Lindsey Hilsum & Anjan Sundaram

‘Sometimes we don’t quite know what we’re seeing.’

Tishani Doshi & Karthika Naïr

‘I have never felt it as a poet, and that is why I’m doubly grateful to dance, for having experienced the loneliness and the terror of the empty stage, but also, to have had that live connection.’

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘The red girls’ school stood opposite a grey boys’ school, built five years after it as if to proclaim the rational symmetry of the world.’

Sumana Roy

‘It is difficult to imagine a history of trees / without man in it. Man as tree, Tree as tale.’

Nilanjana S. Roy & Radhaben Garva

‘All of everyday life is here.’

Sigrid Rausing

‘Possession takes many forms, and at the heart of it is death and dereliction, invasion and submission.’

Snigdha Poonam

‘In Indian media and advertising, young people are mainly being projected as vessels of breathless aspiration.’

Issue 130

Sam Miller

‘On 29 September 1888, an Indian teenager with a mild case of ringworm and a fine head of hair sailed into the Thames Estuary.’ Sam Miller on Ghandi's time in London.

Hari Kunzru

‘Rich men have been building tall on this hill for centuries.’

Issue 130

Arun Kolatkar

‘Selecting the right kind of a tomato was crucial for the scam to work.’

Issue 131

Kathryn Maris

‘this dream that might have been pleasant for an / 8-year-old could instead emerge as a nightmare for a woman / on the brink of menopause’

Issue 119

Robin Robertson

Issue 130

Upamanyu Chatterjee

Younger Daughter’s declaration that ‘Othello sucks’ prompts a conflicted response from Father.

Issue 130

Samanth Subramanian

‘There are clubs like the Breach Candy Club all over the Indian subcontinent: relics of the Raj, institutions that were set up as bolt-holes for the British, where they could retreat to row or swim or play cricket or race horses.’