Cities That Walked – An Excerpt
Fiction by Adrija Chatterjee: ‘For twenty-eight consecutive days, there had been no phone call from Oli’s house, from Ravti. You understand how the grave the situation is, an already unelectrified village, perhaps now shrouded in some unimaginable stillness.’
Days Are Whirlpools: Three Poems by K.S. Subramanian
Poetry by K.S. Subramanian: ‘Let me not do a U-turn of my neck / to see the past, skill sets that / lost their spell in time, high hopes / Slithering down a slippery slope’
The World from my Window: Three Poems by Mary Tina Shamli Pillay
Poetry by Mary Tina Shamli Pillay: ‘Often dreams / Collide but they swiftly / Comply, dusting sorrows / Off their wired feet’
Chris Rock to Kunal Kamra: My Transformation into a Comedy Uncle
Personal Essay by Deepak Sridhar: ‘You have arrived at the footsteps of Indian uncle-dom when, watching someone in the public sphere do something of note, you think to yourself: “That could have been me.” In my case, the “what-if” pursuit was stand-up comedy.’
The Syntax of Time’s Wheel: Three Poems by Sunkara Gopal
Poetry by Sunkara Gopal: ‘From elsewhere, the wind breaks into a room, turns the pages, / Writes four sentences. / The song, somewhere born, dismantles the silence.’ Translated from Telugu by Jyothsnaphanija
A Symbiotic Dance of Survival and Reverence
Photography by Sk Suhana Mohammad: The topsy-turvy lives of fishing communities by the Rupnarayan River in West Bengal, who have drawn strength from kinship and tradition for generations.
Dreams of Californication
A personal story of music and brotherhood: “Kau had also bought me the album before he left the country. Even though he would come back soon, it would turn out that us living apart in different cities would be a feature—and not a bug.” By Deepak Sridhar
Inheritance, from Loss
Poetry by Antara Mukherjee: ‘I dig / Into my memoir platter / where shrouded instructions / wrestle with unhealed wounds.’
Here and Now: Two Poems by Chintan Girish Modi
Poetry by Chintan Girish Modi: ‘For every night of stolen sleep / every moment of crushing despair / every taste of I can’t do this anymore’
Echoes of Winter
Poetry by Urmi Chakravorty: ‘Hope glistened on the peaks afar / while the russet dunes of chinar leaves / formed a gentle duvet for our fiery yen.’