenage. I only understood that men also can have issues when I started reading English newspapers and the Sexpert Mahendra Watsa’s column. In one such column, I chanced upon a reference to the Kamasutra. In my History textbook, I had also read about Khajuraho and the ‘kamuk’ (erotic) sculptures there. So sex advice column, science book and suggestive stories were my spotty sex-education until I found that open tab! After I found that tab I discovered the world of porn stories in English. One day I thought to do a search for ‘kam kathao’ on Google Gujarati. Kamkathao literally means ‘erotic’ stories from Kamasutra. Weeding through the many sites that popped up, I eventually stumbled onto a story of a daughter-in-law, mother-in-law and their woman help. This was the first Gujarati porn story I read. It was also the first lesbian story I read as well as the first time I encountered the idea of a threesome, of voyeurism as well as the existence of women who have sex with both men and women. The words used were completely new to me; I had heard some of them only as part of cuss words in films once or twice. I kept reading, one story leading to another, one revelation unfolding another- a whole world of Gujarati porn. I found a comic strip kind of story-series purportedly from the Kamasutra. There was this prince who was going to get married. So, a woman who has expertise in erotic skills, especially how to please a woman is appointed to teach him the art. She ends up falling in unrequited love with the prince. In the same story, a teacher narrates various “Kamasutra stories” including one where three friends, one of them a prince, meet a group of women in the cave. A princess in the women’s group is given the task of checking the potency of these men. The men rise magnificently to the occasion and get to marry a woman they choose from the group. In another story a woman peeps into the bedroom of the king and queen from a hole in the prince’s room, while pleasuring herself. I read a story situated in the region of Saurashtra-Kathiawad, known for its feudal history and culture, which described the tradition of a king or prince having sex with a virgin on her wedding night. The colours used in this story were bright and gaudy when it comes to dresses because it is a celebration that a virgin is going to be with the person of a royal family. Surprisingly, in this story this act of ‘deflowering’ is seen as honour and even the newly married groom is happy that his wife is going to be with the prince for their ‘suhaagraat’.   One day, I stumbled upon a ‘3D’ comic series in Gujarati. One was about a boyfriend having sex with his girlfriend’s mother. The other story was situated at a farmhouse of some ‘aunty’ who was ‘fucked’ by two young boys in a threesome. The strange thing or what seemed strange then but not now – was that I didn’t really feel turned on as other people do. I did feel something weirdly wet happening to me by reading onomatopoeic words speaking of women moaning as they reached orgasm. But that was it. Otherwise, my observations were kind of clinical. My mind was looking at the stories as any other stories, and observing things about bodies, gender and caste. For example, I noticed that the action largely took place in the seclusion of either a palace or a cave. The stories of royal khaandaans glorified the virility and the potency of men, portraying them as hyper masculine muscular figures, skilled in pleasing women; the women were all stereotypically Indian-feminine with big breasts and plump bodies, fair and gaudily dressed. They belonged to a subordinate caste and class, apparent from the dialect used. For example, look at this story. A man goes to a brothel and he wants to fuck the head sex worker and nobody else. But he is unable to get a real erection all night, leading to some teasing from her. His masculinity is hurt. In the morning, he decides to anally fuck this woman – but to punish her, do so without any lubrication. After a lot of pain on both partners and much hardship, he encourages his penis saying, “My Thakor can now show his power.” Thakor is a dominant Kshatriya caste in Gujarat. This made me understand how caste and masculinity are connected in porn. I was simultaneously reading Vellamma’s stories in Gujarati and Savita Bhabhi in English. I noticed that Vellamma and Savita Bhabhi create were a different ideal for a sexually ‘desirable’ woman than in Western porn. Not Barbie thin but more voluptuous, and also, older. But in 3-D comic stories, the women had ‘size zero’ figures and were fancily dressed, living in fancy houses. Sexual interaction took place in drawing rooms or farm-houses. Men, often younger, would be flabbergasted by this wealth and thought bubbles showed them fantasising about a similarly upper-class life. By now, I had started also reading and watching English porn, but English or Guajarati the feeling was the same: kuchh hota kyun nahi hai mere body me? I was not “feeling wet” as everything I had read and everyone who used to read told me I should. Then I discovered Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. It was a revelation for me. I realised how little I knew my own body, how much I’ve neglected my most admirable parts. I learnt here what I never actually saw in porn or in any other sex-related thing I had read - that there is something called masturbation which women can and do practice. I had only ever read that men, aroused by porn, masturbate. With the help of Vagina Monologues, I explored the parts which can give me pleasure and thought I should read porn again. Maybe now it would turn me on like it did everybody. I even found a story about a woman who masturbates with brinjal and a cucumber, while fantasizing about herself with a milkman. But to my surprise – maybe disappointment - I felt nothing but for a kind of shock at how such big objects could get into one’s body! There was another thing. The way I was not feeling anything while watching porn, I did not feel any kind of attraction and sexual desire for anyone either. I never longed for anyone, nor did I ever feel like touching anyone – I was in fact averse to touch. Then in my first year of college, I got emotionally attached to a much older woman and my peers called it a ‘crush’. During the four years of this one-sided attachment, only once, after four years, did I even feel the need to touch or hug this person. Being averse to touch, a hug is a big thing for me and still I felt like hugging this person! But only for a few minutes. This feeling remained unrequited and then I never felt anything like it again for that person till date. I have not felt romantic attraction for any person till now.        It was during my post-graduation, that I spoke to a friend and she told me about the asexuality spectrum. I could relate to experiences of people who identified as being from the grey spectrum. Which is to say that; I realised that my sexual attraction is fluid like the proportion of white and black in the colour grey. Feeling sexual for somebody depends upon the extent of my emotional attachment to the person. My inability to fantasise made me realise that having or not having sex with a person does not depend on my ‘mood’ but is just lack of sexual attraction towards people because I am not emotionally attached to them. But, this absence is something which I would not have got to know if I would not have entered Kaamkathao and read porn and basically realised that I analyse it instead of ‘feeling wet’ by it. If I hadn’t read porn, I also might not have learned much English. And I would have felt lonely if I would not have known English because I don’t have a word to describe my sexuality in Gujarati! And there was another thing I learned. I followed that slight wet, heavy feeling when I read onomatoepic words and discovered this magical word ‘moaning’. I began searching videos, and what I found appealing was audio porn – the sound of moaning. I had felt the same dampness down there when I had seen Eve Ensler’s performance of a masturbating woman. The climactic sounds, moaning and grunting, shouting, hissing and what not, the very struggle of the human body to reach the climax is something which makes my body reach orgasm through masturbation. The struggle to reach the extreme of sexual satisfaction is relatable and often experienced. My ability to masturbate and climax without anybody else’s help is liberating. Right now I identify as grey/demisexual and queer intersectional feminist who is pro-porn/ anti-censorship on the whole. But thinking how, for all its revelations, much of porn catering mostly to certain types of straight men, leaves out so much about sex,  I aspire to write a porn-erotic story which is feminist, queer-inclusive and has minimal emphasis on bodies; because to an extent, porn, like sex and love, is so much in everyone’s unique head! So, coming soon! This Qaju (pen-name) likes cashews, books and has a shade of grey in her!

My Year of Flings

In retrospect, it seems to me that my ‘hooking-up’ was not so much about seeking temporary partners, it was more about establishing power. To make myself needed, yet always be out of reach.

The year was 2008 and I had just turned 20. I was fresh out of a massive break-up and made two resolutions to deal with it 1. Drown myself in work and spend a lot of time with my friends.  2. Stay away from boys, at least for another 2-3 years. I’ve had enough! I thought. I found a job, which took up most of my time and spent the remaining time with friends. I felt important and happy and a little bit invincible after a long, long time. It was great! I also did something which surprised the hell out of me. I began to hook-up with guys! A lot. Left right and center (indicative of the frequency with which I was entering and exiting casual liaisons). I wasn’t very familiar with this part of me. This brazen, fearless small-town female who refused to think too much and simply lived in the moment – this was new and heady. I felt emotionally complete around my friends. I felt validated around the boys. And I was having a blast! I like to think of 2008 as my year-of-flings.     Entering into casual relationships was easy. I was meeting a lot of people at work and making friends. I met boys who liked me and wanted to spend time with me. We exchanged numbers, spoke all night long and made-out when we could. At a certain point, I was hooking up with two guys (not simultaneous, just concurrently) who lived in adjacent buildings. I got a huge kick out of this. In another instance, I was in a “relationship” with a guy who had set his mind on marrying me. He wanted to match kundli etc. All I wanted was a conversation and physical contact! Actually, to be more clear, by conversation I mean I wanted them to feel the need to talk to me. I never called. I received calls. By physical contact, I mean that I never wanted to have intercourse. I just allowed second base. To me, not having intercourse signified safety. I was ready to confine myself between four walls and a locked door with someone I liked, but not enough to drop the last fabric of my physical privacy. Somehow, in my mind, it kept me safe from getting too emotionally invested. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to retain my cool-girl, don’t-need-no-one appearance intact in the face of that kind of intimacy. So in retrospect, it seems to me that my ‘hooking-up’ was not so much about seeking temporary partners, it was more about establishing power. To make myself needed, yet always be out of reach. Calling first would make me seem needy. Having sex would ruin my mystique. Male attention made me feel very empowered. Playing with their expectations, more so. And since there are no set rules for ‘hooking-up’, the line between casual and serious often got blurred. As soon as that happened, I ran. I did not want to put myself out there at any cost. I did not want to get truly invested in anyone, which I suppose is perfectly fine. It is a matter of choice, right?     But if I really look within – I think it was ok up to a point and not in some ways. It was a problem that I wasn’t respectful of other people’s feelings. That I refused to acknowledge someone’s hurt. I know that acknowledging it may not have helped greatly, it probably would have made things more complicated, and well, hurt is hurt. But it would have been human. It would have been kind. It would have been to take responsibility for being part of something. Now, years later, I ask myself if that was my way of ‘dealing’ with the big break up. I perhaps hurt a lot of feelings just to save my own. I understand that hurt is inevitable in relationships. But, I often find myself asking if I was secretly deriving some pleasure out of seeing other people hurt over me, just because I was hurt over someone else. My behaviour had bordered on predatory. This realisation horrifies me. The ‘hook-up phase’ lasted about a year. I found someone I really liked and was able to trust. We dated for a couple of years and are now married. When I look back at that year, I feel a little bit wiser but also somewhat guilty. Now, I want to refrain from creating false binaries here of me as villain and those guys as victims. It’s more complicated than that. However, I do want to take responsibility for my erroneous ways. For my carelessness and lack of empathy. To be truly intimate with someone is to expose all your vulnerabilities and weaknesses and insecurities. It’s a slippery slope because it’s difficult to tell how the other person would take it. This one friend of mine was told by a guy that she “needed to lose weight”. I was once told by someone that “I’m an emotional mess” and “not the clear-headed girl” he thought I was. Such experiences make cynics out of the best of us. But regardless of how (secretly) glorified cynicism is, it takes you away from the sweet-moments you might otherwise experience in life. I think, no-strings-attached relationships are great! Some people feel sorted with just that whereas for some people it’s a phase. To each their own. If the present me were to advise the younger me, I’d tell her to continue having fun. Meet new people, have safe sex and make memories. But also be respectful of individuals and not fall in the trap of unfairly judging them. Forge relationships that are based on mutual respect no matter how short-lived you know they will be. And most of all, not be afraid of getting hurt. You will learn to handle it. Ila lives in Bangalore. She likes to read and daydream. 

When Pets Walk In On Sex

Let’s face it, pets do become like family for most people. While we may all have worked out ways of getting away from our families in the pursuit of ishq, animal children have a sneaky way of sticking around and refusing to be shooed out of the room.

If you've been on Tinder lately, you might have noticed this trend where every second person is smooching their doggies. (This is separate from the amazing statistics that one out of 10 Tinder profile photos is a tiger) Unless you absolutely hate the idea of pets, you are most likely to think it’s very cute and feel warm, fuzzy-type feelings. If you’re an actual dog-loving person, it might even make you do that much sought-after thing — swiping right. But here’s the more complicated question. What if you show up to a person’s house and the dog is there throughout? Or say you are the one with the pet and are also expecting some action. Let’s face it, pets do become like family for most people. While we may all have worked out ways of getting away from our families in the pursuit of ishq, animal children have a sneaky way of sticking around and refusing to be shooed out of the room. For people who have never faced this scenario, this might seem like a complete non-issue. Can’t you ignore them? Er… no. Having a pet could be entertaining, or a serious kabab mein haddi disaster.  

Scene #1 When they watch but are not impressed by the movie

They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, and that’s exactly what our friend Simran chooses to do with her spaniel who won’t be dethroned from his napping spot at the edge of the bed. It’s not ideal but a lot easier than the Herculean effort it takes to get him to leave when he is in Kumbhakaran mode. “We’d do it and he would sleep on the other side of the bed or near our feet. Wouldn’t wake him even when movements became vigorous.” One time though, he woke up. “I didn’t want him to see so I closed his eyes,” says Simran. Luckily for Simran’s feelings, he went back to sleep. Some people don’t have a problem with the pet lying peacefully at one side of the room. Cats especially, seem to be wise enough to park themselves sedately at the edge of the scene. “We forget she’s even there,” says Chirag. “One time I did look up to see her watching us with big contemptuous eyes. I swear she winked.” Simran and Chirag are among a lucky group whose pets are pretty relaxed. They’re not exactly disinterested in what’s going on, but they do their own thing. It’s like they are watching those movies that are played on the bus. “It happens to us all the time that he’s around. One time he licked his bum,” says Neha, talking about her very hyper dog. “But he’s either an engaged spectator or he’s like 'God get a room'." What happens if the ustaads actually try to be part of the action?

Scene #2 When they would like a role

“My Doberman is not really a Doberman by nature. She’s very happy and always has to be the centre of every event, whether it’s cake cutting or sex. It’s a big problem because once we thought we had locked the door but she came bounding in and jumped on the bed and licked us both in the face and scratched our arms. Cute, but she massacred the mood,” says Meena, who now does the logical thing and checks that she’s really locked the door. Another friend, Rekha, talks about the mood kill factor that is her mad little puppy. “He once happily got very curious about my nipple when things were getting heated up and started sniffing it so we had to throw him out.” It can be worse. Piyush feels a jolt of panic, even remembering that horrible evening when his possessive dog bit his girlfriend. From the dog’s POV Piyush looked like he was being attacked. The girlfriend didn’t need anti-rabies injections but she didn’t agree to come over for a very long time after. The lesson to be learnt is pretty simple. If your pet is given to mood swings, it’s much much safer to tell them tata bye bye. Lock the door. You can resume your animal mummygiri once your lover has departed or after closing ceremony.

Scene # 3: When they get freaked out by the movie

Suresh has a funny problem. He’s worried that he has psychologically scarred his pet (unlike in Piyush’s case). “My dog watched us once and didn’t move, but started howling. He usually howls like that only if it’s Diwali and patakas are bursting. He didn’t stop howling for a long time and it got me really worried that I had upset him somehow.” Again, it might have been an idea to have asked the bal brahmachari to leave before proceedings began.

Scene # 4: When there is an 80's style comedy track

What if your pet has a slightly unruly bladder? “My dog farts a lot. One time, he was lying at the edge of the bed and farted on my boyfriend’s face as he reached over for his bag. We hadn’t gotten too far, but it completely ruined the moment,” said Anahita. Again, bigger disasters are possible too. Like Amit, who took a long time to get over the fact that he kicked over his own fish bowl while in the heart of things. The fish died. This is a little extreme, but another reminder of why it is a good idea to look around you and see if your pets are anywhere in the vicinity. If you have the option, make sure they’re outside, and deal with the whining, yelping or door-scratching. If, like Amit’s poor fish, they are immovable and fragile, then find another spot.

Scene # 5: When your co-star gets freaked out

So far we’ve dealt with cats and dogs, but what if you are nervous of being around animals? Have some childhood-wala fears or just can’t stand them? You need to be able to talk to your co-star about feeling uncomfortable, because nahi chalega if you’re only half involved, and half your head is worried about what the fur-ball is going to do next. Or you might even end up like those people who are scared but have been told some gyaan like 'oh the dog will sense your fear', and have to smile through clenched teeth. There’s nothing to win by creating extra complications for yourself by trying to be brave. And your lover will, in all likelihood, understand that you’d rather do the movie without the extras around. If you are the pet owner, as hard as it might be to digest, your other half might not feel the same love for your animal child, and you have to respect that. (Their lukewarm feelings or animosity towards your pet might make you do katti eventually, but that’s a different story altogether.) What about more unconventional pets? Sunita remembers that her boyfriend in college acquired a snake for a brief while. A harmless snake, she was told. “Harmless is fine and all but how could he expect me to make out with him with that thing in the room? Half my attention was always on it, and after two failed attempts I said that’s it. Not happening.” Luckily, for their love life, the hostel authorities found out and flipped. It's not just Adam and Eve who bid bye, bye to the snake in the bagicha of love.

How I Helped My Mother Watch Porn and Other Stories

Can a young woman learn to accept her mother too is a sexual being?

 About six months ago, my mother called me on the phone, and said, “mujhe blue film dekhni hai”. “Wow,” I remember thinking, that term still exists. She told me that she’s heard of people watching porn on the phone, and asked me if that’s possible. I told her that that requires a 3G connection, and sent her a link to watch it on the computer instead. She was really coy about it. Later, I spoke to some of my colleagues and friends about this conversation. I’d say, “Hey, do you want to hear this bizarre conversation my mum just had about sex?”, and they’d get really uncomfortable and say, “Uuuuhh, we don’t want to hear about that.” People are awkward about the idea of their parents having sex, but why would they also be awkward with hearing about what my mother or what she has to say?   What makes sex a topic of conversation which should be avoided at all times within families? I am a polyamorous pansexual individual and have had multiple conversations around sex with a number of people — age, gender and familiarity level no bar. Talking about my personal experiences or general conversations around sex has never bothered me. Yet, when it comes to discussing sex with my parents, it becomes a point of discomfort for most. Parents, like any other set of individuals, have sex, yet conversations about their sex lives, is something most of us are not easy around — although we will readily share articles about how parents should accept their children’s sex lives! So why not the other way around? When I mention my parents’ sex lives to my peers (and sometimes even when I think about it to myself) I feel a bit strange. My friends have told me that they feel uneasy even when siblings spill the beans on their sex lives. My mother is a very cool person, ahead of her time, but somehow also very much part of the society she comes from. I feel like my mother would be a very different person had she not been in Kanpur. She lives a fairly independent, pretty content life. She’s a housewife in her fifties, and performs many tasks that are generally entrusted to men. Bank work, paperwork or documentation, taking care of the office… if I had to ever get my passport made, it’d never be my father I’d turn to. My mother, she gets things done. She also believes that women should have their own money. My mum’s assumption is that there are many things that men will not allow you to do, so you should save your own money. So when you want to do something, you can use your own savings, and not be answerable to anyone. So, she’d go around helping other women put money in their bank accounts, providing logistical support when a friend wants to start her own small business, and keeping busy. So much of my feminism has come from the ways my mother has responded to patriarchal notions. I’ve heard stories of her childhood where she was not allowed to get an education, but she maneuvered, and told her family, “This is the college I’m choosing. The bus will drop me outside the college, which makes more sense for me because otherwise, I won’t be able to get an education at all. So, let me just make a choice that will ensure that my brothers don’t think I’m going somewhere else.” On the topic of my marriage, she’d say that people want women to get married because they can’t earn. Now that I’m earning for myself, she’s okay with me not getting married, even though relatives object.   I moved out of home for college when I was 18. Around that time, once, my mother called me and said that she felt depressed, like her life had no purpose. Alarmed, I came back home promptly, and she told me, “teen maheene se tumhaare papa ne humko chuaa bhi nahi hai(Your father hasn’t even touched me in the last three months)," which was her way of saying that they hadn’t had sex. I remember thinking, “What am I supposed to do?! I can’t really go to my father and say, ‘well, get it going!’” It felt really bizarre back then. But it wasn’t the first time we’ve talked about sex. Over the years, I have had a number of conversations with her, where she has spoken of her sex life, the idea of pleasure, erotica, sexual desire, sex as taboo, procreation, motherhood, etc. My first distinct memory of such a conversation was when I was in school. A relative who had recently gotten married came to my house to ask her some advice. My mother asked me to go to my room. But later she discussed the conversation with me. The relative had some out-there questions, like “Do we have two uteruses?” Being a teenager who was studying some biology in school, I remember thinking, “Wow, she is way older than I am. How does she not know?!” It was my first realisation that women knew so little about their own bodies.   But that conversation with my mother, though, was about things none of us would have ever learnt in biology class. She talked to me about marital rape, and she told me that in a marriage, it is better for the woman to consent than to make themselves vulnerable to violence or marital rape, because she had heard so much about it. Yes, now when I look back at it I do think it was a patriarchal idea. But it also opened up conversations about sex between us. Of course, I’d seen her laugh with her friends at sexual innuendo before that. I find it interesting to think about my mother because we are supposed to be a sex positive generation and our parents from a generation which did not talk about sex. My mother has been quite vocal in expressing her sexual desire. Most of our conversations around sex happen in Hindi, and often, without mentioning the word. During the marital rape conversation, for instance, she said, “Shaadi mein bohot buraa ho sakta hai, toh isliye haan kar deni chaahiye. (Terrible issues can arise in a marriage, so it is better to just say yes.)” After someone in my family got married, she asked her, “Kya tum satisfied ho? (Are you satisfied?)” to ask if they had sex on the suhaag raat. Sometimes, she asks me for how long I’d continue studying, and that I should enjoy life. When I reply that I am having fun, she says, “Kuch cheezein tum shaadi ke baad hi kar sakti ho. (You can do some things only after marriage.)” But at the same time, she is very comfortable discussing her sex life with me. I think the reason she is so open about it is because she treats me as her equal. After I moved out for college, our relationship evolved. She no longer saw me as only her child, but as an independent adult. On the other hand, I learned to look at her as a woman and not just a mother. Moreover, others just assume she has no sexual desire, due to her age. Sure, she’s more shy about talking about her own desires, than if we were commenting on general practices. She’s otherwise very confident. She’s a very inquisitive person, and whenever we talk, she’s always asking questions. She’s simultaneously a very spiritual person. Every six months, she has a new God to pray to. She likes reading, so she will read the same scripture a thousand times over. She just celebrated her 35th wedding anniversary, and she’s very excited to be going to Goa. She asked me, “Is it okay if I don’t have a bikini?” I also get to hear random details, and how she’s trying to work through situations, like how my dad is becoming fat, and she sometimes finds it difficult to have sex with him.   This brings me back to the question: Why it is that when we hear about the sexual experiences of family members, we feel like running away? A couple of reasons came up during my discussions with my peers. One was that they are parents and that there’s a generational gap. Another response was that so much of our understanding of sex comes from porn (and we watch crazy, random things), and envisioning our siblings or parents doing stuff like that is weird. For others, parents having sex is a reminder of the fact that they were created through a sexual act. Sometimes, parents say things like, “we were at this place when you were conceived”, and that makes people uneasy. Moreover, conversations with parents would give clues to their sex lives, and that worried my friends. Most of these reasons don’t hold water, though. We have friends who have children, and we don’t mind talking to them about sex. We have conversations with people much older or younger than us. We don’t have a problem with the idea of our friends, acquaintances or anybody we have non-sexual relations with as sexual beings. Then why our parents? If our existence in the world is through a pleasurable act of companionship between two individuals, why should it be a mind block? Why would anyone not want to know about how they were created? I want to know all the details! When I had the porn conversation with my mother, and I gave her the link to watch porn, she asked me, “How do you know all this?” I remember being very uncomfortable, and after talking for a while about how I use my laptop to watch porn, I replied, “Ma, I’m not having this conversation with you.” That’s a limitation when I am talking to my mother about sex. I cannot give her examples about my sex life, which is how it works with other people. It’s always a don’t-ask-me-how-I-know, sort of thing.   Once, I was showing her pictures of pride parade, hoping to come out to her, and she asked me, “toh yeh sab hijre hote hain kya?” I could sense the awkwardness, and often, these conversations with her are very politically incorrect. I said, “nahin nahin” and proceeded to discuss queerness, ending with, “baahar toh shaadi-vaadi bhi karke rehte hain.” We have an unsaid agreement about discomfort. When she gets awkward with the direction of our conversation, I usually know. She won’t say, “don’t say such things”, or “you haven’t seen the world”, or anything like that. She will just nod and get silent. She will stop prodding for answers. That’s a signal for me that I need to stop. “Maybe today is not the time,” I conclude. And not all our conversations are learning graphs now. I don’t see my discussions with my mom as her learning from me or me learning from her. I just recognise them for the fact that they happen. I’d like to come out to my parents as a feminist, as queer, and also an activist, but these matters aren’t things they‘d understand, I feel. I’ve spoken to my mother about how, if at all I get married, I will not do it in the way that most people in the family have. It will be a court marriage, with just a few people, because I don’t believe in the concept of marriage. For them, right now, because of their ideas about sex linked to romantic relationships, I’m pretty much a non-sexual being. There is a need to see the sex-positivity of previous generations, as well as perhaps our lack of it. Because as sex positive we might think we are, when it comes to parents, we still seem to be subject to our conditioning. Unless of course your mother asks you how to watch porn. Then you have a whole new beginning. Nimisha is feminist and researcher, who has recently been indoctrinated to love cats. She is an amateur artist, trying to grow a creative bone in her body.   

I Came Out To My Mom And Now I Think She's Fomosexual

A mother's totally unexpected response to her daughter's coming out!

 FOMO: Fear Of Missing OutAchha Ma, I have something to tell you…” We were lying sprawled at diagonal angles on the L-shaped sofa, and to all appearances, it seemed like just another day in the life of a diasporic desi daughter. It had been four days since my annual trip home. The novelty had worn off, and nightly chats dwindled. My mother had resumed her favourite post-dinner activity: Facebook Feed Analysis plus Commentary. “Haan toh bolo na, I’m listening” she said, still peering into her phone. Puddup, puddup. My mother was liking things vigorously. Maybe that was a good sign. “It might seem very shocking.” I had rehearsed and revised this preamumble a million times on my long flight back. “Nothing shocks me.” Still not looking up, still liking. “Okay. Achha so. I’m seeing someone…means, dating someone…means, relationship.” The practised script was fast fleeing from my brain, causing a loud pounding in my chest as it galloped away. As she finally looked up, her expression was a mixture of mild concern and extreme, genuine relief. “Arre that’s great! I’m so happy for you! Very good. What’s shocking about that?” What indeed? My mother had dispassionately observed my prolonged, uneventful long-distance relationship with a boy from college, offering neither advice nor criticism. That was three years ago. As far as she was concerned, there had been no men of romantic significance in my life since then. Technically, she was right. She prodded on impatiently, phone forgotten: “So? Who is it?” “Soooo, that’s the thing. The person I’m seeing…it is not a gents. It is a ladies.” I was trying to find the most non-sexual term to describe a woman. In retrospect, a noun commonly used to refer to spaces where women are in close proximity with their genitals exposed – ‘ladies’ as in loo - was probably a stupid choice. Anyway. “Oh.” I had expected her to be angry, but she just looked confused. This I could handle. Mostly everyone I had told had responded with some stage of polite puzzlement. “Oh? So have you always been, ki States jaake hua?” “Oh? So what about that guy you were with?” “Oh? So how do you people actually, you know, like, do stuff?” “Oh? So you just realized? I always suspected this about you.”   My mother was clearly experiencing all these stages at the same time. I magnanimously offered to guide her out of perplexity. “Ma, don’t worry. I haven’t told many people. It is a lot to handle, I understand. Take your time. We can talk about it. Tell me what you are thinking.” Long pause. I steeled myself for a lecture about society, morals, family, nature, motherhood, tick-tock biological clock, etc. “Hmm,” she began, “Hmm. Achha tell me one thing, how do you know the difference?” “The difference?” “You know. The difference. Between friendship and something more. How do you know that you are ahem…attracted…ahem…” “I don’t know Ma, you just know. It is just a feeling.” “Feeling? Waise toh I’ve also had feelings” advanced my mother. “You know, sometimes I also feel – ladies, they are just better…” I had mentally prepared myself for every type of feeling I thought my mother could possibly have – angry-feeling, sad-feeling, betrayed-feeling, scared-feeling, log kya kahenge-feeling – but this homophilic fellow-feeling was totally off-script. “Haan ladies are very nice. You know, they understand each other. They have the same problems – periods, patriarchy, …” I tried to make vague general comments to veer the conversation away from any more talk of feelings. But my mother’s concentration was now wholly focused on Lesbian Life Analysis plus Commentary. “Your friend…she’s also…?” “Gay? Yes she is.” “Hmm. In my hostel also there were some girls who were…you know…very close. No one said, but we all knew. Always doing ghuss-puss together, always giggling.” She paused. On her face I could sense a profound realization dawning. “So does this mean you” she said slowly, “does this mean you never have to deal with men?” “Not never…” “But never in …personal-type situations?” “No I guess not.” “You are lucky. Men are useless.”   My mother’s face was contorting into a kaleidoscope of expressions that was strangely familiar. I had encountered that face somewhere else before. It was the look that many of my undergraduate students wore on Friday evenings when, instead of underage over-the-top partying, they were forced to sit in yet another ‘Research Methodologies’ tutorial. It was that singular combination of premature retrospection, pre-emptive nostalgia and utter despair – it was unmistakable. But what was it doing here on my mother’s face? Could it be…? Did my mother have…FOMO? “And you will never have to get married also?” “It probably won’t be possible, legally…377…” “Wow, you are very lucky. Marriage is useless.” I knew what was coming. A diatribe on the Many Forms of Marital Distress was my mother’s conception of girl talk. It began with the usual “Look at me. Highly educated, highly qualified with two full-time jobs. One at work and one at home. Cooking, cleaning, making the bed, washing the clothes, who will do all this? I only have to do it na…” But today instead of ending on a note of resignation, she began to bubble over into righteous dismay. “Why should I do it? I never chose this life! In my time we didn’t have any choices. Happy ke unhappy, who cares? What other options are there?” I was not sure if this was a rhetorical question. “But there can be, na!” she roared on. Clearly it was. “See in that film Fire – those women’s husbands? Totally useless! But at least they are nice to each other. I still remember that one scene, where one lady is massaging the other’s feet with so much love. You think that can happen ever with men? No way! You’ve seen your father, can’t even carry his own plate back into the kitchen, forget anything else.” I made a noise that was intended to be a sympathetic cluck, but it came out sounding like an impatient groan. “No point in complaining” she continued, “I can’t change anything now. But you go” “Go where?” “Means go and do your thing.” “Okay, thanks for the support, but I’m not going anywhere.” I put her foot on my knee and started to press above the heel, the way I knew she liked. My mother slid back into the cushions and picked up her phone again. Puddup puddup puddup. Sandhya Y (not her real name) is an educator and idli-enthusiast who likes to spend her time reading, singing and doing jigsaw-puzzles.

I LEARNT HOW TO EXPRESS AFFECTION AND LOVE IN FRIENDSHIP THE HARD WAY

Sometimes I think that friendship and hugging are oddly co-related. Both exist in a place of love which is somewhere between sexual love and cordial acquaintance.

