‘His room is as he left it, furnished with a carpet, a spinning wheel, a low white table, a mattress and cushion.’
The western state of Gujarat, where Mahatma Gandhi’s life began, has a prohibition law in deference to the great man’s memory. ‘The sentiment that attaches to Gandhi’s name in Gujarat makes it impossible to repeal the law,’ I was told one warm evening. ‘The outcry would be tremendous.’…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘The town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
“I’m from here. I grew up here. In fact, that’s why the government invited me back for this work.”
Short fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘India, as we know it, is changing. What will it become?’
Memoir by Amitava Kumar.
‘In Delhi the heat is chemical, something unworldly, a dry bandage or heating pad wrapped around the body.’
Memoir by Amitava Kumar.
‘I’m curious about the refusal to countenance a connection between disparate experiences – a route by which empathy could travel.’
