In his short story, B takes us to the mountains and animates the slow burn between identity and intimacy. This piece was developed as part of The Third Eye’s Sexy Log mentorship initiative, where a cohort of ten people across India worked independently on their experiences of sexuality, with the prompt of Pleasure & Danger.
Queering the Pitch: Life and Times of Saleem Kidwai is a short film that traces the legacy of historian and writer Saleem Kidwai. Best known for co-editing Same-Sex Love in India, a landmark text in the fight against Section 377, Saleem’s life also opened up quieter, radical possibilities of the queer lens — ones that transcended binaries, rewrote cultural hierarchies, and made room for joy, complexity, and chosen kinship.
When friends — or we ourselves — berate the wrong decisions we have made in love, we tend to think about the situations that psychoanalyst Bruce Fink calls the ‘pull paradigm’. The story of love has been constructed such that it has us assuming there is something about the other person that ‘pulls’ us towards them. In this ‘pull paradigm’, we assume that desirability has an important role to play in determining who we form an intimate relationship with.
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.
The only relief I found while caught between Ma and Pa’s cold war was when Nirmala rode her motorbike down to Thirukulamandapam for a visit. I told Pa that I would be out all day spending time with an old primary school classmate.
As far back as I can remember, my two override switches have been between my (seemingly) conflicting desires: to be taken seriously and have a good time. One of my earliest memories is my father telling me bemusedly, “You can’t always be having fun!”
Arrupe Canteen is home to acidity-inducing Zinger burgers and a colourful range of other packaged foods that sustain a bustling college population. I try to be mildly health-conscious, especially when people are watching, so I usually keep my distance from its energy drink, chips and candy-covered counters.
It is 10 years since I made my last documentary, many people ask me, when are you making another film? And to some I answer truthfully, that according to me, Agents of Ishq (AOI) is also a film, a very lengthy film—an infinite film.
When Muskan said “Hamare yahaan yeh sab chalta hi nahi hai” (These things aren’t allowed in our areas), we couldn’t help but notice that she said it for feeling love as well as anger.
Sahiba learns from Google, calls it her teacher and navigates her everyday—from getting things done to finding about her mental health—on Google.