 Sometimes I think that friendship and hugging are oddly co-related. Both exist in a place of love which is somewhere between sexual love and cordial acquaintance. Sometimes friendships also fluctuate between friend-love and romantic interest, just like hugs can have myriad meanings. But is that such a bad thing? If a friend has feelings for you, is it necessarily a calamity, a shame, a problem? I didn’t always have a weird relationship with hugging. As a young person, I have enjoyed tight or squishy hugs from family and friends. They made me feel warm all over. I never thought too much about it. But, over time I have been uncomfortable, terrified and petrified at the idea of having to hug people at gatherings. It started after a few conversations where I heard friends discuss hugs from friends as over-familiar and predatory. I became a little self-conscious and aware of how simple gestures could be misconstrued. It didn’t help that some people to whom I gave warm hugs, as simple human affection, often misunderstood it and became stalkers later. It made me feel as though the conclusions of my friends were right, that hugs can give rise to thoughts of intimacy and unwanted advances.  I am not one for half-hearted hugs, which I find more uncomfortable than not giving a hug at all, so eventually, in social situations I always chose the latter. The result of this was that before and after any party or gathering, I found ways to make my presence inconspicuous or scurry away without anyone noticing. This went on for long, until recently. About 3 years ago, I met a beautiful young boy named Parikshit at a city film festival we both were volunteering at. We were both in committed relationships at the time but that didn’t stop him from flirting with me. He would unabashedly compliment me on my looks and personality throwing in a filmi dialogue or two. It was fun and felt harmless and flattering. Since he was younger to me by a few years and committed, I didn’t give it much thought. It was amusing and sweet to see how he always managed a break during the time I was out on my mine and pretended like it was a coincidence.   Two days into the festival, he came out to me as a transgender man.  He shared that he had watched a recent episode of Satayamev Jayate about alternate genders and sexualities and finally realised as well as accepted who he was.  Apparently he had seen me on the show and remembered me clearly. While it wasn’t the first time that people had come out to me I found this interesting because I knew of very few transmen who had sensitized their entire families, were out, proud and, well, doe-eyed romantics, which Parikshit absolutely was. The festival ended. There was no real reason for us to meet. But he would keep sending me flirtatious messages asking to take me out on a date. Not wanting to lead him on I refused and told him of my disinterest. This did not deter him from pursuing a meet-up. After many No’s I finally agreed to meet him for a coffee, when he told me about his upcoming surgery as part of his transition and the fact that he was a bit anxious about it. On the day of our ‘coffee- date’ he came wearing a very smart black shirt with a great pair of denims. He had also maaroed some bhaari perfume. We sat down and ordered our coffees. He flirted a bit but I managed to steer the conversation to his operation. He shared that it was a complicated one requiring removing his uterus. He said he wished to donate it to a transwoman friend if that were possible. This was the first time I got to know about the different body complications that a sex re-assignment procedure might entail, especially for someone already on hormone therapy. He was a bit nervous but not scared. He felt that he would be closer to the body of his soul. He then steered back the conversation to some flirting. I laughed as I always did. I know some people get annoyed with such persistence and feel it is disrespecting consent, but for me, it was a matter of whether I am comfortable or not. I had never found his flirtation aggressive or threatening. There was something sweethearted and innocent about it. I didn’t think there is anything wrong in him expressing his interest as long as I did not miscommunicate mine. His flirts made me laugh and feel almost affectionate. Yet, I was guarded because I did not want to lead him on in any way. At the end of the meeting, he decided to walk me to an auto-rickshaw. We had an awkward moment because I sensed he was feeling vulnerable and expected a warm, comforting gesture from a friend. And so, I was in a hurry to get in, to avoid the uncomfortable parting hug that seemed to be hovering in the air! I dithered, then shook his hand, wished him all the best and got into the auto. But as the auto- driver put the auto in gear I felt that maybe I should have hugged him.Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad. In that moment I felt like perhaps it was a wrong decision not to hug someone who was feeling vulnerable in order to be absolutely pakka and politically correct. The next day I was travelling to Singapore. As I landed, checked into the hotel and enabled my wi-fi, I saw a message from Parikshit’s partner. She asked me to inform everyone from our work group that Parikshit was no more. He had had passed away on the operation table. I couldn’t believe it. The crying began and continued for a few hours and sporadically the next few days. Mixed up with the pouring of tears was the thought that I withheld a loving embrace from someone I truly cared about. I wasn’t able to forgive myself. A few days later I shared this feeling of regret at his condolence meeting. My friends there made me understand that we need to forgive ourselves for the situations we are in if we are to truly move on. They all shared happy stories of his flirting and incessant talking about me. From that day till now I hug people. I hug them a lot. I even hug people who are strangers while leaving gatherings – unless they are uncomfortable.  I have stopped doubting myself of being unable to handle an accusation of an unwanted advance just because of hugging.  Previously I feared that if a friend who has an interest in me is hugged and they continue to pursue the interest, then it would become awkward. I imagined it to become even crueler when they would be rejected outright.  I didn’t want to handle the emotional mess it would entail hence I didn’t allow friends with some form of interest to just gradually settle into simpler friendship. I wonder if friendship is really that simple and if it can always be devoid of loving feelings and intimate touches? What does the word ‘just friends’ really mean? Can someone who loves us eventually actually become ‘just friends’? Is the fear of managing the mess stopping us from building intimate friendships and making us with-hold our love? Sometimes I think also that we see all touch as sexual in one way and sexual as a problem in so many ways. Society also acts as if the only intimate relationship outside blood that matters is marriage or romantic relationships. Friendship and its mixed intimate feelings and layers is something we do not discuss much or think seriously about enough. I believe now that hugs are a truly wonderful thing. If there is anything that resembles love in all its human magical form it’s a hug and the biggest punishment you could give someone is to take away touch.  A single hug can provide enormous support when we are low or anxious. It communicates that we love and care. That we think that the person we are hugging is special and we want them to fare well. That we have only their best interests at heart. And if there is some emotional confusion, that we trust them, ourselves and the idea of loving friendship enough to deal with it as it comes. Here is hoping you never lack for hugs to give and take. Shreya is 30 years old and loves swimming, cooking and Facebooking.

Dosti is Pyaar: Being Lost and Finding Friends

If pyaar is dosti, it took me a while to understand that that dosti is also pyaar, but more forgiving.

 Shahrukh Khan in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai makes a solid argument when he says that Pyaar Dosti Hai ( Love is friendship) I quite agreed with him. I’ve had two long term relationships, and I think that from a while before the relationship began to a while before the relationship ended, my partner was my best friend. Because just like Shahrukh, I too believe that “Agar wo mera sabse acha dost nahi ban sakta, to mai usse pyaar kar hi nahi sakti.” It’s been two years since my last break-up, but there is no dearth of pyaar in my life, because there is no dearth of dosti in my life. Because if pyaar is dosti, it took me a while to understand that that dosti is also pyaar, but more forgiving. Two years ago, I was in a relationship that had me in the worst phase of depression I have been through. During the two years that I was in the relationship, I had started to slowly distance myself from my old school friends. We were a small group of classmates from boarding school that landed up going to different colleges in Delhi. While my friends from school met with each other frequently, hanging out, going on trips together, I was too caught up in exploring my college life through theatre and then later filmmaking in my masters, to give too much importance to ‘hanging out’. I’d go every now and then to a birthday party, but I realized more and more that there was a lot in my friends’ lives that I didn't know of, and that there was little of mine that I was sharing with them. All this while I also knew that they were still close friends of mine, just ones I didn't have any time for. Five years of college went by rather smoothly. I was self involved, and that worked out very well for me. I made good friends in both the institutions I went to, and between relationships and current dosti, purani dosti was sitting around comfortably in the background, the pyaar for the dosts was still strong, but I was cashing in heavily on the forgiving nature of friendship. College done, work began. A year into the working adult life, I found myself in a really tough spot. I hated my job, but I couldn't leave it right away, and I was in an abusive relationship, that I didn't have the courage to leave. I realised that one of the reasons why I had become even more distanced from all my friends was because of the relationship I was in. Any amount of time I spent with him was not enough and every time I had to spend one evening away from him and with my friends, he would sulk and behave angrily with me. So I avoided my friends even more. Add to that the fact none of my friends knew that I was dating this guy. Because we were in the same college, we had decided at the time we would keep our relationship a secret, and then it just went on for too long as a secret and it seemed like it was too late to tell, and he was paranoid about sharing the information with anyone. So when the depression hit, I had nowhere to go. It wasn't as if I didn't have any friends but  I had just acted too selfish for too long to be able to ask for help. Or so I thought. One night, after a bad day at work, I was sitting my bed, tearful and lonely, because my partner had refused to meet me because I had gotten late at work ( abusive relationship 101). I reached out for my phone and texted Kirat, a friend from school who lived nearby but I didn't visit very often. ‘Hi, what’s happening?’ ‘Nothing. You tell me.’ ‘ Nothing, just getting bored at home.’ ‘ Come over? ‘Okay!’That’s how easy it was. I went over and drank some wine and mostly bitched about work. Then I texted again the next day. “Should I get some wine?” Kirats house is like the couch from Central Perk in Friends. There were always people there, her friends, her sisters’ friends, who had in turn all become friends with each other to create this ever growing  and ever changing group of familiar faces that was always there. It was a great relief from my isolation.  Here, I wasn’t constantly being criticised for everything I did,  people laughed at my jokes. I laughed, in what seemed like ages. These were people who were very different from me, sometimes had unfamiliar tastes in films and books and probably different priorities in life. But that didn’t matter, they just happened to be in the room and I enjoyed being there. I used to think that I needed to constantly stay in the company of people who gave me something to think about, who added to my intellectual and professional growth, but I was wrong. I just needed to be around people who responded to me as I was - and in the process gave me practice in becoming a little more like myself. I starting being relieved whenever my partner would refuse to meet me in anger, I’d run over to Kirats, ready for a great session of wine and gossip. I was slowly able to build myself up from a place where my image of myself was based solely on my partner's opinion and expectations of me to a more multifaceted self. I told her I had been seeing someone, she wasn’t surprised. I told her that I was in therapy, she was surprised.  She asked me if it helped, I told her it did. She said she felt as if she could use some help too. I found out that she too had been dealing with a messy relationship. I eventually broke up with my boyfriend, as advised by my therapist and the few friends I confided in about my situation. But I don’t think I would have been able to do that and deal with the severe depression that I was in, had I not reached out to my friends and regained some kind of emotional support system. I leaned on them heavily, we leaned on each other heavily. Cursing men who hurt our feelings, telling each other the extra weight was looking great! I found great camaraderie in my female friendships, because somehow even though we were living very different lives, being the same age, our experiences were similar. When you are in your mid twenties and not quite happy with yourself and your life- assurance from a comrade takes you a long way. Which is not to say that a good friendship is just one big ego boosting bonanza. A trusted friend has to be able to call out your mistakes and shortcomings, the really close ones have to be able to be harsh with you sometimes. I eventually opened up to a few more of my friends about depression and anxiety, and the sharing of such information was often returned with unloading of some burdens from the other end as well. There is great comfort in knowing someone's miseries and having shared yours with someone. Many of us grow up to think friendships are an auxiliary relationship that go along with our lives as we engage in more important matters like professional growth and romantic relationships. But friendships take work too. Many of us, who live away from their families, find ourselves developing friendships that are  as intimate or even more than the ones with our families. While we try to find a place for ourselves in the adult world, where we are worth as much as we are able to present, friendships allow you to be yourself. You are loved for who you are, not what you are able to do. They are like log sheets of your life, they know you well enough to not judge what you do, they pull your leg endlessly for your quirks and shortcomings, but they’ll never want you to change according to some template. Also, friendships are not just support systems that we NEED when we are down, they are an essential part of our everyday. Granted that sometimes, our regular contact with our friends could only be through the memes they share on facebook or through their snapchat or insta stories, but they are part of our daily lives. Tragedy doesn’t strike every day, and while I am grateful to have friends whose shoulder I can cry on, I am equally grateful that I can watch Game of Thrones with them. That’s what we need friends for, to watch films with, to try out new places to eat, to share a pizza with, or just to share book quotes and memes that resonate with us - to find out who we are, to become ourselves. Friendships command immense amount of affection, like any other relationship. They require as much work. There are rules and commitments.  And they have as much value, if not more, than any romantic relationship or professional achievement. What’s more, having a good friend-life can help you be more together, more confident, and maybe, more likely to have a good love-life, instead of a needlessly messy one. Pyaar is special, I want it, but life is good while waiting for love to come around. Currently, the most intimate relationships I have are with my friends, activities span from an ‘Eli re Eli’ kind of girly evenings spent talking about boys and clothes to all nighters discussing script ideas that will make us the next big thing in the indie film scene of the country. I think back often to the lonely place I had put myself in, uncertain that I had someone who I could have reached out to, and I feel happy that I gave dosti my best shot!   Geeta is a 25 year old filmmaker .

I Felt Humiliated for Contracting an STI But I Know I'm Touchable, Lovable and More-Than-Sexable

Getting an STI is surrounded by shame and shaming, even at times, by doctors.

 Scratch scratch scratch. My inner thighs were having a field day with all my scratching. It was September 2015 and I had returned from a vacation to all this scratching. People scratch things periodically in Bombay — the holding poles on trains, sweaty hair, sweatier necks, each others’ back (metaphorically, too). I figured my itch was just a back-in-Bombay thing. I worked two jobs for 14 hours every day. So, sweat was life, life was sweat. But a week passed and I was still scratching. This time, scratching brought along redness to the party. I’d suspected a urinary tract infection and drank more water than a fish does everyday. But the darn itching wouldn’t stop and gnarring redness had developed around my vagina. I was sexually active with my then-partner at the time and I began dreading the obvious alternative — a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Approaching my parents, who were both doctors, was out of question unless I’d decided I no longer needed a home. Doctor or no doctor, parents were parents and sex-shex was still hai rabba at home. Another hindrance was finding a doctor my parents didn’t know. I did not want to hear “hai mera Guddu tujhe kya hua wahan” from my friendly neighbourhood Doctor Uncle, only to come back home to murderous silences. I was desperate. The scratching and redness was accompanied by pain; the likes of which I’d never experienced in my life. I approached a friend’s mother, a reputed gynaecologist, for help. I entered her clinic and I waited in incredible pain in a serpentine queue for my turn. The doctor, while efficient, was extremely busy. She took one look at my vagina and diagnosed me with Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) 2. Since she was sure of her diagnosis, she did not prescribe any tests. In hindsight, I think this was a huge mistake. More on that later. HSV2 is generally associated with unhygienic conditions and general lack of good personal habits. Or so I thought. Shame trickled its way in. I felt humiliated for having contracted this disease. I was under intensive treatment for the next 10-14 days. The medication didn’t help with the pain, but it did arrest the infection. Slowly, the redness started reducing. In hindsight, I will always be grateful to my then partner for supporting me through this ordeal. He came from an orthodox family and didn’t take the news too well. He was just as freaked out as I was and struggled to understand the source of it. However, he accompanied me to doctor’s visits and stayed by my side, throughout. It’s been nearly two years since that moment at the doc’s. Here are the two things to note. 1. When I left the doctor’s clinic, I had no idea how I contracted this condition. 2. I was given no counselling. Just medicine after medicine. Why didn’t I know where I’d gotten herpes? There was a significant gap between my last sexual activity and contracting the disease. Five months before coming back to Mumbai, I’d met someone during my travels and we’d enjoyed a casual fling that involved intercourse. But we were always careful about protection and I had no reason to suspect a history of STIs from him. Same story with my then-partner. All his test results for STIs turned out to be negative. The second factor was even more harrowing. Listen up. I want to tell you what they never told me. If you’ve been diagnosed with HSV (1 or 2), counselling is and should be a part of your treatment. HSV2 is highly painful and traumatising. A major percentage of my pain was caused by my own mental state. A good doctor will counsel your way out of it. Not only this, it is only during counselling sessions that you will be eased into understanding the long-term consequences of contracting some STIs. With no counselling, I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that the strain of HSV2 virus stays in your body forever. We’re talking about living an entire life with a little secret. I wasn’t ashamed of it, but it still makes for awkward conversation with every partner you have after — since it is my responsibility to inform them before engaging in any sexual activity. I found out about this on good ol’ internet. A good doctor, through a counselling session, will ease you into this process and help you manage this situation (and it is manageable). Internet diagnosis can be dangerous but in my case, it had its merits. As much as WebMD increased my paranoia, I am actually grateful to have access to this information. Otherwise, I would have never known the baggage the disease brings, would have never sought further counselling, wouldn't have read accounts of other people suffering from the disease. And I wouldn't have known if the terrifying visuals of the sores during the outburst was normal. The doc didn't prepare me for just how unsightly it was going to be... I needed to see it on the internet to know if it'll pass. My suggestion to people suffering from these diseases is that they should speak to their physicians about what they research online. Being a more educated patient helps you ask the right questions in the often limited time one has with a doctor, as was with my case. What followed post-diagnosis was unquestionably the most emotionally draining two weeks of my life. Obviously, I could not go home — I was sure my parents would figure that something was up. So I had to spend my days oscillating between my then partner’s office and my friends’ homes. In pain. And no sleep. And did I already say, pain? In case, I haven’t made it clear already, pain is the only component of STI life. It is the sugar, spice, everything nice and chemical X. In the attempt to discover the mystery source of my infection, I did what I cringed hardest for. I called up some of my exes. I was thankful having made good choices in life when they all responded empathetically and with maturity. All the ghosts of the STI past cleared their tests. The source of my illness was still a mystery. But  phone calls led me to launch into another self-inflicted slut-shaming spree. It isn’t a nice feeling to shaadi-waali aunty yourself into questioning your sexual choices. Just as I was leaving the infection behind, I contracted secondary problems — yeast and fungal infections. By now, I’d completely lost my mind. I was done. I was ready to buy a new vagina. But no one told me how. A few months after the treatment, by which time the herpes outburst had receded, I went to a dermatologist. She told me that there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude that I’d indeed contracted herpes (at the time of meeting her). Her suspicion arose from the fact that I never had recurrences, something that’s fairly common with HSV2 patients. She suggested that some herpes viruses can be contracted as a child, can stay in your body and get activated when you become sexually active. My gynaecologist hadn't't informed me about this. Zilch. Neit. Nope. None. Treatment upon treatment, a mountain of medicines and counselling later, I reached a stage where I managed my history with the virus and learnt to build my sexual and mental life around it. It took a lot of carefully monitoring my habits and regular check-ups to keep my physical health in check. Mentally, I taught myself to not make this central to my life. Today, I feel comfortable talking about this to close friends because I know that it does not define me. As for the stigma, most of it is a result of all the conditioning we grow up with. STIs should not be taken lightly. But in our fear of avoiding STIs, we end up avoiding educating ourselves about it. Don’t go into the light is terrible advice. Don't listen to Hollywood. Go into the light and know your body. HSV2 changed the way I approached health and hygiene and in a lot of ways, the way I live my life today. Condoms do not guarantee safety, but once you’ve had a taste of what it’s like to be unsafe, you’d take every safety measure out there — even if some them come with false bottoms. It would be easy to believe that STIs spread only due to casual dating or through having multiple sexual partners. While there may be truth in being responsible with quantity, please note that people in monogamous relationships, too, can acquire STIs. I am one such example. I am touchable and lovable and more-than-sexable. I am also responsible. Don’t wait to learn it the hard way on how to be all these things at the same time. Trishya is a writer. She oscillates between being anti-fascist and anti-red velvet cakes. She an unhealthy affection for Beck.

Diary of An Indian Sex Educator

It was a co-ed school. But the boys were not going to learn about the body.

   Her: “Is it possible for you to talk on menstruation and child sexual abuse to young kids?” Me: “Sure! What age are they?” Her: “Studying in Class 5 and 6.” Me: “Great! That shouldn’t be a problem.” Her: “There is one thing though, you can’t talk about sex.” Awkward silence followed. I had no choice but to agree. This was my first encounter with sex-ed.   I had been working with a feminist organisation in Hyderabad for a year already. I was 24 years old. I trained on legal rights, human rights and legislations but had not started training on sex, sexuality or reproductive health, for that matter. Those were reserved for experienced trainers. The above conversation was merely an introduction to the long list of conditions sex educators must work with. To prepare for this class in a private school in a posh part of the city, I spent two weeks reading. I read about the human body. I studied how the parts looked. I read books for kids, for adults, for trainers, for teachers all in the hope that I would find the language to talk about sex without talking about sex. I worried about the language I could use. I worried about the details I could go into. I worried about the questions the girls would raise. A colleague advised me to stop fretting so much and just be honest and tell them everything I knew. I walked into a classroom full of excited 10-12 year old girls armed with illustrations, stories and honesty. Yes, only girls. It was a co-ed school. But the boys were not going to learn about the body. An illustrated and simple path was used to explain the body to them. We had two hours to ourselves. They asked questions about bodily changes. I responded to them as simply as I could, trying to conceal my uncertainty. To add to my unease, female teachers sat around the classroom like word-police to monitor the words used. I survived my first session. *          *          * After that first experience, I got more relaxed at doing sex-ed classes. I realised how relevant it was for girls (and boys!). I struggled trying to explain sex without saying sex. But in order to conduct this session, we negotiated to do a free session on gender, with both boys and girls in an older age group. The hope was that we would be able to touch some more complex issues as well while staying away from sex. One day a young girl from the same school came up after class to say, “Ma’am, there is a girl in my class who’s had…” Her voice drifted. She obviously had been warned to not say the word. I was terrified. How will I respond to her without using the forbidden word? What am I supposed to ask her now? Where were these kids having sex without any adult catching them? I found the words to ask her how she knew. She said she had seen them. The imagery that flooded my brain in those moments is hard to pen down. To be honest, I was shocked and worried for her and for the children she had seen engaging in the act. These kids were after all just 10. Seeing two people have sex must have raised all kinds of questions! But how could I even ask further? After a few moments of silence, I summoned the courage to ask her to describe what she saw. When she explained, I realised she hadn’t seen them have sex but seen them kiss. I was relieved. But kissing was taboo for me to address as well. I struggled to find words to help ease her worries and to say that they weren't actually having sex. To explain menstruation or puberty, and not sex or how reproduction works often means young girls and boys often have no idea HOW the sperm enters the female body. In their minds, it could have travelled through the mouth! Till of course, they discover the internet or maybe porn. As I continued on the path of sex-education, it only got more complicated. This wasn't an isolated experience where sex educators are encouraged to talk about menstruation, health, child sexual abuse and even violence without bringing up sex. We can explain the process of menstruation without talking about the male parts or male functions. But every time I left it at “When the sperm fertilises the egg”, a hand would go up in class, “But how?” Soon I learnt that their curiosity and questions were not the only things I would have to tackle. We used illustrations while talking about the body, sex and sexuality because we felt it would be easier to digest these concepts this way. Once my colleague and I were training a group of 80 women on sexual and reproductive rights in the old city of Hyderabad. There were women of all age groups, married, unmarried, young, sexually active, not active yet, the whole spectrum. We began with a few exercises through mapping of parts of the female body including sexual parts and in a box, the parts of the male body. Girl: Who wahan hota hai na. Us: Who kya hai? Aur kahan hai?Dikha toh do. Girl: *giggle* (Translation: That is there na? What is that? And where is it? Do show us.) It took us a good hour and a half to just get the parts of the body down on the chart paper. Many of them were not named and the shapes were unknown. Most of the women and girls didn't know about the several orifices in the female body. Ovaries were the easiest to name. Fallopian tubes existed somewhere in that area. Vagina and Uterus were hard to differentiate. They beat around the bush when asked about female pleasure. Anger, hate and pain were easier to pinpoint on the body. Pleasure, joy were more difficult. Giggles were the most common response to any question. They had trouble using the word 'penis'; forget drawing it. We moved on by showing illustrations with close ups of the body parts. Particularly sexual body parts. We also circulated a labelled drawing of the female sexual parts to show the many different parts of the body. To our surprise, one of the girls in the front row began to weep. I nudged my colleague who continued the class as I led the girl outside the classroom. Talking about the body, I have learnt, can lead to varied experiences. The young girl confessed that she had never seen a picture of a penis before. It was overwhelming for her. She told us that it was not like what she imagined or knew. She was shaken by the open conversation we were attempting. —- I was unnaturally nervous when I had to address my first mixed gender group. I had fallen deep into a comfort zone of only addressing same sex groups. Talk about this to both in the same room? Will they react well? Will the girls giggle? Will the boys be accepting? I was reminded of my own biology class on reproduction. My teacher made little or no eye contact with us. We all giggled. Not making eye-contact, was just like talking about menstruation, but not sex. But I had learnt that eye-contact helped. And one could talk about sex while having to talk about something else. It was a week-long course at a college in the city. HIV/AIDS was the chosen one. We had to talk about it (without talking about sex, remember!). Only relief was there weren't any teachers in the room. After breaking up the class into small groups, we handed out sheets of paper on HIV/AIDS and we sneakily added questions on sex, sexuality, masturbation. The questions were provocative, attempting to break myths about masturbation as well as sexual pleasures. The effect was beautiful. The class was initially shy, but as they realised this was a non-judgmental space they began to talk about how no one had ever used the word masturbation above a whisper. After their group work, we addressed the questions together. Some of them more vocal than the others but questions were answered in loud cheers of yes and no!   “Is masturbation dirty? - No. Can we have sex during menstrual cycle? - Yes. Condoms are 100% effective. - No.”  It was one of my most open and honest experiences during sex-ed. Students talked about how no one had ever spoken to them openly about sex which had led to several misconceptions. Especially about the female body and pleasure. Unfortunately when they discussed the class with their political sciences teacher, I received a look of disapproval from her the next day. I did not make eye-contact. I just smiled to myself. The sessions helped me see that it is never too late for a sex-ed class. But a safe (pun intended), fun and explorative space - where we can use the word sex, like we use other words.

Making Sense of An Ending

Yeh kya hua, kaise hua, kab hua, kyon hua, jab hua, tab hua oh chodo, yeh na socho!” (What happened – and how? Also, why? Well it was what it was, don’t wonder, just move on) Boundaries are ekdam people centred and are not just random rules. But they are also crucial for keeping the possibilities of both fantasy and Phantasy alive, to fantasise for ourselves, and to actualise desires in relationship to others. I met Mr. “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun” at a conference and very soon we exchanged numbers and started hitting local addas for drinks and conversation. I would like to describe him as smart, left-leaning thinker. I was not looking for anything serious. I was starving for physical intimacy – so sex, maybe, yes! Very soon we were hanging out at each other’s places and our flirting was electric with sexual interest in each other. So what was that point when consent happened – the delicious moment of giving in to desires? Interestingly, a very comprehensive, verbal discussion over consent happened! We usually understand consent and frame it in terms of mutuality, approvals and permission and I am all for it. But this was a 30-minute, detailed conversation about taking consent. A decorated, sophisticated understanding of verbal and non-verbal sexual advances and advancements. We were lying facing each other and he was fiddling with my hair. He offered to give me a massage and I assumed this was his way of advancing, so I extended myself to kiss him. But he stopped me to ask if all this was ok with me. I replied, “yes, is this is not what you want?” He again stopped and explained to me how much he wanted it but also wanted to know if I was ok with going ahead; that he wanted to ensure I wasn’t feeling pressured to give in for any reason. What an achievement, I thought! How often does one meet a man who compellingly negotiates and understands the context within which female desires operate, understands pleasure and serves you both on a platter? I don’t really meet men who are so careful of my needs and wishes and are ok following along within my comfort zone. Its always the teasing that leads its way to sex! Not a conversation. Consent is sexy! So hog! I thought. So, that’s how it was. I met someone, I liked the attention and never made a big deal about what kind of space we were in. I was very much preoccupied with my work and completing deadlines as well. I liked meeting him over casual drinks and then the casual staying over and a night of love making. He would dedicate music to me. He would read poetry in the middle of the conversation. He would offer to make a meal. But it was clear from the beginning that neither of us was looking for something more emotionally committed or even strongly romantic. Over time, the meetings dwindled a little. We were never the regular follow-up, always in touch kinds. But in the back of my head I just imagined him to be present in my life in the same way as before. One day he invited me to dinner at his friend's house. It was a weird evening for me as he did not even speak to me through the evening. I, without much questioning, decided not to be affected, to react. Thanks to my army-life social upbringing I take things personally only up to a point and I find my own ways to enjoy myself and socialise even if things are a little awkward. But within, it did affect me because I expected a courteous conversation as he had invited me. Clearly this created a sense of pause in me. Though we would text afterwards, I unconsciously limited my conversations and found myself focusing on other areas of my life. He would text me once in a while but for nothing specific – just jokes and cat pictures really. I would reply to his texts but never started any conversation that led to meeting. I’m not sure if I was expecting him to suggest it, but though sometimes he’d ask me, say, if I need chai in a joke, he never explicitly suggested meeting. Then, recently, we decided to get together for a few drinks. And as it happens, we got a little nostalgic about our old moments, and my curious self had to ask “Why did we stop having sex? How did we reach that point of conclusion? Since we had such an elaborate consensual discussion about having sex, why didn’t you take consent to stop it?” I’m not sure why I asked. It was one of a very instinctual things, as the moment did not seem burdened by past feelings. But yes, may be to see, if there is still any sexual tension or not. “I assumed it” he replied. I have often wondered after that, why is consent only understood as something that we discuss when something starts? Why take consent only when one has to ask for sex or begin a relationship? Why do we not favour consent or at least an explicit conversation when one wants to stop, even in the Friends With Benefits situation? When we are so elaborate in dicussing consent – which can after all be communicated non-verbally – and don’t want to assume it, then why are we so willing to assume an ending, rather than discuss that too? I recently met my professor from college and we began discussing the nature of consent and dating in these digital times, where everything is assumed. And she introduced me to the idea of how our consciousness is driven so technologically devoid of any “sense of an ending”. We never give space to the conversation related to endings as it involves grieving and no one has time to do so – or perhaps takes the time to do so. And I realised how technologically driven we are in this digital world. The ease with which we post, upload, download and share, impacts our sexual psyches I feel. We share and discuss online the idea of Yes and No and incorporate it into our behaviour. But perhaps we also turn ourselves into impassive beings, whose lives, emotions and selves are also a constantly moving timeline. We are moving on, we say, but with no sense of an ending and no way to make sense of endings. Henna Vaid, lives in Delhi and makes a living by working in Mental health projects for NGOs.

