Squeeze Edges to Make a Diamond
Short Story by Elizabeth Tan
You botched the opening of the new milk carton, and now the broken lip of the spout gets weaker with every pour, milk dribbling, and really, you should have seen it coming, that first decisive moment when the cardboard refused to peel clean, but the thing is there’s nothing you could’ve done about it – not even make the side which says OPEN OTHER SIDE into a spout…
A Theory of Hindu Neurosis
Fiction by Parashar Kulkarni
“My title A Theory of Hindu Neurosis – might have encouraged curiosity among those of you familiar with my earlier work. This work inaugurates my engagement with a new field of inquiry – psychoanalysis – which has not received the attention it deserves in our country. We have left it to our cousins in Germany to contribute to it.”
Tamarind Trees as the ‘accidental heroes’ in Makassar – Indigenous Australia’s ancient contacts
Essay by Lily Yulianti Farid
“Tamarind trees grew around the Makassan trepangers’ camps on the coastal areas, and today, the trees have become a heritage botanical symbol for the Indigenous people in Australia's top end whenever they remember and retelling stories of the trepangers from Makassar.”
What does it mean to stay in a place where everyone leaves?
Essay by Shubnum Khan
“I live by the sea. I have always lived by the same sea on the same coast in the same house. I live in a sleepy city, a city where nothing seems to happen where people sit at the beach and stare until the surf and the sky become one long burning blur. I live in a place where people leave.”
Indran Amirthanayagam
Essay by Abhimanyu Kumar
“His generosity of spirit shines like a watchtower over the choppy waters of the sea of life. It imbues all he writes with a certain light, which illuminates his lines, allowing them to inhabit a texture which is warm and thick like wool.”
Keeping Faith
Essay by Rashida Murphy
My adolescence was marked by itinerant friendships, in a town by the banks of the mighty Narmada. It was an army town, with new girls…I knew I mustn’t anoint ‘best friends forever.’
Nothing Remains the Same – Lessons through my Lens
Essay by Thobeka Yose
“I have learnt that in this life, nothing stays the same. People move on. Hearts break. Dreams change. What you want in life versus what is important NOW varies as the time goes on. Friends move cities. And relationships change shades as though they were setting with the sun.”
Three acts of reading
Short Story by Susan Midalia
Nearly a full house today, he thought. Last week’s lecture must have been a success. And not a mobile phone in sight, either. Excellent. His threat to dump each and every visible phone in a bucket of water must have done the trick.
Between the Lines, To Read
Hybrid by Ambre Nicolson
“Why are the majority of illustrations in the book dedicated to ways of folding napkins? What is Housemaid’s Knee and why are there half a dozen methods for removing blood stains from collars?”
Echoes, a Reflection
Essay by Jasmeet Sahi
“A particular characteristic of analysing diaspora literature is to employ the lens of loss, trauma, and nostalgia. There is often an unsaid expectation for writers of migrant background to write about family, or food or both. Memoir.”
Measurements
Essay/Response by Susie Anderson
The shoreline was measured by year. The people were measured by blood. The distance was measured by time. The pain was measured by depth, but then again so was all feeling and especially love. And the place was pulling me under.
The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha
Review by Sonia Nair
As soon as the narrator first puts on the red shoes, she finds herself…having bypassed…the potentially dehumanising prospect of walking through an airport as a brown person.
The Great Transformation? Or will Greed once again engulf us?
Essay by Anil Netto
Some suspect greed for real estate profits is the real driving force behind the high-density mega-reclamation projects in Penang. Ah, greed in the era of capitalism and neoliberal globalisation. What else is new?