Poetry by Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan: ‘Pressing my ear to the ground / straining to hear / the universe speak. / The faintest tremor / of the butterfly wing’

Poetry by Anushka Chavan: ‘Will you drag me onto the shore, or should I become the tide? / Will you bring me home, to the river, / Or will I be lost in the hills once more?’

Delhi-based musician Tarun Balani’s new album weaves jazz improvisation with Sindhi folk echoes, creating a cohesive journey through memory, identity, and longing. By Treya Sinha

As a generation of Indians move from living in houses to apartments, Vipin Labroo argues that we must envision our new spaces to reflect better synthesis with the rhythms of nature, the way that our traditional homes once were.

With the recent restoration and re-release of Umrao Jaan (1981), Himanshi Aggarwal revisits the film from a queer lens, as Rekha’s titular character serves as an allegory for anyone forced to perform respectability in a world that denies them legitimacy.

In his multigenerational saga A Person is a Prayer (2024) Ammar Kalia weaves together several characters, each struggling, yearning, and often failing to find clarity in the shadows of their predecessors. As with many internal struggles, they persist in silence. By Shivani Patel

Films like Chhaava have highlighted the valour of Sambhaji and the tyranny of Aurangzeb; the final word in that film, however, is less concerned with history and more with the ideology of the country’s current rulers. By Mozid Mahmud

Poetry by Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan: ‘somewhere, / in the quiet / of this new world, / a new rhythm / begins to hum.’

Poem by Manasha Sharma: ‘stumbling and mumbling it shows itself / in a half unscathed smile / in ragged dirty clothes, / my love homes itself before it gathers space.’

A letter to a friend lost carelessly: ‘With shut eyes, I see you and then myself, rushing around in strange, centripetal circles. Lost souls in fish bowls, swimming around a quiet and darkened running-track’ By Ayaan Halder

The Great Nicobar Betrayal (2024) is essential reading for anyone concerned about India’s ecological future and the future of our species on Earth. Tansy Troy discusses the collection with an inspired set of illustrations of the island’s many breathtaking species.

Photo Story by Anamika Tamuli: ‘In the rural rhythms of Assam, care reveals itself in invisible labors—the hands that keep a home running, the feet that move through flooded fields, the time lost between one obligation and another.’