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.’

Photo Essay by Karan Madhok: ‘I’m still feeling the nasha of this place the next morning; it’s a glow of inner joy, a celebration of each scintilla of being alive. I feel the feathery wafts of mountain breeze, see the clear horizon appearing after the night’s downpour, and watch farm animals grazing on grass, soaking in the morning sun.’

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

‘Your book felt like the scent of passing months, layered with flowers, rain, spring and autumn—a scent that reached into the city’s deep burrows.’ By Sufia Khatoon

Photo Essay by Abin Chakraborty: ‘Kolkata is a kaleidoscope: turn your gaze and a new pattern will emerge. What you wish to see is therefore a combination of what you want to see and what your gaze is capable of perceiving.’

Essay by Tansy Troy: ‘As arresting now as when first sculpted, Navjot’s contemplation of the feminine form is no less contemporary, no less urgent to consider than when she created the red-and-blue lady thirty years ago.’

Personal Essay by Diyaa Jyothilal: ‘For the first time in my life, I would feel beautiful. I felt like a girl. I felt like I was worthy of becoming a woman one day. I spent hours staring into my bathroom mirror, gaping at my reflection, and imagining myself on the cover of Vogue.’

Personal Essay by Andal Srivatsan: ‘That air is now hardened, rancid, antediluvian. It permeates through the fabric of all communities today. It hovers, egomaniacally, over some of us who want nothing but love and harmony—both excruciatingly evasive.’

Personal Essay by Deepak Sridhar: ‘You have arrived at the footsteps of Indian uncle-dom when, watching someone in the public sphere do something of note, you think to yourself: “That could have been me.” In my case, the “what-if” pursuit was stand-up comedy.’

A personal story of music and brotherhood: “Kau had also bought me the album before he left the country. Even though he would come back soon, it would turn out that us living apart in different cities would be a feature—and not a bug.” By Deepak Sridhar

Photo Essay: In a visit to the Serendipity Arts Festival in Panjim, Goa, Deekshith Pai explored the political complexities of contemporary art while rediscovering his own ancestral lands.

Personal Essay by Ajay Patri: ‘Sometimes I like to imagine a parallel universe in which my brother stayed. In this universe, I continued playing cricket after school, continued following the sport with the fervour of most of my compatriots.’