‘To exist fully as an artist and human, one must be seen, heard, read, and acknowledged’: Farah Ahamed explores Satyajit Ray’s Charulata through the lens of Simone de Beauvoir.
Creative Nonfiction by Shobhita Rewal: ‘Rotund Japanese purple enlarged. A plushie abandoned. Soot-stained lips float past. Saliva upon the metal in the skin. Chivalry ain’t dead yet, innit? Plebians need the masala but give this to me anyway.’
In his latest work, Salman Rushdie expertly flirts with the line between fact and fiction, declaring all living beings—including those reading his book—may be ‘characters’ in a grander historical fiction. When nothing is real, stories are the only reality. By Karan Madhok
Poems by Aardhra Chandran: ‘Concrete trucks rumble past his fence, shaking the loose teeth / in his jaw, spitting black diesel smoke onto his holy basil plant. // He measures his life not in years, but in missing trees—/The neem chopped for wood, the mango that died of thirst.’