A poet mourns the loss of language that comes along with many other losses of lives, livelihoods, climate, and a world as we knew it once. All at the altar of greed and power
September 25, 2025 | Moumita Alam
An Adivasi poet from Mahupada in Gujarat’s Narmada district deciphers the nature of the world. And an intrigued illustrator, a fellow poet, and a translator explore the poem’s many layers as they engage with it
July 02, 2025 | Jitendra Vasava
A poet digs into questions about the roots of our humanity in the wake of a new storm gathering around the sanctity and status of our places of worship
April 26, 2025 | Pratishtha Pandya
Our nation’s disturbing yet hopeful present and our contested history, intertwined with each other in his verse and unfold through our mythology in the hands of a poet
March 21, 2025 | Anshu Malviya
A poet, connected to the soil and his people, gives voice to the absurdity of lives caught between daily struggles and sarkari schemes in five micro-fiction pieces and poems
October 26, 2024 | Joshua Bodhinetra
A poem written during the time of the 2020-21 farmers’ protests at the gates of Delhi celebrates the spirit of resistance in a democracy. We carry this poem by people’s poet Surjit Patar from Punjab, who passed away on May 11, 2024, as a tribute to his memory
A poet writes about the farmers across central India dealing with extreme weather conditions as strong heat wave sweeps through the northern part of the country this year
July 14, 2024 | Syed Merajuddin
A reporter and a poet from West Bengal bring to us what they have observed from travelling across the state in the five years before General Elections 2024
Long after the buzz over God and His fanfare have ebbed at His temple, a poet's sharp and witty limericks force us to take a hard look at the changing fabric of the nation
A poem in Dehwali Bhili warns us about the dangers of distancing ourselves from poetry at a time when the world is in need of light and love
A poet and a teacher, who has dedicated his life to displaced children of Dalit and Adivasi communities gives a voice to their collective anguish
A Bengali poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian to win the Nobel Prize, reminds us of the values that have to be the foundation of a kingdom, a religion, and our own humanity – truth, peace, compassion, and love
A poet writes about his dilemma: should he continue with his suffocating existence on the margins of the city he has been forced to migrate to, or return to his village? A poem in Panchamahali Bhili
A poem about human apathy towards climate change also speaks of the changing social and political environment in India
The Indian Constitution is celebrated in a set of nine haikus, honouring the values that make us who we are
When the powerful manipulate the official records, a poet picks up his words to pen the truth. This one about farmer suicides in UP and elsewhere in the country
On 21 March 2023, the World Poetry Day, a poet dreams of a country and mourns a dream
In times of divisiveness and hatred, a poet goes looking for the languages of love and liberty. And where else does she end up but in a gossamer of mother tongues rising from silenced histories
The subsidence in and around Joshimath has led to cracks in hundreds of dwellings in the town. This poem is written in the aftermath of this disaster
A passionate debate sparked off by a minister’s earnest appeal for a common national language takes a poet back to the Tower of Babel
A short poem, where a young Rabari girl from Jamnagar district writes about her realities, wishes and rights
In his fifth and final poem in a cluster of five written in Dehwali Bhili, an Adivasi poet takes a hard look at the growing conflicts within an Adivasi identity in a society governed by fancy ideas of development
Moved by the death of Indra Kumar Meghwal at the hands of his teacher, a poet wields his pen and lashes at the age-old caste system that keeps many at the receiving end of injustice
A lone woman’s painful struggle for justice, and the recent remission granted to 11 convicts who had assaulted her during the 2002 Gujarat riots, sits, disturbingly, at the centre of this poem
A statement by the first tribal President of India, ‘Droupadi was not my original name’, brings back painful historical memories to Adivasi communities, the earliest inhabitants of this country. The anguish she expressed has been shared by many Adivasis, like the poet here
In his fourth poem in a cluster of five written in Dehwali Bhili, an Adivasi poet condemns the self-destructive nature of our so-called civilization and its hollow understanding of peace
In this third poem, in a string of five written in Dehwali Bhili, an Adivasi poet from Narmada district speaks of the rupture between human beings and nature, and a universe of alternative values
‘For every heart the beast plucked, grew a new heart, a new flower, a new life, a new world’: a poem provoked by a series of selective demolition of houses and buildings across the country
