Tag:podcasts

I’ve sat in pachinko parlors before. Not to play—I get bored too easily—but to watch. And what struck me was not the noise or the flashing lights or the absurdity of calling this “amusement.” It was the women. Always the women. Quiet, composed, utterly unremarkable. The kind of women society trains itself not to see. Here’s the thing patriarchy never admits: women are allowed exactly one kind of addiction—self-sacrifice. Work too much? You’re strong. Endure too much? You’re virtuous. Stay silent while carrying everyone else’s emotional luggage? Congratulations, you’re a...

I’ve been listening to Chinese podcasts lately the way one listens at night in a conservative family house: low volume, door half-closed, ears sharper than usual. Not because the voices are loud — they’re not — but because of what they refuse to say out loud. Sex is everywhere in these conversations, precisely because it is never named. Desire appears disguised as “emotional needs.” Marriage anxiety walks in wearing a psychology degree. Queerness shows up as “close friendship” that somehow lasts decades and survives everything. There is something both heartbreaking...

I see them every day. Sometimes I’m still in my pyjamas, hair doing its own little protest, when the doorbell rings and there she is: helmet off, phone in hand, sweat on her brow, polite smile fully intact. The woman who just brought my food. Not a mascot. Not a “girl boss”. A worker. And yet, somehow, we still talk about women riders as if they’re a curiosity. As if they appeared out of nowhere on motorbikes one fine feminist morning. Let me be very clear: women did not join...

Secrecy can be delicious. Let’s be honest. The locked door, the stolen hour, the phone on silent, the feeling that the world must not know—this is the stuff of old novels and bad decisions and very good kisses. Secrecy sharpens desire. It makes hands bolder and time sweeter. It tells lovers: this matters enough to hide. But Auntie has lived long enough, and crossed enough borders, to tell you this: secrecy is a spice, not a diet. In some countries, secrecy is playful. In others, it becomes labor. Emotional labor....

Spicy Auntie here, and no, I’m not shocked. Angry, yes. Tired, absolutely. But shocked? Not after years of watching how “tolerance” evaporates the moment it starts to look like rights. The shooting outside trans activists’ homes in Karachi wasn’t a random act of violence. It was a warning shot—literal and symbolic. A message saying: We see you. Stop existing so loudly. And let’s be honest, Pakistan is far from the only place where that message is being delivered with bullets, batons, or court rulings wrapped in religious language. But Pakistan...