‘Your book felt like the scent of passing months, layered with flowers, rain, spring and autumn—a scent that reached into the city’s deep burrows.’ By Sufia Khatoon

Fiction by Mandira Mitra Chakraborty: ‘I try not to behave like my mother and accept a session of pedicure without making it about civilization and its discontents. I am in no hurry to die, but I shall go quietly when He comes.’

Photo Essay by Abin Chakraborty: ‘Kolkata is a kaleidoscope: turn your gaze and a new pattern will emerge. What you wish to see is therefore a combination of what you want to see and what your gaze is capable of perceiving.’

Jaideep Ahlawat again portrays Hathi Ram Chaudhary in the second season of Paatal Lok, the haggard cop whose memory serves both as a crime-solving device and as moral code to leave no life unforgotten. By Karan Madhok

From the fantastical to socio-psychological, comedic to gory, Nivedita Dey traces the diverse trends and the masters who shaped the genre since its appearance in the late-1940s.

Deities like Shitala represent a specific premodern response to disease. Paromita Patranobish explores what Bengal’s pox goddess could teach us about social ethics in Anthropocene times.

Fiction by Ayaan Halder: ‘We tell each other that she must’ve found her peace. But her memory trickles down to my fist, and it feels heavier. As if it were carrying the slow-congealed weight of all the blood that you and I have drawn from each other.’

‘I board a bus to Biswabangla, wearing a grey shade, mask, olive hibiscus t-shirt, lemon green hair band, loose crimson brown hair, mild sweat, and the will of forgetting.’ By Sufia Khatoon

Through intimate details and dialogues, Rachna Singh’s Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine invites readers into the expansive vision of the man often hailed as the father of Indian photography. By Neera Kashyap

With the participation of women in the workforce telling a sobering story, the journey toward true equality in India remains unfinished. Palak Singh and Paritosh Sinha discuss the magnitude of this ongoing plight.

Poet, author, and translator Snehaprava Das speaks to Mitra Samal about her storytelling process, how translation can enhance creativity, the authors that have inspired her, and more.  

Poetry by K.S. Subramanian: ‘In a year its ambience malodorous / Inch of space making way to concrete. / Green unseated by thick red brick’