Book Review: Medusa Says It All
Reviewed by : Jhilam Adhikary While reading T.S. Eliot talking of John Donne in his now famous essay The Metaphysical Poets, I came across the part where he praises Donne’s works, which frankly, opens the door for a renewed interest in Metaphysical Poetry early in the 20th century. To put it simply, quoting the line,…
A Death in the Forest: A Review
Paromita Goswami’s short stories are resplendent, each shining in their own light of local language and deep cultural sensibilities of the native and indigenous population of the forests of Chandrapur, Maharashtra.
Semeen Ali Reviews The Opposite Bank and Other Poems
Poet: Ramchandra Pramanik Translator: Sreejata Paul Publisher: Antonym Collections Poetry often emerges from two impulses. One is deeply personal, where the poet dives into their own experiences, bringing forth pearls of wisdom from an intimate well, placing the self at the heart of the poem. The other is observational, where the poet turns their gaze…
Review of Language Has No Homeland
Language Has No Homeland Poet: Aditi Dasgupta Reviewed by: Malini Bhattacharya Aditi Dasgupta’s Language Has No Homeland is a slim book, albeit an inventive and cadenced one. This is a collection of poems that builds bridges across languages and the unique emotional semantics that each represents. We meet Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Bodo,…
Book Review: Undecember
Review of Amit Shankar Saha’s Undecember: The Thirteenth Month Reviewed by Subashish Bhattacharjee In Undecember: The Thirteenth Month, Amit Shankar Saha extends the calendrical imagination that shaped his earlier volume, Etesian::Barahmasi, into a liminal poetic space: an intercalary month, a surplus of time composed of “stolen days.” Conceived as the lunar adjustment that reconciles discrepancy,…
Of Passions & Provocations
Filmmaker and Writer Devashish Makhija’s New Book Bewilderness is a Homecoming to Poetry
Showcasing: Fractured States by Ranjan Roy
Book: Fractured States Author: Ranjan Roy Translated from the Bengali by Ritwika Maiti In a near-future India, the nation has shed the last remnants of its democratic past. The Constitution has been quietly rewritten, surveillance technologies monitor every citizen, and belonging is no longer a right—it must be proven through documentation. The government, through its…
Semeen Ali Reviews Bengali Short Stories in Translation
When you sit down with a collection of short stories, what often takes you by surprise is the depth and intensity that writers can explore through this genre. These narratives lay bare the fragility of the human condition; not confined to a few individuals, but spread across experiences and magnified so that readers can recognise…
New Release
Writing from the Solitary: An Anthology on Loneliness Writing from the Solitary: An Anthology on Loneliness, edited by Priyanka Sarkar andvSemeen Ali, collates twenty-three voices pondering over the feeling of loneliness. Featuring poems, essays, and short stories, the collection brings the daunting subject into the foreground: not as something that needs to be resolved, rather…
The Art of Embracing Life Anew
Coming Out Solo is ultimately a book about giving love its due – love that is not of the romantic and marital variety, but the love of friends, siblings, parents and children. This is the love that builds itself in loyalty and solidarity and yet is not ‘eulogized obsessively in poetry and song and film.’…
Book in Focus: Vanished by Ahmed Masoud
Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda is a gripping and emotionally charged novel that blends literary mystery with the harsh realities of life under occupation.
In Focus: Laffaz
Laffaz— by Yogendra Ahuja, translated from Hindi by Varsha Tiwary—is a novella about an elusive, manipulative figure known only by his alias: the word spinner. The unnamed narrator first hears of Laffaz in the 1980s while working as an assistant manager at a small-town bank, where Laffaz’s name appears in the file of a willful…
Book Review
As such, this Reader deserves to be read alongside existing translations, not only as a commemoration of Rilke’s 150th anniversary but as an experiment in the ongoing art of poetic translation. It reminds us that Rilke’s poems, endlessly retranslated, continue to demand and reward fresh attempts to catch their elusive music in another tongue.
Charanbhumi – Echoes from the Grazing Lands
Set during the heydays of the Communist Government in Bengal during the 1970s, it follows the protagonist Munshi as he tries to…
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Of Passions & Provocations
Filmmaker and Writer Devashish Makhija’s New Book Bewilderness is a Homecoming to Poetry
Book Review by S.Mridha
Somjyoti Mridha reviews Charanik: The Walker by Mohanlal Gangopadhyay, Translated by Jayanta Sengupta. Charanik, originally published in Bengali in 1942 narrates a walking tour undertaken by the author Mohanlal Gangopadhyay (1909-1969) with his Czechoslovakian friend Mirek during the late 1930s just before the onset of hostilities that culminated in the Second World War. The Bengali…
Ipsita Deb in conversation with Portrait Artist Subhojit Bhar
Ipsita : Subhojit, please take us through your journey. How did you first discover your passion for painting? Also, about your techniques, medium, and the colours you use. I am a self-taught portrait artist who likes to work both in traditional and digital media. For the most part of the day though, I am a…
Anshu Chhetri reviews Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide To Getting Lost.
Rebecca Solnit begins her book A Field Guide To Getting Lost while getting drunk on Elizah’s wine. The word ‘wine’ serves as a metaphor here, an opening to pass through from the teachings of her conservative Catholic mother. She then shifts her narrative to a backyard door which is left open at night. An uncommon…
Call For Submissions : Issue # 11
How does one think about power? Is it brute force, a state’s will to unleash destruction or is it more ordinary, running through and around us daily, without us even realising its presence, invisible and web-like?
With Bhaswati Ghosh
Parcham is proud to host a workshop on Crafting and Compiling a Fiction Manuscript titled From Foundation to Finish: Creating Compelling Fiction Manuscripts curated by Poet, Author and Translator Bhaswati Ghosh. The Two Day workshop will take place over Gmeet/ Zoom on the 17th of April ( Friday 7:30 P.M-8:30 P.M) and on 19th April…
March 2026: Featuring James A. Greensmith
In “attempting to find in motion what was lost in space” : James A Greensmith in conversation with Ipsita Deb “I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further – for time is the longest distance between two places… The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn…
Fiction and Editorial: March 2026
Editor’s Note: Aditee Sharma “We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.” Vandana Shiva This claim made by Shiva calls for the urgency of the ecological crisis and the need to find solutions…
Poetry: March 2026
Issue Editor’s Note : Aditee Sharma “We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.” Vandana Shiva This claim made by Shiva calls for the urgency of the ecological crisis and the need to…
Short Fiction: Bindi
Bindi by Purav Pradhan Glass beads tied into a thread makes up a necklace on Bindi’s chest. There are glittering lights and the ghastly bokeh on the mosaic of the changing room. Hollow muffled voices space the room like smoke infiltrating the humid atmosphere. The smell of cheaply scented make-up and sweet lip balm cakes on…
Short Story by Riya Dubey
THE ALBRECHT FAMILY DISAPPEARANCE- CARLSON DETECTIVE Rain had been falling since morning, and the power was out again. In Levington, that was nothing new—winter storms came and went, and people had learned to live with the dark. Now and then, a crossbill called from somewhere unseen, but mostly the town lay quiet. Time felt slow…
The Forsaken: Translated by Pratyasha Sen
The Forsaken First published as “Upekhhita” in Parashuram Granthabali, Vol. 3. Fifth reprint, 2006. 3 Rhododendron Road, Ballygunge. Outside, it had been pouring incessantly. Inside her drawing room, Garima Ganguly sat near the piano. Facing her was Chotok Roy, seated on an easy chair. The drawing room had scant furniture. Garima’s father had recently received…
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