Balancing my privilege with the legitimacy of my own identity and emotions has been challenging, and it pushes me into a constant state of expressing myself and holding back. I’m still learning about how I can hit the sweet spot between taking up space that isn’t mine, and allowing myself to see myself as a legitimately queer being.

For me, pride is about the aspiration that someday I will go back to my family, my school and college and talk from the bottom of my heart about who I am and why I never stood up to people when I had the choice.

We are all gifted with the innate ability to feel and recognise love as an emotion and expression. But we are never taught about how to use it and how important it is to accept that love exists in many forms. I guess we really need to learn how to USE our love, i.e., Understand, Support and Embrace the love that we have for ourselves, and the love we have to share with the world. 

I write not in the hopes of swaying any of your future decisions. I am in a happy place now and wouldn’t wish you to take an alternate route at all. You might already be thinking of all the possible course of actions you could be taking in the coming time. While not all of your wishes will come to fruition, hereon you won’t regret any step that you take.

Maybe it is time for the queer community to reflect upon its own hypocrisy, and realise that even queer spaces, which aim to be inclusive and accommodating of diverse identities, can be intolerant of differences.

During LGBTQ awareness sessions in college, Kokila Bhattacharya was asked, "Bhopal mein Pride kyun nahi hua?" So, a group of individuals took on the mission! Here's some gyaan on that.

When you’re a 14-year-old, there’s a lot of mystery and confusion around the word, ‘sex’. Along with this, there is also a feeling that you know more about it than your peers - or at least you pretend like you do. Not many grown-ups talk about how it all goes down, so eventually the ‘knowledge’ about sex comes from your own friends.

I first learned about periods in primary school when one of my classmates suddenly got hers during the first period in school. There was a lot of chaos, and some seniors were helping her. When my friends and I asked her what a period was, she told us that after a certain age, girls  secrete some sort of liquid from down "there" (which according to me was the clitoris - I didn't even know there was something called a ‘vagina’).

Till about a year ago, like many of the people around me, I used to think that Sex Education only revolved around teaching people about sex and the reproductive system. But because of  the Know Your Body, Know Your Rights (KYBKYR) program, I learned that it was so much more than that. I liked the program’s agenda: providing Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) to young people. 

One day, when I was 7 years old, I was sitting in the car with my mom, my Taiji and my two cousins who are 5 years older than me. They were having a conversation I clearly wasn’t meant to be a part of. So naturally, I absolutely had to know what they were talking about.  I mustered all my kid superpowers of asking many questions loudly and persistently, but my efforts were in vain - all I got was the word ‘napkins’, and the mumbled reassurance of “it’s fine you’ll know this when you’re older”, every child’s least favorite words.

By Tara Vidisha Ghose:

While I was still in school, I remember telling my mother “I don’t understand why women cry so much about inequality. We can vote now and they reserve seats for us in the parliament. We are equal.” Sure, back then, it seemed that way to me, because it seemed perfectly normal that every boy in the boys’ football team in school was a hero while the girls’ team had spent years and years fighting just to be allowed to take part in inter-school competitions. 

WHEN WE MET FOR THE FIRST TIME: “I have no problem with ‘them’ but I would not like to associate myself with them” – First statement he made when we went for a chai date, “I mean you understand right!”- He sought some support.

queerness is more than just an identity. it forces you to look at how the world functions and makes you examine your position in it.

A continuation of the previous piece on Shubham Bose Roy's design work for Delhi Pride. 

As Delhi Queer Pride completes a decade this year, we take a walk down the memory lane with Shubham Bose Roy, as they share their experiences of designing the logos and posters for Delhi Queer Pride (DQP), their longest project till date.

Hello all! I am Garima, a 23-year-old bisexual girl. I started exploring my sexuality only recently, and it has been an amazing experience.

By Toshi Pandey

Public toilets are private spaces, that provide the anonymity and audience that is unlikely to be found anywhere else in today’s world. Researchers have been studying restroom graffiti for decades now to analyze and assess the thoughts expressed by men and women in these single-gender spaces.