‘To exist fully as an artist and human, one must be seen, heard, read, and acknowledged’: Farah Ahamed explores Satyajit Ray’s Charulata through the lens of Simone de Beauvoir.
Creative Nonfiction by Shobhita Rewal: ‘Rotund Japanese purple enlarged. A plushie abandoned. Soot-stained lips float past. Saliva upon the metal in the skin. Chivalry ain’t dead yet, innit? Plebians need the masala but give this to me anyway.’
Sakshi Nadkarni on Amitabha Bagchi’s Half the Night is Gone (2018), a tale of stories withing stories, both dense and sparse, a glimpse across many Delhis, a meditation on sorrow, fatherhood, self-reflection, and literature itself.
Poems by Aardhra Chandran: ‘Concrete trucks rumble past his fence, shaking the loose teeth / in his jaw, spitting black diesel smoke onto his holy basil plant. // He measures his life not in years, but in missing trees—/The neem chopped for wood, the mango that died of thirst.’