Poem by Anju Devadas R D: ‘someone once said / the soul is lighter than breath / but the soil keeps secrets / the sky cannot hold.’
Personal Essay by Prachi Sharma: ‘My father pauses in every retelling of this tale. He wants me to see it. A man in the uniform of an Indian working for the English, in a village courtyard in the late 1920s, his face turning to one side from the force of an open palm. The villagers watching. The Daroga’s hand going to his cheek. A pigeon somewhere on the roof, taking off.’
Fiction by Labiba Alam: ‘Nandita’s arrival in our lives was similar to a new season dawning upon the hills. It was a slow, effortless glide, almost organic. It looks as if it had always been there, only we had begun to feel its newness by degrees.’
Poetry by Kashiana Singh: ‘A canopy of desert flowers for / the darkest of his nights, marvel / of bitterroot bursting forth from / dead earth’
Short story by Jamie Alter: ‘His eyes were ever sadder than the lady on the train. Yet there was some resemblance between the two, a similar pain that both of their eyes had been accustomed to.’
The problematic representation of women in many recent Telugu blockbusters like Peddi and the Pushpa films have stoked controversy. When mainstream commercial cinema consistently turns the sexualisation of women into entertainment, who should be responsible for the world these images help create? By Sumithra Prasanna