Poems by Srividya Sivakumar: ‘In my seditious soul, sparrows flit in and out of red-tiled houses. A dry river watches my family offer prayers. A kitten scares my aunt senseless.’

In his 2021 short documentary, Amal Shihabudeen poses questions of belonging and identity to the uneven balanced faced by migrant labourers in Kerala.

Reading Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree in the Lade Braes, Scotland. ‘The poetry of trees is, after all, about agency—the act of breaking, rending, repairing, citing through metaphor. But what agency do trees hold?’

Poems by Kashiana Singh: ‘a lacquered / summer that lacks / rivulets waiting for / gods to decipher us’

Poetry by Karna: ‘You know my ancestors’ history / and say I am the anomaly in your / clean galaxy.’

Ranjani Rao recalls the story behind her memoir, Rewriting My Happily Ever After, and how sharing a personal tale of divorce helped her find connection and community.

Poetry by Nayanjyoti Baruah: ‘Yellow plants cover the paddy field, / As if a new sky had fallen from above. / They touch it with pleasure, set their boxes, / Cropping plants half asleep & half awake.’

The Tirukkural is a Tamil masterpiece of poetry and practical philosophy, with timeless verses on ethics, wealth, power, love, and more. Presented here are excerpts from a forthcoming translation of The Kural (Beacon Press 2021) by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma.

Excerpts from Aruni Kashyap’s critically-acclaimed poetry collection, There Is No Good Time For Bad News (2021): ‘Women couldn’t melt you, shape you, stud you with gems / to hang from their soft earlobes; men / couldn’t wrap you in strips of newsprint, / like tobacco, light one end, take a drag,’

Poetry by Anna Lynn: ‘The young one eats only the fried fish. Her own stomach does not prefer fins swimming against the currents of life.’

From the Himalaya to the coastlines, unchecked tourism is destroying India’s ecological balance. We can’t afford to return to our pre-pandemic state of a tourist-induced environmental catastrophe. By Vipin Labroo

Art, catharsis, and colourful calamities—Tamizh Ponni shares a collection of original digital paintings created over the lockdown.