One of the most famous exchanges in all of English literature happens when Alice meets Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall. They get into an argument — not about politics […]
The Poem That Refuses to Stand Still There is a peculiar quality to Rabindranath Tagore’s forty-fifth poem from Gitanjali (1912) — it feels less like something you read and more […]
Before the novel, before the newspaper, before the modern essay — there was a queen, a printing press, and a group of writers who decided that English was worth taking […]
by Rabindranath Tagore Have you not heard his silent steps?He comes, comes, ever comes.Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.Many a song […]
There is a phrase near the centre of Mamang Dai’s poem that rewards the kind of slow, repeated reading that most poems ask for but few receive: “I am the […]
Nature poems are supposed to be peaceful. That is part of their appeal — you enter them the way you enter a garden, leaving the noise of the world behind. […]
Here is the first puzzle Mamang Dai sets for her reader: who, exactly, is talking? The title says the mountain. But read a few lines further and the speaker is […]
The most devastating scenes in A Bride for the Sahib contain almost no dialogue. In this story, silence is its own form of violence. Two Lunch Boxes The honeymoon begins […]
The wife in this story has a name — Kalyani — but the story withholds it for a long time. That withholding is the point. The Advertisement Somewhere in the […]
Khushwant Singh’s short story puts a colonial mirror in front of post-independence India — and the reflection is deeply unsettling. Who Is Sunny Sen? At the centre of Khushwant Singh’s […]