WHAT 'NO STRINGS ATTACHED' TAUGHT ME ABOUT LOVE AND SEX

A young woman asks some 'un-cool' questions about NSA relationships

When we live in a rented house, we care for it, keep it clean, decorate it maybe, but we do something to keep it well and good. If a rented house deserves that amount of care, don’t the people in No Strings Attached (NSA) relationships deserve that too? I’m writing about the questions that have revolved in my mind, that I’ve felt hesitant to ask out loud, but finally started to. NSA: it’s something everyone around me talks about as the ideal way to have some intimacy in your life. Everyone acts like it’s understood what it means. But is it? I’m not so sure. So I decided to talk to others about it.I asked Akash, 24, straight, male, how he defined No Strings Attached. He said it is “being involved romantically, being there for each other like a couple and doing things together but without the expression of love or without the commitment of marriage.” I began to wonder: is my ‘set-up’ an NSA? Describing his experience Akash said, “I would never do it again, it is not for me. When I got into it, it was all sudden; she came after breaking up with her boyfriend and I thought ab ye fir matha khayegi but then we ended up sleeping together and I was in it! I ended up falling for her but she only wanted a temporary physical relationship. Ekdum ghamasan ladai hui thi khatam karte time, kahe ka communication (We fought horribly at the end, no communicating and all that)! No respect was given to my feelings; she kept asking how could you break our deal! If it weren’t for “feelings” we’d still be together. I got into it without thinking about where it would lead – even though I agreed to her definition of NSA. What I’ve learned is, maturity and clarity are definitely required for a successful NSA.” Zara, 26, straight, female, too had the “feelings” issue come up. “There was no sex involved, but only sexting. It was all fun at first, but then I started having feelings and I felt this is not right. If I’m feeling feelings that will make things hard for me. He would talk only when he wanted to. I was strictly not allowed to ping first which made me feel used. So I was like, that’s not cool. I didn’t feel it would last so I didn’t want to invest. He tried a lot to convince me to stay on in this sort of NSA relationship and did not take it well that I wanted to stop. It came to an abrupt end.” Hearing this disturbed and confused me. Was I also doing what the other two people had done to my friends – disregarding them as people with feelings? Or was I standing at the receiving end in my ‘set-up’ – disregarding my own feelings? Now, you must be wondering, what is this ‘set-up’, that I keep mentioning. So here is a glimpse: Growing up in an atmosphere where hugs were rare but sexual advances towards a child were frequent, I ended up believing that my body was dirty; it didn’t deserve ‘love’ but ‘sex’. The more people accepted my body sexually, the more I kept detaching it from love. But maybe it is because I also detached love from sex - how could something “dirty” (which I saw sex as being) be part of something serene? And how could something temporary – like the body - be part of something permanent, meaning spiritual, as love? For me, love became something where the physical connection wasn’t necessary at all; in fact, I actually pursued a guy for years because there was only an intellectual connection. My idea of love only involved emotional investment. If I didn’t accept my body, how could I accept sexual bodily pleasures in the form of love? When I entered college with such a definition of love, I kept scoring zero in the department of love. Once I got dumped because I wasn’t yet ready to have sex in the relationship and once I got dumped because I was too invested emotionally too soon. I wondered what this casualness of love was which I lacked. Were bodily pleasures casual or was it the temporary nature of the connection that made it casual? Because apparently, I wanted a relationship which was emotionally rich and permanent. After having one emotional breakdown, I decided not to invest emotionally anymore. But then how would I have any connection? Physical desires toh bure the na! I was exhausted emotionally and sex without the-great-love didn’t feel all that great because I kept holding back one part (bodily feelings) of me, not letting myself be completely into the moment. Matlab I could not apply the popular definition of NSA in my life. So what could I do now? I came up with an idea of not naming the thing and calling it as ‘set up’. I kept saying “it’s complicated”, again not really accepting my bodily desires, kyunki ye toh ganda hai, it’s dirty, only intellectual and emotional desires are pure! The set up (of NSA, but not really accepting it, you know!) kept becoming a mess because I kept feeling unhappy about it, treating it like it did not matter and hence kept looking for ‘real emotional involvement’ outside it. Though I claimed that I was really liberated sexually, I was not respecting my own choices somewhere; neither was I really able to respect my partner for only being involved physically. I was acting cool but not really feeling it. While struggling with this situation, I began to wonder whether it was always the case with NSA. Did people always end up feeling like shit or making others feel like shit? Do other people also believe in not labelling it or they label but define it differently? Can physicality of love be treated like we treat the emotionality of it? Aakhir yeh NSA naam ki chidiya hai kya and how do people negotiate this? More importantly, can I make peace with this idea? Could something as fleeting as bodily pleasures be considered love? Did love always have to last forever? Rohan, 24, gay, male, got into NSA relationships through dating apps mostly because the idea sounded super cool to him. He defines NSA as “outside my room, you don’t know me, I don’t know you. All you need to know about each other is the desires, no other details. We will talk only when we are free and only about when we are going to meet next.” He describes his experience as “There are two dead ends of an NSA relationship, Love or Boredom. When I got bored of him or when I could see that he is falling for me, I started coming up with excuses to not meet and avoided him which backfired. The person tried to reach me repeatedly which really irritated me. Then to all my resistance, I had to have an honest conversation with that person, and then with a mutual decision, the relationship ended.” He adds “You are not going to be in only one NSA relationship. Jealousy spoils the set-up and eventually, you need to hurt a person. You should be really straightforward with people ki this is what I want, these are my needs.” When he said “Aaj kal ke time me, when your job takes you various places, NSA seems like a good idea to satisfy your desires.”, I felt great that someone really is accepting their bodily desires, but when I dug deeper he said, “It makes me sound so desperate, it’s depressing! NSA is not about love, but fulfilling bodily desires.” Listening to him talk about his experience, I kept wondering if love and desire are really two exclusive sets. Aren’t they two parts of each other? Aren’t caressing or hugging also sexual bodily desires but in a loving way? Don’t our bodies want to be loved at times in life? Priya, 22, bisexual, female, polyamorous told me “I get bored with one partner and conventional relationship is not my thing. I am a person who gets bored easily by certain kind of people. I need more experiences and as a young person I didn’t want to stay with one person forever.” She defines NSA as “only physical relation without having any romantic emotional connection. NSA has helped me focus on my studies better being my stress buster.” Are emotions always the sign of complexity? She answers this by saying “I am now in a committed relationship so for me, it depends where a person is in life and what they want from life.” Talking about managing romantic and sexual multiple partners successfully she said “Everyone needs to be in the loop and be aware what is happening. I am not a possessive or jealous type, but some people are and they become really abusive. It was awkward to deal with earlier but it became easier with experience. Now I choose people with similar thinking only, people who want the same things from the relationship as me.” She makes a distinction between the ideas of NSA with strangers and Friends With Benefits. “There are fewer expectations from strangers. You could just say it directly and end it when you have other priorities.Anjali, 29, straight, female, on the other hand, believes that it is easier to go ahead with friends. She says “FWB is more comfortable for me because of the familiarity.” She defines NSA as “friends in public space, but sexually involved in private space.” She has been in a long term relationship for 7 years and has shifted to long distance open from the past one year with the same person. She has had occasional parallel NSA partners in that past one year. She believes “They need not know who else I am sleeping with, all they need to know is, I am not emotionally involved with them.” While talking about her overall experience she says, “My experience here, outside India, has been really sorted and easygoing. I don’t want to get married but it is not like I don’t have desires. In NSA I feel happy living on my own.” She believes that “Having a clear, respectful and honest communication with the other person always helps.” Listening to Priya and Anjali, it hits me that I am in a friends with benefits situation in my NSA – by which I mean open-ended- relationship, and my guilt of giving my body satisfaction without the involvement of ‘the permanent love’ was not letting me accept my own feelings of affection for my friend. Both these ladies accept their bodies and understand their desires. Love is not in the permanence but in the little things that all of us do to show that we care, a hug, a kiss, a card, a cuddle or an absolutely comfortable silence! I am beginning to see myself as an example of falling in ‘love’ multiple times and it is okay! I am beginning to understand that my body has desires of being loved and that is okay! I am beginning to understand that love is not really about waiting for a forever happily ever after, but enjoying the present with all its ups and downs. I am sinking into the idea that the more I love my body, the better I understand love! Me: “Listen, do you think we can be properly in a romantic relationship now or maybe end this No Strings Attached? I am kind of starting to have feelings for you, and hence my expectations from you are increasing.” Him: “I definitely don’t want to end it, but romantic relationship... I am not sure, I have not thought about that because of our earlier deal of not having a future.” This was the conversation I had with my partner in the ‘set up’ a couple of days after I heard these NSA stories. You see, I finally was able to use the phrase “No Strings Attached”, accepting my desire of bodily pleasure along with the feelings that are changing! And taking the risk of discussing it – well, it made me feel better. My take away from these stories is simple; The more I respect my body, the more I respect myself and the other person! As for what the other person feels it has to be taken account even if not mirrored totally. And lastly, because people like tips (I do too), here is what I understood about tips for a respectful, workable NSA!
  • “Be very clear what you expect from the relationship.”
  • “Choose people who match your thinking.”
  • “If you feel guilty or shameful in NSA, don’t do it.”
  • “Handle the situation maturely.”
  • “Be really straightforward – don’t play games. If your feelings change, bring it up.”
  • "If the other person’s feelings change, don’t shame them, but talk it over and see if it’s time move on or not."
  Nitya is a masters student who likes to make bags from old jeans in her free time. She loves mountains and colours. 

For 25 Years I've Stayed Faithful To A Husband Who Refused Me Sex

Do I need sex? Well not really but I’d definitely like some.

This is my personal story about my marriage and sex and love and it has taken me a lot of courage to put it down. I’m going to turn fifty-two and my body craves sex, but it is ruthlessly denied because I choose to remain faithful to my husband. I was a naïve twenty three year old in the midst of my Masters, when I got married to a wonderful man nearly nine years my senior. Though it was a completely arranged marriage, I fell in love with my husband after the very first meeting. On the flip side, my marriage brought with it an end to my quite brilliant academic career, though it also provided an escape route from my very strict, orthodox middle-class parents to a life of unimagined freedom, courtesy my husband.    We had great sex and were totally compatible in bed. In the initial years we had sex every day, many times a day and stolen sex during visits to our hometown when elders were around. My husband urged me to experiment in bed and it was only an innate shyness about my body that held me back. I was very bold, outspoken, a rebel in many ways but oddly, I was very shy in all matters pertaining to my body--especially in talking about them. Perhaps it was my puritanical convent upbringing and a mother who never discussed any controversial topic, leave aside sex, to blame. In those days I had a voluptuous and sexy figure but that never inspired any confidence for me in bed. I always felt too fat. And growing up on a staple diet of very bland 1970’s Mills & Boons and Barbara Cartland doesn’t exactly teach you the tricks of the trade. My partner on the other hand was stick-thin and pigeon-chested but had watched tonnes of porn so it definitely gave him a head-start in the bedroom scene and a certain confidence as a result. My marriage was like the little girl in the nursery rhyme - ‘There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid’ Same with our marriage. When the going was good, it was wonderful. We had some wonderful times filled with laughter, leg-pulling and travelling. Our acquaintances never believed that ours was an arranged and not a love marriage. Nearly a decade older, my husband didn’t look his age, had boundless energy, and was the heart of any party, a true charmer loved by young and old. But when it was bad, our marriage turned truly horrible. We fought often and very bitterly. Post fifty  I’ve realised, that my husband has this mental image of himself of being a ‘good boy’ -  a ‘liberal man’, a ‘man who does household chores without being prompted’, so amongst our friends and family he was thought to be the perfect man. Other women would urge their husbands to be like mine. They never wasted an opportunity to point out how unbelievably lucky I was to land such a catch in the matrimonial market. Of course, I resented this. We fought on the flimsiest issues and I became the thorn in my husband’s side – the one who questioned his image of the perfect self. Of course this realisation is all very recent. According to my husband I am still not obedient enough. I still do not listen enough. I was impetuous, blurted things out and flew into rages. But within half an hour I would cool down and promptly forget whatever the issue was.  I never bore a grudge. My outspokenness and immaturity landed me in trouble numerous times. Saying sorry never was easy for me. My husband, nine years my senior and wiser, expected my repentance to be instant and the crime to never be repeated. But alas, it was not to be. Looking back, I’ve come to realise that after every fight, big or small, my husband has emerged victorious. How? Because after every altercation big or small, he meted out his punishment to me, the silent treatment, which not only meant being verbally excommunicated, but also extended into the bedroom where he refused to touch me. The span of this punishment became longer in direct proportion to the duration of our marriage, going from a couple of days, to weeks and to months. The phrase ‘bearing a grudge’ took on a whole new meaning. Nothing had prepared me to deal with this form of punishment. I was a very straightforward and uncomplicated person. Having never seen it in real life, nor read about it in the thousands of tomes I consumed as a voracious reader, nor seen it depicted in any movie, this silent treatment bewildered and hurt me as nothing ever could. I screamed, ranted, cried, begged and literally grovelled, but nothing moved my man. After every small and big fight, surviving the silent treatment was like waiting for the big thaw; when his anger and hurt had subsided enough and he deemed it fit to smile a little, talk a little and even have sex a little. Those were the days when I didn’t know of Google Bhagwan. Never knew that this too was a form of mental abuse, never knew how to seek justice for a punishment so disproportionate to its mistake. I was young, alone in a big metro, no relatives or parents whose shoulder I could cry on and definitely no friend because to everyone else (friends, relatives and peers) I had somehow and most undeservedly got hold of the best man on the planet. What happened as a result? Lesser and lesser sex. Weeks became months; months became years, years became decades.  Nearly thirty years have passed. And today it’s the norm. I schooled myself to get used to this deprivation. I learnt to stop crying myself to sleep and turn to the other side carefully so that no part of our bodies touch in bed. We got older. From his side love ended, mere tolerance began. Marriage became a routine. Our daughter became old and wise before her time, having been a witness to this complex marriage and learning to adjudicate during our fights. Somewhere in all this, I think my husband developed erectile dysfunction. We used to know each other’s bodies so well but now we never talk of this. Perhaps it’s a fear psychosis? As he thinks I have no clue to his problems he might be scared that if called to perform, he’ll fall flat on his face.  I would still like to be able to kiss or cuddle, just to touch and to feel the warm luxury of intimacy. But foreplay or cuddling without the final act is to him a deposit with no returns hence of no interest. Sometimes, I blame myself for allowing all this to happen, not being able to seduce my husband, learning the bitter truth about myself so late.  The truth that I may be highly intelligent, very successful in my workplace, fearless and an icon of coolness to the younger generation, but I still couldn’t really keep my man. Menopause came early, creeping on me as I turned forty five. No hot flushes… no nothing, easy-peasy but it left behind its worst signature – a gain of ten kilos. Do I need sex? Well not really but I’d definitely like some. At least once in a while just so that I can remember what the good ol’ days were like.  I’m dry as a desert. Never tried lubrication, never tried a vibrator, where’s the need? I’m great at fantasising if I’m feeling a real need. But deep down there is a sense of shame and a sense of worthlessness because for me my sex life ended before I really understood its importance or experienced its full possibilities or just, really got down to enjoying it. Why do I stay and still put up with this? Because even today I love my husband, I haven’t met a man better than him or more interesting than him. And then as the rhyme goes: when we are good we are still very very good (sans the sex part). Anamika M is a storyteller, bookworm, traveler and movie addict who's trying to follow her heart where it takes her.

How I Taught Myself To Have Orgasms

I wasn’t fucking anorgasmic, I’d just been doing it wrong my whole life.

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When I was 11 years old, I found Jean M Auel’s Earth’s Children series in the children’s section of a bookstore near my house. The series contains six books, and tells the story of a cave woman named Ayla, her lover Jondalar, and their travels through Late Stone Age in Europe. It was early in the second book that I encountered a long and very anatomically correct description of an ancient sex ritual. That’s when I understood beyond all possible doubt that this series did not really belong in the children’s section.

  I was fascinated. These scenes were an introduction to a whole new world. They were also my foremost source of knowledge and instruction on sex, and had lasting repercussions on my own sex life for a full decade. Unfortunately, in these books, the clitoris only ever featured during foreplay. If Ayla had an orgasm, it always happened during or after penetrative sex. In all the pages and pages of caveman sex that they had, not once did Ayla have a purely clitoral orgasm. So you see, thanks to these super-detailed but slightly off-centre and aggressively hetero sex scenes that I found so early in life, for the longest time, I thought I knew all there was to know about sex. I certainly thought I knew the route to female orgasm, and I believed that it lay in penetrative vaginal sex. A little knowledge is a dangerous things for orgasms. *** Age 16. My boyfriend, the First Serious, has just fallen asleep after “finishing”, and I’m lying on my side reading The Purple Flower, which I left in his house in Bangalore for myself to read because I knew this would happen. I remember putting it down and wondering how he managed to sleep so deeply so soon every single time. We’d been dating for over 10 months now, which I think was more than enough time for me to get over the novelty of having some kind of sex in the first place, and to get on with wondering, with some irritation and concern, as to where my own damn orgasm was. When we’d first started having sex, I convinced myself (and, of course, him) that I was having orgasms on the regular. Multiple even. I really half-believed it myself, I think, and it was certainly what I told all my friends. But as different things began to wane in that strange relationship, I began to take more realistic stock of my situation. I knew what an orgasm was supposed to feel like. I just wasn’t having one. By now, I had read many more descriptions of sex than just the wrongly shelved books of my childhood — enough to list out some commonalities in literary orgasm symptoms: a feeling of warmth and a rushing of blood to obscure places, a pistoning upward of hips, a crunching of bones, a curling of toes and a couple of seconds of black-out breathlessness. None of these things were happening to me. Not once, not ever. Not, to quote Priyanka Joseph, with my “hetero as fuck smelling-like-dad-cologne boyfriend”, and not in my own nocturnal explorations of self. My boyfriend excelled at the kind of sex I’ve learnt many straight men are good at: the kind that works for them, and does nothing for their lady. We’d kiss a bit wetly, he’d bite my neck, play with my breasts, then penetrate me. Sometimes he’d go down on me, sometimes he’d rub my clitoris for a few seconds with dry fingers, but just as often, he wouldn’t. My own sexual activities were far more romantic, far more elaborate. I’d fill my tub up with hot water, open up a dog-eared Nora Roberts, and start reading about 20 pages before a sex scene. I’d build up to it slowly, taking time to get in to the story, into the mood and the feel of things. When I was ready, I’d either put the book away, or keep holding it in one hand, and slide two fingers in, crooking them upwards deliberately to hit one particular sweet spot. It felt good. I know now that the G-spot, a part of the female body deep inside the vagina that causes an immediate and powerful orgasm when touched, is a myth. But back then, when I did this and felt something fun, I thought I’d found it. Something was going on when I crooked my fingers that brought me more pleasure than usual; something different from how it felt when I merely pushed my fingers in and out. I assumed then that this little jolt was the best I was going to get, because this is clearly where orgasms come from, and I still wasn’t having one. *** No orgasms with another person, and no orgasms with myself. Some mournful Googling of my symptoms pointed me in one direction fairly quickly: anorgasmia. Anorgasmia is a condition where a person cannot orgasm even after sufficient sexual stimulation. It doesn’t mean that you don’t feel sexual arousal or desire, but that you can’t have an orgasm despite it. Google informed me that one in five women suffer from it, and I was immediately convinced that I was one of them. By the time I was 18, I had broken up with the old boyfriend, and put enough of myself back together to see a few other people. After I diagnosed myself with anorgasmia, I entered what I remember as a weird in-limbo phase. I would sometimes tell the boys I would sleep with that I was anorgasmic, and sometimes I wouldn’t. Even when I did tell them, for reasons that seemed mysterious then, I would continue to fake my orgasms. It wasn’t a good idea (I know now it never is). My partner would feel doubly satisfied with himself and his golden penis, and I would feel resentful towards him, sick of myself and everything. *** Age 22. I moved to London for my masters, where I’ve been stoned for about a month straight. I don’t mean stoned like I smoked a joint before dinner. I mean I’ve been smoking a massive hit from a big glass bong every half hour for every hour that I’m awake for weeks now. It’s December. I’ve only been in London for a few months, too soon to be having the great time I soon would have there. Attendance at the university isn’t really mandatory, and even if it was, I don’t think I would go. My body isn’t made for temperatures like that, and plus, the weed is really, really good. No seeds, no stems and soft to the touch, with that thick, lemony green odour that sticks to the curtains and your fingers and the air. A true haze. I was on a steady diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because they were cheap and sugary and I was spending all my money on weed. It sounds a bit awful, I know, but it wasn’t a bad time. I was the kind of stoned you get when you don’t have time to get sober, just sort of climbing and climbing until you plateau off onto a new normal. I quite liked it. It was somewhere in this haze that I stumbled upon a magazine article on how to achieve a 15-minute orgasm. The magazine story assumed you were a hetero woman, and instructed you to have your partner pull back the head of the clitoris, and with very moist slippery fingers, rub the top right of your clitoris with quick, tiny strokes, like a metronome. After 15 minutes of this, your partner was supposed to press down beneath your navel firmly-but-not-too-firmly in a pumping action, and voila, a 15-minute orgasm would be achieved. I was very stoned, which means I was also a little turned on, so I thought okay, why the hell not and just went for it. For the first time in my 22-year-old life, I lay back, pulled back the hood of the clitoris and hooked it back with my thumb, and rubbed my clitoris however it felt right at that moment. Maybe it was the psychological effect of the article or maybe it wasn’t, but soon enough, I was making tiny little motions at the top right of my clitoris. In about 10 minutes, my body was literally on autopilot. In 15, I had my life’s first orgasm. Not a 15-minute orgasm, mind you, just a regular old-fashioned straight-out-of-the-books orgasm. Hilariously, I remember being absolutely knocked out for what felt like an eternity after. Twenty two years of sexual interest and frustration in one spectacular orgasm. And I felt all of it just as promised: an involuntary movement of hips, a twitching of thighs, a bodily rush and even a weird sort of crunching of ankle bones. It was perfect. ***   When I came around, so to speak, I remember laughing aloud to myself. I was shell-shocked for sure, but unbelievably excited. I wasn’t fucking anorgasmic, I’d just been doing it wrong my whole stupid life. It took me 22 years and an article on how to reach a possibly mythical 15-minute-orgasm to learn how to masturbate (small aside: I am still in search for a less gross word. Do you have one?) fruitfully and successfully. The discovery made lots of changes to my life. For one thing, I stayed in my room for about another month after that moment, doing literally nothing but this. My roommate once wondered if I was dead, because she saw and heard so little of me, and a little later, if I was depressed, because I only ever ventured out of my room to go to the kitchen for water looking dishevelled and exhausted in my bathrobe. I was quite the opposite of depressed haha, if only she knew. That was the time when I came to the important realisation that I’m amongst the majority of women who only experience clitoral orgasms, and not vaginal. I know that I need lots of sustained slippery clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm, and that no amount of vaginal anything will do the trick. I’ve decided to stop faking orgasms, because doing that feels ridiculous now that I know what a real one feels like. Plus, I can just show men what works for me. Which isn’t to say that it is all smooth sailing, or as easy as I had thought it would be now that I know what to do with myself to have an orgasm. Successful masturbation for me is now so intuitive, and depends so heavily on the tiny variations of pressure, frequency and lubrication that are very easy for me to do for myself, but much harder to communicate those tiny shifts to someone else, especially in the heat of the moment. I am of course as much into aesthetic-seeming sex as the next person, and it feels a bit weird to act like a PT teacher shouting out directions to someone who is really trying hard to please me. Considering that it also takes a full 10 or 15 minutes of very specific and precise actions, it can get a bit awkward sometimes. Wondering whether my endless instructions are tiresome distracts me from the very focused attention I need to have an orgasm. And it of course gets frustrating in the moment if after all my directions they still just can’t seem to get it right, and I am lying there half turned on. Plus, I think they get flustered when I flood them with directions that are counter-intuitive to what they’re used to doing, and the anxiety of trying to get it right in such a loaded moment gets to them too. I have tried having detailed conversations before doing the deed, laying out exactly what works for me beforehand. That goes two distinct ways: it can be a fun, exciting and kind of sexy conversation that gets us both into the mood and transitions very naturally to us having sex, or it can make the entire process seem very clinical and automated, which sucks. It depends on the person and the mood. Having the conversation after sex can be nice too, but I can’t shake the lingering feeling that it makes the person I’m with feel like they’ve just been disappointing or less than up to the mark, and makes the sex we just had less of a happy memory for them. I thankfully have found a solution that seems to be working. Sort of. A boy told me that he finds it super arousing to watch a woman get off, and asked me if I would do that in front of him. It felt really exciting and the good kind of weird, and was a doubly sexy way to show him exactly what works for me without sounding like a PT teacher. That very first time, I surprised myself with the shock and intensity of my orgasm. Every now and then I wonder what it would be like to be surprised by it again, because someone else is working their way to my orgasm. Because then I wouldn’t know it’s coming, haha, that I am coming. That hasn’t happened yet with any boys, but I’ve had a few orgasms around boys with this plan of showing them what an ISI mark female orgasm looks like. Or at least an ISI marked orgasm of mine. I am optimistic and feel like I am getting closer to my goal. I am sticking to my plan and my sticky fingers. I’ll let you know how it goes. Anushka is a writer and a painter.

Watch Me As I Fall In Love: 5 Trans Persons Talk About Dating

Love is supposed to be the simplest thing, but it isn’t.

WATCHING MYSELF

I was scared that I’d fall in love with him, and he wouldn’t actually be open to dating a transwoman.

Antara, 25 years, transwoman, bisexual
Some years ago, when I was 21 and not yet in love, I would spend hours trying to take selfies for my Tinder profile. I was desperate to look like a woman. I wanted to look like who I felt. It’s when I started experimenting with bindis — big round red ones that matched my lipstick — with fake silver jhumkas. I’d take the photo from the top, my chin out and slanted at an angle that ensured you couldn’t see my whole face. My second Tinder date was with a boy who finished his beer so quickly that he started drinking mine. I’d just moved to Delhi, and met him at his house. Yes, yes, everyone has asked me 20 times why I met a stranger in his house on our first date. I don’t have an answer to that. He’s the only person I’ve connected with wildly and instantly. He made me laugh madly, and we stayed up talking on his terrace until early in the morning. But we never met or spoke again. I was scared that I’d fall in love with him, and he wouldn’t actually be open to dating a transwoman. A small part of my fear that night came from how I look. Would he ever consider dating someone who didn’t look as feminine as all his friends? But he never called me either, so that was that. But it took me a while to let it go and say that love is like that only… sometimes yes, sometimes no, half yes, half no. Back then I’d been torn between trying everything I saw women around me doing, and finding a way to be myself. Today I giggle about male friends who love women in stilettos and bright lipstick. I’d wanted to meet people who’d find me attractive even if I met them in my purane cotton pants and talked non-stop about movies in the same animated way that they talked about things they were interested in. Abhi, four years later, I’ve met a woman like this. We’ve been together a year. I care less about my appearance with her. She first told me she loved me much before I said it to her. For two months I just liked the power that gave me. I’d heard enough about how I’d never find true love, so maybe this was my safety net. The day I told my girlfriend I loved her too, we were sitting at a Domino’s Pizza parlour fighting over whether to order a chicken or vegetarian pizza. “I love you and all,” I told her, “but that doesn’t mean you can convince me to order vegetarian!”

WATCHING HIM

I’ve never really approached a person I like first. I like the idea of them approaching me. But I stalk them on Facebook instead.

Shilok, 21 years, transgender woman, heterosexual
I usually meet men for coffee, or for a walk down random lanes. If he’s handsome and hot, I don’t talk at all. I’m always trying to ask them about their past relationships and how and why they broke up with their exes, because sometimes men are just not serious about relationships, you know? Plus, I studied psychology in college, so I use all of what I learnt on the guys I meet. You know, body language, how he’s responding, that kind of thing. In college, I watched my classmates get into relationships. Love was intense, quick and purposeful, the kind that gave you a head rush. Maybe you can call it peer pressure, but I just wanted to know what it was like to be in a relationship. That’s when I began to use dating apps to meet new people, but nothing much came from them. Once I even went to a “love meet” organised by my friend for people from the LGBT community. We sat in Cubbon Park — everyone from Bangalore has heard countless love stories beginning or ending here. We talked to each other and, at the end of the meeting, wrote down the name of a person in the group we might like to meet again. If that person had written down your name, then you were set. But nothing came of that either. When I was younger (and more innocent), I believed I was a girl who would grow up, study, fall in love, get married and have a child. Back then I was certain I’d find someone, someone who understood me, who treated me well, who was kind. Now my mother is worried that I’ll never get married, because transpeople’s love stories are often unsuccessful, and some of this comes from the guilt that we can’t have children. But I’ve realised it’s much harder to talk about marriage so easily, because it’s not easy to find someone who suits you and wants to be with you.

PEOPLE ARE WATCHING

Love is supposed to be the simplest thing, but it isn’t.

Atul, 23 years, transman, heterosexual
I’m used to questions about me, but I wouldn’t have liked to hear people say things about her just because she was seeing a transman. She left me 23 missed calls the day after the party. I never called her back. When I was 19, na, I met a woman at a bookshop in Bombay. She was skimming through Hemmingway, and I was reading Carver. She wrote down my number on her hand — aaj kal yeh sab kaun karta hai? Anyway one day she invited me to a party at her friend’s house. I wasn’t one for parties, but the moment she said she hoped to see me there, mujhe jaana hi tha. At the party I gifted her two books; you know, because we met at a bookshop. All her friends began to nudge each other the moment I did that. Then one of the men turned to her and muttered something. The woman gave that nosey friend a dirty look and walked away with me. I didn’t ask her what the man said. That’s when I realised. Love is supposed to be the simplest thing, but it isn’t. A lot of women I’ve dated have described their ‘ideal’ man to me. Some, much to my surprise, described macho, tattooed men I could never be. Others described skinny, nerdy men who listened more than they spoke. Not that I wanted to be them, but when I transitioned medically, I remained plump, no beard, no broad shoulders. I hated the idea of going to a gym because a lot of men have just laughed at me. So what was I to do?

PEOPLE NEED TO WATCH THEMSELVES

I can’t deal with someone suddenly telling me, ‘Oh I love you, I want to marry you.’

Priyanka, 32 years, transsexual woman, heterosexual
I don’t like the idea of love and relationships. Today I think people just find it fashionable to say they’re in a relationship. There must be one or two people who’ll love you truly. Love has become all about money and sex. There is nothing else. Usually I talk to men over the phone. Some of them tell me to meet them at a park, or for coffee, and some say they’ll take me for a movie. Instead, I tell them, park, movie, idu yella nanige ishta illa, I don’t like all this. So we meet at a temple. It’s quieter there, calmer, more peaceful, and a good place for conversation. It also means fewer glances and smirking men watching me walk down the road with another man. Truthfully, I believed that love existed when I was younger. But it was never intense, or consuming and like a need. It only meant that the person you loved would never cheat on you — it meant that they would understand me, what I wanted, who I am.

WATCH ME AS I FALL IN LOVE

Ours is a cute love story… I’d told my friend the moment I saw this woman that she would become her bhabi, and now it’s coming true.

Sarthak, 28 years, male, heterosexual
The first thing my father asked me when I came out to him as a transman was, “Will you ever have your own family?” My father only wanted that I find someone who would look after me, and whom I could look after. I just told him I didn’t know. I said instead that I would have a house for sure, and that I’d try to have a family. His worry made sense, because a woman I’d been seeing in college had told her parents about me. Until then I hadn’t really thought about marriage and family. Her mother called me up furiously, and she asked me why I was ruining her daughter’s life — somehow, this gave me the strength to come out to my parents. Of course, that seems like another age now. I’m getting married to my girlfriend early next year, and both our families are happy. Ours is a cute love story. I fell in love with a woman three years older than me. We became friends quickly and easily, and she would tell me every time her parents had set up a meeting for her with a potential husband. I’d tell her to go meet him, but for that hour in which she was away, I’d be extremely worked up. Finally, she was the one who first said she wanted to marry me, but I’ve still always been worried about what people say about her because she’s with a transman. When I was in hospital for my surgery, she was the only one I allowed in the hospital. She worried about everything during this time — if I made sounds in my sleep she would always ask me if I needed anything. When my hormone shots made me angry as a side effect, she let things be. My girlfriend is a friend of a friend — I’d told my friend the moment I saw this woman that she would become her bhabi, and now it’s coming true.   Illustrations By Amruta Patil Amruta Patil, writer and painter, is the author of the beloved graphic novels Kari (2008), Adi Parva: Churning Of the Ocean (2012) and Sauptik: Blood and Flowers (2016). http://amrutapatil.blogspot.com

Hot Mama: Or How I Went from Comfortably Numb to Shape of You

 Motherhood and sex, sexuality, sexiness. We don’t hear of these in the same breath much. Does a woman stop being a desiring, desirable woman after she’s a mom? (Answer: um, no). Pooja Pande writes about the whys and hows of this stage of life and what she did about it plus a whole book of erotica about the sex lives of moms. A distant smoke ship on the horizon, Mr. Waters? I’ll tell you what that feels like, and it’s got nothing to do with a trip gone bad (or is it good?). When a baby has just come out from inside of you and is well, such a baby, you really do find yourself receding into the far oblivion, not unlike the out-of-body experience that a drug trip promises, minus the thrills. You inhabit a strange new world that’s not simply unfamiliar, but positively hostile, as you watch your own self struggling and failing and struggling yet again – while you, the helpless soul, consider… nothingness. Your own body – the one you thought you owned and controlled, which did your bidding not too long ago – has suddenly been reduced to a bundle of exhausted, frazzled, anxious, raw nerves. Nipples serving milk on a blob you don’t recognize anymore (it’s your body). To a needy being you fiercely love but do not relate with, who offers no hope in the near future of becoming a person you could possibly relate with. You know that seven-year-old who’s all personality, the one you’ll be having conversations with? About the purpose of life, the beauty of butterflies, the exact sound a puddle-plonk makes, and if there is such a thing as a favourite mango? Yeah, she’s seven years away. Numbness, a serious lack of affirmation, the absence of any and all desire, crippling uncertainty – meet your new bedfellows. You wonder if this is what they meant by irreversible, if this is now your new status as a mother. And if it’s permanent? Well, they sure try to keep you there. Pinned down. A woman as vulnerable as a new mother, uncertain about everything she can and could and possibly would do is too tempting a tabula rasa for a culture overfed on a diet of patriarchy.  Never before or after have I felt it as strongly as I felt it in those weak moments, those cruel days of early motherhood that force you into doubting anything and everything you ever stood for. Things you start believing about yourself, about your undesirable body and mind, which also find echoes of agreement in the world outside. “Of course, you can’t work the way you used to, ya. Itni late nights thodi karegi ab.” “Wow! Imagine! Such a little thing, completely dependent on you for everything. Everything!” “Maybe you can ask Aunty to come over for a few hours every day? Break mil jayega tujhe.” “Maybe you can explain it to your boss. I’m sure he’ll understand.” “I hope you’re still paying attention to your diet. If the baby has colic, that means you had something faaltu.” “You’ll have enough stress looking after the baby anyway, why take on job stress also?” “He’s such a hands-on dad, ya. You’re so lucky. But how much can he do after all “Those stretch marks? Oh, they never really go away.” “You decide. You know what’s best for the baby. You’re the MOTHER after all.” Of all the things I heard, of all the well-meaning, patriarchy-enforcing, advice I was given, that last one always-always pissed me off. That there is this holier-than-thou aura you’ve allegedly conjured around yourself, from the moment that person came out from inside of you – and it allegedly grants you an all-knowing wisdom overnight. I know what’s best for me actually – you want to say – literary awards and multiple orgasms figure prominently, but the list is long. You begin to realize, if you just about manage to keep your head above the water, that what it all really is is a conspiracy theory: Keep them moms on the pedestals, turn them into super-beings, so that they never ever step back down into the real world. We like our goddesses, don’t we? Worship them, they’re easier to deal with. They apparently have zero ambition for everything, including sex. “Your husband is never going to want you the same way again, dear. Who can after he’s seen your body like that? Good thing you’ll be too busy looking after the baby – the last thing you’ll be thinking about is sex.” Hmm. I thought then. Hah. I’ve said ever since. Because, I found myself kicking them Pink Floyd out of the window and going all ‘Sexy Back-ing’, JT-style, in no time. The affirmation I thought I’d lost, the want and need and desire so linked with the body and the mind –  – it came back with a vengeance once the tsunami of my own personal emotion had ebbed away. I wanted to chart my way through that spectrum of the erotic, from new challenges at work, in life – redefine my personal ambition everywhere, from the office to the bedroom. I finally understood what my mom had been going on and on about all this time – “It’s the rebirth of a woman, beta.” You realize there’s lots to be said about mortality when you witness an image of you and also of your mother and your favourite aunt and the grandmother you lost, crawling, walking, jumping about (and eventually dancing to Shape of You). There’s so much you can’t take for granted, so much of a life to live, to breathe in. It makes you want it all, it makes you want more, it makes you work for it like never before. I know I’ve been working at it hard, and boy have I been getting it! And I am not alone – this is a journey undertaken, experienced, and ascertained firsthand by mothers around the world. Mothers who understand what gives them goosebumps, kicks and thrills, satisfaction, what makes them happy – enough voices to fill a book in fact! Titled If Moms Happy, featuring short stories that view erotica from the lens of motherhood, and indeed, vice versa. One of the most affirmative, uplifting projects I got to be part of, and cook up a tasty what-if scenario for, in the form of fiction. And just in time for the Mother’s Day weekend. The hot mamas club? Yup, I’m in. --- Agents, here’s a taste of what lies inside this book! TALKS IN MY TICKER Pooja Pande “See, that ticking clock demands an urgency. I am a slave to that moving hand. Sameer and I both, enslaved by Time, our ball-and-chain routine. My body now times itself to the ticks and the tocks. Some nights when I read Rasik his bedtime book, Dr. Seuss gets shaded dirty hues in my dirty mind. Like Mr. and Mrs. J. Carmichael Krox, I know that I’ve got ticks in my tocker and Sameer, tocks in his ticker. And I know that the reading of this book is the last PG-13 thing I’ll be doing that night. My naked body will soon be entwined in Sameer’s, bathed in moonlight streaming in through our sheer curtains that we decided to put up in the bedroom on a whim, but also because we live on the 15th floor and nobody is watching.” “We transform into masters of the artful quickie tonight. There is something deliciously gratifying in this – this knowledge; knowing that we could do this together. Not just meet or find or stumble upon bliss, but grab it, demand it, take it by the cock and the clit and ask it to relent, to surrender, to come."   THE TREADMILL Brandy Fox “It’s that delicious moment when Sean’s mouth moves down the length of my body to taste my clavicle and breasts and belly that all of me opens wide in welcome and I’m giddy with anticipation. At last it all goes away—the daily grind of work and school and soccer practice and piano lessons and homework—just slips off the bed and out the door. My mind frees itself from the To Do list and the Family Calendar and rests on a soft pillow of utter pleasure.”   PREGNANT PAUSE Jennifer D. Munro “This is a wanted pregnancy, long-awaited. Why else would I keep a stick I’ve peed on as a souvenir of one of the happiest days of my life? So I didn’t expect to uncork anger—anger I’d hidden even from myself—as I both unplugged and corked his dam of frustration. A dune of resentment had built up inside me, keeping us apart as much as the sickness, the fragility, the fear, the doctor’s cautions. The fucking eroded the barriers, brought me back to center point like a compass. Just as my physical body was off center, off balance, so was my mind, my perception of myself. I craved a good dose of yang for my yin. I needed his wide-open, vulnerable body splayed beneath me, just as I have been wide open and vulnerable ever since the missionary-position sex, lying with my ass hiked up on a pillow to aid the heroic journey of the sperm, which created this life inside me. I needed him trembling under my thrusts, my catharsis for having surrendered my body to an alien being.”

