Riddhi Dastidar

We met when I was 16 and she was 17. We called each other bou, wife, love, babe, baby, sexy, (and somewhat inexplicably) George. We weren’t dating, but we might as well have been. I’ve been thinking about her more than usual lately, ever since I found myself obsessed with Showtime’s new show, Yellowjackets, like much of the gay internet. It was specifically the best-friendship between sparkling popular girl Jackie, and her quieter sidekick Shauna that got me. My Jackie, she disappeared midw...

“As a 14 year-old with no connection to the art-world, the traditional route would mean I’d need a degree even though I’ve been making generative art for years. Before I got started with NFTs my artworks were exhibited in a regional gallery for at most a week—a 100 people across Chennai including my relatives, would come see them. With NFTs I have a global audience. No one asks about my past. All they care about is the present.”

That’s Laya Mathikshara—a generative and AR (augmented reality) artist-prodigy, who wasn’t allowed to be on social media by her parents until recently. She encapsulat

Mason Rothschild had to know he was stirring the pot when he launched his line of MetaBirkin NFTs back in November 2021. The 100 virtual faux fur bags were lapped up by buyers in the metaverse—the highest selling for over $45,000—fetching the American digital artist a tidy sum. Less than thrilled, Hermès filed a trademark infringement and dilution lawsuit against Rothschild last week, accusing him of appropriating the brand to “get rich quick” with “fake products” in the metaverse.
Rothschild...

Delhi: "Until his last breath, Stan had hope in the judiciary. He was waiting for the July 3, 2021 hearing where his interim bail plea was to be taken up. I think when that didn't happen, he finally lost hope," recalled Sheela*, a Delhi-based lawyer who asked to be anonymous for fear of being targeted. Sheela was referring to Stan Swamy, a social scientist and Adivasi rights activist, who died on July 5, 2021 in custody, charged with being a left-wing extremist under the stringent Unlawful Ac...

Baaraan Ijlal’s spectacular paintings linger in your memory long after you’ve stopped looking at them. It’s fitting for how she plays with time, rendering history within the present moment—already disappearing. It’s easy to be stunned by the intricate beauty that each vast canvas in her series, Hostile Witness, offers—muted but rich blues and browns darkening into black, imposing facades of crumbling buildings packed with people and fantastical creatures. Rising seas lap at the paintings and ...

Piri, Jharkhand: At noon on June 12, 2021, multiple news outlets reported an encounter between "Maoists" and Jharkhand police and security forces in the Kuku-Piri forest in western Jharkhand's Latehar district. '"One Maoist was killed during an encounter with a joint team of 214 Battalion of CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force] and CoBRA in Kuku-Piri jungle under Garu police station in Latehar", said highly placed sources in CRPF,' The New Indian Express reported. It later posted an update fro...

APRIL 19, NEW DELHI 3 P.M.: A friend from college leaves me a voice note. It’s about a woman who is twenty-three-years-old, pregnant, and sick with Covid-19. She is in the intensive care unit of a government hospital in the city and in desperate need of a ventilator, which they cannot provide. Later in the evening, the woman will die.
7:30 P.M.: On a WhatsApp group for Teach for India alumni, someone posts an S.O.S. It’s about a man in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, whose health is in critical con...

Growing up in Banda, Nazni did not cook, unlike most young girls. She recalls her initiation into adulthood through food.

When she turned fourteen, relatives came calling and she was married by consensus into a family of four brothers in Moradabad. The brothers had great trouble with food, being compelled to eat out constantly, at small-time hotels and dhabas. Their parents were long-dead. A bahu would provide hot, home-cooked food waiting at home, the relatives said. And so there was a weddi...

New Delhi: "I'm a little pissed off at how much airtime depression and anxiety get in the public sphere, especially among the elite. But the moment you say you have delusions or hallucinations, people get scared. You become an object to be managed, somehow," academic Ananya Biswas* told IndiaSpend in January 2021.

Biswas, 38, is among 3.5 million Indians who live with schizophrenia, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), 2019. Nearly 200 million Indians had mental health disorders, according to GBD 2019. Of these, 1.75% live with schizophrenia and around 45% had depressive or

On April 18, as India’s national capital was running out of hospital beds, and Twitter was flooded with #SOSDelhi tweets that would soon become familiar, college freshman Anuradha Malik, 18, saw an Instagram story linking to a volunteer form. The next day, as Delhi went into lockdown again, she was added to a Whatsapp group. (Anuradha and the other volunteers asked to use a pseudonym, citing concerns for their safety.)
Many such groups, on platforms like Discord, have sprung up, populated mos...

The Full Story

Rajveer Kaur grew up working in the fields of Gandhar village in Muktsar, Punjab, alongside her parents and siblings. After her school day, she would harvest wheat and feed cattle; during summer break, they sowed cotton and rice for the monsoon season. “If you want to eat, you don’t have a choice,” she said. “It’s a question of survival from one day to the next when you are born into a family of laborer...

One hundred and twenty-three days into the farmers' protest, as Delhi’s burning summer approaches, one of the few women farm leaders there, Harinder Bindu, describes her 30-year journey in building solidarities across caste, class and gender, raising political consciousness and mobilising women.

In a village named Koilihai in a region known for perennial thirst, lives a woman named Chamela. The parched patch of land spreads across two states, culturally defying administrative boundaries. And the woman who grew weary of walking every day to a distant well looked at the pump that lay rusting over three years and decided to fix it. The region is, of course Chitrakoot, and Chamela its first woman hand-pump mechanic.
Chamela is a Koli Dalit, and what this usually means is circles. You ste...

In the second part of our Valentine Month special, we delve into the phenomenon of ‘prem-prasang’ or love-affair, a label that sweeps sinister things under the carpet in U.P.

“If the phrase ‘prem prasang’ (love-affair) is being thrown around in public you know something has gone wrong. Because if all is well, then either there is nothing to discuss, or it stays private. It’s truly a personal matter,” Kavita, KL’s Editor in Chief says. And when the words prem prasang are suddenly thrust into t...