By Rimli Bhattacharya
And now my need to return to my old self was yet another challenge. Fixing my next session with Anjala, I walked out of her home. I needed to return for the sake of Jhilmil. I have a very little time left with me.
By Navras J. Aafreedi
Noticing my parents’ reluctance, when the official there suggested that they give me just any name if they did not wish to pass on theirs, my father perceived it as the expression of doubt on my legitimacy and gave my first name a couple of suffixes, my mother’s caste name, Jāt and the name of the Pashtun/Pathan tribe he comes from, Āfrīdī (He spelt it Aafreedi to emphasize the long vowels in it, and not for any numerological reason.).
By Fayezah Iqbal
I sank in a bit more in my environs, inhaled more of that air and more of that soil, saw myself as one of those children frolicking, romping, and eating silently there during the recess. My present coalesced with my past.
By Fahad Hashmi
Neyaz Farooquee’s memoir, An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism: Growing up Muslim in India, unravels the tattered, bruised, and anguished conscience of a young Muslim boy who lives in the vicinity of Batla House in Okhla, which shoots into infamy following a police ‘encounter’ that takes place in the area as the cops try to flush out suspected terrorists holed up in a flat.
By Syed Zainab Imtiyaz
When spring would be right at its peak, the sun harshly pleasant for her bones, we would be sitting in those viridescent grasses on that peculiar ‘patij’.
By Reena Prasad
Santosh Bakaya’s time machine moves at a delectable pace through her memories, stopping long enough for the reader to have a satisfying glimpse of an ex-hurdles champion trying out a Gangam style modern dance with the svelte Sherry.
By Bhaswati Ghosh
Thwarted Escape is a woman’s journey – not only through the alleys of memory – but also in the physical realm, from the East to the West. The narrative oscillates between the author’s life in Kolkata, India and cities in the US, where she moved post-marriage. Some of the book’s most tender parts are where the author is seen synthesizing her experiences of her home country with those of her adopted one. In doing so she realizes that despite her impulse to fly abroad, the escape from her old universe never actually happened on the emotional plane.
By Ananya Dutta Gupta
My phone and I had bequeathed and shared meaning between us in similar ways. I had committed memories, thoughts, and images to it in such a way as to create a personal archive.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 