When Mrs Mehra leaves Delhi she retires in one of ‘the vast new satellite townships on the eastern fringes of the metropolis’.
Mrs Mehra found Raju through her old friend Mrs Sethi, who herself found him through her own domestic, Sandesh. Raju and Sandesh were from the same terminal village in eastern Uttar Pradesh, and may even have been cousins, though the truth of this is hard to know.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘The flirtations of insects and plants are furtive, hidden and often so brief that if you literally blink you might miss what exactly is going on.’
Dino J. Martins on moths and orchids, from Granta 153: Second Nature.
‘The origin of the dysfunctional family: spores. / Friend or foe? True fern or ally?’
Poems by Sylvia Legris, author of Garden Physic.
‘And the trees were safely tucked in. Their roots were rallying in the soil, in this coil. Would the woman also take a turn for the better in her last decade?’
Three stories by Diane Williams.
‘walking alone down a country road – / distracted by the slightly annoying and toxic / first green of spring, eyes overflowing’
A poem by Emily Skillings.
‘Whatever the aftermath, you won’t see the city again except through the agency of absence, recalling this semi-emptiness, this viral uncertainty.’
From 2020: China Miéville on the UK government’s response to coronavirus.
Deepti Kapoor on travel, authenticity and the peculiarity of being Indian in Uganda.
‘A video of someone flinging their cat out the window is only allowed if cruelty is not a motive’. An excerpt from the new novel by Hanna Bervoets.
‘Trouble was awake – we didn’t need anyone to tell us.’
New fiction by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘None of these people give a shit that a flock of birds is going to choke to death on those balloons, be they pink or blue.’
Fiction by Dainerys Machado Vento, translated by Will Vanderhyden.
‘That was my first death. When the priest tossed the first three shovelfuls of clay on to the coffin, the clattering sound seemed to ring all over the hillside graveyard and my father's face moved sideways as if he had been struck.’
