Fiction has long chronicled that women have always worked more than what is counted, felt more than what is acknowledged, and lost more than what anyone will ever quantify.

If the girls we read about could speak today, their voices would be both sharp and unflinching.

To understand the deep-seated relevance of this modern debate, we must embark on a journey into the heart of Sarat Chandra’s literature, where these battles first found voice.

I first heard Taylor Swift’s song “The Fate of Ophelia” on the radio during a road trip to New Hampshire the day after it was released on October 3.

My readings of the two books—the subject of this write-up—happened to be on two momentous occasions, set two decades apart in utterly contrasting ways.

Heathcliff portrays a very unique strain of masculinity. It is not one that comes from being a man in a patriarchal society, nor from one being amongst majority women.

It’s very likely that Substack will become the “drawing room” of intellectuals and creative elites.

Before he was “Leonard Cohen—the celebrated singer”, he was “Cohen, the poet”.

The refusal to write beautifully is often justified in the name of neutrality, of detachment, of discipline.

Where Babitz is like the intimidating older sister you could only listen to in an obsessed quiet, Ephron feels more like a friend translating my internal monologue into the perfect words.

In the mist-covered hills of Ooty and the famine-ravaged villages of Bengal, they speak of ghosts. They whisper of a Zamindar’s phantom haunting a grand manor and a shape-shifting shakchunni preying on a crumbling estate.

Farhad Mazhar has long stood at the unpredictable intersection of poetry, politics, and philosophy.

Some poets arrive like rain on parched soil—needing no defense, only recognition. Al Mahmud (1936–2019) was one of them. And yet, in the usual crookedness of history, we have found ourselves having to defend what should already have been canonised. There was a time—not long ago—when his name uns

For today’s feminists, the focus isn’t just on challenging or breaking social norms, but also on asking, who gets to break these norms? And to what extent?

In "Daddy," the speaker's inability to speak is not merely personal trauma but a symbol of women's historical silencing.

Now, two decades later, the question lingers: Did "Guts" really cause waves of fainting spells, or did the legend grow legs of its own?

I couldn’t help but think of the cultural significance of the word “ma” in our own society today; it is lead-heavy with meaning and so frequently invoked—from commonplace addresses of tender respect for women to motherly depictions of the landscape of Bengal in artworks, songs, and films

In a lecture, Rabindranath proclaimed, “I hope that some dreamer will spring from among you and preach a message of love and therewith, overcoming all differences..."

These decisions hint at an implicit belief that certain genres or readerships require the exclusion of certain genders, whether due to artistic limitations, market considerations, or adherence to established genre conventions.

Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal’s 'Instruments of Torture' is a powerful literary collection that delves into the psychological and societal torments individuals endure, particularly focusing on themes of beauty standards and the representation of women. Each story in the collection is named after a medieval torture device, serving as a metaphor for the emotional and societal pressures faced by the characters.