In a string of five poems, an Adivasi poet from Narmada district in Gujarat curates the lived experiences and beliefs of tribal communities. This is the second in the series
Her life lay shredded by a bulldozer. As if the riots a few days ago had not done enough. But the wild flowers, she knows, will grow like hope from the vicious claws of these machines. A poem
Languages, says this Adivasi poet from Gujarat, carry literature, knowledge, worldviews and more. He celebrates this treasure through poems in the Dehwali Bhili language. This is the first in a series
A reporter finds her medium falling short of her expectations as she speaks about life and love with a sex worker from Delhi. She does pick up a pen, but what she writes is not a news story
A writer is moved to strong emotions and poetry as the air fills with words of violence and hatred in the country she loves and calls home
A poet’s powerful tribute to farmers, diverse and united in their spectacular struggle against the three unjust farm laws imposed on them that the state was compelled to repeal
A poem inspired by the spate of cancellations of shows by stand-up comedians and others in recent times – with the authorities, on each occasion, citing possible law and order issues
A poet, troubled by growing ethnic violence and the drives to deter, detain, and deport migrants across the world, and rising hatred against minorities in his own country, ponders the meaning of ‘ghar-wapasi’
A mother remembers a folktale she heard from her mother and writes a little verse about it. Any resemblances to people living or dead are entirely figments of the reader’s own imagination
August 27, 2021 | Pratishtha Pandya
A little vignette from a train journey to mark the International Day of the Girl Child on October 11
A Gorakhpur poet speaks out in anguish as he watches children in large numbers succumb to a deadly fever across UP’s Gorakhpur, Mathura and Firozabad districts amidst a public health system collapse
On December 25, 1968, landlords killed 44 Dalit workers in this Tamil Nadu hamlet. A poem on that tragedy in a week when Mythili Sivaraman, one of the great chroniclers of that atrocity, has passed away
He abhorred those pests getting adept in the dark arts of unity. A poem for the present times
Why were the classrooms deserted, the playgrounds on fire? A poem for teachers lost
As outrage pours in at the Centre's relentless work on the lavish Central Vista project amidst the pandemic, a poet recalls an old tale
Epic characters tumble out gasping for air, but are pushed into an inferno by godlike guardians
The country is ablaze with a thousand bonfires of human lives. A poem about the pandemic
This is poetry that pierces, paintings that perforate – and a story of the pandemic
A lifetime spent standing in queues – then one more at the very end. A poem on the Covid-19 crisis
The continuing and appalling atrocities against young Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh inspired this poem
It’s nearly 60 days since tens of thousands of farmers protesting against three laws affecting them swarmed to the gates of Delhi. This is a poem inspired by the official response to their protest
Sex workers in Kamathipura have been struggling to give their children a life of dignity. Here is a poem inspired by two stories about the realities faced by these women caught in a pandemic of misery
Despite the pandemic and lockdown, tens of thousands of farmers have hit the streets across India since September 25 to protest against three new farm laws. This is a poem in anguish on their struggles
A tribute to Adivasi freedom fighter Demathi Dei Sabar who led an uprising against the British in Saliha village of Odisha’s Nuapada district in 1930 – and to the many young Demathis of that region today
The mass exodus of millions of migrant labourers following the March 25 lockdown continues to fire the imagination of poets and painters. This poem rebukes our many hypocrisies in dealing with workers
The tragedy of the 16 migrant labourers run over by a train near Aurangabad, Maharashtra, on May 8, still haunts us. This moving poem and compelling painting remind us of that dreadful incident
The 16 labourers – 8 of them Gond Adivasis – run over by a goods train on May 8 near Aurangabad district in Maharashtra were all in their 20s and 30s, and from Umaria and Shahdol districts of Madhya Pradesh
May 10, 2020 | Pratishtha Pandya
How long can one watch hungry migrant labourers stranded half-way from their villages when there is Chinese-Thai dinner waiting to be prepared at home? A poem that tears into indifference and inequality
The Covid-19 lockdown-driven distress migrations have touched poets and artists alike. Here's a response
The nine-minute lights-off, lamps-on event of April 5 impacted different people in diverse ways. This was how one poet in Ahmedabad responded to it…
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