At Spark this month, we return to our favourite theme for August, ‘India Decoded’. Despite the fact that this is the fourth time we are featuring this theme, we have a new set of perspectives to showcase in the issue through a fine selection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and photography. Additionally, we feature Dilip D’Souza, veteran journalist, as our Writer of the Month, through a special interview.
In a “transformation poem”, Bakul Banerjee addresses two grave social situations that plague India.
Ammu and her father have a candid conversation as they travel to Shimla, about why he never quite managed – or bothered – to learn Hindi. Vani Viswanathan pens a story that offers a peek into the life of a rebellious student during Madras State’s protests against Hindi as the official language of India.
Preeti Madhusudan believes the architecture of Indian hill-stations need a radical revamp. Read on to know why.
Here’s an interesting conversation between a small girl who has been raised abroad and her mother who is from India. She can’t imagine someone else folding her laundry and surprisingly neither can her mother, now! Gauri Trivedi tells her story.
India, as a nation, is often perceived as a bundle of contradictions. Vinita Agrawal’s poem attempts to cite some of them.
Vibha Sharma lists five books written by non-Indian authors that she thinks come close to capturing the diversity and chaos that is inherent to India.
Eighteen-year-old Mayukh unexpectedly bumps into Rakesh Verma, an astronaut who has been missing since his space mission to the moon in 1989. Parth Pandya tells the story of how Mayukh familiarises the man from space on India as it is today.
