Litro magazine

Here is the latest Litro magazine for my followers to peruse:

Something for the Weekend This week we would like to introduce you to Kate North's Punch, a collection of short stories filled with anticipation, struggling to break through the surface. Will they make it though? Read on to find out. FICTION & ESSAYS Make the most of Litro with our Monthly Digital Subscription Copyright © 2019  All rights reserved. www.litro.co.uk Our mailing address is: Somerset House, South Wing Strand WC2R 1LA

Here's your weekly edition of #essaysaturday On Discovering Authors (Or read it on the Litro website) On Discovering Authors  by Snigdha Dagar There is a book that had been on my reading list for a while. For one, having lived for a little while in Bombay (I lived in the south where people still call it that), I have a fascination for the city like no other, a soft spot for any story that is based here. The nuances are abundant, hard to capture, but so vibrant when done right. There are some cities like that – more personality than massive plots of land, that swallow you whole and let you influence them just as much as they change you. Countless poets and writers have written about them, and Bombay – amchi Mumbai – as a writer’s delight, doesn’t disappoint. I’ve read of the drug lords, of a foreign criminal fleeing the cops, of love and of death in Mumbai, of a feminist writer from Kerela who lived about two hundred meters away from where I did, on reclaimed land, forty years ago. I’ve watched all the glitzy Bollywood movies. I’ve been a regular traveler in the local trains, going back and forth from Churchgate to Andheri, walked along Marine drive in the rain; at noon; at 3am, the skyline lit up on Diwali; with friends; with parents; gone for morning jogs; looked out for hours at the glorious Arabian Sea, and cried. Despite the garbage it keeps throwing back, the crowd, the inevitable floods every few years, the rain and humidity it brings along as side products, the sea is undoubtedly one of Mumbai’s redeeming qualities. The food and the people come a close second. Sita aunty worked in our house, cleaning dishes, doing jhadoo pochafor two years. She would call me baby, even as I turned twenty-one. Even five years after we moved, she still calls every Diwali, and asks my mom “Baby kaisi hai”. Yet nothing could have prepared me for this book. * A few minutes past or before my twenty-fourth birthday, depending on which time zone I wish to adhere to, I find myself in a book store, in a quaint city in Portugal. I’ve been reading about Pessoa, and Lisbon through his eyes, where I’m spending my birthday weekend, but my mind is elsewhere. It’s riddled with longing for a city that I met briefly, but that will forever have a place in my heart; mysterious, charming and often impenetrable, dangerous and alluring, seductive in its offering of misery and joy in equal amounts, but above all the presence of possibility – everywhere. Some may call it hope. There are similarities to these two cities, I think, my mind trying to draw connections in its wandering, to stabilize. While Lisbon is built on seven hills, Bombay was built on seven islands. It owes its name, and its origins in a sense, to the Portuguese, who called it Bom Bahia– the good bay. I’ve spent two hours in my flight here, reading a real account of squatters and scavengers, of the poorest and filthiest of India, immersed in their world, holding on to their ray of hope as if my own living depended on it. But the world I inhabit is vastly different from the ones I’ve been reading about. One beer down, but more drunk on the charming bookstore I’m sitting in, this stark difference between a world long gone (Lisbon in the 1930s) and a world very much alive but farther from my reality than I can ever hope to comprehend (present-day Bombay slums), doesn’t quite register fully.   * Continue to Litro website to read the full article Subscribe to Litro's Digital Membership Now Copyright © 2018 Litro Magazine LTD , All rights reserved.  Our mailing address is: Somerset House, South Wing Strand | London | WC2R 1LA

Get access to the Litro archives, essays, podcasts and much more! Dear Readers,          We thank you for the love and support that you have shown us all these years. To show our appreciation for existing supporters & patrons of Litro we are offering you a free 1 month digital trial. Our digital subscribers will be able to access 15 years worth of content, about 33,000 stories, a number of engaging, thought provoking essays, interesting Litro Lab Podcasts, and much more. This will expire on 30th April 2019 after which a membership will have to be purchased for uninterrupted digital access to Litro.  As a part of this new subscription system, Litro will be bringing you simplified and upgraded membership options and access to new podcasts via Spotify and iTunes will soon be made available for the pleasure of our followers. We also request you to kindly show your support by referring a friend. Add this code when registering - LitroFriend50 and new members will get 50% off on all membership packages. Sign up today Copyright © 2018  All rights reserved. www.litro.co.uk Our mailing address is: Somerset House, South Wing Strand | London | WC2R 1LA