Editor's Note.
Every sunbeam, every strain of music, every sapling and starfish is ultimately the regeneration of a previous something, a collection of somethings, taking on new shape. At the most indivisible level we can comprehend, all life is nothing more than atoms and molecules dancing their way through various forms. And if everything comes from something, it stands to reason that everything must go to something as well.
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A World of Words.
By Sanjana Kapur, Issue 25, Meaning: In Search of Significance.
Like the characters of her work-in-progress, The Sum Of All My Parts, author Andaleeb Wajid crochets intricate patterns with words, weaving through layers to arrive at the meaning at the center of her characters’ lives. Having decided to be a writer at the tender age of ten,
Finding Form in The Contemporary Indian Poem.
By Himali Singh Soin, Issue 23, Rhythm: Ordering Time.
In his Poetics, Aristotle separated the parts of a poem in order to arrive at its skeleton. The parts do not look as they might have in a laboratory. They have been shaped by a natural order...
Songs of Serendipity: Tabish Khair on Linguistic Tussles.
By Manjari Kaul, Issue 22, Coincidence: Fortune's Strange Math.
The stars you see in a constellation can be millions of light years apart from one another. Similarly, the rhymes you hear, for them to be more than trashy jingles, need to trick your ears into...
Everyone Has Dreams.
By Angela Jane Evancie, Issue 22, Coincidence: Fortune's Strange Math.
This is a story about the places that we go, or that come to us, when we are asleep. This piece is about the coincidence between four sets of people, from four continents between four sets...
Sounding Through The Trees: Vivek Narayanan.
By Meara Sharma and Henry Peck, Issue 21, Folly: A wise fool, March 2013
If there’s any kind of definition of an artistin terms of how society thinks of an artist today – it would be the idea that it is ok for them to be a little irrational, or a little insane. It permits that...
Of Monks and Mice and Everything Nice: David Michie on The Dalai Lama's Cat.
By Aeshna Roy, Issue 19, Will: A Desire and A Destination, March 2013
In 'The Dalai Lama's Cat' readers enter a warm, congenial and hopefully entertaining world where they may discover some insights or practices...
The Shape of Time & Words.
By Janice Pariat, Issue 17, Love, February 2013
Someone once said ‘but your stories all end in sadness.’ The events in my stories are sometimes sad, but my attempt in every story is to end with a small ‘lift.’ That is, I want the story to...
Raqs Media Collective: On Triangles, Infinity and Learning Where to Stop.
Issue 16,The End is Where We Start from II, January 2013
The Raqs Media Collective is most often a triangle, sometimes a circle and often a shape elusive to geometry, a bubble, a building, a boat. In being, they create. In creating, they think and ...
Dr. Alka Pande: On Walking With The Erotic Ascetic.
Issue 16,The End is Where We Start from II, January 2013
Hushed whispers and embarrassed giggles forced me to give up my race against time as I was preparing for the more complex final examination on Indian aesthetics...
The Binaries of Becoming.
By Prakriti Mukerjee, Issue 15, The Light & Dark Issue, November 2012
Every City has its secrets... but Calcutta, whose vocation is excess, has so many that it is more secret than any other. Elsewhere, by workings of paradox, secrets live in the telling: they whisper life into humdrum street corners and dreary alleyways; into rubbish-strewn rears of windowless tenements and the blackened floors of oil bathed workshops. But here in our city where all law
The Ghosts of Industry.
By Angela Jane Evancie, Issue 14, The Non-Fiction Issue, October 2012
This was a place for machines, once; empty now, the inhuman scale of the walls and ceilings shrunk us to almost nothing.
Resurrection: Sheba Karim and the intentions of history.
By Sheba Karim, Issue 14, The Non-Fiction Issue, October 2012
In my research for Razia, the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ adage often comes to mind. There was a lot of madness in medieval India! Truth, of course, is never limited by possibilities. If something is ‘true,’ then people immediately suspend disbelief—if it’s actually happened, what is there not to believe?
Something Not Exclusively Art.
By Anirudh Karnick, Issue 14, The Non-Fiction Issue, October 2012
In the debate between art for art's sake and art with a (sociopolitical) purpose, what is ignored is that most people to whom art (in any form) matters use it for 'life's sake'.
Everything is Fiction.
By Janice Pariat, Issue 13, The Fiction Issue, October 2012
Janice Pariat is a writer who is currently in between places, on tour with her recently published book of short stories, Boats on Land. She gives The Fuschia Tree a specially selected excerpt for this issue.
On the off-Chance.
By Himraj Soin, Issue 12, The Chance Issue, September 2012
Himraj Soin utilizes the idea of imitation and improvisation by redrawing five Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, and is therefore fated to be a mere imitator. What happens to the artist when he has no free will?
Art words we love to hate (and still use anyway)
By Avni Doshi, Issue 11, Beauty And The Useless, September 2012
Avni Doshi, in truly "meta" form, parodies the words you'll eavesdrop on, or worse, have to endure directly, at an art opening or a 'salon'.
The Captive
By Himali Singh Soin, Issue 11, Beauty And The Useless, September 2012
A list-poem about a person who is being transformed into a work of art, devoid of purpose, to the tunes of Frank Zappa.
Illusion: Seeing Beyond Seeing
Meaning: In Search of Significance.
Melody: A Different Tune
Rhythm: Ordering Time