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“If you take the Bangladeshi out of me, there’s no cultural context to my existence. If you take my sexuality out of me, there’s no context for my reasons to love someone. And if you take the Muslim out of me, I have no spiritual context. These three are very fundamental to my existence. But who gets to see all three of them at one time?”

Over the years, a lot of attempts have been made to quantify the vastness of Mumbai into a couple of lines. The struggle is coalescing such a detailed mosaic of neighbourhoods vibrant enough to be their own cities into one simple slogan to slap onto a tourism brochure or Instagram bio.

To a lot of us, intimacy is physical. It’s sexual. It's a touch wrapped around feelings and emotions for the person you’re going to share some of the deepest aspects of your life (and body) with.

With a swipe-based interface, dating apps like Tinder and Bumble mimic social media platforms and allow for a constant stream of validation. This interface essentially “gamifies” dating, according to Goldsmith — making dating apps addictive.

We often connect intimacy with sex, but it doesn’t have to be. The pressure for intimacy to be sexual can create unrealistic and unhealthy expectations in a relationship when you should only do what you feel comfortable with.

I’ve only known him for two months, but it feels like a lifetime. These drives from point A to point B are really the only time we spend as just the two of us, but I feel safe with him in ways that I don’t feel around people who I’ve known 10, 20, 100 times longer.

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