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.

Written of a time under armed occupation in the Kashmir valley, Farah Bashir’s memoir Rumours of Spring (2021) entwines the geographical and corporeal, the social and psychological, where the violence of the world remains painfully connected to the violence within. By Paromita Patranobish

‘I celebrate the ways in which queer people in the country have found ways of living with a law that hasn’t been particularly kind to their existence.’ Chintan Girish Modi interviews playwright/activist Danish Sheikh on his writing and the intersection of law, theatre, and queer sexuality.

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

‘We are a living culture, progressing in time and space.’ In the first column of his Full Circle series, Varud Gupta interviews Amardeep Behl on how to tell the narrative of a nation through design and museum space.

What’s The Chakkar? Episode 10: We’re reading books by S. Hareesh and TJ Klune; listening to music by Tejas; watching The Family Man. Featuring Shaista Vaishnav, Ady Manral, and Prateek Santram. Hosted by Karan Madhok.

In Moustache, S. Hareesh creates a modern Indian fable, a magical, evolving story that spreads its bushy tentacles far beyond the pages of the novel. By Karan Madhok

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

Often called ‘The Indian Bob Dylan’, singer-songwriter Deepak Peace from Pune challenges and confronts listeners with contemporary political issues, turning music into a call for revolution. By Hunardeep Kaur

The music of the Kudiyas from Coorg (Karnataka) is a melodious celebration of the gift of the forests. Sravasti Datta explains how an artists’ collective is helping to promote the indigenous music and stories of tribes across the state.