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Issue 12: Fall 2018

Fiction

Lose Yourself by Sudip Bhattacharya

Every time, he’d apologize. Every time, he’d place a hand on her back, and rub counterclockwise. No one knows me like you do, he’d say, which was true to an extent. After all, Sita and he were friends since elementary school and after what happened to Sita at UConn and when she returned, he was there, ready to welcome her.

A Different Music by Ayeda Hussain

Yes, she admitted to her shell-shocked parents’ friends one evening: she liked John Denver more than Iqbal Bano. She understood him; the lyrics made sense. But more importantly, his songs made her happy. She had heard them call it “hippie music” but she didn’t care. She wanted it, she needed it, she craved it.

Zahida by Zuneera Shah

“It was during those days that Zahida became certain there were some things she knew better than others, and this was definitely one of them: the shelf-life of death was shorter than any other item in this world, and would not last, even a single day, on her Chai trolley. It expired immediately, and Zahida knew that if it was not thrown out, it would quickly begin to stink up the place.”

Poetry

Blue by Ankush Banerjee

To meet you and feel cut open
like fruit, like a suitcase that bursts open while you
collect your boarding pass

Ant-eating by Jugni Jahaz

the truth is
hindi is a warzone with thunder and blunt
edges, and my feet slipping always

Essays & Interviews

Cowboys and Indians by Nathaniel Wander

It’s often said that anthropologists study a people. In fact, what we do is to learn from and with them.

Homecoming by Shruti Mungi

“It’s a thought that haunts me everyday, making me feel as young and naive as the day I left home in their eyes, as the day I had last fully known my parents. Perpetually ten.”

On Friendship and Writing by Varsha Tiwary

“If writing is an act of self-acceptance then no technique helped me tap my inner writer, than the quiet, reassuring knowledge that just a phone call away, another beautiful, intelligent, completely sane and poised woman felt just as insane and messy inside as I did.’

Reviews

Ghost in the Tamarind by Subramanian Shankar

Reviewed by Ghada Ibrahim

The narrative is memorable with every character forming budding attachments with the reader.

Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar

Reviewed by Mary Ann Koruth

The Prematurely guilt-ridden, and perpetually seeking pardon for leaving home.

When I Hit You Or, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy

Reviewed by Sushumna Kannan

Critiquing the selective interpretation of an ideology.

Table Manners by Susmita Bhattacharya

Reviewed by Selma Carvalho

Evocation of geographical space and the character’s place in it.

Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan

Reviewed by Thangasurabi Bright Raj

Humorous, absurd and imaginative.

Art

Neelima Chikkodi