Tell me, how far you want to descend  Into your own abyss? 

Tell me I am not a house without exits. Leave

The rain began at dusk, its cold fingers tracing the cracked panes of the house like an unwelcome visitor. By midnight, the storm had grown wild, wind howling through the trees, rattling the fragile bones of the dwelling. I stood before the door, my hand trembling on the tarnished brass handle.

The cream colored bowl held the steaming, almost translucent yellow broth with traces of white, garnished by an array of green onions slashed in an angle.

1 and 3/4 cups of sugar, 2 cups of i-love-you

This is an excerpt from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's short story "Abhishapta", translated by Dipty Rahman

Where there's no scent of mother, but only a sweet sense of comfort in the touch I remember the warmth of my mother's lap

It was actually a bit of a relief to sit on the terrace of the Gezira Pension and have a quiet breakfast before plunging back once more into the traffic of Cairo in search of a carriage to the museum.

I jump from ship to ship, / fly dangling from the claws  of a huge bird in the sky / till my toes scrape mountain-tips. 

It’s been so long since we last spoke that I don’t think I can talk to you without confessing something. There you were, standing before me

Wishing you a happy new year! / The coming year? No, years ahead—

Nuri had just swallowed a little orange pill dry, when she noticed that the portrait of ‘The Sexual Revolutionary’ had been taken down from the wall of her childhood bedroom.

I see her now, but not in the way I have always seen her—through the lens of service, of duty, of roles—but as a woman whose edges were softened long before I learned her name

When I come to you, I become a tree  Trees have roots 

At last, God heeded Sisyphus’s prayer—a plea he had been making for countless centuries. Each time, he hoisted the rock onto his shoulders, convinced that this would be the time it ascended with ease

'I dedicated a lion's share of the life I've lived to poetry. I've thought of poetry as a guiding star'

A lonely soul treads on the street cultivating the sweet pain of defunct love; like a solitary artist, he rambles through the alleys of the city

In the psyche and schema of the average transnational Bangladeshi, rape is visible and legitimate only when it takes spectacular forms—violent, brutal, deadly.

It was the shade of the ashwath that vanquished all one’s weariness from the fiery heat of Choitro. Or else it was not possible for fatigue to be eliminated so quickly.

I weave Hibiscuses in your hair and Along with them I softly weave the strings of my I love you’s. Your eyes are closed as you soak in my touch and Your lips are pressed thin as if imprisoning yours.