Short story by Aishwarya Khale: ‘When I thought about the past, I thought about memory. I wondered if Mr Shinde would forget us, like shattered dolls collapsing through the broken chambers of his mind.’

Personal essay by K. S. Subramanian: ‘For the first three months of severe lockdown everyone was getting used to the eerie silence on the roads and the breeze blowing with an inherent message—stay put where you are.’

Poems by Rahana K. Ismail: ‘they say you could / map out migration by how / games change hands—hands tiny in hope, / searching a piece of it in the other’.

Poems by Anuradha Vijayakrishnan: ‘One imagines the other in the empty place at the table, walking / through a blazing sunlit door / or leaving silently, melting into absence.’

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.