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.

Excerpts from Aruni Kashyap’s critically-acclaimed poetry collection, There Is No Good Time For Bad News (2021): ‘Women couldn’t melt you, shape you, stud you with gems / to hang from their soft earlobes; men / couldn’t wrap you in strips of newsprint, / like tobacco, light one end, take a drag,’

Poetry by Anna Lynn: ‘The young one eats only the fried fish. Her own stomach does not prefer fins swimming against the currents of life.’

From the Himalaya to the coastlines, unchecked tourism is destroying India’s ecological balance. We can’t afford to return to our pre-pandemic state of a tourist-induced environmental catastrophe. By Vipin Labroo

Art, catharsis, and colourful calamities—Tamizh Ponni shares a collection of original digital paintings created over the lockdown.

Flash Fiction by Zalma A.: ‘She knew there was another possibility. Surrender. Or submit. Yes, submit. It’s a more positive word. Optimism. In tragedy.’

A poem by Akash Sinha: ‘I've been sleeping on the soggy cardboard on the used side of your lips’

Under the isolation and layers of stress brought upon by the pandemic, many are turning to the old comfort of personal letters—handwritten and otherwise—to find hope, solace, and connection. By Akhila Damodadran

Poetry and art by Tamizh Ponni ‘the world will never get to know / one frightful naked truth / that the mirror and its muse / were beyond repair, forever scarred.’

Photo Gallery: Traversing across a labyrinth of water from Alappuzha to Kochi, the canals, lakes, and lagoons that form the serene backwaters of Kerala. By Karan Madhok