Fiction

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ASAP Fiction: Our New Category is Now Live

Arushi Vats Jun 08, 2022

Through Fiction, we hope to develop close encounters among sequestered fields of practice—placing art history and culture studies in contact with the earthly dust of storytelling.

Notes From the Underground: A Subterranean Invocation

Rahee Punyashloka Jun 11, 2022

We see with our fingers. In the dark hostilities down here, where the sun is our enemy, We have trained our leathery, ill-nourished fingers to touch many infinities at each instance.

Finding Nainsukh

Aranya Jun 25, 2022

This series of poems have been written as companion pieces to Amit Dutta’s Nainsukh. They are envisioned as another layer in a palimpsest of conversations across time and space, threading together art, cinema and poetry.

Night Shift Poems

Kunjana Parashar Jul 23, 2022

Invocation is among three poems on the labours of nighttime by Kunjana Parashar. While clocks mark the hours of darkness as a time of retreat and rest, the poet discovers radical visions of life beyond the pale of anthopos, transporting us from the star-lit turrets of magic, to the nimble rustle of ants awakening—all caught in the spell of creation.

The Troublemakers of Manakkarai

Krupa Ge Aug 10, 2022

One morning twelve-year-old Selvi was given a warning. That she might be mistaken for a whore for laughing with her mouth open in front of the male cousin she was promised to. That same day, Rajkumar, the man she would end up with, who wore a white T-shirt and a pair of blue bell-bottomed jeans for his fourteenth birthday was taunted by his classmates.

Three Poems

Nitoo Das Aug 13, 2022

In three poems, Nitoo Das submerges herself in the landscape of the first edition of Salim Ali's book "Indian Hill Birds", a copy previously owned by a named yet unknown woman and gifted to Das.

Suspended Volatility: Act 2 An Interior Image

Arshad Hakim Aug 20, 2022

In an experimental piece—part-prose, part-poem—Arshad Hakim stays with an image. Through jumps, cuts and loops he tells and never shows, a moment as freeze-frame, as screenshot, as kinetic imprint.

Kitna Yaad Thayega?

Irtiza Malik Aug 27, 2022

Excerpted from a chapter in Irtiza Malik's MVA dissertation, fragments of "Kitna Yaad Thayega?" are narrated by the figure of Pasikdar and persons suspended in the gyre of "anxious time"—living in the militarised habitus of Kashmir.

halla bol

Niranjani Iyer Sep 03, 2022

In an experimental piece taking the form of a tasting menu, Niranjani Iyer recounts the snacks that have driven protesting bodies across continents and the ideas we associate with food.

sunset town, rising love

Parth Rahatekar Sep 11, 2022

Responding to photographs by Sunil Gupta, the verses in "sunset town, rising love" by Parth Rahatekar construct, with care and softness, the striated textures of queer longing.

a better place

Subhrojyoti Sep 18, 2022

Subhrojyoti's poem "a better place" draws from an encounter with a photograph by Shahidul Alam titled Last Goodbye (1996), as part of the retrospective curated by Ina Puri at Emami Art, Kolkata.

the art of rot

Ajay Kumar Sep 24, 2022

Inspired by Maksud Ali Mondal's photographic series Biotope (2021) which captures the formation and changes in fungal life, Ajay Kumar's poems take the condition of "rot" as their point of departure

Preethiya Nalku Abhirupagalu: Part One

Anna Lynn Oct 08, 2022

In this two-part story, narrated by four women, Anna Lynn explores the trajectories of love, bondage and freedom in ordinary lives, inspired by the images in the photographs of Eight Thirty, an all-women photography collective based in India.

Preethiya Nalku Abhirupagalu: Part Two

Anna Lynn Oct 10, 2022

In the final two vignettes of Anna Lynn's short story "Preethiya Nalku Abhirupagalu" (Four Appearances of Love), we meet Shaheen, Uppuppa, Deepa and Visiting Professor.

people of determination

Dipti Anand Oct 22, 2022

Dipti Anand's "people of determination" is a poetic response to a photograph by Ketaki Sheth from the series, "A Certain Grace, The Sidi: Indians of African Descent".

Two Poems

Samar Dec 03, 2022

This week, after a hiatus, ASAP Fiction returns with two poems threading the epic and the everyday by Samar, writer, musician and journalist from New Delhi.

