Star Literature

Star Literature

POETRY / Dawn of New(?) Air

But talks of harmony flood your nose. / Harmony, harmony, harmony—you want it so bad, / and so you put words in our mouths

2d ago

FICTION / Pest control

Geronimo rushed inside the hole coughing, somehow managing to shut the door behind him. His mother Telapatra grabbed her son, hugging her tight for an instant before smacking him across the back. “How many times did I tell you not to go out at this hour?” cried Telapatra.

6d ago

POETRY / A man walks into a bar

a man walks into a bar but he looks like a little boy

6d ago

POETRY / Bulbul pakhi

“Attention passengers. The next train arriving is a B train traveling westbound towards Boston College.  Please stand clear of the closing doors."

6d ago

REFLECTIONS / In both form and content: A political (un)reality

Over the last two semesters, my course on South Asian writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level begins with Shahidul Zahir’s Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobata (Life and Political Reality, translated by V Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahreen).

1w ago

POETRY / Ghostly tenants

My father speaks in a dismantled language that goes up in  smoke. 

1w ago

POETRY / The song of freedom

the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box

1w ago

WHAT WE'RE READING THIS WEEK / Brutalism

One of the most influential cultural and political thinkers of our time, Mbembe’s latest book is a careful study of politicised acts of “brutalism”, a concept he studies, analyses, and investigates by invoking architectural aesthetics.

1w ago

FICTION / After the rain

Perhaps I should have met that girl. What if I was wrong and imagined an ordinary girl so fantastically that I couldn’t even recognise her in real life?

Hide, if you want to live

Three-year-old Maria asks  her nine-year-old brother, Ibrahim.

POETRY / Lone house around the bend

Your grief rots the decades old paint and the lakhri no one bothered to replace. Even across the road, it reeks of death.

Monsoon osmosis

I inhale the luxurious scent / of squelched earth / smoking under the sodden leaves

1m ago

Colours

Echoes of your voice ring in my ears / As the world turns scarlet in front of my eyes

1m ago

Begum Rokeya: A redoubtable Muslim feminist and educationist

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was an autodidact who became a formidable champion of women’s rights and education when women in South Asia, especially Muslim women, were forced to live in subhuman conditions, almost like animals, or even worse than animals

1m ago

Wonder

I feel my rage, ma, a living thing;/ A beast, caged, like me

1m ago

Storm child

You must have heard the story of your birth a thousand times by now, sweetheart. Your mother and I—home alone.

1m ago

All that I’d despicably known / Things I wish I didn’t know

All that I’d despicably known / Things I wish I didn’t know–

1m ago

Omniscient

Skin sticky with perspiration from a long month of June 

1m ago

All that I shouldn’t have known

What I wish I didn’t know is that when your dear friends whisper the word “psycho” behind your back, you’ll grow up accepting it.

1m ago

The things I wish I had never known

I skip talking to myself for hours / The “me time”, before going to bed

1m ago

The journey

If you travel on a bus, always take the window seat.

1m ago
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