In the final instalment of the Time and Tide series, Tasneem Khan flies over our “Pale Blue Dot”, marvelling at how the ocean connects all the lands that humans divide. She writes in hope of a Symbiocene, a multispecies and multi-timescale future, and shares a few small steps that we can take towards creating one.
Film
Routes
In this short film, naturalist and author Yuvan Aves takes us on a journey along the paths of honeybees, butterflies, aphids and other insects as they remember and retrace routes that go far beyond human notions of roads and boundaries. This film was created by Gaurav Ogale and Annette Jacob.
Interview
The Poetics and Politics of Climate in Fiction and Fact: An Interview with Claudia Aboaf
Claudia Aboaf, writer and teacher, speaks to Winnu D about the importance of socialising the struggle, paying attention to nature, moving away from human characters and the power of writing and fiction.
Blog Post
A New Arc(x)
In this blog post, Anjali Alappat, the host of Arcx, reflects on four seasons of in-depth conversations with some of South Asia’s best known speculative fiction authors, the SFF landscape in the region, and where the podcast goes from here.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Reflection & Refraction
In the seventh installment of our Time and Tide series, Tasneem Khan invites us to consider how experience and knowledge are reflected, recorded, and consumed through time; in a tidal rhythm, certainty ebbs and layers of context and connection reveal themselves.
Cataplisms
The Amazing Morphs of the Golden Cat
In this audio story, the final instalment of Cataplisms, conservation anthropologist Sahil Nijhawan and his collaborator Iho Mitapo take us on a journey to Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh. Iho details the creation story of the Idu Mishmi community and Sahil narrates their sensational discovery of a unique adaptation that might be critical to the survival of the elusive Asian golden cat. Accompanying the audio story is a comic created and illustrated by artist Sudarshan Shaw.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Practice
In the sixth essay of the Time and Tide series, Tasneem Khan writes of knowledge embodied in communities and coastlines, of the intimacy of repetition, attention that attunes, and practice that makes dreams real and expands horizons.
Cataplisms
Siyahgosh. Karakulak. Caracal.
In the final instalment of our Herding Cats series, naturalist and tracker Uditchandra Pal gives us a glimpse behind the scenes, showcasing his efforts to capture footage of the enigmatic and endangered Asiatic caracal, an icon of India’s grasslands.
Short Story
The World Will End in Slow Motion
In Kuzhali Manickavel’s imagining of the apocalypse giants fall from the sky, monsters emerge from the depths, and humans start scrapbooking the end times. This short story explores what happens when the world ends in slow motion, with a whimper rather than a bang, forewarned, heralded and entirely expected.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Decay & Renewal
In the fifth installment of the ‘Time and Tide’ series, Tasneem Khan invites us to look through the veil that separates birth and death, beginnings and ends, into the liminal and rich ‘thin places’ and ecotones.
Short Story
Antarctica
What comes after the end? In this short story by Michael Allen Rose, it is a frozen, lifeless, Sisyphean eternity, where two survivors are trapped in a vicious cycle of too little and just enough.
Short Story
About the Space of Half an Hour
What happens when the voice that guides your every move goes silent without warning? Is it the end of the world or just a glitch? In this short story, Nandini Banerjee explores time, silence, surveillance, darkness, and the terror of making your own choices when you’re used to having none.
Short Story
Ending the Age of Aluminum
Sometimes the apocalypse happens while you’re not paying attention. In this story, Jeff Provine tells the story of one man’s experience the day a sudden microbial mutation changes the world.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Adaptation
In the fourth essay of the ‘Time and Tide’ series, Tasneem Khan delves into the mysteries of evolutionary time, measured not in hours but in adaptations. In this piece, she explores the vagaries of imperfect evolution, and the compromises and negotiations that nature specialises in, shaped by circumstance.
Short Story
The River Parliament: A Sacred Confluence Speaks Out
Ashish Kothari shares his report from a unique gathering, the first in recent history, a meeting of South Asia’s rivers. This short story explores the trials and tribulations of the rivers, shedding light on the issues they face, individual and collective—from pollution and dams to humans warring over their waters.
