In that stillness, I realise survival is not only perseverance.

The article highlights four heartfelt stories about love, exploring themes of waiting, enduring affection, selfless care, and love for life. Each story captures love’s transformative power and emotional depth.

the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box

My father speaks in a dismantled language that goes up in  smoke. 

I feel my rage, ma, a living thing;/ A beast, caged, like me

I skip talking to myself for hours / The “me time”, before going to bed

Shimu and Tushar had grown up together on an alley in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city. Their neighbouring houses were separated only by a brick wall, about two meters high. The branches of a tree growing beside Tushar’s house overhung the wall, its foliage shading a part of Shimu’s courtyard.

Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook

What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight

Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred

The pavements are hotter in winter, the rain never wets the asphalt and I never tell you to do anything else other than “be”. 

And along with our bodies, the rage keeps on, / we chafe and bleed and clot and steer; / we go mad and nude

from my blood fangs, disarrayed cold / looting my sore body / that has done so much for me, while I ached

I wonder where God sits in that tower. I wonder whose cries are louder.

From moon beamed mountains  To plains deltaic; In Diasporas–detached 

My father’s ancestors were Ayurvedic medicine men from a remote corner of the North Bengal. A few generations ago, one of them had cured a long-lasting ailment of the Raja of Taherpur and had received, as a reward, a large chunk of agricultural land or “joat” next to the mighty Joshoi Beel.

The burst of fragrant marigolds on the blanched porch of our old Calcutta home, free like sand, unbridled like the wind

To sit on thy laurels seems apposite, Yet to dig graves for perceptive pleasure resemble a breach Of lines bridging the things learned, unlearned.

We walk past the singing bells and our chambers, Blind to the perils beyond our walls.

I am from the 19 houses in 15 districts, none of which could become "my home, sweet home"