'Varta' Webzine

By Debjyoti Ghosh

Debjyoti Ghosh on the World Health Organisation’s plans to delist transgender identity as a mental disorder

By Aakash

It was a rainy evening in Delhi – the drizzle increased the slight chill of the early October air. My mind, after the daylong torture of multiple meetings, difficult conversations,...

By Pawan Dhall

Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in...

By Rajib Chakrabarti

The poet uses Gogyohshi, a form of Japanese micropoetry, to express what he felt when he heard a man ridicule filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh soon after his demise in life and...

By Pawan Dhall

Come autumn and they say love is in the air. Or is it in memories and thoughts triggered by scenes in another time, another place?

By Mark Heywood, Kaushik Gupta

Irrespective of context, Mark Heywood’s article Activism and Civil Society: What it is and What it’s Not will serve as a good ‘refresher’ for activists of all hues.

By Pawan Dhall

Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in...

By Pallav Bonerjee, Subhojit Banerjea

There used to be a time when I wondered what it would be like to reside in a mental health hospital for a while.

By Rajib Chakrabarti

A poet’s rebuff to ableism and homophobia

By Pawan Dhall, Vahista Dastoor

Hasn’t the subject of gender and sexuality been done to death? Isn’t it all over the media in ever more tantalizing formats?

By Avinaba Dutta, Hari Chettri

The 70th Independence Day could have had new meaning for queer people in India, but for India’s abstention on a recent UNHRC resolution to protect the rights of queer people....

By Pawan Dhall

Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in...

By Shampa Sengupta

Shampa Sengupta answers a reader query on dos and don'ts in helping people with disabilities

By Pawan Dhall

Pawan Dhall does a photo round-up of the ‘21st International AIDS Conference’ held at Durban, South Africa from July 18-22, 2016 The international biennial on HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus) and AIDS...