Publication details 

Name: “IF MOM’S HAPPY - STORIES OF EROTIC MOTHERS”

Editor: BRANDY FOX

Publisher: Cwtch Press

Publication Date: May 1, 2017

Where to Buy:

 https://www.amazon.com/If-Moms-Happy-Stories-Mothers-ebook/dp/B071CMVFTN (Kindle Edition)

 https://www.amazon.com/If-Moms-Happy-Stories-Mothers/dp/0996904557 (Paperback)

Pooja Pande, writer & editor, lives and works out of New Delhi. She often refers to her seven-year-old daughter as the love of her life. Her name's Ahaana and they intend to spend Mother's Day doing the usual: some homework, some Shape of You dancing, and lots of chatter.  

Could I Have Been Misogynist Even Though I Was a Woman? Why?

Today, I feel to an utmost certainty that I am not pretty, and even slightly indulging in dressing up makes me feel like a fraud.

I thought it was a bad thing to be feminine. Here's how that changed.  

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When I read Grunthus Grumpus’ article on Unfuckable Me on this site, it triggered a cascade of thoughts for me. Looking back I see now, it was my own misogyny that very early on, I had decided that I am not going to be pretty. 
 
I was not an ugly kid, but I still decided that I won’t be pretty. Today, I feel to an utmost certainty that I am not pretty, and even slightly indulging in dressing up makes me feel like a fraud. I disrespected femininity. I saw it as shallow. I saw it as an act, playing up the damsel role to impress perhaps to get the approval of men, and so, definitely inauthentic. I also disrespected the kind of guys who fell for that display of femininity. At times I would think I want to be a boy so I can show boys how to be better at using their privilege to create something positive, instead of just jockeying for supremacy. I wanted to access the power that even young boys seemed to possess- of being the last word in a discussion with friends, of everybody in your family pandering to you, of that automatic respect and partiality that teachers bestow on guys for being rebellious. 
 
For a girl, friendship was not about wit, but about being agreeable and bubbly; family teaches you to adjust than demand, and teachers shower you with attention for sincerity, not for mischievousness, which they consider cute in a boy. I really felt jealous of guys for the fucking fluke of being born a guy. I felt miserable just watching stupid guys reap the benefits of a patriarchy. 
 
And you know what? I ended up being totally played. Into becoming a “proper girl with brains”. I weaponized “being smart” and “not girly”.  I was very uptight and judgmental about a lot of things - all of them rooted in misogyny. 
 
On the one hand, I rejected girls who were good at using their femininity as a tool, but I saw them being disrespected by their peers for the same. On the other hand, I chose to compete with boys but with an internalised hatred for my gender, which made me smaller to them anyway. I dismissed and even patronised guys who were not smart. So, it was like choosing to rebel but still remaining within the themes dictated by the system. 
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My rejection of femininity really affected me as a teen. I, of course, came across as a lesbian, but not desirable to a lesbian – or so I thought. I was constantly reminded how I could dress better or how I was not feminine enough to be objectively pretty. My parents also kept pointing out my unfeminine ways of sitting, sleeping, combing my hair even and it made me dig in my heels even more. There were too many failed attempts of pretending to be feminine. Attempts at dressing up girly, ended with me feeling totally out of place and  incredibly vulnerable. Even taking care of my body (even applying a simple cream) felt as if I was trying to be someone I am not. It would feel like playing into the gaze of men, trying for their approval.I became self-conscious about this entire part of existence and it took some effort to unknot this thinking bit by bit later. 
 
Dressing up is still a soul-sucking chore for me. I don’t go to social occasions or a fancy place most of the time, because of how arduous it is for me to dress up and fail at it so conspicuously. I always fall prey to expectations of me. Recently my guy-friend pointed out my fake laugh, or my dead smile to something that’s not funny, which made me reflect on when the fuck did I fucking pick up this creepy habit? Oh, it was for that crush when I was 15. Kill me. 
 
My successful rejection of prettiness has led me to be the most confident when I present myself in a desexualised way. I get really uncomfortable and angry even if I am reminded that I am a woman. I was uncomfortable with my body perceived under the male gaze (not because I was uncomfortable with my body as a woman.) There is some sense of control I can assert when I interact with people in a desexualised manner. I rid myself of the possibility of a flirtatious interaction where I have to play feminine to succeed. (Not that I have never been part of such conversations, but how demeaning and problematic that short-lived experience is, is brilliantly articulated in Grunthus Grumpus’ article. 
 
I have this clarity only in hindsight.) I guess, desexualising is also a preemptive rejection of myself before a dimwit guy reminds me I am not ‘his type’. 
 
The sexualised self of myself adopted stifling masculine notions of sex. In my teens, I ended up discussing sex with only guys, and I have inherited this shitty competitive framework that men are conditioned with when it comes to sex. Sex has actually become a list of to-dos for me. Have I done that? Have I experienced this? Next time I need to try that. How many times I have done it? This was so detrimental and toxic for me. I was so frustrated to not be able to masturbate as easily as a guy, not reach orgasm as quickly as the guy; just imitating this twisted focus on the sex and not the eroticism to reach the head space for sex. How many sex-ed videos and columns and books created by women have I watched/read to decode how my own body works and how my own desire manifests itself. Despite that, there is a sense of the male gaze transfixed at the back of my head. 
 
There is this struggle when I don’t know if I am playing into it, or this expression of desire and sexiness is mine alone. Even the suspicion that I am catering to men can shut me down. Because my reality seems like an ironic dorky ugliness in the face of a singular type of beauty, my fantastical desire requires utter narcissism. In my real life, I may appear unconfident, hesitant and overthinking my awkwardness. In my fantasies, that is definitely not me. I imagine a space where I am assertive and I know what I want and can ask for it and have it. Also, everything is about me! There is no performance to please anyone other than me.  But I can no more bridge the two in my erotic life. I also can’t bridge my intellectual belief of equality with men and my reality that teaches me to be suspicious of men, and that woman men. 
 
These internal and external conflicts have no positive effect on my personal life. There is so much more that Gruthus Grumpus talks about, which I relate to in some way. I get her angst. 
 
Yet, I am hopeful about overcoming my own thought-police, and bridging that gap between what I want and what is. Being aware of where all this stems from, and reading about gender helps me place my experience in context. I can externalize the problem, and work to be closer to an authentic me. I’m getting there, bit by bit by bit.
 
Tame Shewolf has been reluctantly blogging since 2009. She has always been interested in talking about sex and sexuality, but only recently mustered the courage to write about it.

Fantasy Mein Kya Sharmana: My Secret Crushes

Crush, infatuation or love? Nowadays, it feels as if these words have no heated meaning for me. It wasn’t always so. We often think of a crush as something to do with silly teenage feelings. Society tells us “once you get married everything will become sorted”. But, in fact, these desires and emotions are a part of our lives, returning from time to time. They can be painful — sometimes you feel the pain and anger of wanting something you cannot have, sometimes you feel guilty and confused about the feelings you are not permitted to have. Yet, these experiences have been crucial to my growing up. When I was in my teens, I had a lot of negative feelings towards men and movies or any talk related to the connection between man and woman. I remember writing in my school-friend’s autograph book "I LOVE - talking to you on the phone" and "I HATE - friendship with boys". When I was in class nine, reciting the pledge during the school assembly once gave me a weird idea. “All Indians are my brothers and sisters," I said aloud and then it hit me. I promptly bought rakhis for all the boys in my class. It was an interesting day, to see all the boys sport the same coloured rakhi on their wrists, teachers appreciating me for my initiative and so on. Just imagine how it would have been if I had ended up marrying one of them later in life! God, what a character I was then :-) Back then, I used to actually pray to God that I should never feel those love-kind of feelings. Venkatesh Let me qualify that. I didn’t want feelings like that for REAL people. REEL people were ok. I have had crushes and infatuations on actors all my life. Venkatesh horizontal border The Telugu actor 'Victory Venkatesh' was my all-time favourite for over 10 years. From age nine to nineteen, I don't remember a single day that went without me talking about him. This was when Doordarshan was the only channel. Every Friday morning I’d wake up with lots of hope that the gods sitting in Doordarshan office would hear my prayers and play his songs during Chitralahari (the 30 minute Telugu movie song programme). If they did, it would be a day of celebration for me. Next morning, in school or college, my first topic of discussion would be about his song. As a child, I imagined him as my father figure/guardian — protecting, caring and loving me all the time. After class 10 and the end of school uniforms, I could no longer fantasise him being my father. He still was a father-like personality, but my fantasies took new a turn. I saw him more as a dashing hero who was capable of making any actress happy. I didn’t quite fantasise him being my lover, but I strongly believed him to be the most romantic actor ever and indulged in a lot of listening to his songs and replaying some of his most romantic scenes in my head over and over. When did this end? When I was in college, I watched a shoot of his new film for three whole days. The crush vanished. For years I’d been thinking of him, hoping to meet him someday and that’s it. The craze left me the moment I saw him. A real-life crush was around the corner though I didn’t know it at the time. I always smile when I think of what a great companion Venkatesh had been to me for the major part of my childhood. He was always available, any moment I wanted, just sitting inside my head waiting for me to turn on my fantasy channel. Piyush My 20s were harder than my childhood. My family had strong views on how young women should be, all tied to ‘status’ and ‘prestige’. And I did things that fell in line with my family’s beliefs. There was a deep confusion in me about “how I was” and “how I wanted to be”. I always thought it was important to dress up super simple — in other words a little unattractive. I never went to college without my chipkoo hair plaited tight. I never wore fancy footwear, I can still feel my feet covered with beige lace-up shoes. At a shoe store, my friend once joked, “Priya, men’s section is upstairs, you will probably find some good shoes for college.” I succeeded in making myself look as unattractive as I could. I was convinced that my unattractive appearance would strengthen my practice of "I-must-hate-friendship-with-boys" and save me from any sin associated with "love-like-feelings". After three years in an all-women’s college, I registered for higher studies. This time it was a co-ed. The first few months I didn’t talk to boys in my class. They would crack jokes behind my back and seriously plan on how to make me commit the sin of talking to them. One day when I was feeling good about the determination I had in my “mounvrat" [complete silence], one of the boys decided to break the ice and asked me, "will you turn to ashes if you talked to us?" Very casually he said, "we are normal people, do not fear us." And it’s true, I’d grown up with severe conditioning to avoid boys. I knew I was considered good-looking and in many ways I was bold and confident. I was deeply afraid of ‘eve-teasing’ and anxious on hearing others gossip about me. Piyush 1 Though I was pretending that I do not like to interact with boys, it seemed like that’s what I wanted to do — talk to them and become friends. Thank god, I dropped the self-imposed rules. I made very good friends and enjoyed years there. One of those boys was Piyush. He and I shared a very special friendship. Those who didn’t know us must have thought we were serious. But it was never a full-blown desire. We never held hands or greeted each other with a hug. There was some possessiveness. I don’t think I’d have liked if someone replaced me or took that position of a special friend in his life during those years, and I am sure it was the same for him. All this sounds like an intense love affair but it wasn’t. Here were the two things I liked about Piyush.

  1. I trusted that Piyush would never insult our friendship. Talking to boys was so new to me and almost everyone knew what a huge mental barrier I had to cross to get there. I was still afraid of getting cheated or defamed. Part of my fear of being judged was probably linked to the fact that I was somewhat judgmental. I’d talk about other people when hanging out with friends – “you know what, the other day I saw Smitha go on the bike with Ram" or "near the school I saw some xyz spend too much time with abc, she must be what hardly eleven years, does she need all of this at this age?” So I was afraid of others unnecessarily talk about me similarly. But all this was submerged somewhat in the new found joy of making friends with boys. And in Piyush's friendship with me, I could always sense some genuineness.
  1. Piyush was such a great flirt. When I was with him, I’d laugh, I’d smile, I’d blush all the time. He’d flirt with me to ease my fear and panic.

Of course, Piyush didn’t know that I knew about his relationship with Parol (who is his wonderful life partner today). In our last week together, Piyush and I longed to meet at Lumbini Park every day. We were the only two weird people who paid to get in, find a good lake view, open our books and actually study for our exams. Most pairs were looking for either secret spots behind the bushes or corner seats at the refreshment stalls. We were not looking for either. But our tiffin boxes helped. Piyush loved the dosas and coconut chutney that my mother made, he would eat it all, and affectionately give me some of the stuffed parathas in his tiffin box. Months later, when I was invited for our convocation, none of my family members could join me. But I did insist that Piyush come from Agra to Delhi. What could be better than celebrating this moment with a special friend, without whom, without whose vegetable parathas I may not have got that certificate? In our last weeks in college, Piyush told me, "I don't know when we'll meet again but I don't think it is all over. Mere bete ko khoob patana sikhavoonga (I'll train my son well in the art of flirting) — to get your daughter." And just before we said our final good-byes, he said, “Priya, your future husband will be very lucky to get you.” Friendship with Piyush and a few others in my class ended inhibitions and misconceptions I had about boys/men. I left open my long hair un-oiled, tried waxing my arms and occasionally got my hair trimmed and bought myself a few pairs of good looking footwear. The intensity of internal conflict on “how I was” and “how I wanted to be” reduced. I have cherished moments like these. The Neighbour  During the same years when I was doing my graduation, something else was happening in my life, “chorichori-chupkechupke”. We had a new neighbour next door who was all the way from eastern India. I first noticed him when I realised he was making prolonged eye contact each time we crossed paths. For almost two years we never spoke but our eyes did. Some silent conversations included:

  1. Whose scooter sparkled more from a good cleaning?
  2. Is your scooter parked next to mine?
  3. Were we timing our departures from home in the morning around the same time?
  4. Did he hang about a coffee shop to time his return home with my getting off the bus?

I made sure I left home at the same time and took the same bus back every day. I liked the feeling of being noticed, valued and pursued. I’d eagerly wait for my next eye contact with him, I was very curious to know his name but never even dared to go look at the name on the door. I had an immense urge to share my joy with someone. Fortunately, I was gifted with wonderful friends who shared my happiness. He remained a stranger until the day he met with an accident and broke his leg. I told my mother and she asked me to go check on him. I was super happy to know that I was going to talk to him for the first time, introduce myself and ask for his name. I was nervous but became excited after I saw him just five feet away from me. This was the beginning of our friendship. College-studies-home-and my so-called love became a routine of my life for sometime. When I found out he was a computer science graduate from a university, I was thrilled. God had sent me a private tutor plus life partner next door. I asked my parents if I could go and take his help with my studies. My mother didn’t like the idea completely as she could clearly sense my teenaged excitement. But she trusted that I would not let her down, and said yes. We began our sessions after he recovered from the accident. It was during these times that the feelings became more intense and flowed through my body. I was convinced it was love. All the conversation, little touches and intimate moments seeped in to my being. We spoke at length about childhood, family, friends, work and college. As long as our caste (I come from an orthodox Brahmin family and he didn’t), wasn’t the topic of discussion everything seemed lovely. The neighbour 2 My strong feelings for him changed my attitude towards my grandmother, parents and relatives. They all became secondary and unknowingly I got trapped into his possessiveness. My cousin could sense the tension in me when we met. After much contemplation, I told him what was going on in my life. He said, “You are confusing infatuation for love. Love should make you free and not so tense.” My ears shut off automatically when anyone said, “he isn’t the right person for you”. This story had a sad ending. He went to his hometown assuring me that he’d convince his parents about our wedding. But he called me to say that he got engaged to someone else. I had conjured up many dreams for myself and they had ended cruelly. I had sleepless nights and uncontrollable tears. I felt stupid, foolish, disappointed, sad, afraid, and powerless. First, I reacted in ways to restore a more pleasant equilibrium, but there was no way I could avoid the feelings of disappointment or fear that was alarming me. I was lucky to have people around me who heard me and showed me that this wasn’t the end of the world. I was reminded of my favourite slogan, “ All that happens is for good”. And what seemed like failure and rejection actually made me free - my relationship with my family improved. I never wanted love at the cost of everything else. I didn’t want to live as if “he is everything and everything else takes a back seat.” We maintained contact with each other until we made sure we recovered from this emotional experience and were good to move on in life. Nevertheless, it was quite painful to let go of the attachment I developed. I put my faith in god so I knew the pain wouldn’t last. I sincerely wished him a successful marriage and moved on. But how was I to survive the void I was feeling after the farewell? I was happy to have found my freedom, but I was craving similar intense feelings of love and intimacy, to receive that special importance from someone. Fantasies took over my empty brain and I was once again happy, feeling loved by some imaginary boyfriend (can’t remember who, but it must have been some actor I liked then). By then I’d developed confidence to be more open to my grandmother and parents who were looking for matches for me. I wasn’t afraid to say NO if I did not like any marriage proposal. Three or four years after the above episode, I got married to Ravi. By then, memories of the neighbour hardly ever bothered me.  The neighbour 1 Ravi Ours was an arranged marriage, and it all happened at rapid speed. A week after we met for the first time we were married. Before we were engaged, Ravi and I spoke for a total of four hours only. He told me that he had just broken up with a woman. The break-up was hardly five or six days old. She was a match his parents had found for him a couple of months ago. He and the other woman got along well and fell in love with each other. They couldn’t wait any longer to get married. He’d actually arrived in India to marry her but he ended up marrying me instead. I liked his openness in sharing something so personal with a new acquaintance. He assured me that none of his past experiences would interfere with our marriage. I surrendered to the wishes of the universe and went with the flow. We began our journey like every other newly-wedded couple. I did not feel love or crush-like feelings for him. For a very long time we did not experience any strong love or physical attraction towards each other, yet there was some connection. We became busy learning how to build our relationship, manage funds, keep the house and develop common interests. We enjoyed each other’s company. We liked our long walks and drives and conversations. We’ve been married for 12 years and in these 12 years we have made major changes in our life together: work, home, pastimes. Lot of uncertainty but we rode those waves. Within a year or two after our marriage, I again fell into the trap of “he is my everything”. It must be childhood conditioning. I began to believe that “Ravi is everything in my life, all other things are secondary.”  I could feel discomfort rising in me each time I compromised and adjusted to his needs. But I couldn’t act on the discomfort. It seemed more important to support his career change decisions and join him in his journey and deal with the uncertainties that the changes created. When you are not the person doing the hero’s journey, but assisting someone else in his, then going from the known to the unknown is not very easy. It calls for quite a bit of compromises in life — which I made. As always, in such moments of emotional crises my fantasies floated in front of my eyes. I imagined living with a friend and a father. I had fantasies about actors again. Sometimes it was Chiranjeevi (as father), Tom Cruise (friend) and later I think there was Madhavan (again friend). I imagined being in a safe world where nothing but only care and love existed all the time. Part of me always (24/7) spent hours fantasising on having intimate moments with that friend in the secret romantic world inside my head. I couldn’t quite understand why these visuals were so strong. I could never accept that I was missing something. I had so much guilt for not being true to Ravi and for fantasising about a rosy life with someone else. My fantasies made me guilty for almost five years and I fought the fantasy world. Ravi 1 Luckily, I felt safe in sharing my issues and struggles with Ravi. Not because he had solutions for everything. In sharing this turmoil with him, I learnt that vulnerability does not equal weakness. Ravi tried to help me see how much I was conditioned by my grandmother to believe that following the husband’s path is best for the family. It was evident to him that the turmoil is a result of all the compromises I was making to make his journey easy.He’d often encourage me to find my passion and pursue that interest seriously. He liked the fact that I was supporting him with his pursuits, to advise even his picking a difficult path away from the mainstream. There was always a possibility that my new-found interests could take us both in different directions. I could be gone from his life forever. But despite that he encouraged me to meet people, learn things that helped me sort out my issues by myself.  Dheeraj Five years ago I had a crush again. I was in my early 30s. I’d been married seven years. I was in a week-long workshop and once again I felt the same very intense feelings of crush and love for another man, let’s call him Dheeraj. The objective of the workshop was to recognise and be honest with our feelings. I felt a connection with a man and I expressed it to him on the last day of the workshop. Those five days involved a familiar extended eye contact, compliments, appreciation, a sense of ownership of the other person. Those wonderful feelings of being noticed, loved and valued reappeared. This experience followed me like a shadow for months after it was over. It still does sometimes when my mind is bright open for flashbacks. I wish I had asked him how he’d cope after he went home. I felt pain and disappointment in losing him and the feelings of love in my life again. The climax to our simple story was no different from the climax of the movie Mr and Mrs Iyer. Sometimes I would get worried about him and desperately want to know how he was doing, but no, I didn't pick up my cell phone and dial his number. Once again I had questions. Why did I invite such situations, if not to live in a constant state of internal conflict? Time has done some healing. And as I’ve grown more mature and seen more of life I’ve begun to accept some of these feelings. It is truly a gift to have Ravi in my life. He is the one person I share everything so private to me. He has known when and how to be my friend and not a husband. Of course, he has felt bad when I told him I felt a connection with someone else. But soon after, one of us begins to examine it more. What was it about that person that was so attractive? Was there something that we needed to change to make our marriage better for us? Dheeraj 2 I know it’s comparing apples and oranges to compare Ravi to someone I’ve a crush on. I don't expect Ravi to become that person but I generally share with him what attracts me and what doesn't. If Ravi feels that some change in his behaviour can make life better for me, he does make that change, else he gives me all the time in the world to get back to reality and life. ☺ So what do I think about crushes? This has been my understanding so far. A crush tells us things about who we are, our likes and who we think we can get along well with. It also creates an illusion that we are safe, loved and secured all the time. As if we don't have to worry about ourselves anymore and that it is the headache of the person we are in love with. These feelings make us believe that we are beautiful, unique and perfect.   The illusion (in some cases) might last a little longer, but sooner or later, reality does come into the picture, which is when things begin to get harder. It can get hard if we do not address the situation with maturity and detachment. Dheeraj 1 My fantasies, my friends, my marriage, and the many people I met in workshops and my teachers in Vipassana who helped me talk about these things — they have given me many intangible gifts. The truth is, these experiences helped me get in touch with myself, my strengths and weaknesses, taught me how to respect my needs, interests and people who are important to me. I learnt how to be honest and fearless in life when it comes to owning my space in this universe. It made me a better person – capable of feeling true joy because I had allowed myself to feel real sadness; they made me strong because I had faced rejection, instead of denying and repressing my feelings. In disappointment, I learnt to feel vulnerable and even embrace vulnerability. I learned to survive, to respect life and all its emotions instead of being locked up in society’s ideas of good and bad. Whatever the kind of relationships one has in life — from the monogamous to the polyamorous — life is a series of experiences that ultimately unshackles us from a narrow existence. It is up to us to take on this adventure and come out of it as a free spirit.   Sripriya Ravi Kumar (known to most as Priya Ravi) is based in Hyderabad. She has worked in e-learning sector for several years with expertise in Visual Communications. Currently, she is homeschooling her five-year-old daughter Deeksha. Together they explore the world of natural learning.  

Savita Bhabhi and I: A True Love Story

Here is something you should know about me. I wrote three stories for Savita Bhabhi.

Here is something you should know about me. I wrote three stories for Savita Bhabhi. Just three. I wasn’t even able to write the porn parts. I am clarifying this not out of fear of the law, but out of respect for the creators. How did I end up writing Savita Bhabhi stories? Savita Bhabhi Feature 2 It started in 2009 when Savita Bhabhi had just begun. I was a fresh computer science graduate, who was freelancing for a magazine. My friend and I were working on our design start-up. And I had just started work on my first graphic novel, which was to be a serious Pakistan-India dhishkyaun dhishkyaun shahkar. The first few Savita Bhabhi episodes had come out and I, like everyone else, was reading them all. Some ideas are so strong that sometimes the treatment doesn’t really matter. Not that the Savita Bhabhi treatment was bad. The artwork of the first Savita Bhabhi comic — The Bra Salesman — is really good. Even the comics that followed had good artwork, but the concept in itself sparked my engine, and I guess everyone else’s. Right then only the genuine, tharki, fun-loving audience were reading it. The one love, save artists, world is one, wow Savita Bhabhi so cool ya brigade came later, much later to the party. Then it was just the readers and bhabhiji. savita i love you too Then I got on the Savita Bhabhi forum. This was before you could stream porn online, or at least before I could. Forums were a great place to find good porn. By good porn I mean, you know, the porn that works for you at that moment in time. I find the stories in porn films to be exceptional. Full-length porn, you know the old porn movies, their stories border on the absurd. But between the absurdity and the bad acting it somehow creates something that is actually not bad — something unusual. Recent porn films, which want to be tasteful and HD and stuff no longer have that funny-ness. It is difficult to explain. I think it’s because you get the feeling that the new films take themselves very seriously and the old ones didn’t. Anyway, I thought the Savita Bhabhi forum would have gold. Instead I saw their invitation asking for stories from the readers. I shared my story idea on the forum. It was inspired by the graphic novel I was working on. I was deep into research then: Tarbela dam, Afghanistan, behaviour of frontier tribes etc. So the story I wrote was this: Savita Bhabhi goes to Afghanistan to catch Osama Bin Laden on behalf of the USA. She lures him out of hiding and fucks him till he’s tired and ready to surrender. Why did I feel like writing a story for Savita Bhabhi? Well, I like funny and I want to be a part of funny things and contribute to them. I saw Savita Bhabhi as something funny, something naughty that I could write. I can write an absurd plot. It might not be good, but I can write one. Next day I got an email from a “Deshmukh” — the pseudonym for the owner of SB. He liked the story and wanted me to flesh it out. Although, he suggested we change the location to Shimla and he’d rather have a dacoit instead of Osama. I was cool with it. He asked me to send him a rough plot and that he’ll take care of the rest. I did my bit, he did his bit and Savita in Shimla was out soon. sb11_coverpage And then I went out, feeling super, like an invisible 26th January parade was on. Immediately afterwards I bumped into my buddy Adhiraj Singh and the staff of what was then Random magazine (today Comic Con India). How I showed it off. Badi santushti mili. As someone who draws — I liked the illustrations. They were nicely drawn and coloured. I have never been a perfect anatomy, third angle to the fifth perspective aur pata nahi kya guy. I just draw, theek deekhey to badhiya. So I was happy. Few weeks later, I suggested another idea and Deshmukh responded. This time I was full on exploring my ‘krativity’ — Savita won’t be at the house, she would be at her maayka. Her husband Ashok would be at home, alone. He would be visited by the cablewallah, doodhwallah etc etc and none will take money from him. In their flashback would be their sequences with SB. The story would end with Ashok congratulating SB on her good management of the home. In this one too, Deshmukh edited the storyline and wrote the porn himself. I did write the porn but he told me that “lovemaking isn’t alternate oohs and aahs” which I think is quite true. And I loved my absurd plots more than writing the erotic parts. I have always been in a hurry, and hurry is bad for lovemaking. So I stuck to what I knew best — I merely provided the storyline. sb15_coverpage-724x1024 But I asked him to give me credit by name — as in mention my name on the cover. He asked me again — usually everyone got pseudonymous dude credits like,  FunkY!@bb. I didn’t understand why they did that, maybe shame. I really don’t know what prompted this, but I just didn’t understand why people won’t want their name on something so cool. Or they didn’t think it was cool? Or they were not Indians? Or maybe they were and they knew their chacha reads it? Pata nahi. But yeah, I got my full credit, and I’ll always be proud of that. Nobody in my bloodline can top that. Deshmukh later asked me to write for a third time for a new comic series he was planning and this time he (I have never been sure if he was a he or a she) was ready to pay me. They wanted me to sign a contract with some company based in Isle of Man, an island somewhere between England and Ireland. I agreed and wrote the story, although by the time that was wrapped up, I was lost in other things in my life and could never get the money. Then other things happened. 71nfp4E-ZwL In 2011, I finished my first graphic novel, The Itch You Can't Scratch, and on a whim, the publisher and I decided to write on the back a blurb — “After writing for Savita Bhabhi…” This small, impulsive act taught me about sensationalism, journalism, ethics, PR agents everything. Since my book got wide coverage and the first article about my book called me the creator of the character Savita Bhabhi, Deshmukh got pissed . I wrote to the reporter but she didn’t correct it. In all this my parents maintained a safe silence. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t. My graphic novel was about my life and my family. It was honest about poverty and my sisters were pissed. I mean, they were pissed about the honesty with which I had written about our family. The poverty of a Dalit family, the story of my father’s brothers who were consumed by their poverty. As an upper middle class family now (thanks to my father and reservations) my sisters try and hide all that. They felt some shame in me putting it out like that for the world to read. My eldest sister told me about her issues with the book. My elder sister, she stopped talking to me altogether for some time. About SB — well they never mentioned it. My eldest sister once mentioned it, laughing, later – “aur tu ek to ajeeb ajeeb cheezein kar hi chukka hai, wo kya bhabhi waigarah…”  and then she laughed. That doesn’t mean all my relatives were like that. One of my mamajis gave me a golden lecture on doing ‘these bad things’ and how he never thought I was ‘that kind of boy’, I seemed so ‘normal’. And I had made ‘these shameful things public’ and I had to succeed a lot in life to wash these sins off or pata nahi kya kya. Savita bhabhi comic strip 2 After everything, I still feel Savita Bhabhi was a powerful character. Obviously she’s hot like hell— what draws me to her is the whole desipana in an area where Indians might be sending top traffic to adult websites, but we still don’t create adult content. Also, her character invokes the teenage boy in me who used to drool at beautiful older buxom women. I have nothing to say in dissection of the character. There’s nothing to learn man, it’s just the whole naughtypana of it. That’s it. Why do we have to dissect everything? Roti khaa ke so jao yaar. I do not want to talk about how the character liberates women etc. In my head they don’t need anyone or any character to liberate them. They are liberated, they liberate themselves. It’s an individual who does things. If serendipitous thing like an encounter with a fictional character helps it, then great. I think dissection is just useless debate, which wastes essential time which we can use to take action, useful small acts that begin change. Not bakar bakar wherever that is just lines of text. Lorem ipsum. Lo mujhse bhi likhwa liya duniya ne paragraph. Zeher kahan hai? i-love-savita A  lot of people also might pretend to like Savita Bhabhi because its cool to do so, like watching Gunda is cool. But I believe the character was a big success because of its relatability. It invoked this dark fantasy for a hot Bhabhi, yet kept it slightly funny, catching on to the tone of Mastram (the cheap erotic literature, which also inspired a film) I mean take the story of Savita giving tutions – I mean a simple act that occurs everywhere, is taken and made naughty, and it is already in the head of every teen who goes for tuitions. It’s just that someone wrote it. I would happily do it again.   Sumit Kumar is a cartoonist based in New Delhi. His first graphic novel 'The Itch You Can't Scratch' has gained a strong cult following (meaning, not a mainstream one) and his political comics for Newslaundry have gotten mainstream acclaim - which led to his second graphic novel 'Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari' - a satirical retelling of the Naxal conflict.He has created comics and cartoons for companies in exchange for money.He lives in Delhi and makes comics for his webcomic - Bakarmax. Usually, he doesn't write about himself in third person.

