Fiction
The Curfewed Mind — A Short Story by Ghulam Mohammad Khan
he sky was not a sky, but a sheet of hot steel, pressing down upon the world. By late July afternoon, its dull glare had kindled a furnace breath, and one by one, the poplar...
The Manual of Survival: For Those Who Stayed — A Short Story by Fendy S. Tulodo
he boy kept a notebook built from torn scraps and used receipts, stuck together with brittle tape. He called it The Manual of Survival, writing crooked and smeared with grime. Some pages smelled like glue, others like rain, and once he said the ink...
Writings I — by Qānit
n Arabic, fulān (فلان) and its feminine form fulānā (فلانة) serve as placeholders—names for the unnamed, the undefined, the "so-and-so" of speech. These are figures who recede into the background, who are both anyone and no one. One of those...
“Love Letter” — An Excerpt from Mehak Jamal’s Loal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land (HarperCollins, 2025)
I Love Letteraved had started seeing a girl in the ninth grade. It started off innocently as these things often do. Her house was close to their school, so he would walk her home each day. Meaning, he’d stay on one side of the road and she on the...
“That Which We Cannot Speak Of” — A Short Story from For Now, It Is Night: Stories (HarperCollins/Archipelago Books, 2023) by Hari Krishna Kaul
That Which We Cannot Speak Of By Hari Krishna Kaul (1934-2009) Translated from the Kashmiri by Kalpana Raina, Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili, and Gowhar Yaqoobhey say that Lal Dĕd spun wool into extremely fine threads, but her mother-in-law was not...
Non-Fiction
Revenge of the Scribes — by Amir Sultan
n the Bollywood film Mashaal (1984), Vinod Kumar (played by Dilip Kumar) is a journalist who trusts that voice, appeal, and persistence can shake institutions awake. His...
Meditating Love: In Search of a Middle Ground — An Essay by Fariz Gulzar Mir
To have truly loved is to have truly lived, and the person who goes through life without having loved has not really lived a fully human life.―Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant...
Absurdist in Love — An Essay by Amir Sultan
oughly, an absurdist is a person who believes in the meaninglessness and irrationality of the universe. To someone with this worldview, the universe is indifferent — not because it possesses consciousness, but because it offers no inherent meaning...
Rodolfo Walsh’s 1977 Open Letter to the Military Junta in Argentina — Introduced and Translated by Arturo Desimone
Rodolfo Walsh. Writer and Argentine journalist. Wikimedia Commons / Marco Rodriguez Garrido. Some rights reserved.Translator's Note by Arturo Desimoneodolfo Walsh’s Open Letter to the Military Junta used to be distributed in Argentina as a pamphlet...
Wandering Through the Alleys and Making Sense of Central and West Asian Remnants in Srinagar — by Subhajit Pal
he former US president Barack Obama, who has been criticized for various issues when in office, notes in his book that, “The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” Although in today’s world empires are obsolete, the...
POETRY
Ruinous Time — A Poem by Saadia Peerzada
Saadia Peerzada presents a poem that trails behind the slow passage of the years that are shaped by absence, memory, and quiet and subtle endurance. These verses could as easily be about the unmaking of time that rests upon “a microhistory that tries to put into language an experience that is fragmented,” as the poet explains. Through this poem, one tries to think about an instant when things fell apart as the verses move across a series of annual reckonings while a larger, all-engulfing “Nothing” gradually settles over everyday life and remembrance recedes into a “grayscale” oblivion. The poem resists as an archive of loss to remind of earlier times when normality and erasure coexisted uneasily with a necessary friction in-between.
Nine Poems from The Map is Not a Territory (Copper Coin, 2025) — by Aranya Padil
Freelance Leaf CollectorKeeper of the Keys to the Chest of DreamsChief Liaison to memorywho occasionally appears in public as nostalgiaConsulting Editor to the city: Spin Doctor to the left-leaning zephyrthat chronicles the passage of light on human facesArchivist of...
Homage — A Poem by Ahymon Ayoub Khan
Homage Grief leaves my body swollen,as if pulled out from a river afresh.Four times its actual sizeI say four, and not threeBecause three is familiar. I waddle to my bedand pull the quiltover this bag of clay,to signal I am sleepingwhen I am actuallypaying homageto...
ജനൽ | Window | Janal — A Poem by Ayana Joe
ജനൽ പറമ്പ് പുല്ലുകളിൽമേലെ തണത്ത ഓർമകൾ പറ്റി പിടിച്ച ചില രാത്രികളിൽ ഞാൻ എന്റെ ഹൃദയത്തിന്റെ ജെനൽ തുറന്ന് വെക്കും, ലേശം നിലവെളിച്ചം കുടിച്ച് ദാഹം മാറ്റാൻ. കാറ്റ് വീശിയെത്തിക്കുന്ന മലർത്തുള്ളിമഴയിൽ തുടിയും ഈ പഴങ്ങൾ തൊലിക്കൂട്...
