Dear Readers, This edition of PYSSUM Literaria features a wonderful and generous collection of art and ideas, and my heartfelt thanks go out to every contributor who has lent this issue their thought and imagination. Our theme this time is 'Margins' — a word that at first glance suggests only edges and empty space, but which, on closer look, holds so much more. The literature and art you'll find in these pages doesn't just describe margins from a distance — it inhabits them,

By Prithvijeet Sinha Published by Bookleaf Publishing, 2025 ISBN: 978-9372137330 (Paperback) Price: 213 INR Language: English, pp. 76 -Amrita Sharma A Verdant Heart is the debut poetry collection by the Lucknow based poet Prithvijeet Sinha, also the ‘avadh boy’ penning the prolific pieces at https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/ . A collection of vividly crafted and densely expressive poems, the collection offers an intricately woven threads of sounds and images from the

My love for small towns Doesn’t stop with those coconut trees Waving at me from Guwahati. I venture deeper into Nalbari. Nagarbera and Jakhalabandha pass by me. I haven’t seen them since childhood Those destinations of memory. Some towns I have met only once Others not in this life. This passion for old is nothing new But I bring to this quest A feeling I did not know before. Morigaon, so near Nagaon, where the milk farms are After you cross the nursery with flower po

It’s a dust-choked sky A silence sharp like a knife Where broken stones litter And the innocent children Play on the bloodstained streets Oblivious of the suffocating air. My heart goes out To Gaza's streets Where tears flow freely I hear the echo Of blasting mortar shells And a distant sobbing cry. I see a dream dissolved In the troubled water And the shadow Of a life in darkness A future doomed Forever A story growing old Day by day. For every mother Holding her tears For e

I must be on my third try Of wordle When the screen beeps, and I see you in your familiar blue jacket The smile hasn’t changed Though the once fuller face seems leaner Even in your twenties, the acne keeps returning So I can give you tips to apply the yogurt-turmeric paste I almost shriek as you knowingly zap one of zits with a tinkling laughter This, this ritual eases us into a familiarity My eyes light up with a memory of those high school days When hygiene was a relic And

By Sri Lal Published by Red River Press, 2026 ISBN: 978-81-996533-3-7 (Paperback) Price: 349 INR Language: English, pp. 100 -Vedamini Vikram There is a word in our language that has almost calcified with use — “daughter.” It arrives pre-loaded with virtue, coddling, “save the girl child” campaigns and education drives, forever synonymous with selflessness and goodness. “Son”, in contrast, still carries the older, harder gendered weight—valor, sons of Poseidon, Dharti ke Lal,

-Translated by Ministhy S Those who tell stories, and those who write them, are the ones cursed by life. It was Ramaniyamma who planted the root of that great truth in my mind. The ghostly spectre- part of Lord Shiva’s entourage- called Pushpadantan, doomed to be born as a human because he dared to narrate stories; ‘Vetalam’ aka Betaal, who hung upside down to watch stories unfolding, and Dostoevsky, who hurled his own life into the burning wild fire of experiences for discov

Dusk waits on the margins of the dying day to slowly scroll mellow light, dimming the dusty harshness; ushers in trees and the sudden babble of birds streaming down like a thousand waterfalls falling from the sky; a babble drowned by the honk of traffic returning home to nest uncertainly. A pause in the day's dusty harshness and the creeping restlessness of night. The mellow ache of a dim memory, fading to a glow worm searching, searching.... for a mate for itself in light ne

By Amlanjyoti Goswami Published by Paperwall Publishing, 2025 ISBN: 978-81-984437-9-3 (Paperback) Price: 499 INR Language: English, pp. 238 -Kumar Sawan Amlanjyoti Goswami, a 2002 Inlaks scholar who went to Harvard Law School, is Chief, Legal & Regulation at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). A Different Story (2025) is his third book of poetry after Vital Signs (2022) and River Wedding (2019). Divided into nine sections, A Different Story presents poems that

I looked out the window where the sky and the ocean met between them there lay a horizontal line-- Kshitij, you, the horizon, and I, the suspended marginal line trying to reach you, but my songs are drowned in the ripples of the ocean. The page of the leather-bound journal stared at me with your immaculate calligraphic message: To my love, my friend, my wife who has given me thirty-five years of cherished memories – may we have many more… for a long time, those words st

