From the Editor’s Desk

As we enter another New Year, the TBR wishes all its readers, friends, and well-wishers a fresh start and a very happy new year. Let this be a beginning for many things, but above all hope. As architects of creative spaces, I hope you dream more and not give up on those dreams, be happy or at least try to be so, make others happy as only those who care can, create more, listen more, live spontaneously, and find the words to carry forward your creative journey.

I hope you’ll have people who love you, those whom you’ll love in return. Be kind to others, but more importantly, won’t forget to be kind to yourself. I hope you read more than ever - evaluate, critique, and uphold literature with as much care, as you would, the song in your heart.

We bring you an interesting issue, with some great pieces of fiction and essays, some fine poetry and translation (which we’re passionate about), and a list of book recommendations from a well-known poet.

Team TBR takes this opportunity to thank YOU the readers for being with us always. We hope you’ll write in your feedback, share, read and follow the work we bring for you.

January, let’s be cool, be fun, be kind.

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Managing Editor, The Bangalore Review

Specials

TBR Recommends – January 2022

Every month, The Bangalore Review recommends a reading list, also mentioning in brief why each book must be read. This month’s list has been compiled by poet, Abhay K.

Non-Fiction

In Times of Shadow Shows and Pandemonium: Returning to Ray Bradbury

At 61 years, in the midst of a pandemic, Keith Fadelici turns his attention to a collection of Ray Bradbury’s novels & short stories on his bookshelves and inspects the author’s lasting legacy.

Fiction

Lotus on the water

John breathes in deeply, feeling his chest muscles expand. Blood rushes around his shoulder muscles. He feels good. He’s going home now and will be able to be there for a while because he was told something this morning that he never knew until then: he’s non-essential.

Featured Works

Fiction

Who are you without your things?

The cup broke into three pieces. There was no cinematic splatter of fragments; just a flat note of three sturdy pieces and a few splinters..

Fiction

The Essence of Your True Origin

The tight fabric of the kite kicked against the wind and shot up into the sky. It was an exceptionally windy afternoon, but the sky..

Poetry

Abecedarian for A Child Brought Up with Magic

Architecture meant nothing— except blanket forts in August. I didn’t know aboutBrutalist monoliths, Renaissance churches & Gothic arcs. I only knew aboutCrafting glue. I smattered..

Poetry

4 poems by Diego Valeri in Translation

Diego Valeri is an Italian poet and literary critic affectionately remembered as 'the poet of Venice'. Laura Valeri translates four of his poems here.

Fiction

Blue Sugar

It was time. Mama and Daddy said it was time. I was almost nineteen years old. I could haul wood, split logs, drive Daddy’s tractor,..

Non-Fiction

The Burial of the Dead/The Agony of the Living

2 APRIL is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain… What are the roots that..

Poetry

Bird-Scattered

He broke my spine down the middle,folded me between vertebraelike a grocery listand carried me to the mountaintopwhere the ground is too hard to dig...

Fiction

“La Tele”

Alessa’s mother left for work at 6 a.m. cada día, not a minute too early and not a segundo too late. Within fifteen minutes, Alessa..

Fiction

Monumental

When he fell, Frank Wetherell became the sixty-first worker to die in the construction of the tower. It would be another year and three weeks..

Fiction

Dad of Mine

Sometimes I’d worry that the greatest thing about me, the thing the world would remember me for above all else, was Dad. Mom was great..

Poetry

America’s Coast Is Ragged

America’s coast is ragged at the bottomYou know this from maps, of courseBut you don’t know it until you fly down into Louisianaon a late..

Non-Fiction

Leaving the Nest

My son and I tried to save a baby bird on our walk together. At a first glance, all we could understand was, that it..

Poetry

the lake

i walk into the lake and die therethe search team drags nothingbut water to the shore i was just a kid after alland my blood..

Poetry

Entre Rios

Born between rivers, you are infinitelycultivated. Sand backwashed from the ocean. Good silt down from the plains. Fermented in Disneyworld bacteria, embryos fasciculate in polluted foam...

Fiction

The Wall

The headline was the death of someone the media called a ‘bright young actor’. Abha took a sip of her morning tea and went on..