COME AS YOU ARE
IT’S HERE, IT’S queer. Our August issue comes together as a joyous tribute to the fearless and fabulous LGBTQIA+ community within the subcontinent and around the globe. The sculptures of Khajuraho, built in the 12th century; medieval depictions of chapti (sapphic love) in Urdu poetry; pre-modern writings of the Sufi poet Bulleh Shah about his love for his murshid—looking back through history, it’s clear that our heritage, our art and our stories didn’t limit expressions of love or self by gender or other prescriptive notions. We open our style section in this issue with Chand Bibi, the iconoclastic female warrior who introduced androgyny into her wardrobe on and off the battlefield way back in the 15th century. Fast forward and one can trace a timeline of “conformity and colonialism, power and…