Personal Essay by Saurabh Kumar: ‘At a time when my family needed me the most, I did not know how to get there. The hospital was only about a kilometre away from my rented apartment, so I picked up my bag and started to run.’

In the ecologically-sensitive Himalayan regions, the regularity of natural disasters and the scale of damage have increased rapidly in recent years. The two most-significant factors behind this phenomenon have been overdevelopment and climate change. By Vipin Labroo

Mehak Jamal’s Loal Kashmir (2025) is a witness, a tender archive of what it means to love in a region of conflict—how intimacy reshapes itself around checkpoints, how longing endures without signal bars, how the heart insists on ordinary joys in extraordinary times. By Shivani Patel

In Night in Delhi (2025), Ranbir Sidhu lays bare the city of shadowlands, and of lives pushed to the margins of visibility and worth, as it exists in continuum alongside the bright and aestheticized metropolis. By Anjali Chauhan

Amrita Pritam, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Kamala Das were all writers who, even in life, lived on the edge of taboo, scandal, and self-revelation. In death, stripped of agency, their voices have been reframed by the very people who claim to honour them. By Treya Sinha

Photos: Speakers and artists from the hillside and beyond attended the first edition of the LLAF in Landour to shine a light upon literature, history, art, music, poetry, film, and more. By Karan Madhok

Amrita Pritam, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Kamala Das were all writers who, even in life, lived on the edge of taboo, scandal, and self-revelation. In death, stripped of agency, their voices have been reframed by the very people who claim to honour them. By Treya Sinha

From Coldplay’s misguided “Hymn for the Weekend” to Ed Sheeran’s collaborative “Sapphire,” Akankshya Abismruta celebrates a new kind of cultural synthesis between the West and the East.

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’

Editorial: With the intention of promoting the arts borne and inspired from Landour, Mussoorie, and the Garhwal region, The Chakkar and the Mussoorie Heritage Centre [MHC] are launching the Landour Literature & Arts Festival. The first edition of LLAF will shine a light upon history, literature, art, music, poetry, film, and more. By Karan Madhok