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
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.
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."
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).
POETRY / The song of freedom
the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box
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.
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
Colours
Echoes of your voice ring in my ears / As the world turns scarlet in front of my eyes
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
Storm child
You must have heard the story of your birth a thousand times by now, sweetheart. Your mother and I—home alone.
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–
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.
The things I wish I had never known
I skip talking to myself for hours / The “me time”, before going to bed
