Unpacking Women’s Sexuality in India with Amrita Narayanan

In this episode of Back Story, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Amrita Narayanan explores the raptures and distress that shape women’s sexuality in modern India. Drawing from her book ‘Women’s Sexuality and Modern India’ (Oxford University Press), Amrita takes us through years of psychoanalytic work and intimate conversations with women. What emerges is a granular map of sexuality– where guilt, pleasure, internalized shame, and familial influence coalesce.

From the haunting burden of mothers’ lonely marriages to the quiet power of secrecy, Amrita invites us to think differently about protection, performance, and pleasure. What does it mean to carry the weight of a family’s love and its control? And how do women live out sexuality in a society that offers neither language nor space?

The Third Eye’s series, Back Story, breaks down research, praxis, and lesser-known insights for a wider, non-academic audience, to help us all make sense of the world with a little more wonder, a little more depth.

INTERVIEWER
Shabani Hassanwalia
Jaya Sharma

CAMERA
Aroonabha Ghose

EDIT
Shivam Rastogi

CREATIVE PRODUCER
Shabani Hassanwalia

THUMBNAIL ART
Samiksha Kherde

PRODUCERS for The Third Eye
Dipta Bhog
Shivam Rastogi

The Third Eye is being written and developed by a team of educators, documentary filmmakers, storytellers; people with extensive experience of gathering narratives, oral histories and developing contextual pedagogies for the rural and the marginalised.