Cane Juice

Gowthaman Ranganathan Dec 30, 2022

Unfolding over a handful of minutes, Cane Juice by Gowthaman Ranganathan, leaps between sites—real, virtual and remembered—that hold dissident desire, belonging and anticipation.

Three Poems

Alolika Dutta Jan 07, 2023

Fiction's first publication of the new year is three poems by Alolika Dutta: Wretched Woman, an extended triolet; The Sin of Catamenia, a sestina, and Hierophany, free verse.

Afterlives

Prashant Parvataneni Jan 13, 2023

Prashant Parvataneni's collection of poetic fragments grow from an extended reflection sparked by That Cloud Never Left (2019), a film by Yashaswini Raghunandan.

The Quotable Gesture

Shaon Basu Jan 28, 2023

In The Quotable Gesture, Shaon Basu performs an act of intimate reading—finding sparks of representational sense of a revolution in Somnath Hore's Tebhaga Diary.

Two Poems

Nihaal Faizal Feb 11, 2023

Structured by halt, repetition and assemblage, these poems by Nihaal Faizal generate vortexes of meaning and trouble the reliance in hermeneutics on authorial intentions.

Cipher

Chanakya Grover Feb 25, 2023

In Cipher, Chanakya Grover's translucent exploration of doubt, identity and self-knowledge coalesce into a moment of implosion.

Best Wishes for a Happy New Year

Anuja Ghosalkar Mar 11, 2023

Anuja Ghosalkar treads two distinct sites, or "hiding places"—a new year greeting penned by an eminent scientist in the Ephemera section of an archive, and a poem by Joy Harjo written at the occasion of new year's eve

Four Poems

Mihir Vatsa Mar 25, 2023

In Mihir Vatsa's gentle elegies, memory and image are braided in the luminescence of the world, with axioms nestled in the heart of these poems.

The State of Goodbye

Raghu Pratap Apr 15, 2023

In Raghu Pratap's poem, the city of Guwahati becomes a battleground where memory, lament, romantic encounter and turbulent political change collide, seen through an ageing road by the river.

Cold Cities

Annalisa Mansukhani Apr 15, 2023

Grasping at loss, longing and a desire to stay, Annalisa Mansukhani’s Cold Cities is a fragmenting-in-progress, a yearning that circumambulates the expanses of memory and the fragilities of want.

Lost Languages

Sumeet Keswani Apr 15, 2023

In Lost Languages, Sumeet Keswani laments one of the many losses that surface after a painful parting—the loss of a singular language of connection in an increasingly isolated world.

27 Down: A Translation

Apoorva Saini Apr 29, 2023

An extract translated from Ramesh Bakshi’s Hindi novel, 18 Sooraj Ke Paudhe (Bharatiya Jnanpith Publications - Lokodaya Granthmala, 1965).

A Visit to a Dentist’s Clinic

Aishwarya Iyer Jul 01, 2023

"A Visit to a Dentist's Clinic" conjures an atmosphere where the inane and the uncanny engorge with remarkable affinity in the psychic reality of the narrator.

[Un]Fictional Family[Frames]

Supraja R Aug 20, 2023

Consciously braided, this visual essay focuses on the author's maternal family nuclear-unit in the early 1970s, through their photograph remains of a roughly 6 years stay as Telugu diaspora in Kabwe, Zambia, punctuated by various official documents that have lasted this 50-year, tumultuous acceleration to the present.

Three Poems

Carol D'Souza Aug 26, 2023

Located in the peripheral zones that define selfhood—skin, memory, light—these poems embrace the potency of that which is residual and remind us that living is, as adages go, always unfinished.

Memory is a reptile : Three poems

Sunakshi S Nigam Sep 02, 2023

Piercingly intimate, the poems turn all lenses inward towards the domestic and the hereditary, where time gains sharp edges.

Sweet Dreams: Two Poems

Sarah Kazmi Sep 09, 2023

Sweet Dreams is part of Kazmi's long-term research project which traces the material heritage and lived registers of diasporic imagination among immigrants from Pakistan residing in Norway.

Four Poems

Lonav Ojha Sep 15, 2023

Marked by an electric liveness, the poems are driven by the frenetic, breathless onrush of the confessional that restores to the form its intended authenticity and bolsters its ability to hold tension and conflict with and against a linguistic paradigm that offers only denial or otherness to ways of being which defy typification.

