‘Memory is not always an active remembrance’: Two poems by Mehaq Khurshied
Poetry by Mehaq Khurshied: ‘Her nostalgia was only bitter. There was no sweetness to balance it. / Of course, she loved him like our women are taught to love / Love, entrapped in obligation and duty.’
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.”