Tia Paul-Louis is the pen name for a fiction writer and poet from Florida. She’s the wife of a U.S. Army sergeant who also happens to be a preacher and philosopher. She’s a mother to a four-year old girl and works at an army Child Development Center. Through many battles...
Suvankar Ghosh Roy Chowdhury
Salman Rushdie, the British-Indian novelist, gained prominence with his second novel Midnight’s Children way back in 1981. An exponent of history and merging it with fantastic elements, Rushdie emerged as an author who spoke on socio-political disparities of modern times, particularly in India, with utmost clarity...
Tarmac Labyrinth
Have you ever forgotten a road
only to travel through it
years later?
The old smell of it coming back,
the same branches leaning towards
same shadows designing it
weaving nets
The same emptiness and
potholes.
Doesn’t it make you reminisce
about the things you passed?
Left behind?
Glanced at and Ignored?
If you haven’t tried to recollect
the stops you made...
The Final Draft
I've started living after my death!
I was killed
Some four years back—
Stabbed and drowned!
’Twas a shallow stream;
I quivered out,
(Ah! Blessed ghoul!)
Was yet again
Earth-bound
With the hope
Of new love
And assassins
For my carcass soul!
I've lived and died
Many times
In my secular half
And your non-religious (w)hole!
Faced umpteen deaths,
Say, in Mohenjodaro,
And in the Mayan...
wisdom
fire burning to coals
poet looking past embers
seeing distant world
before existence of light
coming of god
untitled
poet on edge
meds not refilled
lost in black silence
static white noise
echoing around skull
deafening suffering soul
seriously considering
ways to kill himself
answer me
telephone without voice
no caller id
broken-hearted poet
wondering if ex-lover
quietly bagging
shrink
routine family counseling
necessary before divorce
doctor’s dark office
framed degrees on the...
Fakrul Alam
One of the earliest memories I have of my father is of him coming out of his bedroom, transistor radio in hand, eager to share his delight about a Tagore song being broadcast in Dhaka or Calcutta radio with someone else in our family. “Aha!” he would say,...
Cool Masculine
Hair careless tangled; dirt bristling on dried skin.
I'll be clean, I'll be beautiful again,
a cool, cruel image for someone.
I press the glass against my cheek,
feel the condensation disappear into natural fires.
I'm James Dean in the photos, the film,
despite all my disabilities...
Let me be him for you:
I've got that...
Studying 19th Century Bengal’s Civilizational Conflicts in Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s Ekei Ki Bole Sobhyota?
Manisha Bhattacharya
“Civility is claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process” (The Institute of Civility in Government).
The idea of civility is about disagreeing without disrespect, seeking common ground...
Bankim Let
Bibhas Roy Chowdhury’s latest chapbook Jessore Road-er Gach (Trees alongside Jessore Road) is “the sweetest song” that tells of “saddest thought.” It’s a spontaneous, melancholic flow of a sequence or series poetry, resting under the trees, in just fifteen poems. These fifteen well-crafted poems perfectly synchronize with illustrations by Biplab...
Sanctification
The pimples on my face
seem to have an identity
of their own.
As if, those are my sins
penalized to be worn.
However, they make me look
a graceful lesser mortal.
Thankfully unattractive
like Sycorax.
A rose infested by fungi.
Oddly, they seek a lot of attention:
Hormonal imbalance? A digestive disorder?
A passion pimple! A dispassionate cycle?
Innumerable diagnosis followed...
Conation
Between perceived hurts and intended harm
I cottoned myself to a kingdom of one. Here
even the wind fails to tease me. Air-condition-
ing has its advantages in intramural settings.
Earthshine is nature’s compensatory face. How
does the human construct simulate this model to
hum its way to happiness? Game plan is within
us. Unwrap yourself:...
Title: England, England
Originally published: 27 August 1998
Author: Julian Barnes
Page count: 272
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Genres: Satire, Farce
Nominations: Booker Prize
Reviewed by Abhijit Acharjee
The eighth novel of the Booker winner (2011) author Julian Barns is woven around the lives of a cluster of characters in a corporation that is lead by an entrepreneur and ‘ideas man’, Sir Jack Pitman....