The bitter, twisted lies of history, Can't annihilate her valourous sacrifice: Against a cruel Brahminic patriarchy A subaltern spoke in action amplified! Visceral waves of loss and sorrow For the Avarna woman denied justice, Surge within and soon overflow-- Oh, crushed was the blossom full of promise! Yet her soul invictus seeking honour Makes her an incarnation of valour. The feudal days soaked in barbarism: Lower caste women suffering public shame-- Forced to move withou

That jarring, incoherent lilt of hollowness— The lanterns hung on those hollow beams, The bamboos that held the tent at the oasis, The sparkling sand grains spread over miles, The barren expanse dotted with cacti, Uninhabited wasteland, sans life. Hollowness, caught in a deadly snare, Vacuum echoed with melancholic air. The rib cage held a bloodied stone, Unaffected by human pain. Flimsy enough to fear the wrath, Succumbed to the drying spell, Unknown to the geography of hung

It never heals, On some days a mere bruise, On others a gaping hole; Rife under an unwitting scab; Chipping at the edges that clumped mass. A slow rogue erythrocyte emerges to bathe in serum again! Ah soon a wound - what maggot wouldn’t desist! Nah no bandage, one wouldn’t need one, or would they? Do they know? Would they ever know if they stained years? On some days all that remains is a scar for the watchful eye, The observant ones, the prying ones, the ones that thrive on

Who am I, what am I — I owe you no confession. You bit, I flinched; you played, I screamed; you roared; I wavered — but never truly fell. You... who are you? You, whom I once called my solace, my harbinger, the very marrow of my existence — the one I mistook for my identity. I was unfettered, yet I walked into the silken snare of your affection. I told you plainly — I am boundless — and you smiled and said, "So you are free", Then the clouds grew luminous, the birdsong turned

By Nabanita Sengupta and Nishi Pulugurtha (Eds.) Published by Niyogi Books, 2025 ISBN: 978-8119626151 (Paperback) Price: 373 INR Language: English, pp. 392 -Priyanka Adhikary There are books that offer the meaning of life; some pages carry us through varied emotions, some let us introspect, while there are certain books that settle into human consciousness and stay for a longer time, allowing us to remain silent, pause, and question the emotional weight carried by ordinary li

-Amelia Walker Limen sounds like line. Which it is, in the sense of being something you can cross. A threshold, my online dictionary tells me. An edge. Something that runs between two spaces or states, joining or dividing them or both, depending where you stand and how you see. Yes, in these senses, a limen is a line. Yet it is also more than a line. Or maybe a reminder that all lines are already more than lines. Draw one, you’ll see what I mean. Don’t worry. It needn’t be ne

-Vijayakumar Thulasisingam A kitchen professional by the name of Jayanthi was appointed at our house, a month before the COVID lockdown, in the year 2019. She comes from a humble background, carries herself with dignity, and always arrives neatly dressed. Her dedication to work and warm nature has made her an invaluable part of the household. She comes by 8.30 a.m. and prepares breakfast, lunch and dinner. Jayanthi has a hunch back and yet, during the COVID times, she used to

-John Thieme Every morning, before classes started, they had to deposit their phones into the little pouches that the school had introduced the previous year. At first, they had resented this, but by now it was accepted as a done deal. The moment of the hand-in occasioned a certain amount of banter, most of which centred on who owned iPhones and who had Androids, but Kent’s mobile was another matter altogether – a Nokia. Ted described as ‘a relic from prehistory’. He said, ‘I

-Sarvajit Mukerji “He comes from a broken home”…. It was the principal speaking. This was the second time that she was mentioning this to his class teacher. He continued looking fixedly at the fish tank outside the principal’s office. He had been told to stand there as a punishment. The aquarium was like a house too, the kind of house he drew in his drawing copy— a rectangle, with a triangular roof. Was his home broken then? Smashed to pieces, like the tablet that he had once

-Anaya Khan As I climbed the stairs of the second floor of the school hallway, the first sound that greeted me was the chatter and giggle of students from the adjacent classroom. The second sound, was that of my own rising heartbeat. I glanced at my dusty shoes for a second and entered the classroom, only to notice the last bench waiting at the back of the classroom. It was pressed against the wall where the sunlight arrived late and the dust settled early. It was the perfe