Editor's Note: Dear Readers. A work of art is an eternal melody in bloom. As we enter a new year of despair and optimism, here is an artist's precious gift to you -- painted with the final dots post-midnight of 31st December, 2025. Stay blessed and inspiring. Take good care of yourself. Let's make the world a better place.

By Narendra Pachkhede. The ‘refugee’ is a mythical symbol of hate. The border is everywhere now.

By Maitreyi Kaptijn and Swarna Rajagopalan/Sapan News. Does it matter if one girl sits with her aunt to draw some pictures and write some words? We believe it matters.

By Rao Farman Ali. This alienation, she argues, severs the child from their cultural moorings. “When your worth is tied to a biology textbook or a physics equation, even problems of mathematics, what room is there for Lal Ded’s Vaakhs, Shaikh Ul Alam's Shruks or the revolutionary verses of Abdul Ahad Azad, even patriotic stanzas of Mehjoor?

By Rao Farman Ali. At least they will not be trapped inside, waiting for the storm.

By Raju Mansukhani. It takes a philosopher-poet to lead us onto a poet-historian.

By Baishali Chatterjee. many of these forms of work have been abolished by the government, whether it's bar dancing, or imposing bans on erotic dancing etc, or legal restrictions oon commercial surrogacy.

By Aayushi Rana. Can a poem stop a bullet?

By Rao Farman Ali. As the sun sets over Pampore, casting long shadows across the patchy fields, Abdul Hamid Wani sits on his haunches, looking at the small, crimson pile in a wooden tray that represents a year of his life, his hope, and his struggle. It is a sight that brings to mind an old couplet, a nightingale's plea to a stone for a single blade of grass.

By Arjun Janah. Will we meet, beyond the mountain, The ones we loved and lost? Will we hear the songs familiar—Or will this all be lost?

By Dr Rashid Ali. So why was well-known Italian scholar of Hindi, Francesca Orsini, deported from India?

By Narendra Pachkhede. And who speaks for Gaza?

By Ajith Pillai. Much of my free time between the age of thirteen and twenty was spent in the neighbourhood park with a group of friends. We called ourselves the ‘Crime Syndicate’ .

Author Anne Lamott praised the work effusively: “I love this book so much—the wisdom, the welcome, the quality of Padma’s writing, the depth of her shared experiences, and, oh my God, the recipes. This book makes me feel as if she is gently and boldly cooking right beside me,”

By Amit Sengupta. Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.  

By Amit Sengupta. The happiness she feels every time she knows he is near, and the correspondence, the letters they exchange over time, makes the bonding stronger. The final scene, when he leaves Buenos Aires and she says goodbye to him at the train station, is of absolute love — a different kind of love.

By Huneza Khan. And yet, Arundhati Roy allows a sliver of something softer. Tenderness flickers beneath anger and unguarded defiance. Butterflies stirred inside me.

By Narendra Pachkhede. The Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit on Gaza: a televised triumph? A reality show dressed up as a fake peace accord?

By Isabel Allende. Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.’

Anuradha Kumar. A murder is only part of everything else that happens in a small town over certain years. It’s never properly resolved. A murder was a dramatic way for me to ask questions. And there are still so many questions.