Ushma Shah is a short story writer and an aspiring novelist. Her latest short story, “Colours” was published in the online literary magazine, Kitaab. She was born in Mumbai and raised in Mumbai and Cochin. She currently works, writes and resides in Seattle. You can find her on Instagram: @penthythoughts and LinkedIn.
Short story by Aditi Dasgupta: ‘Families didn’t merely eat; they communed with their past. Meals were tapestries woven from memory, where each ingredient carried the weight of ancestors, where every bite was a step into history.’
Poetry by Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan: ‘Pressing my ear to the ground / straining to hear / the universe speak. / The faintest tremor / of the butterfly wing’
Poetry by Anushka Chavan: ‘Will you drag me onto the shore, or should I become the tide? / Will you bring me home, to the river, / Or will I be lost in the hills once more?’
Delhi-based musician Tarun Balani’s new album weaves jazz improvisation with Sindhi folk echoes, creating a cohesive journey through memory, identity, and longing. By Treya Sinha
As a generation of Indians move from living in houses to apartments, Vipin Labroo argues that we must envision our new spaces to reflect better synthesis with the rhythms of nature, the way that our traditional homes once were.
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.’
With the recent restoration and re-release of Umrao Jaan (1981), Himanshi Aggarwal revisits the film from a queer lens, as Rekha’s titular character serves as an allegory for anyone forced to perform respectability in a world that denies them legitimacy.
In his multigenerational saga A Person is a Prayer (2024) Ammar Kalia weaves together several characters, each struggling, yearning, and often failing to find clarity in the shadows of their predecessors. As with many internal struggles, they persist in silence. By Shivani Patel
Films like Chhaava have highlighted the valour of Sambhaji and the tyranny of Aurangzeb; the final word in that film, however, is less concerned with history and more with the ideology of the country’s current rulers. By Mozid Mahmud
Short Story by Soham Guha: ‘She will not know the scent of freshly sown grass, the fragrance of blooming flowers, the sound of breaking waves, the songs of birds, the hymns of cicadas, the taste of ripening mangoes, the warmth of the earth. She will never know her home like me.’