Where Stars Die
ALEXANDER TE POHE
The half-moon is pinched between overlapping clouds. I hold my hand up and the light passes through. In eight days, on the full moon, this form will solidify. It’s the one time of the month I can hold hands with my boyfriend Ridley. For now, it has to be enough to wait here for him as I do every night.
How to Know the Indian Ocean
WEIHSIN GUI
As the wind blows ripples that grow into waves and then swells, well-wrought prose breathes life into small mundane fragments and grand historical forces, vivifying them as memorable figures who journey across watery expanses of the imagination.
Thôi bọn mình chia tay
FRANCES AN
Coconut milk and ice crunches in my mouth, coating my papillae in a thin syrupy mixture. I fill the plastic spoon with two pandan noodles, five fake pomegranate seeds and coconut milk. My equivalent of ‘break-up’ ice cream is chè ba màu.
In Flux/A Rose on the Shoulder
DEVANA SENANAYAKE
What does friendship mean? We find one interpretation in Chintan Modi’s essay “Maan, Firoz and Queer Love in A Suitable Boy” published in The Hindustan Times. The piece touches on the historical context of male intimacy and friendship in India.
The Far End of the Gravel Path
MANASI
Translated by J. DEVIKA
Bits and pieces of the broken dishes hurled by her husband from the kitchen flew into the yard. Santhi was sitting under the moringa tree and scrubbing the pots. Her eyes lingered on the broken pieces for some time.
Land is Caste, Sea is Freedom
YOGESH MAITREYA
When off duty, Mr. Sheffield met with Mahar people, spent time with them, and often enjoyed what they cooked, noting down their lives. Mahars are excellent cooks. Because of his association with Mahars, he was disliked in the British administration.
Unspeakable Spell
ANNALIZA BAKRI
Can language satisfy the thirst for a life along the sungai, exploring the banks of one river to another? Would it break the unspeakable spell to remain fluid in a country that has an enormous barrage urbanising the way one catches and controls, but yet feeds on five rivers that run through the heart of the nation?
Scarcity Lingers; Love Conquers
MAYA-ROSE CHAUHAN
My father might have once, in a dirty seaport city, unshelled peanuts, with feet in too-big sandals. He may have done this with eagerness, placing each new peanut inside a stainless steel bowl, offering it gesturally, tenderly, to his mother who may have wrapped it in newspaper, in turn to offer it to strangers for...peanuts.
In Bibi’s Kitchen
KAREN LEE
Women’s care-work, their making of a home, is a theme which unites the bibis with any reader who has ever cooked or cared for others. It is a way to build a bridge between women, between people.
Ryland’s Island
LUISA MITCHELL
On an empty treeless street, beneath a swelling velvet sky pin-pricked with stars and an absent moon, sits Mick’s rather ordinary home. Concrete driveway, planted between a line of identical houses and the occasional rebel – a house on stilts with a wide verandah.
Strange New White World
KAYA ORTIZ
I am fifteen. It’s April, three months after my family had migrated from the Philippines. I still can’t get used to the alien world of Australian public high school. I’m sure everyone around me can still see the Philippines on my skin, hear it in the rolling Rs and strong enunciations of my accent.
Sweet and Sour
SANDIP ROY
In the early nineties in my small university town in the American Midwest, there was no Indian restaurant. As a newly-arrived immigrant from India when I felt homesick, I would go to the local cheap Chinese restaurant. It felt like the closest thing to home in Kolkata.
Hospitals are a Place to Die
VERONICA HERITAGE-GORRIE
Hospitals are a place to die for Aboriginal people. We don’t see them as a place of treatment or care. Our symptoms of illness and ill health are not taken seriously even when we pluck up the courage to attend a doctor.
I Look at the Face
SHAHIDUL ZAHIR
Translated by V . RAMASWAMY
Perhaps Chan Miya of Ghost Lane had been nourished by monkey’s milk as an infant, because if you ever met someone like… and if anyone ever cast doubt on that, she would definitely get into an argument and, if necessary, quarrel.
Rebuilding Democracy With the Seeds of Courage
JYOTSNA SINGH
Barbed wire, spikes, nails, barricades, water cannons, batons, trenches, security forces of all hues and colours — police personnel, Rapid Action Force, Central Reserve Police Force — and a no man’s land. This is not India’s international border.
A Mountainous Myth
VINITA RAMANI
And then one day, as it had done so regularly over hundreds of thousands of years, Mount Merapi exploded.
Lingua Franca
CHER TAN
It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood when I learned that ‘chalet’ was a word in Franco-Provençal to mean ‘holiday home’ and not a word in Singlish to mean ‘holiday home’. Supposedly no emphasis on either syllable. By then, my brain had already been, as is wont to say, ‘internet poisoned’.