From the Editor’s Desk

It is the 77th year of our independence, the tricolour flew high, as I travelled back to the city where the Ganga flows beneath a steel bridge and monsoon laden clouds. As always, there is chaos everywhere, but mostly a loud cry resonates over yet another innocent student's death while the television and social media debate over right and wrong continues. At night I hear the city as it breathes its own toxic air, cries of student unrest, of mortar shelling between the tribes in the North Eastern state of Manipur. ‘Hok Kolorob’: Let there be noise, seems to be a long lost cause. Let the world know the noise, and yet, here we are once again without solutions in sight.

The August issue brings into light publisher/poet Naveen Kishore's poem on love & loss in poetry, Siddiqui F reviews Roopa Pai's book on Cubbon Park, a short story in The Last Story I couldn't Tell, and an interview of bilingual writer Kinshuk Gupta. Do let us know how we did this August.

Thank you for being with us dear readers.

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Managing Editor, The Bangalore Review

Poetry

The Weat of Bings (borward/fackward/onside iut)

Scry-skapers
horporate saidquarters
mirrored mansions
grancy feed-towers
daring town
the latural nandscape

Editorial

TBR Interviews Kinshuk Gupta

Our editor interviews Kinshuk Gupta, doctor, poet, bilingual writer and a translator.

Non-Fiction

Cubbon Park – The Green Heart of Bengaluru

Siddiqui F. reviews Roopa Pai’s book, Cubbon Park – The Green Heart of Bengaluru.

Featured Works

Poetry

This is how it began

I slipped a dream or two between pages 102 and 103 of the handsome volume of poems on my bedside table. Like you would a leaf. The one collected from the pile under the Oak’s shadow.

Fiction

The Last Story I Couldn’t Tell

I left the bar feeling a unique kind of embarrassment, not that I didn’t belong in their world, but a humiliation of character for betraying Corey’s trust. Corey let me into his home and was the only one in Winter Harbor, or indeed in my life, who never seemed to judge me for my naive sojourn North.

Non-Fiction

Decay

The author reminisces about death and mortality and how it shapes the person one becomes.

Fiction

The Poor Man’s Table

I hold the glossy, red boots in my hands, and inside, I feel my seventeen-year-old self, twist and writhe. The last time I saw my mother, she was foaming hot curses from the mouth for my wearing these shoes. They sat in the top of her closet, absorbing the scent of plywood, collecting dust. In all the depths of my mind, I could not fathom her wearing them. Even now I cannot.

Poetry

Verdi Square

I’m on the sidewalk opposite Verdi Square kissing a married woman passionately and thinking oh my god you fool what are you doing because

Fiction

Mrs. Jain’s Mirror

When I began, our images in the mirror transformed too. Reflecting back were two girls wearing purple dresses inlaid with gold, hemlines scraping the sand. We had a diamond stud each in our noses and copious bangles. Once, I’d overheard a family friend describe me as plain. My mum hadn’t denied it. But here, in this mirror, I was something else.

Poetry

An Interview

Everything here is the same—the same faded streetlights and the same fast food and the same homeless people lining the space between buildings.

Poetry

Sluggish

The cold rain at 2 a.m. beats against America, and by then you had already left. A ghost, two clowns will dance on the ceiling until the sky turns grey-white.

Fiction

More than a Lullaby

She was extremely sensitive to this particular raag. A simple mistake in its rendition which escaped the notice of a regular listener – a minute deviation from Shuddh Rishabh while ascending or from the Komal Rishabh while descending, for example – would cause genuine physical harm to her body.

Poetry

For Sale

A wizard, on the other hand, could cast spells with their wands. Radu had two Magic Wands instead of one. To double the power. Radu and the wands were inseparable.

Poetry

Refuge

The body itself is the wound, deep and deserving, skin/hair/breath all edges of the scab. Muscle tension/eye strain, pain beneath the teeth, gentle reminders of the harbor itself.

Fiction

What it Feels like to Still Have Time

Do you chew Bazooka bubble gum still? Do you wear Converse high-tops and carry around erasers that smell like strawberry? Do popsicle sticks fall out of your pockets when you do cartwheels on the path behind the ravine?