To All The (Straight) Men I've Loved Before

Let loose, this rise of the body and soul caused me to constantly fall in love with many a lissom lad

“Kisko dekh raha hai, bey? Kaunsi ladki hai?” And so it began, again, this Ram-kahaani of half-lies and full diversions. “Arre no, yaar, no one. Does she look like someone I will go out with?” No one picked up on the illogic of that statement to ask, “why not? You are as smart as Raju, no? Tere liye to woh sahi hai.”   venkatesh   More on that word -- ‘smart’ – later. But Raju was Venkatapathy Raju, then newly inducted in the cricket team and like me, small, dark and slim. Like him, I bowled left-arm spin (but, badly) and batted right-handed (slowly, like a sleepy Anshuman Gaikwad on dope). So too did that pin-up, all rounder Ravi Shastri. But comparing oneself to him was not on since he was too tall, too good-looking (in a hungry, feral way) - and found getting women all too easy. Since my friends and I spoke mostly in cricketing terms as young men, even this back-handed compliment would’ve been way off the mark. I would have loved to not be like Shastri, but be with him, sensually stroking his incredible cheekbones (feather, optional). Par kaise batayen is raaz ko? And ‘Smart.’ That’s the annoying euphemism in the straight person’s world for male good looks. The word also has synonyms that are pure ugh like the Bengali “ki shupuroosh!” (My Mum’s favourite description of Soumitra Chatterji, Uttam Kumar, and Lord save us all, Pradeep Kumar!!!). If you ask me my favourite expression of manly beauty it is the Hindi romanch kahaniyon wala “sundar, sudaul, gabru naujawan.” dhoni First of all, among men there exists this coyness with male beauty. For instance, it is impossible to blurt out, “Uff, Dhoni is so sexy, man!” No sooner were I to say that, than some neighbourhood idiot was sure to pipe up: “You mean the way he ran out Mushfiqur?” No, no, no! I meant his mischievous triangular grin that slowly spreads to his eyes and the way his arched narrow back flares into the perfectly luscious bubble butt. By now you’ve caught my drift surely – that it is tricky to make sexy, lustful remarks about men amongst straight people, and downright impossible to make romantic ones. So in the opening scene of this piece, I was definitely looking at a beautiful guy but did I say, “abey chodu, main us sundar, sudaul, gabru naujawan ko dekh raha hun”? Sigh. shastri When I reached the quarter-century mark, I finally realised I was gay. Everything in the universe pointed to it. Red roses reminded me of Ethan Hawke’s wet pouty lips; the buzzing of bees reminded me of Bruce Lee whistling tunelessly, fixing his nunchaku while flashing his abs; VVS’s divine whip outside off to the midwicket boundary reminded me, well, reminded me of VVS; the first rains ki saundhi khushbu reminded me of the whiff when I ran into a sweaty Panjo, merey hostel-wala dream-boy; and the thundering clouds reminded me of my heart when I thought of my crush, Tushi at night. So, like a proper scientific chap, I welcomed Occam’s Razor and proclaimed that a comely lad causing my eyes to dart, my nose to whiff and the chest to thud had to be my body and soul rising up to its gayness, like cream from whey, like a skimpy Daniel Craig from the sea. You get the idea, now? daniel craig Let loose, this rise of the body and soul caused me to constantly fall in love with many a lissom lad. My haalat was dire. Imagine for a moment not a straight, but a bent Bingo Little, rushing up to Bertie Wooster croaking, “I say, old chap, I’m in a frightful pickle. There’s this rum boy I’ve met at the workmen’s Ball and he has this thing against spiffy gentlemen. You wouldn’t mind asking Jeeves to send up a good word for me through Oofy’s cook, who is his aunt, would you? ” To which Bertie would of course have raised his perplexed brow to ask, “Jeeves has an aunt?” Bairhaal, I had no Bertie or Jeeves to turn to. So I would make googly eyes, pant and sigh and gulp lumps of self-pity flavoured saliva. Most times the humdrum days at work would dissolve the pangs. But sometimes, especially when working together, thrown constantly into excruciating proximity, the sum total of each touch of the shoulders and brush of the arms, the fragrance of the exhalations, the repeated meeting of the eyes would slam me in a place where it was: To love unasked                   to speak with eyes unarmed                   with arms wrapped                   in words unuttered. Then, one day, in walked Jadoo, a friend of a colleague, for an interview. To this day, I do not know why I fell in love, but I did, gradually but surely. No, he did not qualify the rounds, but he still gave me what I thought were adoring smiles every time I went in and out of the interview rooms and even when I told him he didn’t make the cut. Perhaps foolishly I blurted, “Come home for dinner?” He did and within a week I was constantly replaying the image of holding his slim waist against mine while we discussed his career that night. I guess I learnt another meaning of the term ‘Strategic HR’. Jadoo wasn’t gay, but he was amenable to my request for a kiss then, and much more, as weeks passed. Perhaps he was curious. Perhaps my gaydar spotted a kashmakash in his heart. Perhaps he was being kind. He gifted me an intimacy that I yearned for. For six months, I would travel to Pune, his new workplace, to stay the weekend with him, sharing his narrow bed, while his four flatmates pretended that such things happened all the time. We had holidays together in a southern hill station. I was in love, but slowly also realised that he was not. As the haze of this love cleared it appeared that Jadoo might not even enjoy our intimacy anymore. And just as suddenly it ended.   bruce lee   It hurt. I have this predictable trait of striking out when hurt. To make the break-up even more memorable, I was less than generous and patient with this much younger lad; and now when his memories poke me in the eye, I crawl into a sombre place where: Darkness stoops into my room A companion for another lonely evening by the window I have seduced some straight men, and some straight men have flirted with me. Mazey ki baat - ki I remember those who kissed me. I tell myself I’m a romantic. Perhaps I do not have enough testosterone that would have me remember all those rides like a stallion. The incontrovertible proof of these low levels because my hair is only now receding from the temples. This wisdom I acquired many years ago, at fourteen, when our neighbour, RaniMaasi had strewn her pearls before me, “Golu ke Papa bahut energetic hain. Dekho unka kapaal (forehead) kitna ooncha ho gaya hai. (Golu’s father is so energetic. See what a high forhead he has?)” And there was I thinking he was going bald!   pehlwan   For some years I have wondered about my trysts with straight men. In my thirties I followed Nida Fazli sa’ab’s advise: Faasla nazron ka dhokha bhi toh ho sakta hai, Wo mile ya na mile haath badhaakar dekho. (The eyes may miscalculate the distance across which they meet Why not hold out your hand to see, if a hand is within reach?) It worked a surprising number of times. I have some memories of feeling triumphant after bedding straight men, some memories of having a great time before and after, swapping tales, reliving favourite cricket moments, talking politics and film music. I remember them appreciating the food I cooked for them, and particularly one coming back for more, kyunki my ghee-rajma-rice was like Mummyji’s. Thus affronted, I wanted to strike terror in his bowels by some inappropriate manly method. But all I remember giving was a sickly smile and asking if he wanted more. A couple of these liaisons were disasters because they wanted, not in words but in intent, to be macho, to show this homo what a man really ought to be. Perhaps I could have squealed in delight, got on with the task at hand and let this devil take the hindmost. But then as in life, and just as Darwin discovered that there are all kinds of finches in Galapagos, likewise, there are all kinds of homos in Mumbai. Mann toh yeh bhi kiya ki bataun, ki abey ghonchu, even the smallest things known to us are not so straight and narrow. You can be like the Top and Bottom Quarks, and do it like the Up and Down Quarks, but see, dekho, wahin Strange and Charm Quarks bhi toh hai! Jo ajeeb lagta hai kisi-kisi ko, who bhi Standard Model ka hi hissa hai. With none of these men could I talk being in love with a man, about desiring a man, about sharing why I loved his body, and why I loved his kisses even more. I don’t want to undermine these times; they provided me warmth, pleasure and even some moments to savour. Most of these boy-men were sweet lads, capable of being affectionate and caring. But their heart was not in it; their founding assumptions about the sexual partner were a little different. One of the chaps, now a goodish friend, told me that it was not the problem of the short leg fielding between the two long legs. He too had one and was most sincerely in love with it, and he was okay with all such short legs. No, the ickyness that he felt was because my body was hard and unyielding, and that it was a beastly thing to spring on him. He urged me to try and become soft and pliable like his girl, though he also felt it was utterly illogical of me to find guys sexy when all I had to do was to look at girls.   rajma chawal 2   I tried telling him and some of the others that I revel in their hardness, in their stringy musculature, in the muskiness of their pits, their treasure-trail, their five-o-clock, the bony edges of their hips, their…. Most often the faces would go from grim to grimmer, probably horrified at being objectified, but not by a woman; and scared, not wanting to hear the words that made it all too real. So following the bro-code, I learnt to zip up and push the emotions down to non-drama levels. To go unheard and silenced added to the all-too-familiar experience of gay men at that time, forcing me to accept that: Our fate is Ruse. To cry in the rain, strike bold and sulk tears Since then, I have discovered more. There are two sundar, sudaul, not-so-gabru, naujawan who flit in and out of my life. While I partake of their beauty, sometimes make love, sometimes simply open my heart to flood them with the sneh that oozes from my being, I wonder what they get out of this strange arrangement beyond the orgasm? Why do they keep flitting in? Why does one of them appear like a chiselled dream at my door, and as soon as he is in the flat, wrap me in a hug so warm that the chocolate starts melting in the fridge. He nuzzles splendidly, giving the best bruising kisses ever, giggling like a satyr while giving a hickey, and then just as suddenly he stops to saunter to the fridge to root out something to eat. I want to tell him, hey, you hellion: I tremble when your warmth touches me. Blue-points of ice that set me afire. Then I find myself smiling at these six impossible explanations before any breakfast. Humming, I go to the kitchen and make him what he wants to eat that evening. Pat is a consultant, an academic and a mentor. You can read his other writing for Agents of Ishq here. 

A Craving For French Fries

Have you ever had this sudden, urgent, mad craving for french fries? Like I did, on rainy days when petrichor can drive you to delirium.

By Manzibarr

Have you ever had this sudden, urgent, mad craving for french fries? Like I did, on rainy days when petrichor can drive you to delirium. So when it washed over me that day near the Gare Cornavin, I wasn’t surprised. I was 24. I knew I could do nothing but enter McD and surrender. So I did, coming out with steaming, salty fries and grabbing a chair near the eaves where water had collected off the drizzle.

The tables were very close to one another. Something that bothered me about Europe. A beefy young man sat at the next table eating a burger. I knew he’d been watching me. Most people did in mostly-white Geneva.

“Hi, what’s the time?” he asked. I answered him before realizing he had spoken in English. That was unusual.

We started talking. Marco was from Colombia. “Oh, one of my housemates is from Colombia” I said. Marco wanted to practice his English. It was hard to do that in Geneva he said.

Marco and I met five times over the next two months. Mostly in a group. I invited him to meet my room mates and friends. He said he was lonely. He didn’t know too many people in Geneva. He was a translator he said. Did odd jobs sometimes.

We almost kissed at a bus stop once. It was very close. I couldn’t tell if I really did desire him or was just so starved for physical contact because of the long distance relationship I was in. Come with me to a party he said. Was it Halloween? Some Swiss fete? I don’t remember. I only remember that for some reason, I dressed as a cat in a velvet mini skirt, black tights, cat ears and boots. We went in a big group. Liz, Charley, I, Marco. Others around Marco I had never met before.

The party was on a cruise ship. We took a boat out to the Lac Leman where a gleaming white ship pulsated to the vibration of hip hop music. Marco was wearing a hoodie jacket and a thick gold chain. I noticed what bushy eyebrows he had. There was punch in plastic cups. We had a few.

Marco kept disappearing into the levels of the ship like in a video game. I thought I saw his hoodie on the first level surrounded by heads leaning over him. I called out. Liz and Charley pulled me with them into the area where people were smoking. We smoked some pot Charley had brought with him. It was alright.

Marco returned suddenly. Where were you I asked. Oh just here, he said. Whose party is this? I wondered out loud. A friend’s, said Marco. Shouldn’t we at least meet this friend, I thought? Which friend, I asked. He disappeared again leaving me to ward off some strangers trying to stroke my velvet skirt.

When I saw him next, Marco had a packet of little white pills with him. He offered one each to Liz and Charley. Ooh e’s they said. I declined his offer. Why not, he asked me. Try it, it’s a happy pill. No I said. I don’t do chemicals. Organic is okay. Come on, Marco said, pressing his large hand into the small of my back. I realized how big he was next to me. I’m half his size, I thought. I have started to feel uncomfortable. How would Marco know a friend who parties on an expensive cruise liner? Where is he disappearing to? Marco is a political refugee who has no friends. He translates things from Spanish to French. He can’t be earning much, I always paid for his burgers when we met. But he’s just bought? got? happy pills that he is generously sharing around with us.

Marco is gone again. We can’t find him in the crowd. Where’s Narco Marco now, Charley giggles. Liz, Charley and I leave on a small boat going ashore. What do you mean Narco Marco I ask Charley. Liz and Charley shrug. They’re not bothered, they say. Many people deal in drugs. Marco doesn’t deal in drugs, I say. Just because he’s Colombian, I start, doesn’t mean…

I stop.

I never see Marco again. He never calls. Neither do I.

Manzibarr is a feminist. researcher. dot connector. lover of art, politics, design, prose. She originally wrote this piece here.

My Konark Summer

My libido always kicks up several notches whenever I visit home, aka India. I live in the US, and something about being there doesn’t sit well with my insides. A vital part of me goes into hibernation while in pardes and invariably comes fizzing, roaring back into life when I land in the vibrant mess I still call home, despite having lived outside it for almost a decade now. People are usually surprised when I confess that most of my (online) dating has been in India. Yeah, the US offers more convenience in terms of hosting partners and flings alike. I will admit that less judgmental aunties and uncles all around is a blessing. And of course, the fact that I have my own place where people may come and go as they please without interference is rather fabulous. Nevertheless, the fact remains that most of my amorous adventures tend to occur during the short and long visits home. The summer of 2016 was no exception. I was visiting home for 2 months. I had been dreaming of this for months--of the pleasures of flaneuring all over my beloved city streets, digging into the incomparable Kolkata biryani and chilly pork from hole-in-the-wall restaurants, meeting friends and family, going to say hello to the Ganga, all of it. As part of my Cal sojourn, I also re-activated my OkCupid and Tinder accounts. I was coming out of a dating hiatus, wondering who or what lay ahead.   Konark1 Recruiting New Agents of Ishq I don’t care overmuch about age differences, as long as there is a genuine connection, so when a 19 year old from Bokaro messaged me with a snarky one-liner, I responded in a friendly enough fashion. Soon though, it was apparent that the 12 years between us were a lot. The kid was brash and bright and sparkling with wit, but he reminded me of the undergrad students I teach and I told him so. This produced instant indignation: ”Kids? Come on I'm not a kid. I'm over 18 and an adult.” Made me chuckle. Not surprisingly, while he was huffing and puffing, defending his adulthood and shyly asking me awkward sex questions, he confessed that he was a virgin. And more, that he was “sex-obsessed,” had had an erotic encounter once with a girl who then backed off and left him confused and heartbroken. That mixture of defiance and sheer loneliness--I remembered it so well from my own past. So I made friends with him, chatted back and forth about sex and desire and the joys of masturbation, and why we don’t talk about any of these things out loud in India. And of course, I directed him to the Agents of Ishq website, and yup, he was a convert :) We still chat over email occasionally.   “Did you know ancient Indians were very bold?” A was one of the guys I went on a few dates with. An Oriya dude, he is a techie working for one of the big IT companies in Calcutta. I remember that he was intensely focused on bodybuilding. He used to be skinny, he said, but once his boss had mocked his weight in front of senior colleagues, and out of that sense of hurt and shame, he started working out. His diet was astonishing--primarily a Hindu vegetarian, he ate 12 eggs daily to build up his muscles! I’m no paragon of fitness (just ask my doctors about their Thoughts On My BMI), but that didn’t seem to faze A. While all this was great, we stumbled when it came to conversation, because the guy was the silent type, and there is only so much even a chatterbox like me can do when entirely unaided on the conversational front. The one time he opened up was memorable, however. I was planning a trip to Konark and Puri with my family, and he hails from nearby Cuttack. This was the third date, and he had been a perfect gentleman so far, never even broaching any topic relating to sex. But when I mentioned visiting Konark, he blushed visibly, and then said in a hushed tone, “Did you know ancient Indians were very bold? I had no idea until I visited Konark a couple years back and saw some of the sculptures! Maybe you shouldn’t visit there with family.” I … stared at him, nonplussed. He was from Odisha, for Chrissake! He took my silence as encouragement, and personal questions he had evidently been bursting to ask me came pouring forth. Top of the list was wondering how two women can actually have sex with each other, since “the main thing is missing” (My OKC profile clearly indicates that I am pansexual). So in the middle of my third date with a clueless man, I found myself on an unexpected, impromptu soapbox, talking about the politics of desire, about heteronormativity, and how you don’t need a penis for sex to happen. At the end of it, his only response was, “You seem to know a lot about sex. Will you please teach me?” I burst out laughing. I hadn’t intended to be mean, but this was the (unintentionally) funniest proposition I had ever gotten. Suffice it to say, there wasn’t a fourth date.   Condom, please D was a suave Delhi dude, visiting Cal on business for a few days. He was tall and handsome--the very stereotype of a virile Punjabi munda. We got along great from the start--a couple messages back and forth online, meeting for coffee and an extended conversation after it, sharing a pack of cloves and a joint on my balcony. We talked far and wide, about politics and religion and dating preferences, and he seemed right up my alley. I shared that I get tested every year for STDs, and how I had dragged my very reluctant brother along to get tested with me the week before. (My brother had been terrified of the results and made me read them out to him, heh.) D squirmed slightly at the story and said he understood how my brother must have felt. That should’ve been my first warning, really. At the time though, this wasn’t enough of a red flag. I was attracted to him and didn’t hide it. We were both comfortable with casual sex and couple-nights-stands, and rented a room for the night when we met the next time. We had great chemistry, and the sex was extremely fun and playful to begin with. I was half out of my mind with desire...but not enough NOT to notice that he hadn’t put on a condom, and was still trying to get inside me. Just before he could do so, I stiffened and rolled out from beneath him, cursing loudly. To my “Dude, where’s your condom?” he gave a sheepish grin and admitted he hadn’t brought any. Classic. I had some condoms on me though (I always do!), and retrieved them from my purse, only to see him frowning. Long story short, he refused to put one on. Frankly, I wasn’t even interested in his feeble reasons why. I flatly refused to have intercourse. In my years of having sex, casual or otherwise, I’ve never encountered a male partner who has refused to put on a condom, though I’ve met men who’ve grumbled about it. To be honest, I was kinda stunned. This was a guy who was swapping casual sex stories with me just the other day! He was a thirty-year old guy from a metropolitan city! It was inconceivable to me that not only did he have regular unprotected sex, but that he fully expected me to acquiesce as well. I made it clear that as long as he wasn’t putting on a condom, there would be NO penetration: “I sleep with women too, dude. I do not need the ‘D’. Maybe today is when you find out what it is like to have sex without intercourse, hmm?” It was an absurd, surreal impasse. He tried arguing, coaxing, sulking and then seducing me into changing my mind. But I wasn’t gonna deal with a whiny, irresponsible man-child compromising my health and safety. And I was stuck in a hotel room with him in the middle of the night. He finally seemed to give in, and agreed to put on a condom--except, when it came right down to it, I found him again trying to slip inside me unsheathed. It’s a good thing I have a sizable body. Although he was a hefty guy, I was able to physically shove him off me, get dressed and leave, middle of the night be damned. That’s when Ubers come most in handy, no? Yeah, dating is tricky, no matter which part of the world you are in. Online dating even more so, because you usually don’t have mutual circles of friends and acquaintances acting as a buffer, for safety or otherwise. My misadventures in Kolkata that summer were educational though, and even fun in parts. Konark2 But, you win some I eventually did find two others (one online, one an old friend) who turned out to be generous, wonderful lovers, and those memories are very, very precious. OKC delivered finally, and how! Just as I was about to give up on the site, I came across a profile with a 99% match with me, and messaged them. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as they say. This person is non-binary (though assigned male at birth, and still using he/him/his pronouns), a writer, and just as startled as I was to have found someone who felt so familiar. Like me, he is also polyamorous, and I happily spent the rest of the summer in his arms, getting to know his family as well. My story would be incomplete if I didn’t mention an unexpected series of encounters with an old friend, someone I’ve known for the last 13 years. There had never ever been any romantic/sexual frisson between us, so his proposition to me one night after an epic drinking spree came right out of the blue. Even more surprisingly, I said yes. (Still not sure why, exactly.) Turns out we are electric together sexually—he’s one of the rare ones who set me alight from top to bottom. My, my, Cal, but you held some of the best surprises last summer! I like to think of Summer 2016 as my Konark summer, with a heady selection of people and experiences over the two months I was back home. So who says only ancient Indians are “bold”? :) Alaspriya is still torn between two continents, and needs to write like she is running out of time. Which she is, eek. You can read her other writings for Agents Of Ishq here. This is the song she listened to on loop while writing this piece. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=YFYiTS46x-8[/embed]

UNFUCKABLE ME (OR, “YOU’RE NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS”)

A self-styled Adonis recently told me that he has never really been attracted to Indian women (He’s Parsi. Don’t Ask. I Don’t Know.) Or short girls, but I’m just so beautiful that he feels especially drawn to me. That as a short Indian girl, I was somehow different from other short Indian girls -- an arbitration that he felt perfectly comfortable vocalizing as he was thinking through it, an articulation imbued with the knowledge that when a rich, handsome boy tells a girl that she’s pretty, she is going to listen. I laughed at that comment for hours. To what shall I compare this? Most accurately, I think I can compare this to the moment to a 21 year old girl with a twitter account dedicated to the Indian Minister of Road Transport and Highways waking up to a tweet from him telling her that he is going to inaugurate a toll-booth in Ghaziabad in her honor. When you are confronted with something this ridiculous, you begin to recognize the social forces and emotional anchors that undergird such interactions. You sometimes need things to get really weird before you can notice them. Flirting is about flair, and expression, but pay attention to most of the flirting you’re at the receiving end of and you can see what’s actually going on: exceptionalization. Are you even desirable as a heterosexual woman if men can’t describe you as an exception? When I was sixteen, a guy seven years older than me told me he liked me because I was smarter and more mature than women his age. My high school boyfriend told me that he liked me not only because I was “pretty, smart and funny” (teenage male thinking is remarkably complex), but because I was the ONLY girl he knew who was all three of those things. He was a top athlete in school, so you know, only the best girl was worthy of the boy. unfuckable_podium_1 One of the more boring qualities of girlhood is that the desire you experience is predicated on the desire you produce. It was as if this male X-ray romantic vision was what discovered me, you know like the diamond in the rough that I was. Being the object of male desire/[male desire’s object?] was became a way for me to understand my own brilliance, because male biases are thought of as unassailable facts. This feeling of desirability was mapped onto otherwise competitive, jagged and antagonistic dynamics with the boys I went to school with. In class 9 I complained to my school counsellor that a boy in my class threw a razor blade at me and she said, “He comes from a conservative Brahmin family and isn’t used to a Muslim girl getting more marks than him -- also he probably thinks you’re pretty.” As I grew older, I realized that I couldn’t make the jokes about my body hair, or my father being a member of the Taliban (just joking yaar) go away, so I decided to be the best in whatever I could be the best in, which was many things. Boys thinking I am pretty felt like another victory, like I was queen bee of the wolfpack or something similarly muddled. unfuckable_certificate_1 This projected self-image operated through a fragile sense of my own girlhood; I believed that I had transcended the funda of being a girl -- because apparently something about me was too scary, too strange and I’ve always struggled with the idea that I was meant to be a girl or that I am much of a girl in the first place. I am an unremarkable combination of thin and fair, and when paired with my exotic Muslim name I often get turned into an object of fascination or some kind of conquest. I have always been cushioned in the idea that I possess a prettiness, which has filled me with this particular dread because it meant that I was palatable to men, and also this irritation that this “privilege” is something that they confer onto me. It is for this very reason that I find myself unable to internalize “your hotness is your own” as a self-love mantra. If it weren’t for the male-identified “privileges” of being a hot girl, then I would probably even forget that I had a body. The other thing, and this is a big one, is that I never really acted like how young pretty women are supposed to behave, and I don’t mean this in a cute way. Without getting into the specifics of all the harassment and bullying I have experienced, I realized very early on that that the thrill of being exceptionalized is followed by the violence and disposability of not being sanitized enough, of not being the kind of “good girl” men want to protect. unfuckable_speech_1 There came a point at which being cast as the modern-day trophy wife type of girlfriend filled me with an icky restlessness. The more powerful men thought I was, the more disposable I knew I had become, because the condition of my desirability was that I always had to be exactly what they wanted me to be, and nothing else. The initial point of the thrill for me was never that I was “not like other girls,” it was that I was better than the boys. But this was just me being stupid and hopeful, boys would never acknowledge this as fact, and the more threatened they feel the more cruel they become. It is hard to talk about myself in this way as a retrospective, packing years of my life into this terse linearity, so I can find a way to make the present easier to talk about. The easiest way I can describe these convoluted modes of recognition is through this quote from a Hannah Black interview, in which she is talking about an ex: “I must be a woman because you treat me how you treat women.” This is what it felt like, this acute powerlessness. While I can understand the feminine to be a source and expression of power, the truth is this is never how I experienced my girlhood. I began to feel the heartbreak of not being one of the boys, of not being hotter than the boys, of not being hot to the boys. This strange, shameful condition of being trapped between a “fuck you!” and a “pick me!” I find myself constantly reminding myself that I am not a bechaari, because even that is something men want. Or I tell myself that a 20 year old girl worried about not being pretty is one of the least important, most common things in the world, except assuming the voice of a mean old man against my feelings don’t make them go away. unfuckable_boys_1 The thing is: how do I have sex when I want to rupture everything men see as desirable about me -- because I know by now that this catalogue of desirable girl types only exist to make you feel as small as possible, to slot you so they don’t have to see you. How do I have sex when I don’t even see anything desirable about me - because realizing these things about how men see you can actually make you terrified of being seen at all. unfuckable_rupture_1 A few months ago, my friends were describing the rush of wanting to fuck people they see passing by: their types, the fantasy, the urgency, the lewdness of it. I remember having nothing to say, not because I was scandalized -- I just didn’t think anyone would reciprocate my desire to fuck. How do you even fantasize when you are unable to negotiate your own fuckability within yourself? How do you see other people as attractive when you don’t think of yourself as someone anyone would be attracted to? How do you see other people when you can barely see yourself? I was recently at a panel on “Technology and Erotics,” and the India head of a popular global online dating app said that Indians in their 20s have already dated more than people in their 40s. There is this narrative that us post-liberalization babies have access to greater vocabularies of desire and have more avenues to operationalize that desire. The pressure to be having sex as proof of our desirability is now compounded with this strange “jab main tumhari age ki thi toh TV peh ek he channel aata tha: Doordarshan” type of generational guilt. I remember laughing at what a perfect little sexless Indian girl I am hidden like that black and white channel at the end of the frenetically technicoloured dial. Being suspended in sexlessness when all of your friends are constantly in relationships, in-between relationships, and/or hooking up makes the holy trine of sex-positivity, body-positivity and self-love feel like a consolation prize. My attempts at rejecting prettiness resulted in me desexualizing myself. My desire to unravel the constituent parts of my desirability became a way for me to find different ways to tell myself that I am unattractive, and when you relate to yourself in this particular mode of of self-hatred you begin to see the different ways that social and personal interactions are structured to remind you of it. I would stand idly by as men I was talking to would ask out a friend, often wondering why I never measured up or received that kind of attention - there are numerous permutations of this exact feeling, stretched across different circumstances, but all amounting to the same thing: me being in a perennial state of feeling rejected. The paranoia of being thought of as ugly and unfuckable, the most unladylike feeling. unfuckable_balloons_1 I developed this fear of being seen and judged. I began to get used to panic attacks and crying uncontrollably in public, and every time I had to go outside I would have to spend hours emotionally training myself. On many days I would be too scared to even step out of my room to use the bathroom. I had already fallen in unreciprocated love with someone, a desire that embedded me in a circular relationship between hope, longing and rejection. The question of whether I am pretty or not drains, corrodes, and harms me so much that I would rather that we didn’t live in a world where these things mattered. I wish there was no such thing as prettiness, but this is an unrealistic hope, so yes I would rather be pretty than ugly, but don’t tell anyone I said that because we’re all beautiful, as you know. How to deal with the dilemma of hotness as a feminist? In a journey to be your own person/woman? Either you commit yourself to being ugly as a statement or you think of everything about you as attractive, also as a statement. Desiring in spite of feeling undesirable. Desiring in spite of feeling like your ugliest, most unfuckable self. If there’s one thing I have learned, it is to listen to what my paranoias and fantasies are trying to tell me. Who do I tell myself I have to be in order for me to stop punishing myself? Whose pleasure, whose power? I have been using hetero-romance as a way to wound myself, oscillating between wanting to reject the everything I have been told I should be and feeling rejected because I know I never was “that girl” anyway. I found some brief respite in the image of the exceptional girl, but then there is also the violence and the heartbreak and the anxiety of what will happen if it is revealed that I am not exceptional. I would like to derive no pleasure at all from how men see me, because then I can get rid of the pain of not being a man.  But it is hard to speak about detachments when there isn’t exactly anything else you can attach yourself to. unfuckable_mag (1) Then there is the complexity of what I actually fantasize about, which is, being loved in spite of heterosexuality and patriarchy. I want to exist outside the realm of dating, outside this thing of being judged for having a face and a body, outside of these ritualized prevarications. I don’t care how much sex you have and how soon - often critiques of dating turn into these moralistic ventures and like, I’m a chill and cool girl I promise. I just want to figure out what desirability means and why I feel me being who I am renders me unfuckable. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned to not let rejection turn me into some stereotype of male dejection, to wrench it away from narratives of entitlement and abuse. Rejection is physically overpowering. The days you feel it you are completely engulfed, and packed within is an urgency that needs direction. I was both terrified that I told a boy that I had feelings for him that I was willing to commit to (ugh, but like, not a marriage) and that in the absence of the kind of reciprocation I fantasized about, I was turning a figure of obsessive insecurity, that I was not respecting his boundaries. There exists a space to mediate all of this that is not retributive - you don’t want to punish yourself or the other person. I keep holding on to this kind of grace, which I think helps me, but I also wonder how anger can be restorative. So on some days I try to be angry, half-apologetic. I don’t have the answers because I am figuring out the script for myself, and this in itself is a feminist triumph. I want to believe, I think I do, that it will guide us towards loving ourselves with as much care and generosity, as in our fantasies we practice loving someone else.    

