It was a big window, like an arched doorway. It creaked loudly the first time I opened it. It sounded angry, upset. I wondered why?

A fading comet trail of snippets from the halls of the Mughal Kings remain immortally enshrined in memory’s space.

During the long lockdown in early 2020, I took stock of my shelvedunread books. A mint-green hardback covered book-spine caught my eye;A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

They say that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take But by the moments that take our breath away.

She knocks on the door, The door-bell is broken; a sculpture of unknown figure hangs on the wall, The door is solid, but not made of Mahogany wood.

Last November, our elderly maid servant Fatema’s ma who works full-time at our house, wanted to take leave to get her son married. Of course, I agreed immediately. But she would be gone for about two weeks and hence she proposed that her eldest son’s wife might work in her absence.

The river wept, as we left But its tears were not for us.

Flowers on Facebook — Violet, red, yellow, orange — splashed a welcome into a garden never visited

I’m telling you amidst the whispering cropped-headed paddy field, in the lore of these reeds, in the orchestra of these auburn after-harvest field by the seedlings that crack this soil-- I am their spokesperson.

Like everyone else present here, I, too am so fond of roses,

How Freedom Became Our Own Word

Everyone had them on their bookshelves. Everyone read them and fawned over them. Online stores were getting creative with the contents of these young-adult fantasy books, coming up with themed candles, beautifully designed bookmarks, and exclusive sticker packs. It was almost as though the genre had developed a cult following of its own.

A damp siren screamed at the rushing wind. Black and thick smoky clouds slowly clotted in a grey sky, as if preparing for some kind of a ritual.

I can’t sleep anymore Piano. Storms. White noise Nothing works.

It’s already been several months since we’ve been hurled into the vortex of the coronavirus. The virus lives among us, silent and invisible.

The Routledge Diaspora Studies Reader (2017) co-edited by Klaus Stierstorfer and Janet Wilson made significant observations about the increase in global movement of people, capital, products, cultures and ideologies;

I hold stares - I sing to the moon Rigid, motionless - senseless woes

The human race is doing quite well. There was a possibility of a climate catastrophe in the early 21st century but they came to their senses soon enough and managed to deal with it by 2050.

During my adolescent years, I devoted a significant portion of my time exploring the idea of ‘summer love’. The cinephile in me went from cheesy Disney Channel flicks like Lizzie McGuire: The Movie (2003) to masterpieces like Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), while the bibliophile in me devoured Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name (2007) and John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines (2006). However, I had to acknowledge all the ways in which these stories didn’t feel relatable to me. Being a Bengali, I’ve grown up reading about the intense romance shared by Devbabu and Paro or watching the pangs of unrequited love in Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (1964). Should I then dismiss the ‘summer fling’ as an irrelevant Western trope? A thing of the sunny Florida beaches and umbrella topped cocktails?

Unshaven, skeletal men, with hollow, black-ringed eyes, sitting in silent solitude in inner city gutters. Youngsters turned ageless by addiction, their endless need for the next fix drowning out all other desires, commitments or relationships.