By Achyut Dutt
The meltdown came in what seemed like a flash. Two months into their friendship, she’d expressed that she wanted to talk. He called her up the following weekend. It was to be their one and only phone conversation. And a delightful conversation it had been.
By Safia Begum
If I wanted to write at night, I would go to the toilet, stand there, write, and come back. In the toilet, we had a small box for sanitary napkins; I used to hide my pen and papers there. And, again, in the morning I would take it out from there and send my poems to the magazines.
By Arshi Khan
Muslims need the fulfillment of their constitutional rights for which the Republic of India was created. Muslims cannot accept a State worse than the colonial masters as they were not so cruel, dishonest and violent against their subjects. The citizens are not hosts to welcome a government but to watch it and to criticize it if it goes beyond the statutory rim.
By Prasenjit Bose
The problems afflicting the Left, especially the CPI(M), today are manifold. The rank and file needs to come out of the denial mode and realize that perhaps for the first time in history, the CPI(M) and, indeed, the entire Indian Left, is faced with an existential crisis.
By Rabindranath Tagore
The other boys were overjoyed to see these results almost before the games had started in earnest, but Photik became very anxious. Makhan scrambled up immediately and attacked Photik, hitting him with blind rage.
By Lopa Banerjee
The whistle blows. I find myself in the sweltering heat of a train compartment in suburban Kolkata, my tongue chained to numbness and austerity. I carry with me the rampant memories and succulent folklores of my childhood, my unruly hair running along with the houses, huts, trees, ponds, and creeks, as my life speeds along, swishing back and forth between pale faces and clumsy station platforms.
By Mary Ann Chacko
In this ‘Cafe Dissensus’ conversation, internationally acclaimed actor and social worker, Nandita Das speaks to Mary Ann Chacko, an Editor of Cafe Dissensus, NYC.
By Achyut Dutt
Indian women, those days, didn’t feel sane unless they were battered in some way, even if it was by their own child. Is it perhaps universal with women everywhere? The more you treat a woman like dirt, the more she adores you and thinks you’re cool? I saw this in my own mother as a child and took full advantage of it.
By Sachin Tiwari
A unique feature at the school was the question hour, where students would gather and raise questions that came to their mind. These sessions were not structured with a purpose to “teach” the children but were designed to work with observations made by the children themselves. Thus curiosity served as a point of entry and inquiry into a larger area of concern for everyone.
By Elena Vinokurova
You have no future and all that awaits you is death from an overdose of sun, freedom, and chili peppers…and, then, you wake up in a gray city apartment in a gray concrete high-rise under a gray sky among people dressed in gray ties.
By Bhaswati Ghosh
For someone who did not renounce the worldly life in search of enlightenment, but rather remained in the thick of it, working hard for a living, Kabir, through his defiant and colourful satire, remains a torchbearer for mavericks. He is the wise fellow who stands in the marketplace wishing everyone well, without affirming friendship or enmity with anyone.
By Rabindranath Tagore
This morning, the sun is beaming from time to time, a wind is blowing swiftly, tamarisk and lychee trees are sashaying and rustling in a sway, a variety of birds are calling out in as many different ways to enliven the forest’s morning assembly. Sitting in this large, companion-less bright and open second-floor room, I am delighted to see a row of boats on the canal and, across it, a village flanked by trees on both sides.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 