The Bhabhi Next Door

"I like talking to a Bhabhi in the neighbourhood because of her outspoken and frank opinions on sex" says Saurabh "but I feel nervous too because she is so bold." The conversations excite him and Bhabhi extends an invitation. WiIl Saurabh take her up on it? Listen to this podcast about a young man's fantasies and anxieties about sex.

"I like talking to a Bhabhi in the neighbourhood because of her outspoken and frank opinions on sex" says Saurabh "but I feel nervous too because she is so bold."  The conversations excite him and Bhabhi extends an invitation. WiIl Saurabh take her up on it? Listen to this podcast about a young man's fantasies and anxieties about sex. This podcast has been created in collaboration with The Youth Parliament as part of the “Mardon Wali Baat” workshop. Language: Hindi Listening Time: 4 minutes 27 seconds

George Michael, The Sex-Ed Teacher We Never Had

And all this while dear George, hot-sexy-smooth George Michael in his snug denims kept telling us, ‘Sex is natural, sex is good, sex is fun, sex is chemical’.

Growing up in 1990s India, George Michael became the sex-ed teacher who told you what sex felt like, beyond the flying saucer clip-art uterus and the AV about menstruation writes Pooja Pande.   george-gif In the spectrum of “things that you guess and things that you know”, there was a whole lotta erring on the unfortunate side of that equation if you, like me, grew up through the 80s and 90s. And so popped up a question in English class one not so fine day – sweaty is how we were all feeling back in the days when that word did not stretch to include anything remotely sexy. You did not sweat from anything more amazing than the lack of a cool breeze in a cramped classroom. I raised my hand and asked Madhulika Ma’am, “Ma’am, I want to know the meaning of a word.” Now Madhulika Ma’am was one of those cool English teachers – only English teachers were cool like that, no? – and she had recently been encouraging us to read and explore beyond the syllabus and to not fear if we didn’t understand something, because she’d be right there to help us. So, explore I did. I’d just turned 10 and had had a special “double digits” celebration and had encountered something I did not understand, but I knew I wanted to go forth boldly. Badly. This something was George Michael. The man, the music. I’d had a taste and I wanted more. Madhulika Ma’am lost some of that joie de vivre when I asked her I wanted to know what “father figure” meant. “Stay back after class”, was the response I got, an admonishment I knew. “I found it in a book,” I dissembled immediately, knowing even then this was maybe a little too much beyond syllabus. In the video, see, the man did not seem to be conducting a paternal relationship towards the woman and that had me honestly perplexed. But uff, when he crooned, “If you ever hunger, hunger for me”, you somehow knew what he was talking about. You wanted to hunger too. Hunger for him too, yes sure.
  1. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9hfHvQSNo[/embed]
  We are all creatures of instinct, after all – born of what we do not comprehend at the age of 10, but we grow into it. We are meant to. But Madhulika Ma’am’s reaction came back to me a couple of years later when I listened to I Want Your Sex endlessly. There really were more “things that you hide” than “things that you show” in India of the 90s. It was a song that predated Father Figure, as I found out later, but it had missed my eight-year-old radar and joyfully so, because then it landed splonk in the middle of a hurried F.L.A.M.E.S. game in-between classes. Just as teenage lurked around the corner, smirking at a bunch of 12-year-olds desperately scribbling off the rest so as to view ‘S’ in all its glory, the last letter standing--signifying “Sex” with the Special Someone. So everyone could burst into the refrain, ‘Sex is best when it’s one on one’. Best rendered with knowing glances all around, like we all knew what he was talking about. I mean, we did – just not very precisely. But it sure helped years later. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3AP26ywQsQ[/embed] But first we had to wade through all those inane Biology lessons through high school and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge sessions of “learning about your body” in diagrams that looked nothing like anything I had on my own body. That uterus clipart-ish thingie still reminds me of UFO’s and alien movies! And there was that one bizarre AV we were all subjected to so we could be prepared for the onset of our periods. Which we never were because it never played out like that damn AV: It just seemed like a wise decision to lock oneself up in the bathroom until Maa arrived. And all this while dear George, hot-sexy-smooth George Michael in his snug denims kept telling us, ‘Sex is natural, sex is good, sex is fun, sex is chemical’, much like the commercial that stays stuck in your head, sending out subliminal messages to your limbs that can hey, only follow orders. Even before it all began, George stopped being all that: In a quickfire move that was Freedom, a song that was nothing short of a coming out anthem. ‘The horror the horror’ everyone shrieked, all the “hungry schoolgirls” whose “pride and joy” he had betrayed. But really, to me, it didn’t matter. F.L.A.M.E.S. and related shenanigans that included proposals at the water cooler, manipulating Chem Lab viva groups et al, had already taught me everything I ever needed to know about ek tarfa love and how it was perfectly alright to simmer with burning passion like a biryani on a low-flame kadhai “until the end of time”. We understood serious heat like that, us kids of the 90s, and how it fired up and consumed you, just like a George Michael song. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYAc7gB-0A[/embed] Besides, I had my own personal takeaway from that anthem that still speaks to so many even today, so much so that 2012 Olympics closed with it. George might have meant it for the tabloids and the stalkers making it famous in a video he remained deliberately unseen in, but for me it was something that smelt of the ultimate truth, as far as relationships were concerned. I could say it to imaginary boyfriends, parents, teachers, anyone who was listening, “All we have to see is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me. Yeah, yeah.” In. Your. Face. Cut to Fast Love colliding with that first year of college that brings with it all those notions of the only kind of Freedom that matters to an 18-year-old. We were now firmly set on the path of “some education”, “some affirmation”. Hell, we were even scouting for it. Narratives change as you grow up and garner experience, even as the love-lust for a singer, his music, his songwriting, his demeanour, his accent, his voice, crystallizes into an iconic shape seared onto your soul. Making out in a hazy parking lot with George urgently crooning “I do believe that we are practicing the same religion” on the soundsystem might all be very well, and boy does it make for great locker-room talk after! I still remember a friend telling me how the Fast Love video scandalized her and she would watch it, lights dimmed, when everyone else in the house was fast asleep. “Obviously”, I replied in my best that’s-no-big-deal voice, “Dirty Dancing bhi to aise hi dekhi thi, na?” But ever since she said that, it became like a bucket-list item on my personal definition of dirty. Make out with Fast Love playing in the background. Check! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQVWYu4BdMo[/embed] But then here he was, the very embodiment of tender passion, in Jesus to a Child. This one promised goosebumps in other ways, and came laced with an overpowering sense of déjà vu. Where had I felt this kind of yearning before? I got my answer on another chance encounter, several years later – In 2004, having figured out some of life, or so I thought, I read about Patti Smith covering a song that she said she simply couldn’t get out of her head. I had to go back and play it on loop then. It was George Michael’s Father Figure. All of George Michael’s diktats came true one way or the other, because he was the sex ed teacher we never had. “Just keep on fucking” sounds every bit like the order it is – Oh yes, we all better follow it. In memoriam. “C-c-c-c-come-on!” – but it also manages to embrace the humour somehow. Sex is funny too, after all. George Michael was the one who made a case to “explore monogamy”, he suggested we “go outside”, he patted me on the shoulder to “keep the faith”, and he told us that there’s always somebody “too funky” for you. Way too funky, maybe, and perhaps I should just stay away. There’s wisdom too in sex, after all. In an era not overwhelmed by choices – choices in porn, choices on Tinder, choices on beer barrels for god’s sake! – George was our very own ‘Future Sex/Love Sounds’. And while I dig Justin Timberlake as much as one can, there are simply no pedestals lying around anymore. ‘Cuz George Michael, he just stepped off that last one. Pooja Pande, writer-editor, not-so wild-child of the 90s, has been waking up to angsty mornings of late. She genuinely hopes 2017 will be a kinder year for music, lovers, and music lovers. Read more of her writing here.

"I've slowly learnt to keep the lights on." Body, Images and Sex: A Storified Conversation

Body, Images and Sex: A Storified Conversation with Kripa Joshi, Rani Dhaschainey and Ratna Devi Manokaran

My First Vibrator

When household chores turn into the discovery of an orgasm. Listen to Meera's story of her first ever vibrator!

A sleepy afternoon during her summer holidays, a college girl is innocently going about boring household chores when she makes the most path-breaking discovery. Listen to Meera's podcast about her very first home made orgasm. Click here for image source.

TELEPHONE PYAAR

When Rohit's crush writers her cell number on a form he quickly memorises it. Then it's love in full gear. They act like strangers in the coaching class and spend hours on the phone. And then, one day, there's a cross-connection and the line goes dead. Did love have to turn into hate? Listen to this podcast and see what you think.

When Rohit's crush writers her cell number on a form he quickly memorizes it. Then it's love in full gear. They act like strangers in the coaching class and spend hours on the phone. And then, one day, there's a cross-connection and the line goes dead. Did love have to turn into hate? Listen to this podcast and see what you think. This podcast was created in collaboration with The YP Foundation (The Youth Parliament) as part of the workshop Mardon Wali Baat. Listening Time: 10 minutes 16 seconds Language: Hindi

EK LADKI BHOLI BHALI SI

There is a boy who likes Kajal. He follows her around. She quite likes it. But when it's all indications and no declarations, what is a girl to do? And what if her parents find out? A story of innocence and wisdom from Ranikhet, Uttarakhand.

Language: Hindi

Duration: 4 minutes 11 seconds

This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya.

 

Every Navratri Falguni Made Me Feel That Queer Is Ekdum Cool

A song of ishq for Falguni Pathak!

The year I was eleven, there was this new, super-hummable song which became a huge hit, playing over and over on every Indian music channel climbing the charts superfast! The song “Yaad Piya Ki Aane Lagi” by Falguni Pathak, had a sweet, simple, thod sa filmi video in which four gal pals excitedly plan their look and dance moves for the big Dandiya night. It had Riya Sen looking super-hot and her knight-in-shining-armor rescuing her from a nightmarish wardrobe malfunction. How does he do this? With just her hairpin and letting her hair lose. He even used the magic hairpin to open a jammed car door! I think that is the precise point in my puberty when I realized that long, loose hair has magical powers. I also clearly remember registering that one amongst the four girls was very comfortable with her tom boyishness and so was the older Falguni, who appeared in the video as a singer-narrator. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OddevBzLqLg[/embed] I related to Falguni’s song-videos but wasn’t sure how. The music was fun of course, but it made me feel something inexplicable. Now when I look back I am surprised how I did not see the queer happening, like practically all over! Perhaps it was because I did not acknowledge and accept that I was queer that time. I did not even know the word and could not concretely comprehend the idea. But I knew the feeling that seemed to be present in some unsaid way in the videos and related with it. After the first video the tomboyish girl did not return. But Falguni was a constant in every video and her presence became stronger. All the videos have the same logic. There is a heroine, with pals, who is super femme. Falguni plays the hero not in the sense of being the romantic lead opposite the heroine, but definitely the saviour in disguise, replacing the hairpin-wielding hero of the first video, as sound mixer, dance teacher or a (queer) fairy godmother to a (queer) Cinderella. She always rescues the damsel in distress. Be it helping select an outfit to impress a lover, or getting over loneliness, or just arranging some help. Sneakily the male lead never really gets enough screen time, he is just kind of kept there for name’s sake. And shots of the couple together are always followed by shots of Falguni, so you always remember who the real hero is. Take her super popular song “Meri Chunnar Udd Udd Jaaye.” Here, the basic plot revolves around a young girl (Ayesha Takia) sent away from home and being made to stay with a not so friendly warden in a huge house. Curiously, she keeps remembering Falguni from her home town, teaching her dance steps and they really look half in love. Later we find Ayesha fantasizing about another woman in a saree who appears only when she is alone, a rather curvy imaginary friend. There is a hunk in the video, but it is unclear what role he is fulfilling in the story besides polite conversation. He is quickly ejected to be replaced by all the ladies of Ayesha Takia’s imagination. There is also a Yak for some unknown reason. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9r2GxMlRD4[/embed] In another of her songs “Oh Piya”, we find Falguni stepping out of a Mercedes, which appears to be her own, wearing a white suit. In that time and for that matter even now, I cannot imagine any Indian woman carrying off clothes like that and with such swag! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coJG9walQP4[/embed] This entire image of Falguni thrilled me, because I too wanted to dress like that, drawing on a masculine side of myself. But there was something else, something even more under the surface that I could recognise in the stories. In every video, Falguni almost always seems to be friend zoning herself - even if the damsel is throwing herself at her. Since she is often on the sidelines of the story – a little bit narrator, sometimes a fantasy, not exactly part of the narrative, it’s very ambiguous, yet palpable. I could relate to this one hundred percent because for the most of my teenage years I friend zoned myself when it came to female interests. In fact, I went out of the way to ensure that if my girl crush liked a boy she would have him. I did this by introducing them or pitching in a word wherever required, even if it meant a stabbing pain in my heart, because I really didn’t think it possible that my love could have its place. I had never heard a love story in which this happened, and maybe could not conceptualise it. Maybe I did not want to give myself away, even to myself – or could not. Falguni’s songs embodied same-sex, attractions, bonds and relationships without explicitly stating them, alongside heterosexual ones, and the echoes resonated in my consciousness. Through their shape, these stories helped my feelings find a place. The videos made tom boyishness normal without disempowering feminine women. Femme, tomboy, butch – anyone could be queer in whatever combo – there was no need to define, no need, even, to ‘choose a side’. I was not forced to come out while watching, but internally I enjoyed them keenly and related to it – and through this free enjoyment subtly learned to feel comfortable with that world of being and feelings in me. The unexpected mismatch between Falgunis voice and her appearance is also amazing. If you didn’t know what she looked like you would imagine her to be very feminine – in fact like the heroine character of her videos. And if you had never heard her sing you would assume that she would be rowdy. In real life she is impeccably polite and seems quit shy. She is comfortable sharing screen space with women leads unlike many of her female contemporaries who always needed male hunks swooning over them (though to each their own fantasy I say!). I also loved Falguni for being extremely comfortable with her body and weight. She didn’t seem to need to be skinny or sexy and got attention just as she is. Although she maybe queer in her persona, that is scarcely the point of her public image, in which she is essentially known by her work, as the insanely sought after singing star of the traditional Navratrai dandiya celebration. falguni-feature She reaffirms that you could be queer all the time yet not be only queer in what you did. I absolutely love that despite being the queen of Dandiya, Falguni has never worn a Ghagra Choli costume. It is so inspiring for me to see that she is super comfortable in her clothing and doesn’t change it under any circumstances. Her clothes are just an extension of herself. I find it amusing that although, by now we should be used to it, the media can never resist making a comment on her ‘style’. But because she is so comfortable with herself, a snide remark would expose them as narrow minded, leaving Falguni unaffected, smiling sweetly as ever. In one of her interviews a reporter slyly asked her- “Be it on stage or off it, one always sees you clad in a shirt and trousers/jeans. Have you ever contemplated wearing a traditional dandiya dress — a ghagra choli, for instance?” Her response was “I have never worn a ghagra choli in my life. I have never even worn a salwar kameez, ghagra choli toh bahut door ki baat hai (ghagra choli is a far cry). I am not used to it.” The reporter continued on the same line – “How did this style become your sartorial signature?” And her response was- “Even as a child, I would wear the school uniform only because I had to. Otherwise, I was always comfortable in my shirts, pants and jeans. I never considered wearing anything else. When I was growing up, my sisters always dressed me up in shirts and trousers. Now I feel this is my costume; yehi dress hai mera (this is the way I dress). I don’t think I will ever wear a ghagra choli. “ The naturalness of her gender queerness is such that your mind doesn’t even question it. And the most exhilarating, heady part of it is - the masses have unquestioningly absorbed and accepted her looks just like her affable personality without blinking an eyelid. When I cut my hair short and began to wear shirts and masculine t-shirts people started to refer to me as Falguni. After some years of being out as a bisexual woman, I figured that this is the average Indian’s code word for Lesbian/ Butch women. And it is not a derogatory code. I know this because India loves Falguni. The hysteria of her fans during dandiya is unmatched and she is paid in crores for her dandiya shows. Falguni’s video appearances remain etched in people’s memory even after so many years and the ones where music companies erased her from the screen are forgotten. I just celebrate the fact that she was always way ahead of her time. Her unconventional looks and non-apologetic style are yet to be duplicated by any woman singer. She is a rock star in her own right albeit an unacknowledged one. She is so public yet so guarded that we can keep assuming but we will never know, as with all glamorous people! falguni It makes me happy that she is so famous and everyone accepts her. Her following is so diverse that it allows for that closeted tom boyish girl to openly admire her without having the pressure being judged – and slowly, slowly maybe, us ladki ki bhi chunar ud ud jaye till it feels comfortable being herself in front of more and more people. I wish there was more of Falguni in the year for all those who are struggling with their identity. Or maybe more Falgunis. To have personalities who are comfortable and happy in their skin and are widely accepted. Whose style is a style, and not a headline. That is something to dance about, na? Proud out bisexual activist, Sonal Giani is better known for featuring on Zee TVs prime time show 'Connected Hum Tum', Bollywood film 'W' and Documentary 'Purple Skies'. Currently she is a Creative Associate at Parodevi Pictures. 

I CALL HER MOSAMBI

People think Divya says she's bisexual jus to 'be cool.' But it's feelings, all kinds of feelings of love swirling around her that she talks about in this lyrical, soundscaped, spoken word podcast. Duration: 3 mins 39 seconds Language: English  

BAS EK KISS...

A marriage that has sex, but none of the sweetness of kisses. The memory of a long-ago electrifying touch, which tells you things can be different – can that push you to change things? Listen to the painful yet hopeful podcast from Muskaan.
Language: Hindi Duration: 6 min 36 seconds This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya.

ISHQ KE AAM, KHAANE KE AUR, DIKHANE KE AUR

Sweety, growing into a beautiful young woman in a small town, admired herself in the mirror, longed for love. But did she dare taste this forbidden fruit? A bittersweet story of longing and regret from Muzaffarpur, Bihar.

Sweety, growing into a beautiful young woman in a small town, admired herself in the mirror, longed for love. But did she dare taste this forbidden fruit? A bittersweet story of longing and regret from Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Language: Hindi Duration: 5 minutes 11 seconds This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya.

NOT A HAIR IN PLACE: SEX, WAXING AND THE BODY IN MY MIND

Body hair and sex - that complicated relationship!

Two things happened when I took up badminton at 13: My first real interaction with boys and the regular wearing of shorts. This meant that something had to be done about the furry, grey film that seemed far denser and darker on my legs than on other girls’. And arms, of course! I pointed out to my mother (thankfully the only parent dealing with this department) an article in a women’s magazine from her own subscription, which encouraged adolescent girls to wax so by the time they’re in the twenties they’d have just the legs to flaunt below their skirts. Though my mother had caught me in the past shaving my knees with a men’s razor, she didn’t really see that my hairiness had been making me cringe at my body. In fact, she, along with a few of my other female relatives, frequently and openly, declared that I was indeed a hairy kid, giving my fears the loudest voice. However, my mother was into clothes, and she saw the point of the article clearer than my self-esteem issues. And so, I had been allowed to wax my arms, underarms and legs from an early age. It wasn’t half as painful as hearing casual remarks about the presence of ‘’excessive’’ hair on my petite body. When I turned 16, my cousin, newly of adult age, suggested we should get our belly buttons pierced to commemorate our getting to live in a city away from our respective hometowns. Of course, I scoffed it away. Not so much because it meant agreeing to a hole made through a fat chunk of stomach skin but because it meant revealing a hairy stomach to a stranger. She had her way of making partners in crime and soon we met up on a college-bunked Saturday to carry out this lark. Before we proceeded to business I asked her very consciously if she had done any “cleaning”. She had been a child almost hairy as I and at 10 years of age declared she wouldn’t in all her life go through the torture of waxing and would instead tie ponytails along her arms. She said that she had used a razor. And I had Veeted it, in keeping with the times. If you’ve ever mowed the lawns you’ll have noticed that the newly achieved neatness immediately makes any nearby overgrowth look distasteful. You discover weeds you didn’t know existed. What I mean is, something like that happened when belly button piercings were followed by requests to see said pierced belly button - not to mention the advent of backless tops. Once I’d removed the hair on my stomach, I grew into the practice of uprooting the “weeds” I felt were all over my body too. Every month I spent hundreds of rupees getting my stomach and back waxed along with my legs and arms, baffling some of the other clients at the beauty parlors with my ‘guts’ (my unflinching reception of wax strips) rather than my self-consciousness. It would have been a very different story, if even one of them had told me to let go of the fuss over my body hair. What they did tell me, was that I had beautiful eyebrows and I shouldn’t get them threaded- some parts were right to have hair. So why only some parts then? How did eyebrows get to be understood as authentic,, a natural presence of hair, while the rest of my body seemed like the real sexy me only WITHOUT the naturally present hair? It became obvious slowly but surely, that by the time I’d start having sex, I would let no pubic hair stay. The baap-weeds had to go. I couldn’t let my man, whoever it was and no matter how hairy he himself was, have a lesser woman. He’d obviously shave off his pubic hair or choose not to (I had no idea about hairy balls then), and it would feel perfectly smooth against my own angelic V-region. And he’d obviously expect it for how else would he go down on me? I continued waxing most of my body every month. My roommates barely ever noticed the overnight confidence with which I changed my clothes before them. It was really just me who lived everyday spending time microscopically examining the slow and sure hair re-growth. My beautician took notice though; she encouraged my regularity at it and promised I’d see a big decline in the growth rate “after marriage”. So far, I alone saw what lay between my parted legs. Only I knew I had buttocks with, not only a sheath of stretch marks scrawled all over, but also a soft layer of brown hair that caused no such itching as that which I felt over my waxed ‘parts.’ I was alone in knowing that my underarms smelt no different with no hair on them. I felt like my body was more authentic on some days while not so on others, and knew it was a matter of the mind over the body itself. BQ2But, despite this realization, I continued designing my life’s events around the re-growth cycles, albeit with reduced fervor. The first time I ever made out with anybody, I’d been expecting it. I had ample time to present a version of myself that would be most delectable and super un-turn-down-able. My pubic hair stayed though- I was slowly beginning to see and feel how discriminating this hair removal business was. So desperate was I to be accepted the way I was not that I didn’t even consider what it would be like to be received for how I am. Because naturally, certainly, that would be just so, so unsexy. So you see, the focus shifted once again from me to them, the boys. There weren’t very many doing the impressing, so I tended to be the one do it. It took me a second sex partner to come to a startling but relieving inference. We met at a party where we got drunk (wasted) and had oral sex in a harshly lit room that shone unfettered luminance at my “underprepared” body. But here was a boy undressing himself to reveal a naturally hairless body. So I kept my eyes shut the way a cat does sipping the milk- if I can’t see the world, the world can’t see me. He went on about kissing me all over with great drunken enthusiasm. He didn’t seem to care about seeing the supposedly sexy - like a belly button jewel - resting amid something supposedly excessive - as strands of thin, black hair. When I pulled at his underwear in an attempt to take it off, he budged a little and said that he hadn’t shaved. No shit. I told him he shouldn’t be uncomfortable about such things (I hadn’t shaved either, dummy) and felt like a person of superior sensibilities. Somebody else deriving all the joy from my body made me enjoy my body even more, no matter the state its skin was in. Never had I understood intimacy like this before. So was it sex for which I had wanted all the hairless attractiveness? If sex is the game for which you want to have some goddess’ body, I thought, maybe I’ve misunderstood the rules. Or was it the alcohol that made my hair invisible to him? I wanted to put this to test. After this encounter, I booty called him several times. The first answer happened after quite a gap, but yet again, before we had sex we had a little bit to drink. MyY arms and underarms were waxed but my legs were prickly; I had given shaving my stomach a thought before scolding myself for being so quick to forget new insights. Besides, it’s a test of the theory, remember, fickle mind? The sex, this time in daylight display of bodies, wasn’t very different- he didn’t seem to care about the hair growth around my back and stomach, and went down on me while my bush was in its full glory. It felt like he was doing it so he could show how hot he could be at it. Or that it was something he could do FOR ME, and in that I felt sexy albeit hurried. But again, we weren’t fully sober. So I took this on a step further (Or I simply just wanted this boy again). BQ3Except for my pubic region, I had waxed it all. I booty called him again, making sure it was a sober act this time. I felt wet a lot faster than usual; lose a layer of hair, gain a layer of sensitivity. His touches felt a layer deeper to the point of causing muscle spasms at a couple of places. Him? Well, he was a lot more comfortable doing me. I wondered if that could’ve been because of my waxed skin but then I also remembered] it was also our third time together. He responded similarly to my moves as he earlier had. And most significantly, went down on me with just the same fervor. Add to that, he even agreed that sober sex was a lot better. If waxed skin sex was any better, it most definitely was more so on my end, I felt. And yet, somewhere down our future run-ins together, I forgot all about the test. The recurring-vanishing cycle of the body-hair terrain went right through him without any difference, without any passing remarks even. Then I remembered a time when I first got to know in my early adulthood years that men took notice of these things when a few men sniggered at a female friend’s unwaxed arm. My booty-call boy though had been at quite a variance with this. I thought him very precious for this. But it’s probably not him; it’s instead sex that has made a definite difference. It is sex where all body-hair thorns dissolved into having no points, so to speak. In sex that my body has learned to be like itself, to like itself, to be liked, to be more than a passive object of supposed perfection. Maybe having sex with other people might make him seem not all that precious? Now I let my body hair take its own course, but also wax it, if not as diligently. I wax often though, when I want feel the breeze against my skin. I can’t tell if sex engenders a decline in hair growth (as claimed by the beautician woman), but for me it has certainly led to a decline in my obsession with that hair growth, even if it’s a battleground that remains active! Faint Perhapses is in the first year of a Masters degree and in the second year of being sexually active. She’s now wondering how any of this is important to her bio. She writes self-confrontational erotic-ish essays here.

ISHQ VISHQ SEX VEX

EXPLORING TOUCH TO EXPLOSIVE TOUCH Let Manu take you on his journey of touch from naive bodily explorations with his male friends to the electric, experiences with the opposite sex, and along the way understandings about consent, mutuality and the simple pleasures of pleasure!

ISHQ VISHQ SEX VEX  EXPLORING TOUCH TO EXPLOSIVE TOUCH Let Manu take you on his journey of touch from naive bodily explorations with his male friends to the electric, experiences with the opposite sex, and along the way understandings about consent, mutuality and the simple pleasures of pleasure! This podcast was created in collaboration with The YP Foundation (The Youth Parliament) as part of the workshop Mardon Wali Baat Listening Time: 5:12 mins  Language: Hindi  

I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN LOVE – THEN I FOUND POLYAMORY

Well. Polyamory done right, as it turns out, is a lot of work!

