“Road Trips” by Mariam Jajja
Road Trips
On Being Late to the Party
From the Editor
Let’s tease it out, and lay it out for all to see. So, here, sort of, are the answers to my questions. This new “desi” tradition includes queer comics, erotica, and meta-fiction. It includes the avant-garde, the Gothic, the speculative fiction, the philosophical fiction. It’s fiction inspired by Western writers. It’s fiction that wants to be for everyone, truth be told, even as it doesn’t want to pander. That’s our tradition.
Read MoreThe Storms
By Sarah Thankam Mathews
No normal girl will even say something like that, Kamala, my mother had hissed into the phone, no normal girl wants to be alone, how can you even say such a thing.
Read MoreAlligators
By Tara Isabel Zambrano
The alligator has started to rot. Its suffocating odor pervades the air. The gypsy mother urges us to carry it a little longer. The girl sits next to me, our thighs rubbing, our nostrils burnt under a common stench. The boys on the opposite row are staring at us. The wind brushes her long locks on my face. For one fleeting moment, I want to tell her that she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t need to be told that. There’s no before or after for her.
Read MoreSecond Midnight
By Devi S. Laskar
“You’re going to arrest me for wearing shades?” The policewoman shakes her head slightly, and a strand of mouse-brown hair escapes the untidy bun at the nape of her neck. “Stop playing. You know why I’m here.”
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