किस्सा एक नाकाम संपादकीय मंसूबे का.

The Story of an Editorial Misadventure.

Bangalore Four years ago Sabbah had written eleven short stories about different generations of a family in Madurai. At the time of submission to publishers, she had loved most of the stories. When ten of the stories were picked and arranged into a book called How To Eat in Madurai, Maami, she had still loved […]

  Translated from Assamese by Diba Borooah Pahi’s visage is barely visible through the blanket of the dense cloud of shravan   that has descended upon her. Her spirits have certainly been deflated ever since her father had been transferred. Indeed she took a protracted period of time to come to terms with her father’s absence […]

राग दरबारी पर कुछ लिखने का प्रस्ताव मिलने से हुए अनुभव को शब्दों में बयान नहीं किया जा सकता. प्रस्ताव पर स्वीकृति की मुहर लगाने के बाद समस्या यह थी कि लिखने का विषय क्या हो? बहुत सारे विषय एक एक कर दिमाग में धक्कम पेल करने लगे. ‘घास खोदने’ की पद्धति का अनुसरण करते […]

Translated from Hindi by Alok Bhalla (Night. Half Moon. Countless stars. Silence. A beautiful, sad woman, who seems to have just got out of bed, is sitting on a bench in a park of a city.)   Vandana: I’ve never been here before…not even in my imagination…perhaps…not even in my dreams…If I had, something would […]

The Adventures of Topandas Khilluram Narkiyani in Manohar Shyam Joshi’s Hamzad Ladies and Gentlemen! We have talked a lot about demons. It’s time we met one. What do you call a person who sleeps with you, your mother, your hunchbacked elder sister, your beautiful younger sister, your first enigmatic lover, your second intellectual lover, your […]

A Reading of a Painting of the Ramayana from Chamba 1 The genesis of this project lies in my attempt to ‘read’, in collaboration with Vijay Sharma, three 18th century miniature paintings based on the Ramayana in the Bhuri Singh Museum at Chamba (cf. Vishwa Chander Ohri). As with the written and oral versions of […]

(a) After the long summer vacations, I returned a week late to a university made calm and lush by the recent monsoons. The hostel boundaries of trees and creepers had come closer in a tight embrace; the narrow pathway that led through the garden to the temple had disappeared. From the tree branches, heavy with […]

Snow When the snow first started falling, no one knew that it wouldn’t stop. The people were grateful because they had never seen snow. Now theirs would be a snow town for a while. Articles were written because it was a miracle. Then, the first houses started caving in. There was snow inside the toilet […]

There it is. The jacket. Hanging on the side of the chair, glowing in the morning light. Iridescent blue, with a tinge of green; its color vibrates like a deep bass string. Saraswati picks up the tray too fast. Coffee sloshes over the side of the cup, pooling in the saucer, as her feet negotiate […]