 Polyamory image   “For someone who claims she doesn’t believe in love, you sure do love to listen to mushy Bollywood numbers,” remarked A, as we were driving back to his place for our usual hook-up session. I’d found him off the internet one summer when I was back home for a few weeks. This was a time when smartphones hadn’t yet stepped on the scene (Motorazrs and clunky Nokias ruled the roost), and online dating wasn’t ubiquitous by any means. I could’ve said several things in response to A’s flippant comment, but I didn’t know him well enough to warrant it. I could’ve told him that I am one of the most romantic people I know, a devourer of trashy 80’s series romance fiction and Nora Ephron films and of course, the unavoidable Bollywood. Self-aware consumption of pop culture aside, though, my lofty expectations of love and relationships weren’t borne out in the face of actual human beings and their shitty, selfish behaviours. Growing up, I’d had a ringside view of my dad’s extramarital affair and my parents’ acrimonious divorce. Most of my uncles and aunts and sundry other relatives were trapped in miserable marriages; as an adult, I’d seen the same awful patterns replicated in various permutations in the dating lives of my siblings and cousins and friends. To my cynical, weary eyes it was all too clear that “love” didn’t last, and that boredom and infidelity were the more likely outcomes when two people entered into a long-term serious relationship. So why bother? When I met A, I was 25. I had never been in a relationship. I was having flings aplenty, with online strangers and friends alike, with women and with men.poly image 3   But I’d always sidestepped relationships. Hook-ups were simpler, cleaner, more honest in their intentions and execution. My friends thought me stubborn and idiotic. But I knew my standards for love, and I wasn’t budging. I’d tell them, “I can’t abide lies and cheating and dishonesty in any shape or form, and all the relationships I’ve seen so far, go there. Or someone loses interest, and it all ends badly.” Sure, there were a few happy exceptions. But they were so rare that I didn’t have any hope that I’d be among the lucky few. At any rate, I wasn’t willing to chance it. The prospect of being alone wasn’t ideal, but it was preferable to the alternative. It helped that I had no interest in marriage or babies. And anyway, I’m queer. What if I fell in love with a girl? Marriage wasn’t going to be an alternative in India in that case either. Deliberately stepping away from the hetero marriage-motherhood-family narrative was incredibly liberating. I was free to map my own course in life without thinking of a significant other and I began to emphasize the value of other kinds of love that we’re surrounded by, but often take too much for granted. Deep abiding friendships kept me afloat, my immediate family was a constant source of support and my work was strenuous and fulfilling. I was happy, cocky even—I thought I’d cracked the secret to a perfect life. Yup, I was definitely due for a comeuppance. It came in an unexpected form. At the ripe old age of 28, I managed to fall in love. The deep, obsessive kind, that brings immense happiness but also incredible pain when unreturned. poly image 1 The twist was that I fell for two different men more or less around the same time, one a friend and one a stranger I met online. Being in love was an exercise in self-revelation: I hadn’t expected the powerful tunnel vision it produced. In both instances, my emotions had a new, intense focus—the highs were incredible, and the lows, shattering. There was much to learn about the negotiations (and difficulties) involved in holding on to yourself, while being part of loving, intimate, sometimes fucked-up, coupledom. Neither relationship worked out ultimately. My best friend was mystified, “How can you be in love with R, when you’ve already fallen for G?” I didn’t know myself, to be honest. Weren’t you supposed to have only one “true love” at a time? Yet there I was, struggling to recover from simultaneous heartbreaks. I didn’t have a term for it yet, but it was the first time I figured out I could love two people romantically at the same time. That term, of course, is “polyamory”—being involved with multiple romantic and/or sexual partners simultaneously. I’d heard of “open relationships” or “open marriages.” To me, while apparently liberal, these always seemed pretty sleazy in some way. The husband of an acquaintance hitting on all her friends surreptitiously—we’d learnt to keep our distance from that lecher. My friend who once propositioned me, saying it was okay because he was in an “open” relationship. But of course, his girlfriend wouldn’t know it was me he was sleeping with on the side. “No specifics,” he said. My problem wasn’t with wanting multiple partners. But the lying was unconscionable. If you’re so “open,” why not be honest about it? If your partner has agreed to both of you having other relationships, whether sexual or anything else, why this hush-hush secrecy? It seemed like Ye Olde Cheating, simply repackaged to sound more hip. In theory, the idea of polyamory was great, but I wasn’t sure us fallible human beings were quite up to the execution. We make enough of a mess with one partner, imagine adding two or more to the mix! Slide2My first substantial conversation with my current boyfriend was, ironically enough, on this very topic. I’d bumped into him online. I held forth on the impossibility of truly honest and open non-monogamous relationships, no matter how noble the intentions. What I didn’t know was, he was already in one, and a successful one at that. As our online conversations grew, and I learned the details of his very non-traditional love life, he began to make a convert of me. The idea no longer sounded so implausible, though it was tricky and delicate, and certainly not for everyone. Perhaps coincidentally, I was falling in love again. We had tons in common, our conversational chemistry was off the charts. We shared similar political and philosophical beliefs, both unabashedly feminist. He wasn’t offering the stale old happily-ever-after relationship narrative. This idea of love was almost pragmatic. It openly acknowledged that we might want others while being involved with someone else, and that this is not an inherently bad thing. How you choose to act upon said desires, however is an entirely different matter. If you’re lying, cheating, manipulating and being an asshole in general, you’re going the clichéd route. With openness, and honesty, and the idea that it's okay to desire others and act on those desires, you're less likely to be an inconsiderate, miserable human being. Unlike the disingenuousness I’d encountered before, honesty is the bedrock of such a relationship model. The rest of it looks remarkably like what my lofty ideas of love were—a relationship built on mutual trust, respect, admiration, and raging chemistry. It felt so right, fit so well into the impossible standards I’d set for love, both in theory and practice. I realised that even when I was rejecting it, all this time I’d really been buying into the conventional capitalist model of love after all—where your partner is your property, and only you have sole rights over them. Letting go of this idea was crucial to reframing my approach to my emotions. I didn’t belong to anyone, nor they to me. Being with the other was an active choice, and one that required a declaration of commitment through our actions every day. This was a radical departure for me—the queen of casual sex choosing to have multiple committed relationships! Well. Polyamory done right, as it turns out, is a lot of work! poly image 2   It requires exceptionally high levels of trust, honesty, communication, and checking in with your partners, especially about their emotional/mental states. I have learnt never to take my partners or their feelings for granted. I respect their rights and choices as individuals, including the choice to love others. Also, being in multiple committed relationships has actively taught me to be a more generous partner—it is great to see your girlfriend be excited and happy about a new date, and come to you to discuss all the juicy details! Slide4With my various partners, I actively savour the moments we are together—the joy is in the present moment, not only in the presence of pre-decided, typical relationship arcs dictated by social expectations. This also means there is less pressure for one person or one relationship to fulfil your every relationship or romantic need. Could you do with only one friend who gives you all you need from friendships in general? Plus, both my boyfriend and I identify as pansexual—for us especially, this arrangement works out so very well, since I’m happier while dating women in general. We set our own rules for what works for us, and so far, it’s worked splendidly. I am aware it might not continue to work out in future, but I’ll deal with that bridge when we get to it. Honestly, I had expected it to be harder emotionally than it turned out to be in practice. The insane levels of talking and figuring out what does work for us was absolutely crucial. Without such clear boundary-setting and expectations, and being painfully honest with each other, I doubt it would have been the relatively smooth sailing it was for me. When I later dated other women, the same kinds of detailed communication happened with them. This is non-negotiable, I’d say—being able to trust your partner enough to have the HARD – by which I mean vulnerable – conversations about the wants, needs and boundaries that are crucial for you both. Equally important is to have the difficult discussions if something in the current relationship is painful for you or not working out well. Like all relationships really, you should ideally be able to figure out how to change your existing set-up so it works better for both. Love is usually unpredictable and often difficult. Learning to communicate, be heard, and listen in your turn is essential, whether in a monogamous or polyamorous relationship. Maybe it’s just more recognised in a polyamorous one!Slide1 In some peoples mind there is this question about boundaries of what is allowed and what isn't. I didn't have rigidly defined boundaries as such. I was sexually as well as emotionally intimate with several of my partners, both male and female, and everyone knew and was okay about this. It’s not that all relationships work in the same way. People are different, love is varied and each relationship had its own “rules.” But in each case, I found out that accepting and expecting this honesty and generosity, and being willing to talk things out always helped smooth the path. This doesn’t mean I am a polyamory evangelist, however. The whole point is that there is no one right way for people to love and be in relationships. After a bunch of trials and errors I’ve stumbled on to something that feels so right for me. But monogamy is what suits most others I know. Ethical polyamory is not for everyone, and that’s fine. I often find myself having to explain how I conduct my relationships to disbelieving friends and acquaintances, though. The most common question is, “Aren’t you jealous when he is with his other girlfriend/boyfriend?” And the answer to that is kinda simple, really. Yes, you do feel varying degrees of jealousy  But, you can deal with it. First, you have to admit to yourself you’re feeling envious, and not to judge yourself harshly for feeling sad or shitty in general. Next, it is crucial to be frank with your partner about it. It helps if you can figure out together what is specifically bothering you, and what you need to do to feel better. Pinpointing the negative emotion and then discussing it with the person you love openly helps get rid of it, for the most part. Cuddles also help. A LOT. It takes practice, and a whole lotta self-awareness, but I’ve found that it is doable. We’ve always been told that we should be jealous if someone we love likes someone else; you’re supposed to feel devalued if your partner chooses another as well. But if everyone is differently valuable, maybe we can learn to be happy for each other, if we try, even if conditioning is not easy to shake off? Yes, it can be tricky. And will of course vary from person to person. So far, whether I’ve dated/slept with other men or women, I’ve never seen my boyfriend show any signs of being jealous. He has always been super happy for me if I ever clicked well with someone else. The two women I’ve dated seriously had different responses—one was perfectly fine, while another had major difficulty handling her feelings of possessiveness. For me, I’ve largely found that as long as my own dynamics with my partners are great, I’m not really bothered or jealous about the others they may be dating. Feeling jealous often usually comes when there’s something else in the relationship I’m feeling insecure or unsure about. Also, it’s not compulsory to like whomever your partner is dating. Starting out I wasn’t sure how I’d react to my boyfriend’s other partners in person. Turns out, as with any other friendship, it depends on the individuals involved! I am friends with one, largely indifferent to another, and don’t particularly like the third.  I find the one I am friends with interesting, intelligent, generous, accomplished, and brimming with self-confidence—the kind of person I get along with, so why shouldn’t we be friends who happen to share a common love? poly image 4 If anything, this friendship feels more radical than my non-monogamous relationships, because it hits at the very heart of ideas of female competition, backstabbing and sautens. The Other Woman (or one of them, at any rate) is my dear friend, and it feels wonderful. But it doesn’t always happen – that’s what boundaries are for. My last girlfriend couldn’t handle her jealousy of my other partner two months in, so she stopped dating me. We continue to be friends, and still care for each other, but that was the right choice for her. Letting people go gracefully and changing conventional expectations of significant others is also something I've learnt to do, and am still learning. Yes, logistics can be tricky, esp. time distribution wise. A large part of why I could pull off simultaneous relationships successfully without driving my introverted self stir-crazy was because some were local and some, long distance. It made time distribution a lot easier. While I was in mostly daily contact with everyone online/over text, in person meetings were spaced out. I would meet my (local) girlfriends regularly throughout, whereas I’d spend more extended chunks of exclusive time with my boyfriend during vacations. In figuring out how you spend time with each, it is important to be fair to your partner(s). This hinges on really good communication skills and the courage to say what you want, yet being able to negotiate what works best for you both. Most people think polyamorous people have lots of sex, and we do, but we also do a crazy amount of plain old talking! While polyamory is most definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, it has led me down an intensely personal route of self-exploration, and opened my mind to possibilities (and people) I had never considered before. Polyamory (unlike the fairy tales) acknowledges openly that nothing lasts forever, and a particular relationship may not either. Situations change, people change, what they want changes. And that it's perfectly okay, even if it may sometimes be sad (perhaps inevitably so). Internalising this has led to a healthier set of relationships where I’m concerned. And it continues to feel like absolutely the right choice for me. I have a sneaky feeling that it will continue to do so for a long while, really. Alaspriya likes nothing better than lazing her days away, with books and Star Trek for company. Humans are nice too, sometimes. Tarini Sethi is a fine artist and illustrator based in Delhi. Her work largely revolves around human intimacy, discomfort and romance. She works with different media exploring sexuality in a humorous way. More work:    http://tarinisethi.tumblr.com/

A LOVE SUPREME

Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Gudiya's story of love ending in tragedy is both unbearably tender and painful - but it will make you believe in the idea of a love supreme.

Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Gudiya's story of love ending in tragedy is both unbearably tender and painful - but it will make you believe in the idea of a love supreme.
Language - Hindi
Duration - 4 min 47 seconds.
This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya

Qayanat Ka Romancenama

“A board was flashing a sign: Qayanat*, I love you. It was like a film. I could not believe this was all happening for me, to me.” Qayanat’s romance, begins like a film, proceeds like a film, complete with shayris, desperation, twists and turns, 100 free sms a day, ice-cream in the mall, and her reflection in her boyfriend’s eyes. How does this filmi Romance-nama culminate? Not at all as you would expect – listen here to this podcast full of fizz and glitter: Qayanat ka Romancenama.

“A board was flashing a sign: Qayanat*, I love you. It was like a film. I could not believe this was all happening for me, to me.” Qayanat’s romance, begins like a film, proceeds like a film, complete with shayris, desperation, twists and turns, 100 free sms a day, ice-cream in the mall, and her reflection in her boyfriend’s eyes. How does this filmi Romance-nama culminate? Not at all as you would expect – listen here to this podcast full of fizz and glitter: Qayanat ka Romancenama. Language: Hindustani Duration: 12:36 seconds This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya *Name changed

JEEP MEIN BEEP, DIL MEIN DHAK DHAK

“He winked at me in the rear-view mirror and I was overcome with shyness.” Once Chandni meets this jeep driver and their love story gathers speed, it’s heart-in-the-mouth romantic twists and turns and the speedbreaker of respectability cannot slow it down. A story of passionate romance from Banda, UP.

“He winked at me in the rear-view mirror and I was overcome with shyness.” Once Chandni meets this jeep driver and their love story gathers speed, it’s heart-in-the-mouth romantic twists and turns and the speedbreaker of respectability cannot slow it down. A story of passionate romance from Banda, UP. This podcast was created in collaboration with Khabar Lahariya. Thanks to Hansa Thapliyal and Gissy Michael for help during the making.

In A Gay Bar You Can See Forever

An Indian man at 31, in a gay bar for the first time, experiencing male erotic tenderness for the first time.

At 31, in a gay bar for the first time, experiencing male erotic tenderness for the first time By Pat gay bar a

(Image: Couple hug, Artist: Raphael Perez)

  “And this is our local digs”, said Stephen, turning inside a glass fronted shop, narrow and long, with a profusion of potted plants, “This is where us homos come to cheer our favourite Footie players”. Stephen was being butch, referring to the hyper masculine game of Australian Rules football where hunky and drop-dead-gorgeous players wear a sexy and scant ensemble. I had cycled straight from the Uni, all the way to that den of inequity, Fortitude Valley, for my second official date, my first with an Australian. I think it was one of those places on Brunswick Street, but can’t remember the name. I was thirty-one and like a babe in the gay woods, felt lost. I had had my first ever date the week before, with Yasushi, whom I had thought to be an extraordinarily beautiful man . I had burst into tears after being kissed and embraced by him in his home. The evening before this day, Yasushi had asked me to meet him outside the main post-office, so that we could check each other out. I remember him, sitting on a bench, reading a book, in a tee and shorts. He was probably the only Japanese guy around, so it was not difficult to spot him. Two things I noticed, and remember: cascades of glossy hair and bee-stung red lips. He was tall, toned and had that glorious golden hue that many Japanese people have. “Come in the afternoon, my flatmate will be away”. So I had taken the ferry and walked the rest of the way. And then we were alone in the hall and all I could do was stare at Yasushi, drinking him in from afar. “Is this your first time?” I remember shaking. Not the shivering we get when we are cold, but a deeper, painful tremor of tiny pulses in the abdomen and the hams. I did not have a straight answer to the question. It was my first date, sure, but it was not the first time I was going to have sex with a guy. I had lived in a hostel for four years and we would have sex very frequently indeed, sometimes with my roommate in the next bed, sometimes with the lad in the next room. Sometimes boys would pop in for room service. All for a lark, and raging hormones, of course. This was pre-internet so one didn’t really know the mechanics of gay sex. I doubt if we even knew the word gay. None of us connected the sex with being gay. I didn’t. But I knew I liked looking at boys, I liked imagining being held by a boy.  I discovered that I liked kissing and nuzzling into my bed-mate after our orgasmic highs. But did not have the vocabulary to slot it. That came four years later. But that’s another story. I don’t think we were anything more than rank amateurs at lovemaking. We  tried, fumbled, failed and learnt. It was in Australia that I realized how much I had fumbled and how little I had learnt. Since I was 21, I had imagined about loving men and had told myself that it was idiotic to expect another man to feel likewise. Sex, yes, but to feel all this roiling in the stomach, needle pricks in the heart? The emotions that I felt disturbed me. I had not yet figured out that gayness was a way of being; getting hardons was not the problem; adolescents get used to it, right from the ritual of the morning wood to the stiffening at every whiff, sight, touch and thought of the sensuous. My problem was the thudding of the heart on seeing Tushi smile at me in the hostel staircase with his gold-flecked green eyes; or dissolving into a puddle when shaggy-haired, manga-faced Panjo crept stealthily from behind and folded me in his arms and gave a loud kiss just below the ear – his delightful habit. Or, on realizing that when I closed my eyes, I could remember Vinod Khanna’s dimpled chin and Tom Alter’s spare body and nothing of Parveen Babi or Abha Dhulia. I could not explain all this. And for a very long time I thought I was possibly the only person who was created thus- a man who not only desired other men sexually but who also dreamt of being romantically involved with some of them, living together perhaps; cooking together, playing badminton and cricket, going trekking and cycling and long walks, and….and maybe keeping two Labradors… And now here was I, all of thirty-one, already one year over-the-hill from the moment Brian Kinney first felt himself to be mortal - here was I experiencing male erotic tenderness for the first time. And I told myself, O what a wonderful world! gay bar b

(Image: Two Men Hugging, Artist Raphael Perez)

Yasushi had pulled me gently, and embraced my shaking body and kissed me. And it had felt wonderful. I had realized for the first time since adolescence what it meant to hold a man, to feel his body, to savour his fragrance. And to realize Yasushi’s willingness - he wanted to hold me, he wanted to crush his lips on mine; he wanted to be tender, he savoured my being the man I was, just the way I was. That is when I had started sobbing. I shall remember that till Alzheimer’s claims me, and if I had to share the experience with you all, a good approximation would be this YouTube of that little girl Lily, who is told that they were all going to Disneyland. I had cried that day in Yasushi’s arms out of happiness - sharp pangs of happiness; and out of relief that it was possible for me to feel tenderness and yet not feel my shoulders weigh down in heaviness. The bar had a few people. Stephen and I had a beer each and promised to return later in the evening. I had been to a few bars in India. They were raucous and had bad music. I preferred going to restaurants instead back home. When we returned I was perhaps in an odd frame of mind – several times within a week I had experienced intimacy that was somehow different from the nocturnal hostel romps. I had already had one moment of epiphany when I realised that it was not just I who felt loved and cared-for in another man’s arms; the other guy too felt the same. I was not alone to feel this kind of love. This time the bar was busy and I remember sitting at one end of the very long island inside which were the bartenders, being rude and jokey, all at once, like any Aussie male between the ages 18 and 40. I sat for hours, Stephen had gone home, he had an early lecture, but I sat nursing my intermittent VB, looking at the boys and men, eyes roaming in wonderment at all the beauty of limbs and face, of carriage and voice. But my eyes would mostly linger at couples kissing; at pairs, all arms and legs, entwined, lost to the world around, and no one gave a damn. There was serious fondling too if one looked carefully. Yet no one looked, no one seemed to be all worked up over this re-enactment of Sodom and Gomorrah. There was laughter and good cheer. Shouts came from the groups bunched around large TV screens showing different things – horse racing, footie, gay TV shows and news. Random men would ‘how.are.ya.mate’ me, and typically, not linger to hear my reply. Some would pat and brush my shoulders. I cry at the drop of a hat, sometimes even before it touches the floor. That night too, I wept, to myself, within myself. I had never experienced something so beautiful, so liberating. Yet I wept acid tears and a sense of deep loss overwhelmed me. Why had I not experienced this back home? Could I not have been like that lad, kissing and laughing with my boyfriend, hands clasped, pissing smartass at the bartender? Could I not have been that young man, sitting on the floor between the legs of his lover, playing checkers with his friends? gay bar d

(Image: Sauna Bar, Artis: Touko Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland)

Since all those years, life has taken me traveling, far from the small town I called home till I was 15. I have been to the Christopher Street bars in New York's gay quarter a number of times. And to Minneapolis’ gay bars, and to San Francisco’s gay streets, to Chicago and Boston. Some places I have felt welcomed, other places, ignored. One place even glowered at. I guess not all gay bars are like home to every gay man. But I can imagine that those that are like home must be precious islands to that community. Perhaps Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando was also home to some gay men. Some of whom would have died that night, their haven destroyed forever by hate. There are bars in Mumbai that serve gay clientele on certain days. The last time I went to one was in 2006. Perhaps some of these are havens too. What is certain though is that life of a gay lad in Mumbai is qualitatively different now. A thriving community exists where gay men and women seek all manner of sustenance, from the instant to the long-term, from the vanilla to the kinky. YouTube abounds with gay-themed films, with coming-out sagas, documentaries of abandonment and violence, celebrations of marriages and adoptions. In a roomful of students and trainees, I am reminded that despite the utter invalidation that Section 377 imposes on gay men, despite the perfunctory debates on sexuality in the media, despite the vaudevillesque depiction of gay men in the mainstream films, one is yet to hear of gay-bashing in high schools and colleges in India. That is remarkable. Often, looking at the heads bowed in concentration over their projects, I try my gaydar and imagine which of them has questions like I had at their age? Which of them is out to their friends? Looking at the youngsters nowadays, one wouldn’t be surprised if their friends rib them good-naturedly over distractingly handsome jocks. For those who still secretly worry and burn, I wish I could reach their hearts and tell them it will all be alright. Pat is a consultant, an academic and a mentor.  

My First Boyfriend

Rutuja's first boyfriend began to do an unexpected sexual thing with oranges. Did she like it? Listen to Rutuja's podcast about what she learned from her first relationship.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit The first boy she ever had sex with was strange. In front of other people he acted like he didn't know her at all. When she tried to break up with him, he thought she wanted to marry him. But most importantly, he began to do an unexpected sexual thing with oranges. Did she like it? Listen to Rutuja's podcast about what she learned from her first relationship.

You, Me (Aur STD)

A pertinent but unexpected question asked on a random dating app led Luna to get tested for STDs. Just using condoms is not enough!

It started on one of those hook-up apps 😁 

 
Doesn’t everything nowadays? It was a rare night. I was lonely, looking for attention and craving conversation that didn't revolve around banalities when I started chatting with this witty guy, with a great sense of humour. We managed to get through quite a few conversations without sharing specifics. We didn’t know each others’ names but we were talking like we’d known each other for years. 
 
Before I knew it, I was meeting this guy at a local coffee shop ☕️  
 
What I thought would be an hour long chit-chat session leading up to a hook-up in the future, ended up being a complete dinner 🍕 🍷🍧with a great conversationalist. 
 
We met a couple of days later again. It was one of the best evenings of my life. That night ended with a kiss 💋💋 
 
Even the slightest touch of his hand had me tingling all over. Of course, I was craving for more. 😜 😍 
 
And between these two dates, The Talk happened -- where we discussed the possibility of having sex. As neither of us was the kind to beat around the bush we dove right into the conversation. It started with discussing the possibility of sex and ended with our expectations. 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/possibility-of-sex-1yms.jpg]]
It really did seem like the most natural progression to whatever we had happening 😊 And then he asked The Question... 
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I asked him 'Seriously?!' more than a few times as WhatsApp's blank walls wouldn't convey my shock and disbelief.
 
I, the one who always used protection and didn't particularly sleep around, was being asked this question. I was offended. But in a while, rational thought and logic returned. 
 
I replied honestly. 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/Justummtrust1.png]]
This random person I met online was asking me questions that I never thought would be involved in meeting new people off an app. But by then the seeds of doubt were planted. 😟😓😥 
 
Why didn't I do this before? Why didn't I want to be sure? Trust doesn't act as a shield against infections. 
 
We use condoms.
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/Justummtrust1.png]]
We do whatever little that we know to do to protect ourselves (though we could always know more – why don’t we?). But somehow we never even want to entertain the idea that something could go wrong 🙈🙊🙉 
 
We ask our partners ‘The Number.’ 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/new-speech-bubbles.png]]
Like knowing how many people they’ve slept with can be an accurate indication of how risky it would be to have sex with them. We forget, it takes one mistake. 😖 
 
Instead of throwing arrows in the dark, why not just ask for some simple tests? No matter how clinical, uptight or unsexy it seems. I somehow managed to recover from this train of thought and got around to doing something that I should have done a very long time ago. 
 
I set up an appointment with the gynaecologist. 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/STI-testing-1%20%282%29.png]]
Then I started to ask around. I had some strange conversations with a couple of my friends and realised that none of them have set up an appointment just like that for a check up. To step into a gynae’s clinic without having an ‘issue’ like say, a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) would open a can of worms for anyone who lives in a highly protective family with boundary issues - which, let's face it, is most Indians. Being sexually active is something that doesn’t exist for family. 🙅 
 
But this time I invented an excuse and took my horrified, scared self to the doctor. 💉 
 
One would wonder why was it such a big deal. After all, if you can have sex, you can go to the gynaecologist, right? The fact is over the years, I have heard/read/came across multiple women who have been judged or told off by their doctors for being sexually active without being married and along with all the social disapproval to dodge, this adds to the reluctance. That’s the sad truth. 😔 People judge; doctors also judge. Who would willingly submit to a lecture on morals? I certainly didn't want to! And worse, everyone knows everyone when you live in small neighbourhoods. What if the fact gets out? No one wants to lie naked on a table unless there is a compelling reason to do so. The excuses are endless. But we are adults. We should be responsible for ourselves. And doing this is as necessary and simple as getting teeth cleaned.😬😎 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/gynacdentist.png]]
Finally, the appointment happened. My doctor was sharp, quick and thankfully, too methodical to let things like awkwardness, judgment or discomfort creep in. However, it’s also true that, till you reach the doctor's door, you have to deal with various funny and weird euphemisms all basically aimed at finding out if you are sexually active. 👫👬 👭
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/doctors-form-clipboard-.png]]
People's inability to utter the word  "sex" is incredible 😑 
 
But anyway, I managed to take these with a big pinch of salt and extra large serving of humour 🍔🍟 
 
I walked out feeling relieved that I had no infections and with a promise to myself to never be this stupid again 🙏🏽 
 
Did I hook up with that guy? Somewhere between all of this, it became irrelevant to this story. I know that's not what you want to hear, but, well, my focus just shifted. 
 
But what he helped me do means a lot more to me than a few orgasms would have (though those are always nice). Empowering someone to take charge of their life, health or safety is probably the best gift ever 🎁 
 
While it took me some time, offence slowly turned into gratitude. How many times do you meet someone on some random app and that person turns out to be entirely responsible and concerned about your safety? After this encounter, I resolved to: 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/08-Mon/todolist1.png]]
If you have been skeptical about visiting a gynaecologist and taking charge of your sexual health, here are a few pointers: 
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Read up, get to know and go for it.  It really is that simple. If pleasure is a priority, so should be the responsibility that comes with it 😏 PS. –To get started on learning about STDs/STIs in a simple, one click way, check out AOI's post Things To Know About: Sexually Transmitted Infections For a crowdsourced list of gynaecologists we trust, click here. This amazing list has been put together by @AmbaAzad and her Twitter friends. 👍🏽 
 
Luna is in her late 20s  lives in Mumbai with her overprotective family, works in digital media and writes about love, life and other things to make sense of them. Terrible at this boy thing, she is a Gretchen constantly looking for her Jimmy. (If you truly get this reference, she requests you to get in touch with her).   

THIS IS WHO I AM: A YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY OF FINDING HIMSELF THROUGH KINK

A young man who discovers his submissive nature and learns to be himself through BDSM and kink.

  I checked my ticket to make sure I was boarding the right train. When I finally got on I smiled a little. I was going back with a lifetime of memories from an amazing weekend with some of my closest friends. Even when I remember my past when I wasn't so happy and confident, my smile doesn't disappear. Once I half-believed that my presence in this world was a mistake. Something about the world felt so very wrong; I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was there, like a splinter in my mind, driving me insane. But as this was the only world I had I tried my best to fit in. I lived my life and learned things what society teaches you: go to school, go to tuitions, worship God and so on. The journey of finding my own self has been long, frustrating and rewarding.

***

In my teens, I discovered a world with no borders, no discrimination, one that didn't cost much to travel in – the internet. I'd heard from all my hormonal guy friends about the porn they'd watched and how it was so erotic that they masturbated just thinking about it. I wanted to give it a try. It didn't so much as arouse me but I was ready to explore more. I watched more erotic movies recommended by friends and classmates just to see how it felt first hand. But each time I tried to masturbate, I grew tired and gave up.
For a while I wondered if there was something wrong with me. But I was still hoping that if I pretended I was just an average guy, then maybe everything would be alright. I had begun to explore my own sexuality (even if I didn't know that was what I was doing).
When I was 16 I got friendly with a guy in my class and I ended up sleeping with him. It was the first ever relationship in my life. Over the next 5 years whenever we slept together, I never wanted to be the top one. I was really content being the bottom half of the relationship, the more submissive partner in every sense, not only physical. Afterwards, I would find myself imagining myself in the same situation but with a woman on top of me, fucking me with a phallus. Just the thought meant I went to sleep with a rock hard erection. I still hadn't learnt the art of masturbating. At that time, I was absolutely ignorant about BDSM. When I was 18 years old I became very good friends with a girl. I had my first sense of how different a girl's life is from a boy's. I was mostly ignorant on the feelings of love and care for a girl. If I try to define my feelings for her now, it was love but I didn't realize it at that time. I just knew I was very happy whenever she was part of my day. In many ways she was the 'one' for me as I couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't met her. When we used to talk, there were quite a few instances where she made me say or do things I really didn't want to, or wouldn't have had the courage to do if she hadn't have told me to do. Like once I 'let slip' I liked a girl but was too scared to ask her out - which I really was. She instructed me ask her out. This gave me a surge of energy – and also the courage to ask the girl in question out. Or once, I was depressed and she commanded me to cheer up or she would break all ties with me. This immediately gave me a rush of energy. It stimulated me both erotically and emotionally. So much so that I tried (purposefully but covertly) to land myself in helpless or embarrassing situations in front of her. The sense of power she had over me turned me on immensely. She had no idea of my feelings, I think. After all, I also believed my feelings were brotherly for a while. When we were a little older, and she became interested in other guys, I disliked it. But I didn't question anything. I was addicted to the miniscule adrenaline rush I got from our relationship. And it was around then that I first realized that I had a submissive nature. It was an innocuous incident but holds a very special place in my heart. I was playing Dumb Charades with my brother, his friend and the friend's sister. I teamed up with her while my brother and his friend formed a team. The first movie I got in the game was Joru Ka Gulaam. I tried acting like Govinda. I tried other predictable gestures with my partner to get her to understand the movie title. All of a sudden I had an epiphany. I gestured to her to rise from the floor and sit on a chair. She got up, bewildered, but she did as I said. Then, I closed my eyes, thought of the stars and fantasized that she was my lover and knelt down in front of her. To the others it presumably looked like a a serious attempt to win my turn. They couldn't have guessed what a transcendent experience I was having!
The adrenaline, the skipped heartbeat and tears of joy that almost escaped my eyes all said the same thing to me: "This is how I am made. This is who I am. This is what I am meant to be."
These lines went through my head and my heart and got imprinted there. I'd no idea why it made me feel like that or why it took me till this moment to realize this, but once I did, there was no turning back. I took a break after my turn and went to the balcony. My heart was far away, flying through the night sky. I had finally identified my self.    

***

One day, I stumbled across Literotica.com, where authors post erotic stories in many categories and genres. In the BDSM category, I clicked on a story by an author who called himself/herself Rita (name changed). It was a turning point in my life. Rita's story, opened up so many new possibilities. It was about a couple who wanted a 24/7 female submissive, written in such a beautiful yet accessible manner, that even a novice could grasp the difference between a healthy, mutual, BDSM Dynamic relationship and an unhealthy one. I read all her stories one by one. Could it be that people who like to surrender really existed? Or was it just the stuff of fiction? I'd always thought that people who get pleasure from having their will taken away, who enjoy being hurt physically by others belonged in one place: a mental asylum. I read Rita's stories again and wrote a line of appreciation underneath each. Soon, she replied thanking me for my compliments. That was my first doorway into the world of kink. At first our interaction was purely writer-and-fan, but later we exchanged personal emails. Ever since that day I'd played Dumb Charades and realized my submissive nature, I'd been afraid to discuss with anyone. Talking with an author from the other side of the world seemed like the safest way to get my questions answered. She seemed nice, patient and knowledgeable. Later I mustered the courage to ask her my questions. She answered with more questions that pushed me to think and also gave me a peek into her 24/7 BDSM lifestyle that she had with her husband/Master. BDSM now seemed like a deep, blue ocean and not a tiny, shallow stream. I was really blessed to have a friend like her.

***

"Can you please move to your berth?" the middle aged guy again pulled me out of my memories and asked me to move as he was getting sleepy. I climbed up to my berth to lie down for the night. I turned to my side, immediately winced and lay on my back instead. I smiled; the pain was such a sweet reminder of my magical weekend. I couldn't wait to look at the marks. I remember then what was it like for me when I didn't know this feeling.

***

One day Miss Rita and I thought it might be fun to have an online dom-sub play session. She sent me a lot of questions in advance – what I looked like, what I was looking for from the power play. I had to Google several terms – like "OTK" and "collared" before I could answer her questions honestly. As she was a writer and me being an aspiring one, our playing quickly escalated into a totally different world with no boundaries and where all our dreams came true. There were some things in the play that I loved, something that I liked and some things that I disliked but every scenario taught me something new. I constantly wished that this world was real.
Miss Rita introduced me to a kinky social network. When I joined it I was transfixed by the sheer number of sub men in there! Almost too many to count!
I found an Indian kinky group within the site and at once felt that this was a place where I won't be judged or thought of as a weirdo. This feeling itself was like a treasure to me, where I could finally open up the big box of secrets locked inside my heart that I only had shared with Miss Rita. As I followed the discussions on the group boards avidly, I realized I didn't know anything about BDSM in real life. I was a silent but keen observer. When I first saw a thread about real life meetings in various Indian cities, I was really tempted. However the threads didn't reveal what actually happened at the meetings and I couldn't find one in my city so I let fear take over. My biggest apprehension was whether these meetings with real life kinksters were safe. One day I saw a post on the group by a guy who was looking for a mentor in the BDSM world. I posted a comment wishing him luck in his search. He thanked me via a private message. His name was Ashok (name changed). I found that he had attended a few meetings in Kolkata. One day when I was at work Ashok sent me a message saying he was going to be near my town the next day. We could meet if I wanted to. I became very nervous. I didn't know whether I wanted to meet a total stranger I knew from a kinky website, (of course, not considering that I was also a stranger from a kinky site). Then I found a thread on the site on meeting a new person for the first time in the real world. I read it and decided to follow the instructions to the letter. I called Ashok and he told me to come to a hotel but I declined as the rules said to meet a new person always in a public place. I suggested an overbridge near his hotel. I laugh now on my choice of a 'public place'. I was indeed very nervous. Ashok turned out to be a calm and knowledgeable person with a soothing voice. I asked him all my questions and told him that I'd once had a relationship with a man -- something I'd never shared with anyone. He was nonchalant and understanding. He applauded my courage to think about my own nature as a submissive. He said he was new to the kinky life style but he knew people who were experienced. I asked him about the meetings and he said it was no different than getting coffee with a group of 'regular' friends . And in fact, a month or so after I met Ashok, I had the chance to go to Kolkata to attend my very first real group meeting. As I sat there, watching other people at the same table, talking about kink as lightly and enthusiastically as though they were talking about cricket, I felt amazed. I was overjoyed by their attitude and zeal towards the kinky lifestyle.
At the meetings I learnt men can be submissive, women can be dominant, some can be both. Being kinky is not an illness or a disease and neither a mental instability nor a result of an improper childhood. It was simply a choice for some, a way of life for others and for some it was just a thing to spice up their bedroom life.
I listened and interrupted from time to time. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was doing something for me. The desire to learn more brought me back to the group for more. Later, I pitched in organising events in Kolkata that the group organised, as much as I could given that I had to commute from my town. I made some wonderful friends. I had finally found people I identified with, who loved me for who I am and not what I can pretend to be. It had been incredibly hard to find.