A Drought Land Ageing Backwards

Pushpanjali Oct 06, 2023

The string of poems have been written as a leitmotif for community gatherings in the rural settings. Palamu district, where the images are set in, falls in the rain-shadow area, and a fear of drought looms perennially over its residents.

The Coca-Cola Fascination

Jatin Gulati Oct 20, 2023

The Coca-Cola Fascination by Jatin Gulati assembles eight fragments scattered over decades which trace tremors and shifts in the orbit of a family—cultural, generational, material, and crucially, dietary—as a fizzy beverage becomes symbolic of change, loss, and togetherness.

You would get your sibling a giant isopod, if you had to

Michelle D’costa Oct 22, 2023

Written in an enlivening second person, "You would get your sibling a giant isopod, if you had to" by Michelle D'costa is a short story that zooms in on the capricious, mercurial, and beguiling creatures that are siblings.

Confessions

Amartya Ray Nov 01, 2023

The poems, assured in their uncertainty, are crafted to resonate with the inner voice nursed by youth, rumination, and the sensorium of being alive in flickers.

C’est la view & Losing it

Zachary Tichauer Bushnell and Vinay Ghodgeri Nov 15, 2023

The poems, crafted as meditations on the invisible but constant processes of cognising the world through the prism of ourselves, magnify aspects of embodiment, presence and flights of reverie in the scale of small moments and enduring associations.

Unhoming

akshada Dec 17, 2023

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to feature "unhoming", a set of narrative fragments by akshada, trailing the spirals of felt time released in the moments that prelude the vacating of a house.

My plastic hairclips keep shining: A note on erasure, childhood and story-telling

Urooj Jan 06, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction we are pleased to publish "My plastic hairclips keep shining", a collection of reflective vignettes tracing the splintering of remembrance and the pleated modes of being in family photographs, by Urooj.

First White Hair: A Translation of Harishankar Parsai’s Pehla Safed Baal

Sonakshi Srivastava Jan 13, 2024

We are pleased to feature a translation of Harishankar Parsai's short story "Pehla Safed Baal" by Sonakshi Srivastava, which follows a man's reckoning with the sighting of a grey strand.

Two Poems: Signs and Remains

Dipanjali Singh Feb 02, 2024

We are pleased to publish two poems by Dipanjali Singh, that map the territories of belonging and estrangement with skilful precision.

01_twomountains _sun_sky

Priyesh Gothwal Feb 23, 2024

We are pleased to publish our first digital folio titled "01_twomountains_sun_sky" by Priyesh Gothwal. Unfolding over a sheaf of images and notations, the folio combines poetry, citation and mark-making.

2031 Timewaves

Sonam Chaturvedi Mar 02, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to publish 2031 Timewaves by Sonam Chaturvedi, an inventive narration that assumes the form of a scientific report to trace the occurence of temporal anomalies.

Echoes of Previous Lives

Pavni Anand Mar 08, 2024

This week we are pleased to publish Pavni Anand's spectral, poignant exploration of muted memory, in the intermediatic text "Echoes of Previous Lives".

Do Kavitaayen (Two Poems)

Ishant Sharma Mar 23, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to publish our first set of poems in transliteration, "Do Kavitaayen" by Ishant Sharma, emergent from the cross-generational, migrational liminality of a queer urban digital native in a poetic encounter with their mother.

Show of Hands

John Xaviers Arackal Apr 13, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction we are pleased to publish "Show of Hands", a short story by John Xaviers Arackal, inspired by an encounter with a photograph by Homai Vyarawalla.

All That We Saw

Amitesh Grover Apr 27, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to publish a speculative narrative titled "All That We Saw" by Amitesh Grover, which trails the effects of a strange phenomenon—the vanishing of images.

Whisper of an Unfired Shot

Rahul Juneja May 11, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to publish "Whisper of an Unfired Shot", a multimedial, bilingual work of image-making and poetry by Rahul Juneja, raising questions to virulent monuments in history.

Margarine

Rupanjali Dey Jun 08, 2024

"Margarine" by Rupanjali Dey is a poem on the ordinary movements, the "little things" that make loving possible.

Silence

Girinandini Singh Jul 18, 2024

This week on ASAP Fiction, we are pleased to publish "Silence" by Girinandini Singh—an embodied charting of learning to speak a colonial language.