Short story by Madhurjya Goswami:‘It was only after the state police’s operations were over, after the troops with sniffer dogs scoured every nook of the city, after the NDRF’s neon orange jetties sliced across the grey Brahmaputra, that the body of singer Niren Rajkhowa washed up on the banks of the river in a quiet and leafier corner of Kharguli.’

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.’

Through memories, juxtapositions, and observations of the intricate, the poems about Guwahati in The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City (2025) portray a city that no longer exists, having metamorphosed into a new ‘synthetic’ space marred by politics and reckless urbanisation. By Ayaan Halder

Fiction by Anannya Nath: ‘Prosenjit forgets to react. What would he do now? How should he talk her through this? Is this what happens once you forget about being a father?’

How recently-formed collectives in Assam have focused on the socio-political and ecological issues of the state, and initiated a new public imagination through engagement in arts. By Jahnabi Mitra