Narrating the Silence: A Human Rights Reading of Joothan: A Dalit’s Life by Lovely Soni

The novel [Joothan] can be considered a testimony that carves a sharp distinction between the ideal constitutional record of human rights and a realistic portraiture of the lived experiences of the subjugated minority communities, where the mindset and deep internalised casteism overpowers the legal framework. (LITERARY SECTION)

Legislating Identity, Culture, and Memory: An Interview with Doyir Ete Taipodia

I feel it is high time that our cultural signifiers, our metaphors, and our images become part of literary aesthetics and are accepted in literary discourse. (LITERARY SECTION)

Life is an amalgamation of ups and downs but sadly, some view only the downs and act accordingly. Mandakini Bhattacherya’s short story The Gift that She Was is a distressing tale that depicts the weakened hearts and their cowardly actions in a simple and logical narrative. (FICTION)

Suppressed, oppressed, subjugated and similar words are perhaps synonymous with the word ‘Woman’ and Abhinaba Maitra’s story Mrs, with a crossed line in the center, is a depiction of that brutality disguised in love and care. (FICTION)

Akshay Sreeja’s poems turn inward, bringing a balance marked by a deep sensitivity to the outside world as well as to the world that grows within each one of us. (POETRY)

Gopal Lahiri’s poems are a window into a world that one has lost, as well as into a world that one grapples to align with. (POETRY)

Dr Glenis Maria Mendonça (in the pic) offers a strongly ecocritical and socially engaged reading, of a short story collection The Bitter Fruit Tree by Prakash Parienkar (translated by Vidya Pai). It   foregrounds the marginalization of tribals, lower castes, women, and migrants within the forest communities of Goa. The review emphasizes the collection’s focus on ecological destruction, caste oppression, and cultural rigidity, showing how Parienkar’s stories intertwine human suffering with environmental loss while challenging the romanticized image of Goa. 

Equally engaging is a memoir They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta, reviewed by Ananya Sarkar. (BOOK REVIEWS)

The Magnificent Ruins by Nayantara Roy, reviewed by Semeen Ali (in the pic), offers a nuanced critical reading that foregrounds the novel’s central concerns with inherited trauma, gendered expectations, and the constricting pressures of family structures within a South Asian context. Her reading highlights how the narrative interrogates surveillance, identity, and loneliness, while showing how women, in particular, become carriers of tradition and unprocessed pain across generations. 
Equally interesting are the other books including The Dead Fish (fiction) by Rajkamal Chowdhary, translated into English by Mahua Sen, reviewed by Sunaina Jain and Re-Inventing Indian Cinema and Culture: Emerging Supremacy of Telugu Cinema by Prof Dr CHSN Murthy, reviewed by Ramesh Susarla. (BOOK REVIEWS)