Poetry by Ankush Banerjee: ‘Before anaesthesia shatters / the bough of your body, before the / moon overhead is a mouth of darkness, you / pray they fill the space between dislocated hip / & future with what you heard but / could never hold’

Poetry by Mrittika Chatterjee: ‘Windows cradle the world’s weight— / concerns, french braided, / but strands, a newly freed tribe. / Steering wheel clutched, / as if holding an inner child’

Poetry by Carol D’Souza: ‘An armour is only the skin / that has learned / that there is no such thing /
as face value / The prudent trick / of seeming like a free-flowing ditty / from within’

Poetry by Sunil Sharma: ‘a sign / from the heavens, a sighting / rare, a visitor infrequent, in the / urban jungle.’

Poetry by Kashiana Singh: ‘Flushed body of a zombie, burnt silk of raging worms / beholder of lost labyrinths, embroiderer of membranes’

Fiction by Chitra Gopalakrishnan: ‘Ganika is, of course, what I chose to call myself. Others in the town called me a woman of the court. Or a woman of the night.’

Fiction by Jigar Brahmbhatt: ‘Their office was fixed in time, no different from any other office: the neat partitions, cold furniture, and glass, glass, everywhere. Like a simple rule to add two numbers, the office was never going to change. Only the folks playing table tennis seemed ephemeral, like shapes made of fumes.’

Poetry: ‘I want to weave lavender flowers into my hair / love my mother, whose anger / is a withering flower / decomposing to memory / in ash burn lavender.’

Poetry: ‘I placed my parents on a bench / And refused to let the sunset / Dawn upon their lives.’

Poetry by Kiriti Sengupta: ‘Death pauses verdict; the authority mars evidence. / The doomed is put on the pyre; rallies slit through / the silence.’

The collection Awaaz: Voices of Govandi has emerged from the need of the people of Govandi to reclaim the narrative about their neighbourhood, and carve out their own future. Here is an excerpt from the collection. Edited by Nisha Nair-Gupta

Poetry by Vrinda Bansal: ‘I am rage and blasphemy, God in a dungeon, / a domesticated wolf, the brain of a terrorist party / I am your grandmother’s birthday party and a child’s funeral, / a barrel of kerosene’