Dear reader,
As the monsoon sets in across the country, we are happy to give you another chance to celebrate the end of the torturous summer – Spark’s June issue, themed ‘Facets of Nature’. We have a lovely collection of poems this time, drawing on many aspects of nature such as greenery (or the lack of it), the animal kingdom and weather of all kinds. These are well-supported with a medley of fiction and non-fiction as well as some digital art and photography. The Lounge fills in with the usual dose of non-fiction on movies and books. We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed working on it!
Elephants are a delight to watch, more so when you visit them in a family outing. Bob Bradshaw’s poem portrays one such experience that’s filled with little yet interesting observations about a group of elephants.
A seed resists coming out of its comfort zone, but its innate nature pushes it out into the glorious world anyway. Is this the story of, well, every story too? Bhargavi Ravishankar pens a piece of flash fiction.
“What do you feel when you see the first rain cloud of the season adorning the sky?” asks Dhanya of the land of the official onset of the monsoon, Kerala. Read on to recollect your own monsoon memories as she tells you hers.
Mohan surely thinks he knows it all. An ‘assignment’ to fetch a jackfruit from the forest however makes for an interesting encounter that, quite like the jackfruit, might prick – his pride. Prashila Naik pens the story.
Deepu used to be shamelessly mortified of insects, but today, she takes pleasure in killing them – and maybe doesn’t even have to kill them every time. Vani Viswanathan tells you how that transition happened.
Bakul Banerjee’s poem focuses on one of the key natural forces at work inside earth, namely the Centripetal force. The poem is structured in the form of a Pantoum.
The city hates Nature, says Parth Pandya, in his poem that highlights the constant struggle going on between the two.
