Personal Essay by Namrata: ‘Language is meant to bring us closer. To help us say: I see you. I want to understand you. I care enough to learn your words. And when we turn language into a line in the sand and use it to exclude, to shame, to assert dominance, we forget its most sacred purpose: to connect.’

Films like Mrs., The Great Indian Kitchen, Thappad, Dor, and more sparked widespread discussion about the value our society assigns to women’s labour and agency. Sarthak Parashar writes about how the impossible choices faced under patriarchal social obligations—in reel and real life.  

Fiction by Kanya Kanchana: ‘Have you ever considered what it takes to make a goddess appear from wood and stone? My uli does not make a single false stroke.’

Poems by Rahana K. Ismail: ‘they say you could / map out migration by how / games change hands—hands tiny in hope, / searching a piece of it in the other’.

In Moustache, S. Hareesh creates a modern Indian fable, a magical, evolving story that spreads its bushy tentacles far beyond the pages of the novel. By Karan Madhok

Golchakkar Series - The March panel of our virtual literary talk features Benyamin, Pankhuri Sinha, Ramesh Karthik Nayak, and Neelam Saxena Chandra: Mother Tongues in a Global Context.

Jeo Baby’s remarkable film The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) is a critique of patriarchy in Indian households, a delicious recipe of a discomforting, cold dish. - By Deekshith Pai