By: Ajay Patri She tells me to start using contact lenses. I want to protest at this suggestion, enraged that she is so insensitive to the intimate connection I share with glasses. But because we are surrounded by people, I…

By: Adreyo Sen In her dreams, morning was a cool wind and the wetness of the grass under her braided head. The braids had been banished, as had, in the nefarious hands of Time, most of the little things so fragile…

By: Adreyo Sen The little Indian woman entering the pub turned to me and said Hello. And in the dusk, her lined face was transformed to a dusky beauty, by tiredness. Weariness had worn her down to a worn elegance as…

By: Garima Sharma In the balms of my new forehead that grew like grief over the walls you could never see the shame. my backs thousands of them, became mirrors that turned into silver blanks dots of the mind after every…

By: Garima Sharma A lonely woman takes lovers, no dreams, children, shoe bites, men and brothels of feet. coins, zari, and the young boy outside the hamaam. Freedom was never for the darling slave, whose wrists are bound by spit,…

By: Garima Sharma I am the one who sweats sadness killing knees and loneliness on slow roads did you hear? when I erupted like a dying river? on those blue sheets my hair greased with horror and navel burning with rejection?…

By: Gaither Stewart From her seat high in the corner of the grandstand Sophia is at the same altitude as the acrobat on the trapeze. She leans forward from the edge of her seat and gazes across at him. His…

By: Aneesha Roy I thought of you for days and months. I thought of you in tempestuous storms and insurgent gales. I thought of you in bitter snow and in hale. I thought of your beady eyes, your crooked nose…

By: Aneesha Roy Dear little Cecilia, sprightly, contumacious, Tiptoed to her room; carefree, audacious, She was to star in a little skit In a few days, too soon. She expected no laurels, no exalted praise, But was determined to give…

By: Aneesha Roy An unsolicited phrase of reproach Escaped my lips today. It was undeserved and rude And perhaps directed at Her rawest nerve. She said nothing much in defence. She was too hurt to speak. No execration, no distasteful…