The Night of November 2, 1984 by Vic Nanda
Set against the backdrop of the Hindu-Sikhs riots that broke out in India in the wake of the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Previously published in the Cosmic Latte magazine of Bucks County Community College.
The Deadly Date! by Sanyukta Chaudhuri
This is a short story dedicated to the senior citizens suffering from post retirement blues. A space that the younger lot can only talk about and not relate to for obvious reasons, but an effort can always be made to understand their state of mind. This is just an effort to do that…
"Drops And Smoke" by Bonisha Bhattacharyya
A visitor’s observations of a rainy day during Kolkata’s monsoon season.
"Nooh" by Anubha Yadav
“At night I can come out of the cloth rolls to see my house. Our clothes are still there on the wall. Ammi’s small stones on the clothes are gone but even then the clothes don’t fly.
"Orange Dreams" by Bonisha Bhattacharyya
The poem “Orange Dreams”, tries to construct a story. A story with its central protagonist being a little girl, and charts her thought processes as she grows up to realise the pain staking process of her own coming into existence.
"A Leaf Or Grass" by Bonisha Bhattacharyya
The above poem has been penned as an after thought to Walt Whitman’s poem “Leaves of grass”. Whitman, in his poem, talks of how within a universal framework, every man is an Everyman. The boundaries between one and another are erased in his poem. “Leaves of Grass” is an optimistic way of looking at the role of mankind, which is to belong to one great network, by not dwelling in separation but by achieving a union with the habitus around. In the poem above, the “I” is the “YOU” , and one is still the other, but the optimism is substituted with an existential angst .An angst of surviving in a world that doesn’t provide answers.
"Favorite Colour" by Anubha Yadav
“Amma’s worries had a daily rhythm. It was always four in the morning when she said it, “It is fate. If he would have grown paddy again and not coffee …” She never completed it. She said it since Bhagyashree was eight. She was sixteen now. “
