Three Poems
By Archita Mittra
all words are only a black-faced pretext
to fill up the
e m p t y
s p a c e s
in the dusty, abandoned
parking lots of your heart.
Book Review: Noam Chomsky’s ‘9-11: Was There an Alternative? ’
By Muhammad Ashraf
‘9-11 Was There an Alternative?’ was published by Seven Stories Press in New York, to international acclaim, which proves the fact that many such dissident voices are constantly being heard by the public in an unprecedented way.
Onam: Syncretic Festival of Kerala
By Latheef Abbas
In this Onam season, I make this plea to my Malayalee readers: Let us eschew divisive calls that harp on purity and exclusion, values that try to build borders and turn friends and neighbours into strangers.
Book Excerpt: Saeed Naqvi’s ‘Being the Other: The Muslim in India’
By Saeed Naqvi
During the Bombay riots, Jawed found himself in the entrance hall of his Churchgate apartment building, candle in one hand, a screwdriver in another, diligently pulling out the nameplate ‘Prof N. L. Ahmad’ so that arsonists and murderers would not find their way to his mother on the floor upstairs.
Appropriating Ravan: Design to Blunt a Radical Symbol
By Arunoday Majumder
A packed Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi thundered with applause as Ravan addressed Sita, the wife of Ram. The moral opulence of the demon-king and the ethical poverty of the god-king lay bared to the audience. The occasion was the opening performance of Ravan ki Ramayan – a play written and directed by Atul Satya Kaushik.
Resistance in Kashmir Post-1947
By Faizaan Bhat
The youth have been killed during several such uprisings in 2008, 2009, and 2016. These youth deserve our respect as they are the martyrs of Kashmir, who have sacrificed their lives for the collective good and common cause.
Five Poems
By Mary Ann Chacko
Like the safety of a garbage dump to a street dog beaten and left to die,
So is poetry to me;
A place to lick my wounds.
Shaniwar Wada: History, Intrigue, and Romance
By Nishi Pulugurtha
As I walk across the ramparts, traffic buzzes by. Within the fort, it seems another world, a world far removed in time. A world that goes back to a period read long ago in history books, a world of which we have just these ruins as witness of time gone by.
Four Poems
By Goirick Brahmachari
The smoky roof has given up. It leaks memory drop by drop
On to my sink. The staircase is
Breaking, falling apart. Insects
Have taken over the corridor.
Theological and Political Radicalization: The Salafi and Jama’at-e-Islami Influence in Contemporary Kerala
By Anwar Haneefa
The recent trend of the recruitment of Kerala Muslims to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), although it is exaggerated by the media, marks a radical shift among Keralite Muslims from their neutral psychic state to a more sensational one.
Disability: The Invisible within the Community
By Rekha Revathy
It is a fact that disabled women face a lot of barriers in actively participating in feminist movements. These barriers are mainly due to difficulties in mobility, accessibility, etc. Many conferences and other such programs are not organized in such a manner that they can accommodate disabled women.
The Lake of Blood
By Irfan Mir
Death was on his young mind; it had gone into his brains, seeming nearer to him than it had ever been. In the quivering light of a candle, the wooden rafters above his head seemed to float. He imagined Ezrail hovering around him like cigarette smell.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 