With viral videos like “I Come from Two Indias”, Vir Das and other modern comedians can afford to be more biting in their attacks against the ruling class, as they don’t receive direct patronage from them. But they are now bound to the attention economy, desperately pushing for extremes instead of striving for meaningful cultural critique. By Aditi Murti

What’s The Chakkar? Episode 12: We’re reading books by Wendy Doniger and Sophia Naz; watching Lagaan; and listening to Dot. Featuring Saurabh Sharma, Prateek Santram, and Ady Manral. Hosted by Karan Madhok.

It’s impossible to watch the biopic Sardar Udham without identifying how the past still haunts India’s present, how old imperialism continues in the form of the new state. By Karan Madhok

Personal essay by K. S. Subramanian: ‘For the first three months of severe lockdown everyone was getting used to the eerie silence on the roads and the breeze blowing with an inherent message—stay put where you are.’

Poems by Rahana K. Ismail: ‘they say you could / map out migration by how / games change hands—hands tiny in hope, / searching a piece of it in the other’.

In his Booker-shortlisted novel A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam masterfully uses stream of consciousness to meditate upon longing and desire, in a country where war and violence slowly recede against the humdrum of everyday life. By Priyanka Chakrabarty

Poems by Anuradha Vijayakrishnan: ‘One imagines the other in the empty place at the table, walking / through a blazing sunlit door / or leaving silently, melting into absence.’

In House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths, Leena Yadav moulds the story about a tragedy into an active question of self-reflection for the larger society. - By Atulya Pathak

Poems by Srividya Sivakumar: ‘In my seditious soul, sparrows flit in and out of red-tiled houses. A dry river watches my family offer prayers. A kitten scares my aunt senseless.’

Aman Poddar’s meticulously hand-engraved jewellery and artwork derives inspiration from the patterns of nature, while also embodying the idea of slow living, of the practice of stopping and contemplating. By Priyanka Sacheti

In his 2021 short documentary, Amal Shihabudeen poses questions of belonging and identity to the uneven balanced faced by migrant labourers in Kerala.

Delhi-based artist Mocaine’s ambitious multi-disciplinary project The Birth of Billy Munro is a dark and nihilistic narrative of music, prose, and film. While an imperfect patchwork of borrowed inspirations, the culmination is still unlike anything else in the Indian indie scene. By Karan Madhok