Personal Essay by Diyaa Jyothilal: ‘For the first time in my life, I would feel beautiful. I felt like a girl. I felt like I was worthy of becoming a woman one day. I spent hours staring into my bathroom mirror, gaping at my reflection, and imagining myself on the cover of Vogue.’

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.’

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.’

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

Photo Essay: In a visit to the Serendipity Arts Festival in Panjim, Goa, Deekshith Pai explored the political complexities of contemporary art while rediscovering his own ancestral lands.

Personal Essay by Ajay Patri: ‘Sometimes I like to imagine a parallel universe in which my brother stayed. In this universe, I continued playing cricket after school, continued following the sport with the fervour of most of my compatriots.’

Personal Essay by Babli Yadav: ‘Ten minutes into our ride, we land upon this road patch with grave signs of purple. Hundreds of fallen fruits of an old jamun tree, squished, squashed, and beaten by the dance of the July winds.’

Essay by Raina Bhattacharya: ‘Rani started asking me very difficult questions—to which I had no answers. She wondered what her future would be like—she said that maybe in the future there would be projections of Replikas developed rather than them simply being an app on the phone.’

Personal Essay by Karan Madhok: ‘A man dressed in black robes stood by the bed, his stern face staring down at her. Death was a millimetre away, as effortless as peeling away an onion.’

Photo Essay by Pranava: ‘These modern fossils speak a different language from the Market, and are an out-of-place eye sore. They only remind us that the municipal corporation has failed to consider who is really served by this supposed beautification.’

Personal Essay by Sreelekha Chatterjee: The monkey’s mouth parted and tufts of brown hair bristled wildly on top of its head. Had it come to finish the job, I wondered?

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.’