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.
Despite a promising premise, Anubhav Sinha’s courtroom drama Assi succumbs to formulaic depictions of sexual violence, trading nuance and subtleties for shock value. By Akshita Prasad
In Lavanya Lakshminaryan’s The Ten Percent Thief, a dystopic Indian future serves as the setting to explore existential dilemmas of human creativity in the face of an authoritarian technocracy. By Karan Madhok
Farah Ahamed examines the complexities of motherhood and desire in Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Mummy,” Mahesh Manjrekar’s Astitva, and Deepa Mehta’s Water.
Tej Sisodia’s short film It’s Only 47° C highlights the dangers faced by India’s most vulnerable populations at the face of climate change. Sravasti Datta goes behind the scenes with the filmmakers to learn more.
Poetry by Bunny: ‘I dip the iris in soy / and watch the dark eat the color. / Still, through the stain, I see you.’
Poem by Anju Devadas R D: ‘Ink spills like blood, / blotting the margins of her name. / Each word a bone, / each sentence, / a noose of syntax.’
The Ministry of Science & Technology has partnered with SARAL AI to convert research publications into ‘user-friendly’ social media content. But without clear parameters in scope, the initiative leaves ambiguity for the rights of researchers, academics, writers, publishers and more. By Madhuri Kankipati
“Poetry is the diary I always carry with me.” Gopal Lahiri’s collection Selected Poems (2025) cultivates a privacy that invites readers to the poet’s second self in consciousness. By Dustin Pickering
In a quiet corner of Uttar Pradesh, a retired government employee runs the Mann Ki Baat Radio Museum—featuring the world’s largest radio collection—striking a conversation between generations through sound and memory. By Arsalan Shamsi and Siddharth Sharma
In a wide-ranging interview, Salini Vineeth speaks about profound questions of identity in her work, switching to literature after an engineering background, writing in multiple languages, and more. By Mitra Samal