Wo kehna ye tha kii – وہ کہنا یہ تھا کہ۔ – What was meant to be said is this – A Poem by Rabiya Fayaz
Wo kehna ye tha kii Khud ko agar nahi padd paye,Kya likhna tera? Kya paddnaa tera? Degriya le kar balay ho hazar,Kya qalam tera? Kya waaz tera? Jab khud kii khamoshi se ho bekhabar,Kya akhbaar tera? Kya hangama tera? Tujhe taraashe jab bheed kii kahani,Kya nakhsha...
FILM
The Power of Musical Storytelling in Amar Singh Chamkila — by Urvashi Janiani
aving grown up watching Hindi movies with musical numbers, it is disheartening at times to watch new-age directors not put their might behind a robust music album. Maybe the...
A Zionist Aggression (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1972) — A Film Review by Azmat Mushtaq
Zionist Aggression (1972), a partially scored silent short documentary of 16 mm black-and-white cinematography, is an indispensable product of the earliest example of...
Adolescence and Male Rage — A Review by Zarak Rais
ale rage is not too shy to introduce itself. It mutates to touch the life of every woman you know, and in this version, a young teenage girl’s introduction to it ends in her...
Music
The Power of Musical Storytelling in Amar Singh Chamkila — by Urvashi Janiani
aving grown up watching Hindi movies with musical numbers, it is disheartening at times to watch new-age directors not put their might behind a robust music album. Maybe the...
Ghosts of Partition and the Songs that Stitch Us Back Together — A Commentary by Tehmina Pirzada
hen you first encounter Amrita Ghosh and Kevin Meehan, they may seem like an unlikely musical duo. Two English professors singing Tagore music while also exploring the complexities of India–Pakistan friendship is not a combination most people would...
Gaekhir Republik’s “Jazz Ahmad Jazz”: A Surreal Spin on Rock — A Commentary by Mohit Kilam
loaked in the whimsicality of an everyday Kashmiri conversation set to melody, Gaekhir Republik’s music has established a notable presence in the contemporary cultural scene from Kashmir and out into the international arena. Unafraid in its...
SOS (Straight Outta Srinagar), TARYAQ and a Timely Pharmakon — by Amjad Majid
An Inverted Paradise Lostn Kendrick Lamar’s post-Drake-beef album, GNX, the artist meditates on his place in the world and on his connection to it. In doing so, Lamar proves just exactly why he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize back in 2018 as he...
Love, Impermanence, Urban Existence and Social Critique in Suman Sridhar’s The Black Mamba I, II, and III EPs — by Amjad Majid
ue primarily to her versatile style and approach to music-making, Suman Sridhar is an artist who, for the longest time, has been difficult to situate in one space, place, genre, or culture. In engaging with her latest series of three EPs alongside...
Art
Exile Things — What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration (Transcript, 2024)
hen people are forced from their homes, their things carry symbolic weight and come to represent the tangle of human relations that constitute an emplaced life. Yet these things...
for now (Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 6th Edition) — A Curatorial Overview by Salman B Baba
pace functions not merely as a backdrop for narrative events but as a dynamic system that recreates emotional and temporal experience. In what ways can the space be understood as...
“Nature and Observation” — A Series of Artworks by Srijani Dutta
This series is entitled as “Nature and observation.” In this series, I have attempted to capture the aroma, silence, mild sound, rhythm and beauty of nature and how it looks from the perspective of...
“Art Creates Itself and We Are Merely Its Medium” — A Conversation with Mehran Ansari
was raised in an environment where art and literature played a significant role in everyday life. I was particularly motivated by and exposed to great poetry and prose at an...
Photography
Exile Things — What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration (Transcript, 2024)
hen people are forced from their homes, their things carry symbolic weight and come to represent the tangle of human relations that constitute an emplaced life. Yet these things...
The Season of Transience and Fugitive Emotions: A Tribute to the Kashmiri Autumn — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar
Koh tae baal che chaange pathe pairaan,kar nyarei hard'ue bae pae sheen,Wostouer wann wath manz toofanas, mae jahanas annigot gov (The hills and mountains are awaitingsince twilight for the autumn...
Photo Essay: A 1950s Vintage Landmark Struggling to Stay Afloat in Srinagar’s Dalgate — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar
n Srinagar’s Dalgate, a heritage market known as the Tange-adda, or Tonga Station reminds passers-by of an iconic image of the place that is reminiscent of Kashmir’s 1990’s era....
