Chinmaya Lal Thakur’s article on reviewing KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAY from the backdrop of postcolonial feminism provides a refreshing new angle to understand the selfhood of the noted social reformer and freedom fighter. Thakur’s examination of a few snippets of Kamaladevi’s life provides the readers how subversion and resistance can occur in different ways. (FEATURE: INDIAN FEMINISM)

While on the poetry in the Feature, Indira B’s poetry touches the chords of being a woman and foregrounds woman’s self-actualization. While ‘Body Business’ opens into a ‘Revelation’ for the woman, ‘Dissolution’ discusses the varied layers that clothe a woman’s identity leading her to spell out, ‘Woman that I’m’. (FEATURE: INDIAN FEMINISM)

Pramod Kumar Das interviews renowned Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Odia poet & litterateur, Ramachandra Behera, in a quest to understand his creative roots. The interesting interview reveals aspects of the poet’s career, evolution of thought, and sources of influence and inspiration. Das’s reflective interviewing presents the poet’s life under the scanner of scholars as well as emerging poets. (LITERARY SECTION)

Legendary Jainendra Kumar’s Hindi story ‘Jahnavi’ – beautifully translated by Madhu Singh – is a hauntingly interwoven account of two women whose identities converge and diverge at the same time. A mystery woman feeds crows on her terrace singing to them not to pluck her eyes when she is dead because she wants to behold her beloved. (FICTION)

Unni R’s acclaimed Malayalam short story ‘Sahayathra’ – translated as ‘Companionship’ by Nithya Mariam John is an extremely sensitively portrayed theme of socially ostracised and legally criminalised marriage between people same gender. Sumathi and Radhamani decide to end their lives. At least in death they must lie together, and not on either sides of a rail track. (FICTION)

One can feel the emotion of grief attain a visual dimension in Vibhu Dhariwal’s poems as he seems to have composed them in a state of emotional despair and disappointment, and severe physical pain. For his young age, his poems are lofty in stature. (POETRY)

Appetising reviews of works of Fiction – a historical novel (Malathi Ramachandran’s The Legend of Kuldhara); Vandana Kumari Jena’s Rotten Apple & Other Stories that “celebrates women’s various shades of grey”; Easterine Kire’s novel Don’t Run, My Love rooted in Naga folk tradition; Shouvik Bhattacharya’s whodunit Murder in a Minute; besides Abdul Wahid Radhu’s travel memoir, Tibetan Caravans (Journeys from Leh to Lhasa) … (BOOK REVIEWS)