Category: FICTION & POETRY


  • โ€œGo back to your country! We donโ€™t want you here!โ€ The words still echoed in my mind as I crossed through the carpeted lobby of the Student Union building. Students sat in huddles on the floor, others sitting lazily on the arms of couches occasionally laughing at something someone said. When I walked by, the…

  • Today, I write to you from a faraway land I don’t know when my words will reach you, If you’ll get to read my letters or my songs. I hear rumours of men marching towards your city Men with guns and laathis and power; Power that controls us, tortures us, leaves us powerless in our…

  • On the bulge of Amira Kadal, I stare at the fish in their basket, murmuring between themselves about their estrangement from the Jhelum that flows underneath, belligerently. Or, maybe, they are just gasping for a few extra breathsโ€” as many as they canโ€” before it is all over; as all of us try to do…

  • The Murderer and the Murdered I have never found it in my heart,to clean my room.I like it muddy and untidyโ€”the kind of chaos, that accompaniesa frantic search for the passport,just before leaving for the airport. A madness walking naked,turning my walls into New York Subways,where trains leave from one city to anothertravelling through holes…

  • My mind is a graveyard where voices go to sleep. How do I tell you I am barren today?If satisfaction was not bought with a few clicks,I would have sailed too, like Odyssey and spit on his grave,named myself the only Queen of Ithaca. Haven’t I travelled to worlds far beyond?Haven’t I seen God in…

  • It was time. The time; when I fell in love with the fall of darkness, when dying light of the day slowly yields to the devouring darkness of night. It was the time when I fell in love with the sensually unabashed darkness, silently nestling the verdure fields of rice and the far and wide…

  • Reclining against the mud-plastered wall, Gull Khanโ€™s soft-natured wife Noor opened the copper lid of the samovar, blew a mouthful of air into its chimney, and after adding a pinch of salt in the tea, she dropped the lid back with a shrill clank. The steam that leapt out spread a milky smell across the…

  • Translated from Kashmiri by Dr Mufti Mudassir Glory to Him who created lifeEarth, heaven, love and knowledge Countless blessings to the ProphetHis noble companions and family A thousand eulogies to his four friendsWho are the four pillars of the faith Ovations offered, mark my wordsA love tale of Sheereen, Khusrau and Farhaad Nizami says so…