In this episode of The Sanskaari Girls Podcast, Professor Madhavi Menon—renowned scholar of English literature and gender studies—joins Kuhoo to explore the intricate politics and poetics of desire.
Drawing on Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf, sufi poets, and everyday life, Professor Menon reflects on desire as something simultaneously seen and unacknowledged, thriving in places we rarely expect. She discusses the role of fantasy in shaping human yearning, and examines how law and morality influence whose desires are legitimised and whose are marginalised, especially in the context of India’s shifting legal landscape around sexuality.
This conversation asks us to reconsider what desire is, how we experience it, and what it reveals about the worlds we live in. Read more about her work here. Her books Infinite Variety and The Law of Desire can be purchased via Speaking Tiger Books, and Amazon.
🎙️ The Sanskaari Girls Podcast is a podcast by the Sanskaari Girls Book Club (SGBC), a South Asian feminist reading community fostering critical engagement with literature, amplifying marginal voices, and building reflective, politically conscious conversations.
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