Historically, religion has had a complicated role in serving as an alternative to therapy. Sadaf Vidah explores the opportunities and challenges from both Indian and Western religious traditions in regards to mental health.

In his novel Feral Dreams: Mowgli & His Mothers (2020), award-winning author Stephen Alter revisits Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, taking forward Mowgli’s story, transposing the classic jungle tale into unexplored terrain. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book.

What’s The Chakkar? Episode 1: We’re listening to Khwaab; watching Mirzapur and Raat Akeli Hai; reading Nisha Susan, Tara Westover, Isabel Wilkerson, and Frank Herbert. Featuring Ady Manral, Kanika Jain, and Prateek Santram. Hosted by Karan Madhok

Performance artist Inder Salim has traversed the profane, the political, and the poetic. Abhimanyu Kumar explores the process behind Salim’s ground-breaking work, where the mundane becomes magical, imperfections are embraced, taboos are broken, and for fleeting moments, the audience and the artist share a sense of transcendence.

The latest panel of Golchakkar Series with Kaushik Barua and Dipika Mukherjee: A conversation about Non-Indian characters from writers of Indian origin; of authenticity, appropriation, cultural anthropology, and more.

Art: To support a charity project, Angad B. Sodhi embarked on an ambitious project, creating a hundred unique little pieces of art on clay diyas for Diwali.

Season 2 of Prime Video’s hit show Mirzapur continued its debauchery of gore, lust, back-stabbings, and politics from the UP/Bihar belt. But at its core, the series is an exploration of fathers and sons, of expectations and fallouts, of family lost and family found. By Karan Madhok

The ‘magic of sound’ has an inherent healing power. Akhila Damodaran reports why many Indians are seeking music therapy to cope with the stress of a particularly painful year.

Poetry and art by Jharna Sanyal and Partha Pratim Roy: ‘Sometimes I walk out of my skin / in search of the duck pond where / moss green water plays with thirsty branches’.

Christopher Raja’s memoir Into the Suburbs: A Migrant’s Story is a tale of isolation, not just from a place, but also from family, and in some ways, from the self. - by Kanika Jain.

COVID-19 has again put the failures of our health care system in the spotlight. Shefali Saldanha argues that an overhaul should bring to the forefront the conversation about preventing sickness, before treating the survivors of our failed health policy.

Kochi-based multilingual pop-folk band When Chai Met Toast discusses their first Hindi track, upcoming album and connecting with fans amid the pandemic - by Barkha Kumari