Poem by Amya Roy: ‘You rested in our rainbow, / too many silences sit across us, / staring in our eyes, / waiting for us to speak.’

‘I was overcome with fear and awe, witness to a power I could feel but couldn’t comprehend’. In another account of his adventures in the Garhwal Himalaya, Zachary Conrad recalls a treacherous trek to Sahastra Tal.

Two poems by Antara Mukherjee: ‘The war cry has long bled the emblem, all sons / Headless heap now, trumpetless coronation’

Short story by Vedant Srinivas: ‘The guards meanwhile had crept through the bushes on both sides and brought back big brambles. I looked at the pile, then at them and guessed what they were planning. But I was too terrified to ask.’

Poem by Aaqib Khatibi: ‘I see them drifting along the smoke by the ocean / to lavish lands which are mine no more’.

Matchmaking can be a tricky exercise, especially for cats. In a poignant essay, Barnali Ray Shukla shares the story of Zorro and Ginger, and the complex fissures of politics and morality that tug apart a pucca rishta.

Ghazals by Amrit Lal “Ishrat” Madhok, translated from Urdu by Karan Madhok: ‘Are we mere companions, or do we swim / Together in the fountains of heaven, waters blue?’

Two poems by Santasree Chaudhuri: ‘Blissful acceptance / Staring at the moon / with an empty stomach.’

Short story by Samia Ahmed: ‘This is not an introduction, it’s a mating ritual. I am twenty-four and ripe for marriage.’

Five poems by Gopal Lahiri: ‘somewhere the curling script of history hangs over / the old crossword book of migration’.

Girar is a streaming novel by Kiran Bhat which will take place in 365 different corners of the planet. “A New Year” is an excerpt from the first instalment of Girar, setting up the premise on the first day of the Kannada New Year.

In the late 2000s, Karan Madhok left home to travel alone around India, living off a backpack, sleeping in trains, searching for more of his country, and finding more parts of himself. In a photo-essay, he recalls why this ‘bharat darshan’ was the best experience of his life.