Poetry by Carol D’Souza: ‘it pools around my ankles most days / But now, onwards! To the elixir of evening tea’

Personal Essay by Andal Srivatsan: ‘That air is now hardened, rancid, antediluvian. It permeates through the fabric of all communities today. It hovers, egomaniacally, over some of us who want nothing but love and harmony—both excruciatingly evasive.’

The 2017 documentary Turup reminds viewers of how we are all trapped in a haunted physical world, rife with symbols of pathos; and yet, the revolutionary yearning echoes itself in the corners of the strangest of rooms. By Anamitra Bora

Poetry by Vikram Kolmannskog: ‘here where the pressure is high / yet you remain so very sensitive, // here where you find the grassy, gritty origins / of humility and humanity.’

Fiction by Rijuta Pandey: “Anyway, when your life depends on a thread, you learn to weave anything out of it. You can weave even the blue sky.”

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.’

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’

In the run-up to the 2024 elections, the films that hit the big screens, the books showcased on the windowfronts, and the music crawling into our ears, has mostly sung the songs of propaganda. It’s art without dissent; art that rages for the machine. By Karan Madhok

Imtiaz Ali’s biographical drama Amar Singh Chamkila (2024) returns to the profane and scandalous themes of the Punjabi artist’s music, reclaiming the singer’s societal impact, and exposing the flawed notions of morality in Punjab’s cultural milieu. By Deepansh Duggal

Does the reader choose their book? Or the book its reader? Satyarth Pandita explores this grand moment of literary connection and resonance.

Poetry by Mary Tina Shamli Pillay: ‘Often dreams / Collide but they swiftly / Comply, dusting sorrows / Off their wired feet’

Chronicle of An Hour and a Half (2024) establishes Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari as a writer fierce and loyal to his craft, as he invites the readers to reflect on the spectacle of violence in our technologically-powered society. By Akankshya Abismruta