1: For a long time we didn’t know any men who cried our fathers couldn’t cry and our brothers had all stopped crying abruptly one day it was only ShahRukh whose big eyes would brim and swim with unshed tears and each time he wept all the girls and women …

Dear readers, I wanted to share that I will be conducting a workshop on short-form writing at a beautiful homestay called, ‘Slow Garden’, in Leh, India from the 20th to the 25th of September. …

1: I know someone who starts her phone calls with a laugh instead of ‘hello.’ 2: Our cook would sing each time she made mutton curry. And sometimes I’d think that the recipe included browned onions, green chilli, ginger-garlic paste and half a Bangla song. 3: This man I like…

1: This should be obvious but start with flowers. Take a walk in a garden you like and pick (don’t necessarily pluck), the brightest, softest and most surreal looking flowers. String them together or stick them in a vase full of water. This will forever be the nicest bouquet you’ve…

All that’s glued, fixed, taped and bound was once torn, chipped, broken or found there’s an angry, dark hole where a face should be in a photo of her (and a lover) from 1973 the crockery shelf holds a teal blue cup that lost an ear, during a minor slip up but she likes to drink her tea from this cup alone on a teakwood chair that’s now scuffed and worn there’s a book from her father, a scarf from an aunt

1: We lived here for fifteen years: All our stuff is in boxes the house is so bare now there’s no warm green couch no curtains, no books or teacups I say “goodbye,” softly and turn to leave and when my voice echoes in the emptiness I hear the house…

Look at the bedroom walls you loved, poems you collected, texts you gathered as evidence, memes you stored as ammunition, sentences you hoarded, dresses you long to own, ideas you wish to practice, places you may never visit but perhaps one day…, pottery you hope to make, songs you never…

1: D didn’t like being hugged- she would squirm, there would be no leaning into her- she’d shift, unobtrusively. And she hated a friendly arm on her shoulder- the weight of that arm, the knowledge of it; felt like she was being pushed into the ground. D hadn’t been held…

1: Hate is a gooey balm There’s a thick, viscous hatred that numbs the bitter end of relationships in a coating of righteous anger. And when hate offers you many reasons to detest him, it also offers you enough reasons to move on. 2: When D met P they found…