 I received a link to this beautiful poem a few days before I was due to visit Delhi, my hometown, to spend Diwali with my family. Reading the poem transported me to my childhood and I was overcome by an urge to run
Principles of Prediction is two-time Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Anushka Jasraj’s debut short story collection that will leave you bemused and in awe. Jasraj unpacks complex human emotions through intimate peeks into her characters’ psyches, revealing deep-seated conflicts, fears, insecurities, and passions. In 13 beautifully spun stories that
The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories (read an excerpt) is prolific writer and veteran media professional Nisha Susan's debut short story collection. The stories here are sad-funny, serious-absurd, and never predictable; they delight as often as they take you by surprise. An assortment of
This is an excerpt from The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories by Nisha Susan. Click here to read our interview with the author. This was her only romantic fantasy. One in which the man she is in love with becomes incandescent with jealousy because of a
... which is now a lovely shade of faded memories from the lockdown. At the onset of my least favourite time of the year---seasonal wardrobe change---I decided to escape to Bombay, because I’d rather pack one tiny suitcase than pack up my entire winter wardrobe into many large suitcases. Oh,
Helter Skelter is a proud partner of the Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction. This story by Catherine Bisley was one of the final shortlisted entries for the prize in 2020. Annie, who was originally called Miranda, worked as a policy analyst at the New Zealand Treasury. It wasn’t
A powerful blend of communalism, hypernationalism, inequality, media insensitivity, and everything else that makes up the painful reality of our present, A Burning by Megha Majumdar is a brilliant debut novel. The story revolves around Jivan, a 22-year-old Muslim woman, who becomes a political pawn following an impulsive Facebook post.
I remember I was eighteen when I was first confused about my sexuality. I was in Bengaluru for an internship; I didn’t know anybody in the city, and life had immediately felt weightless and limitless. Bengaluru in 2010 offered a certain freedom of movement, independence and self-expression that was
I binge-watched the entire season of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club the day it was out. Adapted from the popular series of books by Ann M. Martin (most of the later books were ghostwritten by other writers), it tells the story of a group of young girls in Stonybrook,
What does it mean to be brown---a many-hued, many-headed, living, breathing idea? What is this word useful for? As an identity, it’s often used interchangeably with ‘South Asian’---a polysemic term which gained currency as a category of division after the establishment of area studies departments in the U.
Children manage to find slivers of hope, joy, and wonder amidst utter distress, and Deepa Anappara explores this in all its beauty through her straightforward and captivating narrative in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line. The novel is deeply sensitive, with endearing characters that linger in your mind long after
After moving into our flat last June, my flatmate and I had an A.C. unit installed in one of the bedrooms. It came with an outlet for the excess water to drip inside our room, and a small, deep, olive-green bucket sits at the side of our bed for