From the Editor’s Desk

War rages, little children are killed, prices rise and uncertainty surrounds us- what is left to say you think.

And then on my night walk I see this magnificent Tabebuia Rosea in full bloom on the Bangalore roads. I realise that it is in times of uncertainty that we need to surround ourselves with beauty, because in the end that's what we hope to leave behind as well as look forward to.

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Managing Editor, The Bangalore Review

Arijit Sen

Many Cinemas of Manipur

Arijit Sen, an independent journalist, writes about Boong, the winner of the best children’s film at the BAFTA

Shamya Dasgupta

Shamya Dasgupta interviews film maker Soumik Sen

Asijit Datta

Grief IV

Grief is sometimes a pair
of oversized trousers.
I put my legs in and all air
presses upward.

Book Reviews

Five Modern Bengali Poet: A Book Review

Sekhar Banarjee reviews Five Modern Bengali Poets

Translations

Why Nails Grow?

R. Raj Rao and Babar Ali Sayyad translate Hazari Prasad Dwivedi's Why Nails Grow?

Fiction

The Clothesline

Maisie lingered in the office supplies section before ending in home goods. She enjoyed this aisle most because she could tell that the man at the counter took pride in it. Often, it was stocked with new, unique things. This time, he had added a box of pens, with dark

Fiction

The Becoming of a Badass

Remember, if they lay their hands on you, you can hit back! Plant your back foot firmly on the ground. You have to keep your balance when being a Badass. Take a deep breath, ball up your fist, and hit them square on the nose. That is the universal “Leave

Poetry

Full Moon

The moon is a feminist. She’s showing me her round belly, pregnant with herself, glowing. Fullness, she tells me, is powerful.

Fiction

Germ Warfare

Three weeks later, Alex was still there and not showing any signs of moving out. She had quit her job and was supposedly looking for another one. Occasionally, she helped out at a friend’s nursery but the friend couldn’t afford to hire her full or even parttime. Lauren was looking

Fiction

Negroni Season

You show up at my apartment not with the ingredients for Negronis, but instead bring me a high-end bottle of gin and some tonic water. You’ve forgotten the lime, but the gin is a special blend, infused with botanicals and citrus and is lovely all on its own. “We’ll have

Non-Fiction

The Value of a Quarter

On a vacation in Bali, a taxi driver leans over to my white husband in the front seat and says, “Your wife is brown and beautiful, just like me!” In Cambodia, a tuk tuk driver tries to flirt his way into getting me to pick him over the other drivers

Fiction

The Studio

My daughter starts college in the fall and only speaks to me when she’s in need of money. My wife nags me all the time about a cottage we saw upstate about three years ago. It’s in the mountains. The back deck overlooks a huge lake. A slow-moving stream runs

Poetry

Learning a Bird

Be called to wild places; gather names, welcome flowers—beside the road, through cracks in sidewalks— miracles on a wooded trail. Pay rapt attention. Treasure

Fiction

Stoop Talk

And this is what you did on the mornings you both found yourselves on adjacent stoops, philosophizing over things out of your control. Like the rising cost of everything or how her middle one must fully process every feeling, otherwise, he is a lion ready to attack.

Poetry

Lake

Maybe the rippled surface of the lake is a gateway to stars in a different sky, and maybe the probing of pike nosing through roe

Fiction

The Letter

Three years earlier Lizbeth had moved from her small town in upstate New York to a suburb of New York City. It had been a question of economics, safety and comfort – a dark studio apartment in a questionable part of Manhattan, but with reasonable access to job and city life

Poetry

Lessons in Gyotaku

Hints of flesh in the forgery of flesh, a habitat of deconstructed trucks, rusted in a mud-slaked parking lot: all that is not submitted to

Fiction

Sophia Got Engaged

She drummed the fingers of her left hand on the rows of color-coded tabs in the drawer, pretending to deliberate, the brilliant stone twinkling with each gyration under icy fluorescent office light. “Thanks,” Malik mumbled when she handed the folder over, quickly wheeling himself away. Dom coughed and turned, seemingly

Poetry

As Wide As Weeds

Your smile as wide as weeds, not dandelion, not wish gone to seed. but buffalo burr, pretty as it is noxious, stinging spines beneath vibrant

Fiction

The Passion of the Grandmother

She was the diamond brooch of the family, who had roasted chickens, hams and turkeys, stirred gallons of iced tea, and served pound cake on Franciscan Apple earthenware. No calorie need ever be counted, nor any puff from a Virginia Slim. She bestowed comfort from hands fragrant with Porcelana. Cold

Fiction

Thrift Savers on a Thursday Night

A slim mirrorless camera sits in the center of a display case among camera lenses and larger DSLR cameras. Technology has vastly improved since this camera came out. Working photographers would replace it with something with more megapixels and a better lens. They’d write off the donation on their taxes.