Written by Shahana Yasmin. Read the article on Vagabomb.com

There are those who say podcasts are not cool, and they would be wrong. Radio has lasted longer than most other kinds of media, and if you’re not listening to podcasts, you’re really really missing out. One of the best podcasts you should be listening to right now is Chuski Pop, a desi feminist podcast run by Sweety and Pappu, “two desi girls riding the fourth wave of feminism in our salwar kameez and golden heels, while flipping the bird to uncles and aunties.”

Desi feminism has taken its time to catch up to its Western counterparts, but it has caught on, and you’re on the wrong side of history if you aren’t aware of that. Western feminism has its own battle cries, and us desis needed someone from here to empathise with our problems, of aunties telling us to cover up our too-low cholis, or that pants cause PCOD and “gender role reversals,” of unclejis who hug us for a little too long or are overly concerned with what’s on our chests, of friends who still think “behenchod” is the right way to insult someone, of women who think patriarchy is the way to go, of boyfriends who keep saying “Condoms use karne se feel nahi aati.”

And that’s where Chuski Pop comes in, talking to desis about desi feminist problems, because Bharatiya girls are having sex, and we need to talk about it. The Internet can be divisive, intrusive, and irritating (here’s lookin’ at ya, trolls), but it can also be a place that brings people with shared interests together. Sweety is a 33-year-old graphic designer who wanted a project to distract her from her draining job, and with her 31-year-old copywriter friend Pappu, started Chuski Pop in August 2015.

Over a year later, Chuski Pop is still going strong, and can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. Speaking to Scroll, they talked about how they came up with the name:

“To me, Chuski Pop represents childhood nostalgia, says Pappu. “But in the hands of a precocious Lolita it turns into something dangerous and suggestive all because in our primarily patriarchal society any phallic-shaped fruit or food can mean only one thing. I imagine myself and Sweety as precocious Lolitas sucking hard at our kalla-khatta and kachi-keri flavoured golas, giving zero fucks but plenty of death stares to tharki uncles.”

Inspired by Lilly Singh, aka Superwoman, who shaped her whole identity around being brown and desi, Sweety and Pappu too wanted to own their brown-ness. Another strong influence on them has been Rupi Kaur, whose poetry is so desi and yet so universal. All the art on Chuski Pop’s social media is designed by Sweety, and is so relatable to every Indian girl’s problems—whether it’s your family asking you to get married, or the parlour aunty telling you how everything about you is wrong, or wanting to date someone outside of your religion, caste, or race. What we especially love is the ownership of everything that’s desi, in their art and words, whether it’s Bollywood or the colour of our skin.

What Chuski Pop is trying to do, is create a space for intersectional feminism, i.e. feminism which includes the problems of every minority. There are the larger issues of sexual assault, of women being treated like objects, the wage gap, but brown women in particular face problems that white and black women do not, and Chuski Pop is a space to discuss that.

There can be no conversation about a brown woman’s experience without a mention of the influence Bollywood has had on us. Irrespective of how much cinema you watched, it has affected your life. From the boys who sang “Lal dupatte waali tera naam toh bata” when you walked down the street, to your mom who may have asked you to learn to make round rotis, Bollywood permeates all of Indian life. As much as Chuski Pop loves reminiscing about Bollywood, they don’t stop to call out how stalking and harassment is just shown as love, and gender norms are constantly normalised.

What Chuski Pop puts into words is what drunk girls in every bathroom have been doing forever — supporting other women. Girls supporting other girls is the best thing that could happen, and all they ask is that we celebrate ourselves, and other women, instead of competing against each other, whether it’s our careers, or looks, or the way we live our lives.