Spectacle of the Stars: A memory of magic from the night sky
Paromita Patranobish was a 13-year-old on the rooftop in Durgapur when a meteor shower changed her life, birthing a love of stargazing: ‘That night, 22 years ago, I understood the universe as a living, pulsating ecosystem… the Leonid shower had me as a witness to the power of worlds infinitely beyond my finite one.’
Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”