If you’ve ever thought that kinks are just fringe fantasies whispered behind closed doors, then Indian sex educator Tanisha Rao’s bold new book “You’re Somebody’s Kink: Notes on Pleasure, Play, and Intimacy” sets out to overturn that assumption entirely. In a country where sex education is patchy and conversations about desire are often cloaked in sharm (shame) and chup chap (silence), Rao’s work is a rare, unapologetic exploration of how intimacy, pleasure, and connection actually unfold in real lives. Drawing on interviews, anecdotes, and lived experience, the book argues that kink is not a deviation from “normal” sex, but one of the many ways people seek closeness, trust, and self-understanding in a culture that rarely gives them the language to do so.
In this context, kink does not mean something bizarre or pathological. It refers to sexual desires, fantasies, or practices that fall outside socially dominant ideas of “normal” sex—typically heterosexual, penetrative, and marriage-centred. Kink can include power play, role-playing, fetishes, or alternative ways of experiencing intimacy, but its defining features are consent (raazi), communication, and mutual pleasure. Rather than being about excess or shock, kink is about intention, trust, and the freedom to explore desire without shame.
At the heart of You’re Somebody’s Kink is a deceptively simple question: who decides which desires are acceptable, and which are dismissed as galat (wrong)? Rao approaches this not as a provocateur but as a careful listener. The book weaves together stories from queer and straight people, first-time explorers and seasoned practitioners, many of whom describe growing up without any meaningful vocabulary for pleasure. For them, kink becomes less about performance and more about reclaiming agency—over their bodies, boundaries, and emotional needs.
One of the book’s most striking insights is how kink often functions as a social practice rather than a purely sexual one. Interviewees repeatedly describe how entering kink-friendly spaces taught them skills absent from mainstream relationships: how to articulate boundaries, how to ask for what they want, how to say no without guilt, and how to check in with a partner beyond the bedroom. In a society where sex is rarely discussed openly and consent is often assumed rather than negotiated, these practices feel quietly radical.
Rao’s own positioning matters here. As a queer, nonbinary Bahujan sex educator and Chief of Social Voice at Sangya Project, a pleasure-focused Indian sexual wellness brand, they write from within the intersections of caste, gender, and sexuality. This perspective sharpens the book’s critique of who gets to be seen as desiring and desirable. Many contributors speak of how caste, body size, disability, or queerness shape what kinds of intimacy feel accessible—or forbidden—to them. Kink, in these narratives, becomes a way of resisting narrow hierarchies of desirability that dominate both mainstream culture and dating apps.
The book also punctures the myth that kink is a Western import incompatible with Indian values. Instead, Rao situates contemporary kink practices alongside India’s long, if uneven, history of erotic expression—from kaam (desire) as one of life’s recognised pursuits to folk traditions and regional subcultures that have always made space for sexual play outside respectability. What has changed is not desire itself, but who is allowed to speak about it openly, and whose pleasure is taken seriously.
Crucially, You’re Somebody’s Kink is not a how-to guide or a manifesto. Rao resists giving prescriptions, focusing instead on reflection and empathy. Some stories are joyful, others messy or unresolved. Several contributors speak candidly about mistakes, mismatched expectations, or learning the hard way that curiosity must be matched with care. This refusal to sanitise experience is part of the book’s strength: pleasure here is not a destination but a process, shaped by communication, vulnerability, and context.
By the end, the title’s provocation lands with clarity. “You’re somebody’s kink” is not about fetishisation, but about relationality—the idea that desire is never abstract, never universal. What feels ordinary to one person may be deeply meaningful to another. In making space for these differences, Rao challenges the culture of silence around sex in India and replaces it with something far more radical: honest language, shared stories, and the possibility that intimacy, when approached with care, can become a site of community rather than shame.
Oh, sweetheart. Let Auntie say this slowly, clearly, and with a raised eyebrow and a martini in hand: kink is not the problem. Silence is. Hypocrisy is. Bad sex is.
“Kink” has been turned into a dirty word by people who are perfectly comfortable with joyless marriages, entitlement masquerading as desire, and generations of women taught to adjust instead of ask. Funny, isn’t it? Tie someone up consensually and you’re “deviant”; emotionally neglect your partner for twenty years and society gives you a medal.
Here’s what kink really is, stripped of panic and pearl-clutching: it’s curiosity with consent. It’s adults saying, “This is what I want, this is what I don’t want, and I trust you enough to tell you both.” In cultures where sex is supposed to “just happen” and women are trained to endure rather than enjoy, that alone is revolutionary.
I’ve met people who learned more about boundaries from a single kink workshop than from a lifetime of sanskaari sex education that never bothered to explain pleasure, let alone consent. In kink spaces, “no” is sacred, “maybe” is respected, and “yes” is negotiated, not assumed. Compare that to mainstream dating culture, where communication is optional and disappointment is guaranteed.
And let’s address the elephant in the bedroom: kink is often more ethical than so-called normal sex. There’s checking in. There’s aftercare. There’s accountability. There’s an understanding that bodies carry history—trauma, shame, desire, fear—and that intimacy requires care. That word again. Care. Not conquest.
People panic because kink dares to expose the lie that there is one correct way to desire. It reminds us that pleasure is not universal, that intimacy is personal, and that what works for you may bore, frighten, or delight someone else. And that’s fine. Diversity in desire is not decay; it’s honesty.
In Asia especially, where sex is either sacred, shameful, or strictly reproductive—never playful, never negotiated—kink offers language where there was none. It says: you are allowed to want things. You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to be strange, soft, powerful, submissive, curious, tender, loud, or quiet.
So no, kink is not about whips and chains. It’s about agency. It’s about choosing, not performing. It’s about replacing silence with speech and shame with consent.
And if that makes you uncomfortable? Darling, sit with that feeling. Growth often does.
Auntie approves.