Poetry by Ajay Kumar: ‘we break news with each other more than we / break bread. this just in: i’ve never been out / for blood anymore than i’ve been out for good.’

Short story by Rhea Gangavkar: ‘I looked at the hospital’s main gate; how many people were here for the same thing? I looked at Megha. She was staring at the sky as she softly whispered, “It might rain.’”

Personal Essay by Bharti Bansal: ‘The only way light can bend with no escape is by entering a black hole. You grow old enough to realize that whatever happened to you wasn’t the universe communicating. It breaks you in the worst possible ways.’

Personal essay by Sreelekha Chatterjee: ‘I had a habit of waking up at the slightest disturbance in the surroundings. In the wavering streetlight coming from the open doors at both ends of the room, there were silhouettes of ghastly figures shortening and lengthening.’

An essay on art and analysis by Dhani Muniz: “Art was never art in the way that food has always been food; or perhaps, rather, it is a vast restaurant at the end of the universe in which we are all picky eaters.”

Short story by Ushma Shah: ‘There was a pale, mouldy smell around him, and then, Abhi smelled himself. He had a stench, too, mouldy, and woody, and old.’

At the recent Van Gogh 360° event in Mumbai, Bushra Satkhed found inspiration in the trouble artist’s keen eye for the beauty in life.

Poem by Nikhat Jonak: ‘On the pedestal I saw her sit, in temple, / With raging eyes and divine comportment, / And I wondered if she too bleeds’

Growing up in fascination of the Taj Mahal, Babli Yadav meditates on the burdens of passing time, in a letter to the Mughal emperor who built the great mausoleum of love.

Poetry by Shamayita Sen: ‘every passing moon screeching upon / every neighbourhood I inhabit is a reminder of // your absence’

Personal Essay by Poornima Laxmeshwar: ‘Closed doors mean abandonment… only houses where no one resides must be locked. Doors are like hearts... They must let the sunshine and the storm enter, because life is such.’

Short story by Sachin Ravikumar: ‘The pink tabebuia is a picture of quiet grace. It does not impose. Its presence is a welcome respite from a noisy, polluted city perennially draped in tones grey or garish… Was this tree really from here? Were we still in Bangalore?’