Poetry by Ayaan Halder: ‘And then the browning milk that has gushed into his shoes, and mine,  / Carries us over / To someone else’s pyre. / The wind, by then, has ravaged his leaf.’

Fiction by Sanchalika Das: ‘I thought to myself that the god in heaven is just a child playing with clay, throwing it around with disregard and then picking it up with the intention of throwing it again with utter delight. The clay loses and gains in this process.’

Poetry by Parismita Kakati: ‘When they burn me by the river, my pyre ignites / with smoke that rises thick and not sandalwood sweet / A stench grapples the air, reeking of desire / like overripe fruit splitting under its own weight.’

Personal Essay by multidisciplinary artist Ravi Modi: ‘Truth, I came to realise, is fluid, shapeshifting, dusty, incomplete. It never arrives whole. It gathers slowly, the way vision does, through fragments and adjustments. Much like my own sight, truth is always in the process of becoming.’

Poems by Prahi Rajput: ‘the surviving curiosity / in descendant’s narrative is wrested from a ticket & one welcomes / the other through its foreign / door/translating displacement & dialect’

Fiction by Armaan: ‘Your jersey is all sweaty. And your shorts too. It’s stinking up my room. Take it off. / Dilawar’s eyes turned to the door. He felt like if he ran through it, nobody would find him. All he had to do was run.’

Poetry by Gopi Kottoor: ‘And why after that sun-dusked rainbow / Turned our eyes colour-blind // Why is it that your footprints in the dark, / Still lead me to that secret altar’

Personal Essay by Kinjal Sethia: ‘Some lanterns burned outside this huddle of bhajans and stories. As kids, we kept close to the elders. It would be hauntingly dark outside this circle, and we pretended to conjure witches waiting in the inner rooms or imagined that the screech of the fruit bats was the call of the spirits.’

Poems by Saurabh Suman: ‘in the music that declares the arrival of autumn— / the evening breeze caressing / almost dried-up leaves, / trembling as they cling to the stem’

Fiction by Labiba Alam: ‘Nandita’s arrival in our lives was similar to a new season dawning upon the hills. It was a slow, effortless glide, almost organic. It looks as if it had always been there, only we had begun to feel its newness by degrees.’

Poetry by Sukrita Paul Kumar: ‘the golden sheen on the pines / beckons the waves of the grey ocean / and the silver arrows dart forth in unison’

Poems by Abhilipsa Sahoo: ‘Once, I was a little bird slowly blooming out of the warm embrace of the nest to learn the taste of first flight, believing that distance was proof of growth. Now I’m just plainly tired of being the burnt-out lamp on my parents’ windowsill’

Flash Fiction by Nagireddy R. Sreenath: ‘We don’t talk about the silence between us: the missed birthdays, the calls that went to voicemail, the distance that grew while neither of us looked directly at it.’

Short Story by Biswajit Chatterjee: ‘But this peculiarly-formed lad is an altogether different animal when he is in water. With his unfamiliar yet uncanny ability, he learns to handle the waves, the deadly undercurrents, the movement of the swells, the whirlpools.’

Poems by Arya Gopi: ‘I carry my exile in my pocket— / seventeen reminders that buzz / like electronic prayers / to gods who’ve forgotten / how to synchronize.’

Personal Essay: Who has access to knowledge? Ph.D. scholar Swathi Priya explores how multidisciplinary lenses of caste inclusion, neoliberal market, liberal ideology, mental health imperatives, and literature inform her larger research goals.

Poems by Agni Barathi: ‘What impossible simile / will suffice, my love, / to sing of my real, utter ruin?’

Poetry: ‘Things lying around, still, cautious / Tell-tale signs, of nothing / Butter, a knife and a pen / A diary of poems now lost’

Fiction by Ranu Uniyal: ‘Like old times, they each sit in their own shells. Unable to communicate. Unable to speak. Like old times their eyes still search for each other in familiar spots. Somehow, they never meet.’

Poem by Maansi Sharma: ‘the rabbit on my foot, startled like the river, / coursing through the bed, giggling at our feet. / there is soup and bread and tea and honey for the quiet ache. / we don’t need to eat god for breakfast.’

Poems by Meenakshi Jauhari: ‘It has all been done – she has aged, and arrived, / and, one day, will leave. / Her day passes, and leaves behind no residue. / Her night weaves a starry reality she remembers briefly, for a few / waking moments. Then it too evaporates, leaving no trace.’

Poetry by Kamakshi Lekshmanan: ‘a man influences a knife, sways the auburn twigs. gentle and soft. // the heap of brunet lay aside, / besides a pair of eyes submit – in gratitude.’

Poems by Laila Brahmbhatt: ‘On the city’s edge, where destiny echoes, / hope crawled through cracks. / Even roses in New Delhi / orphan their thorns.’

Poem by Hiranmayi Krishnakumar: ‘There’s a chair by the window / waiting for someone who doesn’t arrive / in this version. / The cushion sinks on its own. / It has good memory foam. / The fan spins like it’s trying to erase the century.’

Poetry by Mary Tina Shamli Pillay: ‘Pressured through the / mist, we are tormented / by the sharp blue sky, / the muffled din of a / wailing child, the crackle / of a hostess, the wrapping / unwrapping of smiles.’

Flash Fiction by Rajan Narayan: ‘And somewhere in this city, perhaps not far from where he stood, lay something that was once human, broken and beaten by the vengeance that still radiated from the piece of wood, now quivering in his tiny hands.’

Poetry by Prashant Pundir: ‘You are who I love, handmaking woolens, handmaking hope, handmaking this life, you who, with your tiny legs, walk to all the medicine stores and dog shelters and government buildings, saying: I REFUSE TO SPEAK A LANGUAGE PIROUETTED IN HATE AND ANGER’

Poetry by Goirick Brahmachari: ‘Love is like the wild lilacs, white / Apple trees over green meadows, / Riverstones I have walked over / For years— splattered, irate, broken.’

Short story by Madhurjya Goswami: ‘You ask yourself a question: How does a fallen airplane look? Does it look like a pigeon squashed to the ground, its neck askew? And the hot, unplastered room answers: well, you’ve got to see it yourself.’