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.”
Poetry by Priyanka Aravind P.: ‘I too had a mother, / Who fed me with knowledge so ancient, / And called me her brightest star, // until I misspelt a note from the sacred chants.’
Survival in the pandemic continues to favour the powerful and privileged, while those in the margins face a scarcity and failure of the health care system. Aryan Somaiya and Sadaf Vidha confront this imbalance from a queer lens.
Propaganda films force upon us the grand question, writes Sanjay Basak: Are we loudly applauding the breathtaking production on screen, or are we quietly absorbing the idea that someone, somewhere, deserves to be feared, hated, or erased?