***

I can't remember when I had drifted off to sleep in this rocking train. I open my eyes and think. My own past self would hardly recognise me now. I learnt that being submissive by nature doesn't mean that I had to be a pushover in everyday life. I can be fierce at my job, be affirmative at home and loud with my friends! I live a 'normal life'. Most people around me have not a clue how extraordinary my life is! I end my story with a favourite quote, "It is not just who you are, what matters most is how you live it." Kevin, is a 29-year old man identifies as submissive. He became aware of his kinky side in 2008 and has never looked back since. He is a member of The Kinky Collective which shares his vision to make Kink a friendly word in the Indian Community. Ayangbe Mannen is an illustrator. For more, visit her website www.ayangbe.com.  

How Posing in the Nude Changed My Life

A young gay man who hates being touched, is awkward about having sex. Then, an ex-flame asks him if he'll pose for some photographs - in the nude. Listen to Arindam's podcast on how the experience made him bloom into a sexual being. And how an act that mixed intimacy and creativity, began a new journey of confidence and exuberance.

A young gay man who hates being touched, is awkward about having sex. Then, an ex-flame asks him if he'll pose for some photographs - in the nude.
Listen to Arindam's podcast on how the experience made him bloom into a sexual being. And how an act that mixed intimacy and creativity, began a new journey of confidence and exuberance. Listening Time: 16:38 minutes
Language: English

Mamma Ka Dilemma

One day you discover your 7 year old has been watching porn? What do you do? Freak out? Cut your internet connection? Blame yourself? Or maybe, you do what Anu Singh Choudhary did. Listen to her podcast Mamma Ka Dilemma.

One day you discover your 7 year old has been watching porn? What do you do? Freak out? Cut your internet connection? Blame yourself? Or maybe, you do what Anu Singh Choudhary did. Listen to her podcast Mamma Ka Dilemma.  
Anu Singh Choudhary is a communications consultant, documentary filmmaker, writer, editor, translator and blogger.

The Reluctant Voyeur

Your best friend and her boy friend get it on in front you. Should you be made a voyeur without your consent? Young Andrea's podcast about an awkward night.

Your best friend and her boy friend get it on in front you. Should you be made a voyeur without your consent? Young Andrea's podcast about an awkward night.   Click here for image source.

We're Not Serious and Other Non-Promises

"What is sex sex I want to scream? Is what we’ve been having un-sex sex? Is one superior to the other? Is this one inferior to that one?" Alia questions the boundaries between love, lust, sex and long-term relationships.

[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/02-Tue/Alia-2-Edited-b%20%281%29.jpg]]
We are lying on his roommate's bed, facing one another, momentarily tired. He sighs, groans helplessly. His eyes are heavy with arousal. I feel the same languor, the weight of muscle-skin-heat building up in me. I think of the past half hour. Its savage playfulness. 

I'm not sure what I feel, except that it is thunderous. I’ve been waiting for this a long time. 

We have known each other for seven years. I have adored him for three years. He has lusted after me for one year. We spent a night together two months ago. It hadn't gone well. 

'Are you going to fuck me this time?' I whisper this in his ear. My beloved's sudden discomfort becomes evident. He stares at me, smiles apologetically. 'I don't know', he says. I am surprised. Then, he says firmly, 'No, I don't think so.' 

'That's the wrong answer', I hiss. 

I roll away from him, sit up. My smile is brittle as chalk. I want to remind him of the months of messages flapping across our separate cities, messages weighed down by their heat and lustfulness. I want to recall the dark joy of planning secret meetings, the building-up. The not being able to stay away. “We have to meet.” “I have to see you.” “God. I want you so badly.” 
[[https://agentsofishq.com/uploads/2022/08-August/02-Tue/Alia-1-Edited-b.jpg]]
I want to say, "Imagine that moment, half-beast half-soul". 

Instead I wear my pants. The rest of the conversation is tedious, full of jagged fragments. Poky fragments that shouldn't be kept. Or recalled or retold. But here one is. Going over them again and again. 

'Look. One of us has to be responsible.' 

'You know I want to, really I do. But I'm not ready for that sort of intimacy.' 

'Everything else we've done, it's just… fooling around. It's not the same as sex sex.

' What is sexsex I want to scream? Is what we’ve been having un-sex sex? Is one superior to the other? Is this one inferior to that one? Why? Does that make me inferior or superior? What? 

'I'm 34', he says this in a tone of finality, a voice of stone. A fact like a rock knocked hard against the forehead. 'I'm 34 and the next time I get into a relationship, I'm going to be giving it some thought. Because I'm going to want it to be a long term thing.

' What do I feel right now? I don't know. Feverish? Scared. Before the onset of something inevitable and unfair and opaque.

I ask, 'So was I some part of your experimental phase?' 

'You can say that.’ It's that easy. And I am struck dumb hereafter. Gone is the heat, the lover, the power to please. 

I want to scream, say, but what about me? 

Instead, 

"You want this: to end up with a fine woman, a knowing, canny practical woman with sharp, straight hair. She works a 9-7 job, and motivates you to go to the gym every evening. You will have one child. You will send this child for tuitions. You will take it in turns to cook dal-rice. You will never quite be happy, but enviably content. The sex will keep you going for a while, though she will be uneasy about your quirks, your heaviness, the way you hold your hands down across her throat and stomach. You will dream of her often. She will make you as weak as you said you wanted to feel. You will watch the fine network of lines that eventually creep out around her eyes and down her cheeks and say to yourself, I was right to wait so long for her. I was right. You will watch your child grow older together and leave you behind. You will watch television for her sake. Put her favourite shows on record. She will love you, but not helplessly. This will make you ache and yearn and ache. There will be some fleeting affairs, never important, slightly painful. Passing through your existence much like pins and needles. 

Whatever else happens, you never allow yourself to detest her. 

" I say none of this aloud. It's too much, it's not true, it’s too true. Saying it might bring it to life, but the vividness scares me. A future in whose totality, I do not exist. A window which I’m on the outside of, feeling constantly not quite right enough to be let in. 

In the outside room stand part-time lovers, castoff for long-term love. 

It's funny, what you become when you're convinced you're in love. It’s funny what you un-become when you feel you are not loved. It’s funny there are so many meanings of sex no one talks about. To clarify, I say nothing, of importance. Nothing happens. The phase passes. I never see him again. 

He insists I take a taxi home. He tries to pay for it, I refuse. He leaves me with a kiss- quick, fraternal, sickeningly sympathetic- on my cheek.  It echoes in my ear for days to come, it says, "That was That".   

Alia works at a library by the sea. 

I Kissed A Boy (Plus Several More) And I Liked It: My Slutty Life

The thrill of being with a stranger, the joy of kissing several more - and liking it! Read as Glitch embraces her 'slutty' course of life, making it HER choice.

The other day in the auto, I was doing a count of how many people I have had sex with. I don’t know if my “score” is high or not – but it did take me through one traffic signal and I had two “oh yaaaa totally forgot about that person” moments. 1 Sometimes my friends complain about how long it has been since they have had any action. We jokingly keep a log of their dry spells, but I don’t seem to have that problem. This is not because I am a babe and everywhere I go people are into me or something. It’s also not because I am a girl about town with a super active social life. I think I have a good amount of (according to me) sex because, I simply allow for it to happen. 2 I am very aware when someone expresses interest in me. Some people claim they can never tell – but to me it’s obvious. First you become aware of a persons presence, then you both make eye contact longer, find lame reasons to elongate the conversation and there is a general magnetic force field type of feeling that starts happening between the two bodies, I guess that’s why its called attraction. 3 Whenever this happens to me, if I feel drawn to the person, I reciprocate. If I don’t, I won’t.   4 copy And when I do reciprocate, more often that not, it results in a hook up. Then the next day (or sometimes even a few minutes later) I like to tell a few of my closest friends. 5When I was in college, and it was still a very new practice for me, an invariable reaction that I got from my friends was 6 For the next few days I would get the sick kind of feeling you get in your stomach when you eat too much junk food. I’d force myself to block out the memory of the hook up and I would keep thinking of all sorts of other things. 7 And those thoughts made me feel pretty small and shitty. But even though my friends felt it was bad and this self-hate haunted me – my practice of casual hook ups didn’t end. Whenever opportunity presented itself – I still took it up on the offer. I don’t think I continued doing it because I enjoy debasing myself, or because it was a poor addiction problem – but because the actual experience in itself was enjoyable for me. Its not like I was a naive fool who was not aware when someone was testing waters with many people, or when a person was a general charmer. I did see it, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. So what if I am not the most prized and special choice? What am I supposed to hold out for anyway? Does someone have to prove a prolonged and exclusive show of devotion and desire in order for it to be okay to sleep with them? If I sleep with someone without putting up a chase does it mean I am no longer of any value – to myself – to them – to others? I know that people often call people like me easy with a meanness in their voice. Is this where the feeling of being used comes from? Is my worth located in who gets to touch my body, and how often? Is sex an experience of someone taking away something you have or of two people connecting with each other through their bodies? Why is the who and when and how many times I decide to have a sexual experience more important than the fact that it is me who chooses every time. Am I slut? And if yes, is that bad? 8 I really like the feeling of meeting a total stranger, and getting to know them intimately. Experiencing different people’s styles of physical touch, responding to the way different bodies work together, the electricity that happens in anticipation, holding someone’s gaze and just letting yourself feel good – all of this makes me feel alive. It might not always lead to the greatest mind blowing orgasms – but the experience has mostly been open and respectful with a warm thanks for a good time and that was that kind of bye in the morning. All of which works great for me – and isn’t that a good enough reason to just do itnike2 9 So instead of stopping my practice, I just stopped telling those set of friends. Initially I would keep quiet and be bursting to tell someone but have no one to tell. Till slowly, I found a new set of friends... 10 And now for the next few days after a hook up, I find myself dwelling on all the little details in my head – something that was said or a feeling that it caused in my stomach or an image flash of my body and theirs – and instead of shrinking and feeling shitty, I am sitting in an auto smiling to myself at all these sweet experiences I have. Glitch is a 28 year old, and by definition both unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Amma, It's Time We Had THE TALK

Discuss sex with your parents? Tell them that you are sexually active? Nope, not happening. But Srinidhi managed to do so. Read to find out how THE TALK took place between Srinidhi and her mother!

Recently, a dear friend sent me the lovely illustrated book 'Embroideries' by the Iranian writer Marjane Satrapi. I had read it before but didn’t own a copy. I was excited to reread it. I rushed through it in a couple of hours. (If you haven’t read this yet, I can’t recommend it enough.) The first time I read it, which was several years ago, I wouldn’t have dared give the book to Amma to read. Things have changed these past few years. I handed it over to her and said, “It is lovely. Lots of Iranian women talking about sex and their lives. Let me know what you think.” 

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A few days later, I saw the book lying in the spot where she left my books after she was done with them. She usually offers her opinion spontaneously once she is done with a book. But this one was different. I asked her what she thought. “It was okay. Interesting to read these women talking so openly,” she responded. Amma and I had developed for ourselves a new pattern. I looked for books that she would enjoy, ok, make that books that might shock her and gave them to her in the hope that we could talk about these topics after. Feminism. Sex. Sex in mythology. Lesbians. Alternate forms of love. Being single. It was working well for us. The books did most of the uncomfortable talking and she continued to ask me for recommendations.
This wasn’t the first time we were presented with opportunities to have the crucial discussion about sex. A good five years ago, Amma found a condom in my bag’s side pocket. An opened one without its cover. Yes, it felt like disaster in slow motion. I knew she had found it when she told me she was looking in my bag for something and couldn’t make eye contact two full days after. She hesitated bringing up the topic, perhaps terrified of finding out her youngest daughter had been sexually active. I was tempted to ask her about it so we could finally discard the shroud of secrecy around my sexual life. But I panicked and turned into an ostrich instead. I conferenced my sisters in to find out what I should do. They couldn't find words through the loud laughter. When she couldn't handle not knowing anymore, she brought it up. “I found an…,” she paused and continued, “open condom in your side pocket.” I turned to stone while I looked for words and tried my hand at a poker face. I am miserable at lying but it was my only go-to in a state of panic. “It was from a water balloon experiment A and I were trying,” I said. She squinted her eyes like she does when she suspects I am fibbing. Fortunately, she didn't ask further questions but the awkward air didn't leave us for days.
Growing up in a sort-of conventional household, sex was not taboo but nobody broached the subject. We are a family of four women, dad and the doggess. We never really had ‘the talk’ though. We joked a lot about the doggess's libido yet the topic never reached humans having sex. Occasionally, the topic would slip into conversation but we managed to circumvent anyone in the house actually having sex. Sometimes we spoke with reference to rape, otherwise mostly how it was portrayed in the movies or in books. The conversations were usually with Amma and always in whispers in the privacy of our home. A while ago she accompanied me to the gynecologist. She joked about how women from her generation never went to the doctor until they conceived. I responded with things are different now and it is good that we come to ensure we are healthy. She nodded along. She insisted on waiting with me and talking to the doctor about all the tests she had conducted. I, on the other hand, frantically messaged a friend from the waiting room, freaked out about how to inform the doctor that I am sexually active without Amma noticing. Why couldn't there be a secret wink code? Or one with a specific number of taps to convey - “I am sexually active but Amma doesn't know.” After we came out of the doctor's, I began to think about why I hadn't told Amma yet. What was holding me back? Why couldn't we have this conversation like we had the other conversations? I do think it is essential to have conversations with your children about sex. But as adults how do we talk to our parents about it. I have been negotiating this complex conversation with Amma for over a year now and I find myself falling short of words each time. How can two of us speak about it honestly? Without any lies or euphemisms. How can we have conversations about safety, pleasure and the act itself? Some days I do believe we make progress. But I sense the tone of the conversation would change once I am married to one which was less coloured by fear and concern. Even Amma is more comfortable talking about this with my sisters. Since I wanted to be open with her, I kept looking for new ways to talk about it.
Books were not the only entry point for Amma and I. Nearly a year ago, while working with a feminist organisation in Hyderabad, we organised a two-day film festival. I was very excited by the wide range of movies we were screening. My eldest sister, who was in town, was keen on watching a documentary called Accsex. Accsex is a spectacular movie on disability and sexuality. It has women with different kinds of disabilities speaking about love, sex and life. My sister and I agreed that Amma should come to the screening. She sat through 52 minutes of women talking freely about their experiences. The movie explicitly deals with sex and women's experiences with pleasure. The illustrations and poetry enmeshed with the women’s narratives question our own prejudices and ideas of normal. The movie celebrates the body in its varied forms after taking out the pity glasses. Then, the group which had gathered to watch had a short discussion about the silence around the sexuality of persons with disabilities. Amma did not speak. She seemed to be reflecting what she had just witnessed. Many from the audience spoke about their own prejudices and how they had perceived persons with disabilities before the documentary. Amma, like me, is an introvert. Taking some time to process the movie, Amma asked us later, “How do lesbians have sex?” My sister tried to explain to her immediately. A few days after reflecting on how best I could bring it up again, I brought Amma the laptop and told her jokingly, “The internet holds the answer to your question. You should read.” I am aware that the question is often asked and not in a nice way. But we were presented with a window to talk to her about sex beyond its often limited framing of penile-vaginal penetration. 
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Through the movies and books, there has been a change in the way we spoke about sex. She even insisted that we go to watch Margarita with a Straw. I told her there were a lot of explicit sex scenes in the movie. She responded with a grumpy, “So?” We never did end up watching it though she dutifully reminds me even now that I didn’t take her and go. Some of the conversations make me wonder if she is aware about me being sexually active and just chooses to not acknowledge it. It seems like the only possibility. Perhaps it is her way of dealing with it. However, these conversations, books and movies bring us closer to the day when I can openly talk to her about my own experiences, without any hesitation. These openings aren’t just to shock her. It matters how she sees me. I joke about the fact that the world doesn’t have to see the real me but I sure would like Amma to know. Engaging with her has helped in bridging this gap between her versions of us and the real us. Amma’s interest in understanding and her ability to engage has deepened the understanding between us. It has given us the opportunity to build a more loving and open relationship based on trust. This has made it easier for me to be real with her with worries about judgment. Today, Amma, my sisters and I often speak about sex, power within intimate relationships, using condoms or other contraceptives. The hush tone of the conversation is definitely passé. I hope that someday I wouldn’t need cheat codes at the doctors and Amma would already know the secret. Srinidhi Raghavan is a feminist who reads a lot. An introvert who advocates for human rights and writes about women and girls' rights, equality, and sexuality. She hides in poetry for comfort. You can read her other article 'The Diary of An Indian Sex Educator'. 

Jewels like Flowers: About Men's Bodies and Women's Desires

We are always made aware of the beauty of the feminine, but what about the masculine figures? Read this essay by Elisa Brune to know a woman’s love for the opposite sex.

An artist's entranced paintings of male nudes and her tender essay on the penis's strange invisibility in a phallocratic culture.   My mother hated my father's genitals. She never wanted to see them and even in his underwear she found his body obscene. She yelled at him if she saw him naked in the bathroom, he had to cover up as soon as he came out of the shower. He later told me it was the same, even in private. She would just bear him -  let him “do what he had to do", but she did not want to see anything. In forty years of marriage, she never looked at that sex that penetrated her and had given her three children. More than finding it obscene, she thought it was ugly, stupid, ridiculous. In her mind it was a sort of blunder of nature, a necessary evil, the wrong button sewn on a couture dress. She has never given it a look, nor a hand, and not a single kiss, of course. My father had to prepare it alone, enter alone, conclude alone. In short: make love alone. 
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Fortunately for me, I did not inherit this thinking, nor was I handed this education in other ways. As far back as I can remember, I always loved to look at men’s sexual parts.  At first, out of curiosity, then for excitement, but also for the aesthetic emotions they aroused in me. In all my relationships, I spent a significant amount of my loving time contemplating, flattering, cajoling my partner’s penis. Unlike other parts of the body, I think that penis is always beautiful. Perhaps because it is always true. Far from the intentions of its owner, it can not seem misplaced, awkward, hypocritical, pretentious. It is a kind of pure biological and emotional truth. Erect or resting, there is always something infinitely touching about it. Men's sex is their proudest and most fragile part, the lyrical paraphrase of their personality, the last sentence at the bottom of a poem which makes it come into existence. 
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The most difficult truth of the male sex is its visibility. Whatever its status, you can not retract it, it stands there, it hangs, it exceeds. In animals, it fades into bristles and quadrupial recesses. 
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But the standing position, if you ask my opinion, was created to make the body a display. Of the naked man, one sees only this: look, here is my sex. And behind the sex, the softest outgrowth of all, the testicles' pocket, the divine balls, the maddening valseuses. That this joyous team is so exposed, and that for thousands of years, we have turned our eyes from it, is completely absurd. I ask only one thing: that you behold men's personal jewels as you behold flowers. 
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As for the erection? When addressed to one who it desires, and one who desires it, it is, simply, paradise on earth. It should be photographed, drawn, filmed, written, sung, sculpted... Why do we never see it (except in pornography, which constitutes the dark side of this prohibition) We live in a society which is considered phallocratic (and it is), but where can you see an actual phallus? Nowhere, nothing, nada, the phallus as a penis, as a tender, human thing, not an invincible symbol, has no place. The ancient Greeks would show it, the Asian, the Africans ... But we, the so called “Moderns”? I dream of a society where women make choices and where men are spread naked across magazines ... But we are far from this free dream. Already a simple penis at rest, soft and harmless, is more difficult to find than a four-leaf clover. As for the erection, forget about it. Cinema rejects the erection like the plague, fearing it will be considered X-rated, consigned to the shameful dungeon of supposedly sick sexuality. Even Chippendale strippers and others who play the card of sexual arousal, stop at the edge of their string: you can eroticize my body, yes, from the soles of my feet to the biker cap, but not to my morning and evening glory! A strange and disconnected world, where women must rev up to everything except the central motif? Where men absorb the idea that the erection is both an embarrassment, a crime and the lack of it a failure? 
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An un-remarked on taboo, the erection is an unhappy erection, shivering, disoriented, and finally perverse: there is nothing between the repressed and the pornographic. Women are outraged by principle, men embarrassed without knowing why, and we must find ways of making love despite sex. 
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I draw these images, of men’s bodies and beauties and by implication, the beauty of sex. I make these drawings as a way of feeling love and making love and showing love. Who is comfortable with the erection (at any stage) and the moment of rest, is at ease with life. Without this, maybe we should never start a philosophy course. 
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Elisa Brune is a writer and journalist with a doctorate in science. She is also the author of The Secret of Women: A Journey to the Heart of Female Orgasm and Pleasure, among other books.

The Flower of My Secret Sex Life

A young woman's candid and joyful account of her search for a relationship with her sexual self.

A young woman's quest for a sexual self.

‘Hello, mera naam Tina hai aur mein apne aap ko chhooti hu’.

Talking about my sexuality makes me feel as if I’m attending a weird version of my first AA meeting. Nervous and excited. But...as long as it’s out there…so, here goes!

My first encounter with explicit sex was through a dirty joke. My friend was giggling and whispering about some pencil and sharpener metaphor which I didn’t fully comprehend, but I laughed along with her anyway. That’s what you do when you’re 12 and want to show that you’re cool.

It was a gradual process for me – I happened to come across tiny descriptions of sex in fiction novels between the protagonists, then later in Mills and Boons (a handful), then full-fledged erotic romance/erotic novels and then…well, novels in which sex was the plot.

It was only after I turned 21 that I desired to masturbate (yes, I said it) and actively sought content to fuel my imagination. Before that, when I tried it a few times, it felt hurried and awkward. I was less informed (aka clueless fumbling) and not very motivated (aka lack of privacy).

I remember feeling short-changed after reading romance novels that didn’t have explicit descriptions of sex. I thought 'Man, that book sucked! Sam and Jane didn’t do it in the whole second half. What was THAT all about?'

I realized that I was kidding myself when I reasoned that I picked those books for their plot. I love to read. So, I decided to be honest with myself and made two mental categories during book selection – one for intellectual stimulation and the other for, well…self-stimulation (cue in erotica).

I quickly realized that pornography didn’t arouse me much (not that I didn’t try with it for a bit). It was too bland – not much depth and creativity in scenes (including revoltingly clichéd dialogues). And it seemed to be primarily for male titillation (Why is the dude always more eager to receive than minister?).

Then I discovered other things. Like, ever seen animated sex? Welcome to the world of hentai. Which is mostly, unfortunately, not female friendly (and Japanese). But, for my time and feelings, better than regular porn. Why? More build-up, more foreplay but mostly, more intensity. I realized I got that from erotic novels and began to explore them at length – and continue to do so. Different folks, different strokes, right?

***

Unlike pornography, erotic novels (the better ones) aren’t just about two people trying to get each other off. It’s descriptive, creative and reels you in. It has the ability to arouse you, make your body more sensitive and you may even find yourself floating through the stages of sex. ‘Increasingly hot and sweaty’ is always better than a typical ‘wham bam thank you ma’am!’

It made me realize that sex isn’t just a bedroom activity involving a man panting above a woman. It’s about people dissolving themselves in mutual pleasure and enjoying each other (and in turn, themselves) in an intimate way – in fact, a variety of intimate ways.

Initially, I was unsure about masturbation – or as they say, “indulging in masturbation.” Ever seen a kid push another down? As soon as he sees you looking, he becomes defensive and insists that he didn’t do it. Well, that was me – doing the deed and then going like ‘Hey, it wasn’t me!’

Except, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, no one was judging me and I was defending myself against – well, me! And that was absurd because I like me! Also, I noticed that the more uncertain I was, the less satisfactory the experience turned out to be.

Speaking of strokes, after overcoming the initial hesitations, sexual self-exploration was always a pleasurable experience. I realized how my body was capable of producing pleasure that was so fleeting yet so profound. Any remaining reservations I had about my actions dissolved after I experienced my first orgasm (hell yeah!).

Setting a rhythm and getting comfortable with a technique is the hard part. After that, it’s smooth sailing. Reading informative articles online helped in understanding genital anatomy, how and why certain methods worked for me and why others didn’t. Also, reading such articles made me more confident about what I was doing.

***

You can’t explore erotica and not come across taboo erotica (pseudo-incest, dubious consent, etc.), gay/lesbian/transgender erotica, BDSM, threesomes, orgies, etc. (yeah, there’s more). I remember the first time I read about a threesome and found it arousing. I was so appalled that I liked it.

Till then, the idea of sex, for me, was an intimate act between two people. I was afraid I was falling into the land of debauchery with no hope of coming out. It was a friend who put some perspective on that. She pointed out that it’s only a fantasy and that I was freaking out unnecessarily. It could also be looked at as not one but two men loving you…okay, I was down with that!

On a serious note, it made me question my preferences, what I liked and what was my limit. More importantly, I realized that any unconventional or scandalizing piece of literature was pleasurable for me not because of the act itself but the feelings it brought out in the protagonist (remember I mentioned intensity before?)

***

And if you’ve explored masturbation, it’s not long before you end up thinking about sex toys (oh c’mon, at this point, you would too!). I don’t know why but whenever I think of sex toys, the image of a blow up doll pops in my head (go figure). Anyway, sex toys are devices designed to arouse you.

The first time I fully understood the use of a dildo was through an erotic novel in which the couple explored light sexual domination and submission. After that, I learned about the variety of instruments designed for pleasure (and the extent of pleasure you wish to experience). Although I currently don’t own any, it’s something I would like experimenting with.

***

I was never shy about talking to my friends about sex. I found I was as knowledgeable or more so about that topic. But I was shy about exploring my own body. To the extent that lingerie shopping embarrassed me. Now, I enjoy picking out bras and wonder why I don’t have enough thongs. Somehow I feel sexier knowing what I’m wearing under my clothes.

And well, speaking of under the clothes, I got my first Brazilian wax done recently. Ever since I read about it, I’ve wanted to try it. Never been nude in front of anyone, always waxed myself at home and I went ahead and bared my crotch to a stranger. Yep, that’s me.

The experience was Bloody Painful and Super Thrilling. And totally worth it. And the rumors were true for me — I found it did give me a higher sense of pleasure during my ‘happy time’. Whether for real, or whether because it was such an anticipated thing in my head, it doesn't matter – I loved it!

I read a woman’s comment somewhere that she felt more confident being naked in front of her lover after getting a Brazilian wax. I completely understood what she meant.

***

I haven’t had sex yet and intend to do so only after marriage (gasp! I know!). It’s not because I come from a religious or conservative family (though I do). After a point, you realize that it’s your choice whether you want to continue following what’s taught to you, or not.

The thing is, I like my faith and its suggestions and guidelines for life and I’m comfortable with choosing to follow the suggestion of sex after marriage. Yep, it’s a choice I’ve made. But my choice of self-exploration makes me feel confident about my sexuality.

There are people I know who are having sex but that are either too preoccupied with the man’s response during sex or consider sex as just an act that needs to get done. In both cases, there is such a strong disconnect from your own body. This kind of hesitancy in your own sexuality makes you forget the important fact that it’s your body that makes you aware of how pleasurable the act is.

This is a different kind of freedom – to understand myself in this manner. I know that this kind of confidence will encourage sexual compatibility with my partner after marriage.

All the things I’ve tried so far, the extent of my exploration – has made me feel so good about myself and my body. And I think that’s what it means to be sexual – to realize what stimulates you mentally and see its connection to your body, to explore and enjoy your body in the most intimate way possible.

Rogue Hasina is 23, an avid reader (comics included), partial to music, movies and felines (in that order) and trying to strike a balance between ‘Masturbation? Oh no! I don’t even think about it’ and ‘Tentacle sex is my jam!’

I Thought It Was A Dream Date. But I Am Bipolar, So Was It Just A Dream?

This date wasn’t supposed to be a rebound, but still hit me in the face, and everywhere else

It was exciting to meet a guy at a bar almost three months after my two-year-long relationship (my longest). I dressed in my favourite “I don’t care” outfit and wore my no-makeup makeup look, inspired by the camaraderie between YouTube and Pinterest. My no-prep routine made me run 40 minutes late from the decided time of our meeting (a respectable time for me). So, he texted to check in on our Bumble chat, the only place we had connected. 

“Am I going to get stood up tonight?” his message read.

I thought that was funny and charming, still don’t know why. Now the possibility of what this date night could be got more exciting for me. Date night at a cool bar with a fun cutie??? AaaaAAAaaaa. 

What is way less thrilling though? Meeting someone you have already developed an involuntary crush on, and sliding into your first conversation that you have been diagnosed with BIPOLAR disorder, Obsessive Compulsion Disorder (OCD) and ADHD, and you have been living with it for two years.

Illustration of two people out on a date. One of them is raising their hands excitedly revealing three diagnosis that say Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and ADHD.

It is even less romantic to tell someone on your first date that the charming and happy being they see today is a reflection of what doctors (four in total) have called my manic phase. 

You surely don’t want to tell this adorable guy that when this manic phase ends, that there will be a depressive phase. It will not be charming. It will wipe out smiles. Both mine and of the people around me. More importantly, how do you communicate that there is no blueprint to tell an innocent, nice boy that these phases don’t define me? I want him to be on a date with me, not my mental health, a very small aspect of my personality.

I reached outside our date spot in South Delhi. I shrugged at him apologetically, he shrugged back, as if saying, “I could have waited 20 minutes more.” Shit. He is sweeter than I imagined. We shared a cigarette, went inside, sat at the bar, and ordered half a litre of beer each. Ten minutes into the conversation, people around us were looking at us like they could tell we were two people on a very successful first date. We laughed to the point where I thought we could only be platonic buddies. This much comfort in a first-time romantic encounter? Every romantic comedy I have ever seen was disagreeing. We drank till the bar closed, moved out of the place, sat outside on the footpath, shared another cigarette, laughed a little more, and Googled places that would serve us more alcohol at 1 a.m. On the way to Bar No.2, we cuddled, and moved our hands onto each other’s bodies, wherever our drunk bodies and conscience would allow. It was embarrassing for the cab driver, but delightful for us. The date ended with more Long Island Ice Teas, Esse lights, and walking back tipsy for 15 minutes to my house on the abandoned streets of Delhi. 

Everything still seems so perfect. 

All my mental illnesses have teamed up to tell me this was all in my head. I am imagining things. People like me, with three diagnoses, don’t get dates like these. We only get temporary stimulation. Ones that end in “What was I thinking,” while I cry myself to sleep, swiping away on Bumble, looking for more normalcy as a 25-year-old. But I know all this happened to me. I have a crowd and servers in two bars, one cab driver, and my roommate and her boyfriend from when we reached home, to back me up on it. 

There is also a possibility that there are other things that happened, but I think are my imagination. Like the time he drew me in his notebook from the photos in my room or from when he changed into a printed shirt to match my kurta just so “We are twinning.” I am still hazy about the night we danced for hours in the middle of a crowded dance floor, and unsure if he got jealous when I kissed another guy as a way of protecting myself for “keeping things casual.” Was I depressed and everything felt like an anchor to stop me from sinking, or he did really kiss me on the head, bite me on the arm, and hug me by the waist in a way that still makes me giddy, anywhere, anywhere, when those memories hit me without my permission? 

When your medicines control your body and brain, when your notes from therapy pave the way for your life when you compartmentalise everything, to deal with it later because you have so little trust in your impulses, when you are scared your pangs of anger, and when you have no one to share these feeling with, you never know the truth from the “crazy thoughts in your head.” I don’t know if I deserve to be loved, hugged, kissed or drawn. 

As anticipated, the manic phase ended and the depressive one hit. 

Illustration of a person crying, lying on the floor in a fetal position. Another person is looking in confusion, from a distance.

In just a matter of days, the charming, happy, being, I was on the first date diminished into a ball of crying mess, rocking back and forth on the floor of my room. The self-harm increased, and the will to live decreased. As I swung faster, I saw this cute guy move further away from me. 

What happened,” I asked finally, from my hospital bed after being admitted to the ICU, after a panic attack followed by an incident of over-dosage of medicine (As it read on my hospital prescription). This was two weeks after that first magical date.

“Hey, I am not used to seeing someone (especially someone I have fun being with) go through so much internal turmoil and it was starting to feel very unfamiliar to me. I’m sorry…I didn’t want you to feel this way… but maybe I just started to feel like I might drown with you sometimes,” he replied. Now this seems real, there is no haze. “Understandable,” I texted in response and turned over to sleep with the beeping sounds of monitors and other patients coughing in the ICU. I don’t need anyone to back me up on this explanation. People with three diagnoses, like me, live with this reality. Who am I to change it? Who am I to doubt it?

Shreya is a queer, disabled reporter based in Delhi. My interests lie in writing social justice features and long-form stories with a gender lens. I am an empathetic writer who gives the utmost importance to journalistic ethics and data.