The narratives in this volume constitute immense challenges and small but profoundly significant triumphs. Located within a personal journey of emergence from a space fraught with silences and half-truths, the book documents the life-stories of ten working-class queer women living in north India. In doing so, it dispels the myth that lesbians in India are all urban, westernized and come from upper and middle classes. These real-life narratives create a space for voices with little or no pr...

This Element, about historical practice and genetics, seeks to understand what is at stake in presenting, preserving, and articulating the past in the present. Historical practice is both conceptual and material, a consonance of approach which is reflected in the innovative and non-traditional format of the Element itself – not simply in its length, but its constitution. The Element was created collaboratively with contributions from a range of disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of profes...

Short tales of passion and lust from the pens of today's most exciting writers of lesbian eroticaThis all-new volume of lesbian erotica brings together a dazzling selection of new fiction from around the world. Here are 50 short stories from a still growing genre, most of which have been specially commissioned.The writing covers the emotional spectrum, from intimate reminiscences and intensely personal experiences, to wild confessions and magical encounters. Uninhi...

ROLE-PLAY REVERSAL By Chris WestlakeEmily has joined the amateur dramatics where she plays the sort of rich spoilt housewife that every milkman longs to meet on his round. The tables are turned when Deana, the sassy ebony minx who plays her meek maid in the play, turns out to be a dominatrix with her own set of handcuffs! When Emily is licked out on stage, it seems that there could be a third role in this production .HOLY MATRIMONY By Chloe...

Astha has everything an educated, middle-class Delhi woman could ask for - children, a dutiful loving husband, and comfortable surroundings. So why should she be consumed with a sense of unease and dissatisfaction?Astha finds herself embarking on a powerfully physical relationship with a much younger woman, Pipee, the widow of a political activist. But with this extra-marital affair is she foolishly jeopardizing everything - or is Astha at last throwing off the fear and timidity in...

At a time and in a culture where science and technology have taken over from religious belief, when ethics are understood primarily in terms of aesthetic choice or legality, how are we to formulate moral principles to guide us in our daily lives?Though religion can certainly help in this, the Dalai Lama demonstrates that there are universal principles we can draw on which transcend the dilemma of belief or unbelief. And whilst many have been content to speak of spiritual matters as ...

Kamala Das (1934–2009) is one of India’s most beloved and controversial literary figures. She was hailed and reviled as the first Indian woman to write an autobiographical cult classic about love and desire. Admirers dubbed her, “The First Feminist Emotional Revolutionary of Our Time.” The tabloid press called her “The Love Queen of Malabar.”

Irreverent, laugh-out-loud tales of living and travelling in India.

Widely recognized as one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the twentieth century, Jiddu Krishnamurti taught that in order for there to be peace in the world, we must each first make peace with ourselves. No spiritual path, leader, or personal or political philosophy will guide us in this endeavor, he said; this transformation of the human psyche is a truth that each of us must discover within.Here, Krishnamurti teaches that the war and destruction human beings wreak on ...

Sally Howard, a self-confessed child of the Western Sexual Revolution, sets out on a sexploration through modern India by train, plane and auto-rickshaw.From the heat of anti-rape protest on the streets of New Delhi to the cool hills of Shimla, playground of the Raj; from a Gujurati retirement home for gay men and eunuchs to a busy sex clinic in Chennai; from patriarchs to matriarchs; GIGs (Good Indian Girls), BIGs (Bad Indian Girls) and the fleshpots of Bombay, she accompanied by ...

Seven voices contribute to this rare glimpse of the work being done on the front lines of the fight for social change in India. Playing with Fire is written in the collective voice of women employed by a large NGO as activists in their communities and is based on diaries, interviews, and conversations among them. Together their personal stories reveal larger themes and questions of sexism, casteism, and communalism, and a startling picture emerges of how NGOs both nourish and stifle local ...

Shohini Ghosh: Shohini Ghosh is Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, a university in New Delhi. Tales of the Night Fairies, her documentary on the sex workers rights movement, made a strong intervention in debates on sex work. She writes on contemporary media practices and sexuality.