Enjoy a freewheeling issue of Spark this month, with our ‘Kaleidoscope’ issue! This month, we have a wonderful mix of poetry, non-fiction and fiction that span a wide range of topics under the sun. We hope you enjoy reading through the issue! Cover Image by Neha Doshi.
A man, admired by many for his athletic figure and handsome looks, contemplates his face standing before a mirror. M. Mohankumar’s poem conjures the thoughts running in the man’s mind.
Don’t stories live their lives? Don’t they dream like us? Don’t they evolve? Don’t they aspire to be extraordinary like we do? Isn’t each of us a story after all? This is a story of one such story named Tix. By Rajarshi Banerjee.
Hari Ravikumar writes a poem on jnana, bhakti, and karma yoga, traditionally identified as the three paths to moksha.
The choices we make today resonate throughout our lives. If given a chance, would you still make the same choice which you made in the past? How much of your present are you going to sacrifice to secure how much of your future? In this allegorical story, Vishal Anand meditates on the limitations of leading a life on the edge, without a wide margin, and the emotional turbulence it may bring to us in the future.
In a three-part poem, Aparna Nandakumar writes about a desire’s premise, about leaving a desire unrequited, finally pointing out how in the face of intense physical desire such arguments do not hold water.
For Shreya Ramachandran, snow was a true marker of being in a foreign land. She recounts her first time seeing snow in London, a place she believes holds its best for those who wait and watch.
Vani Viswanathan writes a story where the unlikeliest of people sympathise with one another – after all the world is divided into haves and have-nots of unimaginable variety.
Parth Pandya writes a ghazal (a poetic form with origins in Arabic poetry) in English, attempting to stay with the rules of the form and bringing forth the beauty of expression that a ghazal uniquely allows.