Essay
Veg and Non-Veg: Hazy Scientific Boundaries, Clear Caste Lines
In this essay, public health doctor and researcher Sylvia Karpagam writes about the unscientific classifications of foods, and their stigmatisation and weaponization in a caste-ridden society.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Layers
In the third essay of the ‘Time and Tide’ series, Tasneem Khan uncovers the delicate and rich layers of memories remembered by sediments and seabeds as time ebbs and flows.
Cataplisms
The Art of the Cat
In The Art of the Cat, our third Herding Cats film, Paul Abraham, the founder of Sarmaya, meditates on the relationship between big cats and Indian artists. Join us for this wild and scenic journey exploring the power, divinity and reverence of the feline through the canvasses of indigenous artists from across India.
Cataplisms
Crooked Cats: The Truth Behind Beastly Encounters
In this audio story, part of our Cataplisms series, Professor Nayanika Mathur shares her expertise on the ways in which the governance of big cats, especially the ‘crooked ones’, demonstrates interspecies entanglement and the role of humans in the Anthropocene.
Book Excerpt, Cataplisms
The Leopard of Gopeshwar: An Excerpt from Crooked Cats
In this excerpt from Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene, Nayanika Mathur talks about how humans, and the entanglement of politics, conservation and climate change, have impacted the “government of big cats”.
Essay
MaraTime: Time as Movement
In the second essay of the ‘Time and Tide’ series, Tasneem Khan dives into time as it moves with the bodies of oceans, in ritual and drama. She invites us to observe the waters as they breathe, each coast with its unique rhythm, and the worlds that each ebb and flow brings to the shore and carries away from it.
Essay
A Sarus Serenity
In this essay, Siddharth Pandey writes about encountering the magical, mystical Sarus cranes at various points in his life, and their mutual connection to the mountain landscape, their home for generations.
Film
Time is a Dancer
Movement, rhythm, poetry and dance intertwine to explore the science, philosophy and mystery of time, that constant heartbeat of the universe. Paul Sutter’s original poetry is brought to life by Kate Sutter’s choreography, performed by SYREN Modern Dance.
Essay
MaraTime: Exploring Time Through Two-Worlds in Coastal Ecologies
In this essay, the first part of the ‘Time and Tide’ series, Tasneem Khan introduces us to the phenology of the sea, where geological time converges with biological rhythms. Learn more about how time reveals itself in coastal landscapes, and the true meaning of ‘maratime’.
Essay
On Moonlight
The moon in her many phases and faces is a companion, omen, comfort, myth and legend. In this essay, accompanied by her own artwork, author Sharanya Manivannan writes about her love affair with this heavenly body, and how it has shaped her over the years.
Event
Stories at the End of the World
To celebrate our fourth anniversary, we’re hosting a short fiction contest called ‘Stories at the End of the World’. Find out more details about the competition, the exciting theme, and what you could win here.
Book Excerpt
A Seat at the Table: An Excerpt from Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada
In this excerpt from Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada, Shahu Patole’s 2015 Marathi book translated by Bhushan Korgaonkar, we catch a glimpse of the rich language, history and recipes from the often stigmatised kitchens of the Mahars and Mangs of Maharashtra.
Cataplisms
Fragmented Forests: Raza Kazmi Talks Capitalism, Conservation, and Charismatic Wildlife.
In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, we present our first Cataplisms audio story. The Cataplisms project examines our multispecies entanglements, critiques capitalism, and acknowledges the cataclysms at our doorstep, all through a feline lens. In this episode, we hear from someone personally and professionally invested in the fate of big cats and the forests they live in. Raza Kazmi is a conservationist, writer and wildlife historian, who focuses on East Central India. Banner image by Aditya Panda.
Essay
Looking For a Room of One’s Own
A queer archive can be a lesson in history, a toolkit for activist endeavours, or simply a space to find out about the social and cultural lives of queer people. Visiting QAMRA in Bengaluru, Kavya Murthy pores over newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, and magazines, contemplating what it means to encounter a queer archive as a queer person.
Book Excerpt
Exploring the Extraordinary: An Excerpt from Superpowers on the Shore
In this excerpt from Superpowers On The Shore (2022) by Sejal Mehta, we learn about the weird and wonderful ecosystem of creatures that flourishes on Indian coasts. In the chapter “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby” Sejal hilariously tackles reproduction in the intertidal zone.