True Life

The Queen of Khap

Sunaina Kumar

Sudesh Choudhary has broken a tradition spanning more than six centuries. Do men still set the limits of her power?

Sexual Harassment

Gee Imaan Semmalar

The author underwent female-to-male sex re-assignment surgery, but has been unable to switch his passport gender. The story of his struggle in his own words

Nocturnal Mission

Chinki Sinha

Wandering the city at night with photographer Gavin Evans

Giving up mirrors for 31 days gave Sonali Kokra the time and space to reflect upon and reclaim her life. What began as an experiment in self imagery turned out to be an unexpectedly radical act of self love

How to Frame the Taliban

Chinki Sinha

A veteran of many wars, photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg found Afghan terrain tricky, the language unfamiliar and the recklessness scary. Yet, he kept returning to document it all

Waiting for the 20th Surgery

Aanchal Bansal

A 12-year-old girl was gang-raped so brutally in Jaipur in August 2012 that her vagina tore and merged with her rectum. After 19 surgeries, her condition remains heart- rending, and Rajasthan government officials can’t wait to get her off their hands

Ladies’ Special

Drashti Thakkar

Inside the ladies’ compartment of the Mumbai local is a world that is both strange and familiar, compassionate and vicious; where lives are saved by generous hands. Yet a girl who has fallen down could be trampled for blocking the entrance.

Love in the Time of HIV

Sohini Chattopadhyay

When Najaraus met Maitri, she was an HIV-positive widow, and he an AIDS awareness worker. Nine years later, with a little grit and a little fib, they are married, living together, still in love—and Najaraus is still HIV-negative

That Girl in the Well of Death

Pooja Rathod

Twenty-year-old biker stuntwoman Pooja Rathod talks about riding on a wall and risking her neck for her independence

The Woman Who Took on an Institution

Rina Mukherji

Rina Mukherji fought a sexual harassment case against her erstwhile employer The Statesman for ten years, facing delays and defamation suits, until she finally saw a favourable judgment last year