“Across Indian literatures, writing on gender has long served as a site for interrogating patriarchy, exposing the inequalities embedded within family, community and the state, and reclaiming women’s and queer subjectivities through acts and narrative modes. … The writings of (several female writers) repeatedly return to women’s bodies as sites upon which social anxieties, institutional power and patriarchal control are inscribed.” Dr Syam Sudhakar & Suthara S Lal in their Editorial. (FEATURE) 

“Write that down. / Write it again. /
Write it louder than the bombs.

Because defiance begins here: / with a mother
standing before the world / and refusing to let her child
be remembered / only for the way she died.”

Thanya in “My Daughter Was Five”. (FEATURE)  

“Bhavāi has two aspects: folk entertainment and folk education.” (Tushar J Vyas, in the pic., Author of Bhavāi: Folk Theatre Form of Gujarat, in Interview with Akshay Bhardwaj)  (LITERARY SECTION)

“Divya [in Meru] shapes a posthuman civilisation which turns epical love into interspecies bonding between human and machine (posthuman).” (Asha Chaudhari, in the pic., in her article on Divya Srinivasan’s ‘Meru’)  (LITERARY SECTION) 

Honesty versus duplicity. The protagonist in The Honest Sin by Nagireddy R Sreenath is perhaps the only one who embraced life without any complaint or regret, while all the other characters were mere depictions of hypocrisy masquerading as worldliness.  (FICTION)

Senility is a stage in life when time seems to travel more slowly than a snail, while memories whirl around as if on a merry-go-round – sometimes joyous, sometimes dizzying or distressing – as portrayed in Whisper of Memories by Umadas Bhattacharyya (in pic) and translated by Uma Chattopadhyay. (FICTION)

Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan’s poems bring readers face to face with the unease of being constantly reminded of one’s identity as a woman, and of trying to hold one’s ground in a world that all too often seeks to objectify and diminish women.  (POETRY)

Chinnaraj Joseph Jaikumar’s poems tune into the days of youth, evoking memories that gradually shape a person’s identity and awaken questions that continue to haunt the psyche. (POETRY)

U Atreya Sarma (in the pic) offers a nuanced and deeply reflective appraisal of a poetry collection Fractured River by Dr Gandra Laxman Rao (Telugu Original), trans. by Julie. In his preceptive review, he reads the book through the intersecting lenses of translation, mythology, and contemporary socio-political thought.

Equally engaging is Neera Kashyap’s review of a story collection The Bare Bones of Humour, edited Ankit Raj Ojha which blends satire, irony, and exaggeration to provide social commentaries. (BOOK REVIEWS)
 

Sutanuka Ghosh Roy (in the pic) in her engaging review of Sanjukta Dasgupta’s story-poems titled Dinosaur Granny's Story-Poems explores it as a celebration of childhood, timeless magic of storytelling, and ecological consciousness. This book as an imaginative fusion of folklore, digital realities, cultural memory and humanistic values, will certainly have an enduring appeal. 

Equally interesting are two other poetry collections including Measure of My Days by Dr. Ritu Kamra Kumar reviewed by Sunaina Jain and Un(bloomed) by Namrata Pathania, reviewed by Shivani Chaudhary (BOOK REVIEWS)