From the Editor’s Desk

Every new year when I go back to the work we've shared here, those we choose to work on personally, or even those we might have forgotten to share but enjoyed tremendously- I think of childhood habits, of pressing dead butterflies, flowers and leaves onto old note books. The more we embrace the new, the more we seem to look back upon the old and the familiar, and smile at what flew by us, at what we might have survived, but still look forward to. Tonight, while in search for the right words, I look at the night sky and measure distances- those between the creation of art, its soul and its presentation. Our cities, sometimes doomed with too much thought, with their coat of dust, and apprehension, seem to have forgotten the joy of gazing at stars. But if you look hard enough, and have it in your power, to still put in your creative best, we do find the light- like those invisible Saturn rings that burn bright in the yonder. Those that we know exist, but don't see.

We are two worlds within one, both past and present- and I urge you to indulge a bit in both. From our world of wonder, art, sunshine, love and warmth, here's wishing you all our readers a very happy New Year.

Our January issue brings to you an interesting essay, 'A Way of Seeing: How To Write Like a Woman' by Lily MacKenzie, book reviews by Shekhar Banerjee and Sucharita Dutta- Asane of 'Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras by Mirza Ghalib' and 'Our Many Longings' respectively. In poetry Alan Hill shares a tender poem- 'My Mother', and the fiction section has stories like 'Piece of Petrified Son' by Becca Lawlor.

Love and Light.

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Managing Editor, The Bangalore Review

Non-Fiction

A Way of Seeing: How to write like a Woman

The author circumnavigates the world of literature, along with the intent of discovering the know-how of women writers and comes back satisfied.

Poetry

Second Sleep

My second sleep, where red, white and blue are burning,
the ashes gleaning and glinting as they die.
I wake to the carmine rays of dawn
and fall asleep to the sound of fireworks outside.
I cradle the ivory dove in its mourning,
whispering, “Am I alive? Am I alive?”

Non-Fiction

Our Many Longings – Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh: Edited by Sohana Manzoor

Sucharita Dutta-Asane reviews a collection of contemporary short fiction from Bangladesh edited by Sohana Manzoor.

Featured Works

Poetry

My Mother

My mother rationed it like electricity, food enemies had to be beaten, bombs avoided fires put out Love would be shown in a more practical way through duty, service.

Fiction

The Closet

I was fond of that little place. There were costume-like clothes dangling above my head, willowy branches of a protective forest, and the walls formed an impenetrable edifice, bumpy and cold like Rapunzel’s tower. The clothes smelled of starch and my mother’s youth.

Poetry

Homeshores

The bleached armory of the sea Lay ever-washing on the shore In casques and blades and bulwarks. In your hand a gray medallion crumbles To powder And is claimed with haste By the wind

Fiction

Piece of Petrified Son

I grinned at her and her enviable energy, soaking in her palpable brightness. She practically hopped around the kitchen, half humming a half-familiar tune, as she noticed every detail most people seemed to miss. There was no use in trying to stop this on my own.

Poetry

Happy Birthday, Spider Plant

Spider plant is the wrong name for my immortal perennial. In all her newness, she remains the same tuberous roots that I touched with tiny fingers, eyes illiterate, but full of love.

Non-Fiction

Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras by Mirza Ghalib

Sekhar Banerjee reviews Mirza Ghalib's poems on Banaras

Fiction

The Curator

The Body. My body. My body thus became insignificant, irrelevant even. I owned it, but I didn’t own it. I felt it, but I didn’t feel it. But I felt the times it was battered, abused, spited, pinched, pushed around, shut down.

Poetry

Of Blue Skin and Invisible Suns

They'll be tests, machines that spin famished tubes with eyes like steam engines hanging in space, and no matter how deeply infrared you are, no matter how many mean dogs you put out front