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Voices: My partner has strange sexual fantasies – should I be worried?

DEAR VIX: The Independent’s agony aunt Victoria Richards is here to help. Email [email protected] for advice on love, work, family and relationships

The Independent UK · Oct 22

What Cities Must Keep for Leopards, Civets and Jackals to Move Through

Every night, across the edges of Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi, animals that most city residents have never seen are attempting to cross the city. A leopard slips under a highway overpass. A small Indian civet threads through a storm drain. A golden jackal trots along a dry nullah bed…

Times Life · Oct 22

Why the Same Railway Tracks Keep Killing Elephants in India

India has roughly 30,000 wild Asian elephants, the largest population outside Africa, and each year trains kill between 20 and 30 of them. The deaths are not spread evenly across the 68,000-kilometre rail network. A handful of track sections, some no longer than a few kilometres, account for a disproportionate…

Times Life · Oct 22

18 again: I returned to my life in 1983 – to reckless adventures, in a world soaked in alcohol

Sundays were deadly, the generation gap between parents and their kids was enormous, and a pint cost 50p. The frisson of casual violence was everywhere. When I left school and set off to travel, I had no sense at all of where I was going or what I would find

The Guardian - UK · Oct 22

How to Write a Freelance Contract in India That Stops Scope Creep

The invoice that comes back with a 'can we just add this one thing' attached is not a client problem. It is a contract problem. Scope creep does not arrive as a demand, it arrives as a reasonable-sounding request, and a vague contract gives it nowhere to stop. Define the…

Times Life · Oct 22

The Compliment That Was Actually a Warning: How Families Praise a Girl's Looks

You are seven years old the first time someone tells you that you are pretty in a way that makes your stomach tighten. The sentence is warm. The delivery is warm. But something underneath it is a door swinging shut. The compliment-as-warning is one of the oldest dialects spoken inside…

Times Life · Oct 22

Getting Ready Alone vs With Other Women: What Changes When You're Watched

The mirror tells you different things depending on who else is in the room. Alone, you are your own harshest editor. You work in silence, or in the particular intimacy of a playlist no one else chose. You try the bolder thing and then wipe it off. You try it…

Times Life · Oct 22

Why Do Potraj Devotees Beat Themselves With a Whip?

They walk from village to village singing praises of the Goddess, wearing colourful clothes, carrying whips and sometimes striking their own bodies. But why do the Potraj devotees of Maharashtra and Karnataka follow this intense form of devotion? Behind their unusual appearance lies a centuries-old religious tradition connected with village…

MyLifeXP · Oct 22

What Indian Men Say About Women's Weight at Dinner and Who Learns to Laugh

The comment never announces itself. It arrives mid-meal, folded into something that sounds almost like concern, a glance at your plate, a remark from a chacha or a colleague or a husband who thinks he is being helpful. Your body becomes a topic at a table where you did not…

Times Life · Oct 22

5 Gita Verses for the Person Holding Everyone Together Alone

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that has no name in most languages. It is not burnout, exactly. It is what happens when you have been the steady one for so long that people have stopped imagining you could be otherwise. You answer the calls. You make the decisions.…

Times Life · Oct 22