Books
“but where the hell was he?” — An Excerpt from Mirza Waheed’s Maryam & Son (Context/Westland, 2026)
fter another night of sleeplessness and occasional episodes of passing into a state of half sleep, Maryam found herself on the sofa watching Countdown on Channel Four. As often,...
Nine Poems from The Map is Not a Territory (Copper Coin, 2025) — by Aranya Padil
Freelance Leaf CollectorKeeper of the Keys to the Chest of DreamsChief Liaison to memorywho occasionally appears in public as nostalgiaConsulting Editor to the city: Spin Doctor to the left-leaning zephyrthat chronicles the passage of light on human facesArchivist of...
An Excerpt from The Eye of Childhood (Zorba Books, 2023) — by Dr. Arjun Raina
he word psychosis is used to describe a condition that affects the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. This means a person is not thinking clearly and may believe things are true that are not. When someone becomes unwell...
An Excerpt from Flames of the Cherry Tree by Leena A. Khan (Daraja Press, 2025)
tattered signboard was nailed into the wall just above the door: Salman Khan & Son. “This first floor has everything that is up for sale.” The door creaked as he opened it, and when we stepped across the threshold, we were transported to...
“13. Firdous Cinema” — An Excerpt from Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict by Ipsita Chakravarty (Context, 2025)
13. Firdous Cinema P’s memory is neatly folded. She spreads it out. There, in the centre, is a grey building laced with concertina wiring and a rusted neon sign that spells out Firdous Cinema. ‘Firdous’, meaning paradise. Once, it is said,...
Academia
The Weaponisation of the Language of Oppression: Review of R.F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution — by Marie-Luise Kohlke
The Weaponisation of the Language of Oppression: Review of R. F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution...
Exile Things — What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration (Transcript, 2024)
hen people are forced from their homes, their things carry symbolic weight and come to represent the tangle of human relations that constitute an emplaced life. Yet these things also stand for hope: they are a seed that must grow and bear fruit in...
To Be or Not to Be: Between Palestine and Israel — Introduced and Compiled by Muzaffar Karim and Mubashir Karim
To Be or Not to Be: Between Palestine and Israel Introduced and Compiled by Muzaffar Karim and Mubashir Karim Locating the issue within the Intelligentsia e who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors” appears as an epigraph to an...
Patriarchy and Partition: Representation of Women in Anirudh Kala’s The Unsafe Asylum — A Commentary by Marusa Mushtaq
he Unsafe Asylum is an unsettling collection of interlinked short stories by Anirudh Kala that provide an insight into the aftermath of the 1947 Indo-Pak partition. The short stories reflect on the drawing of Radcliffe Line, the resulting communal...
Rehman Rahi and Existential Poetry in the Kashmiri Tradition — A Commentary by Faheem Ahmad
Introduction he concept of human existence has long been a central theme in Kashmiri poetry. This existential inquiry can be traced back to the age-old corpus of Sheikh-ul-Alam, who pondered profound questions such as, “Who am I? What is my...
Acquaintance
Beyond the “Post”: Trauma, Temporality, and Psychiatric Categories in Kashmir — An Essay by Huzia Rais
Disclaimer: When I write about Amina, I am reminded how delicate it is to convey another person’s story. It is easy to turn a life into data, or to speak over someone while trying to interpret what...
This is Fine: A Love Letter to the Apocalypse We Call Life — by Ghulam Mohammad Khan
ll discourse is a product of its epistemic regime, meaning that what we think is largely determined by where and how we live. So, before you dismiss the following as the ramblings of a malcontent, remember: these musings emerge from a Kashmiri...
Is Islamic Marxism an Oxymoron? — by Musa Malik
hroughout the millennia, as human societies have developed and evolved, we humans have found ways to know more about the invisible forces that govern our day to day lives as living, breathing human beings. With the passage of time, we have given...
The Moon Emerging from the Clouds — A Personal Account by Ensherah Freij
f you read the book of life, you will find words that echo with pain and betrayal, multiple stories revolving around a penetrating sorrow, and narratives replete with wounds, one after the other. On an unusually cold summer’s day, the young girl in...
Colonizers, Annihilating and Civilian Armament — by Rela Mazali
Colonizers, Annihilating and Civilian Armament Rela MazaliEnglish translation by the authorTalk for the panel: Feminist thoughts during a war, Ben Gurion Univ., MA Graduate conference, June 9, 2024wo dear friends of mine write about genocide. One...
From the Editor
2024: An Inverse Year in Review
Editorial Note REV. 2.0: Open Source as an Ideology of Participation and Inclusiveness – by Amjad Majid
t was almost the year 1984 and the world of personal computing was barely breaking into the consumer market at a mainstream level. In imagining and projecting Apple as a revolutionary force resisting an imagined tyrannical corporate monopoly that...
2023: An Inverse Year in Review
