Weekly Features

November 17, 2024
Parul Desai Shah encounters the invidious immigrant experience, and Jahnavi Gogoi discovers discrimination close to home.

Smells Like Home
Culture Essay by Parul Desai Shah
Excerpt: “A buyer said the house smelled. Like spices,” Nina stated with dramatic condemnation. This was a bullet wound to my family’s soul.

Satyanarayan Katha
Culture Essay by Jahnavi Gogoi
Excerpt: At one point in my childhood, I declare that I am an atheist. I do not believe in god. Everyone is horrified.

November 10, 2024
Shikha Valsalan travels, parties, yawns and cares in verse, and Miss BayLeaf paves the road to armageddon.

‘Jobless Evil Eye,’ ‘Only Controlled Disasters’ and ‘Darkness, My Old Friend’
Humour by Shikha Valsalan
Excerpt: I am the ultimate / jumbo jinx retardant…

Count Down the Way to Hell
Humour by Miss BayLeaf
Excerpt: Did Israfil blow the trumpet of doom or is it the constant ringing in my ears?

November 3, 2024
Daniel Fitzpatrick follows life along a loafing leaf’s locus, and Mark McConville traces a whirlwind of emotions through Holding Absence’s rock masterpiece.

Leaves
Humour by Daniel Fitzpatrick
Excerpt: It is tempting, when an oak leaf / falls into your empty cup…

Hunting for Joy through Music — Holding Absence’s The Noble Art Of Self-Destruction
Music Review by Mark McConville
Excerpt: To create art, you must be ambitious, and Holding Absence shows they’re masters of melancholia while breaking ground.

October 20, 2024
Katha Haldar and Sarthak Das traverse the heart of Bengal, and Anita Nahal breathes in Daipayan Nair’s earthy haiku.

Salt, Shadows and the Tempest — A Drifting Odyssey
Travelogue by Katha Haldar and Sarthak Das
Excerpt: As we gazed out of the bus window, the road unfolded before our eyes. Sometimes it veered, entering the heart of a distant village.

Heart-touching and resplendent haiku — Daipayan Nair’s the ten hands of a fuchka seller
Book Review by Anita Nahal
Excerpt: As Santōka Taneda, Japanese author and haiku poet, expressed quite rightly, “Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.”