What does it mean for a literary work to have land as the protagonist? Can land be the towering presence through which art flows? Land and its accompanying tales have contributed to the social, mental and spiritual construction of space. What role did landscapes play in the journey of societies and their understanding? Poet and philologist Kanya explores the enchanting intricacies of land in fiction.

By Anandajit Goswami Francis Beacon once said to know the nature outside we need to know the nature within. As a child, my quest to understand the natural world outside started with the thirst to know the nature within. While the environment within was lost in multiple conflicts of genetics, culture, conditioning, and hereditarianism, the view outside, and a bond…

By Monisha Raman When doomsday strikes, will humans find an alternate world? Will genome banks come to our rescue? Will there be missions across space to find a suitable home? How will such societies on a perpetual search be structured? Gigi Ganguly’s Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World is a collection of speculative stories that depict humanity’s complex relationship with…

By Andal Srivatsan Nature and poetry have been linked for centuries before the genesis of the term romanticism. While the proverbial connotation of romance is rooted in love, attraction, and a deep sense of belonging, romantic poets wrote about striking rural landscapes as a source of joy. Alfred Tennyson’s The Brook quotes the brook itself. It is human, delicate, undaunted…

Lagoons throughout the world are threatened by the capitalistic ambitions of states and international territorial disputes, yet literature on them is missing an intimate portrayal akin to Nan Shepherd’s work on mountains or Roger Deakin’s portrayal of the British Isles.