“F se Field, Issh se Isshq” is a series of audio stories emerging from the lived experiences and fantasies of sexuality in India. All these narratives contribute to a feminist way of understanding sexuality by centering the psyche.
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.
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.
I once taught a girl whose laughter made me think of falling water on stones. I recall the sound of it as clearly as I recall how often and how willingly she told me jokes. On the day her friends left on a trip, I asked her, ‘Priskilla, why didn’t you go to Bali?’ She said, ‘Ma’am, my purse was khaali.’
This is Part II of a series on the psyche and sexuality, based on the author’s research, reflections and analysis. The series explains key psychoanalytic concepts and offers pedagogical possibilities while working on sexuality.
Yummy yuckiness is the stuff of life. Allowing the bewilderment around it to bubble up matters. Alongside recognition, the exploration of why pleasure and danger are so mixed up also matters. While sharing why I think this exploration is important, I’d like to begin with my own experiences.
