I woke up with the taste of blood in my mouth

Mother woke before sunrise with the weight of the house pulling at her bones and moved against the cold floor, the chill biting at her ankles. In the corner hung the gutted rabbit, its blood pooling on the floor. Her fingers trembled, as she bathed herself in it, coating her skin red.

Raise no alarm, if on a night dimly lit,

That night, the wind howled like the wolves as Shyam and Alameen rowed silently, their boat traversing through the misty air and the water rippling gently beneath them.

A star fell on the ground in the windy night

Glamorous lightweight raindrops  from the October sky keep 

As I read Subimal Misra–I was therefore seized by the urge to bring out his stories, or "anti-stories", in graphic form

The question here should be: Why does the nationality of the poet matter if the sentiment and emotional dimensions are the central focus that keeps the dynamic of a national anthem active?

As if playing a game of chess / Still the world waits for the next dawn

The audience for the jatra was all any Marxist theatre director in Kolkata could have wished for.

I am compelled to ask what being a Bangali even means today: What shapes our ethnic identity?

The recent attack on “Amar Shonar Bangla” stems from this type of attempt to categorise the national anthem, leading to further allegations against it

The first pulse, in the midst of a whipping maelstrom, 

Don’t you see— I can only write dark. 

Saikat Majumdar writes with a sharp poignancy that arrows straight to the core of the heart.

At some point, it started turning into hyper-productivity, because more task completion meant more serotonin. My writing, on the other hand, shifted from my internal world to the problems of the external world.

Resistance takes many shapes and forms, from taking up arms, to facing police batons, to picking up a pen

This is the third and final part of “Storm Child”, serialised here on Star Literature

August, marked with dying things. Summer’s end, / My freedom spent

Eternity collapses at the wheel of change. / Past is lost