Vandana Singh’s speculative fiction invites us to revise and reshape many of our stereotypical notions about climate change. Her speculations force us to look at the micro-level impact of climate change while keeping the bigger picture in mind. The way forward may not necessarily be about discarding the past and making disruptive new beginnings. The world has always taught us ways of sustainable living, both at present and in the past. We have to be prepared to bring those practices back to life. The fitting response to the climate crisis is to understand and appreciate the planetarity of the world and the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things that exist. We also have to be conscious of the voices in the margins, the communities whose practices of sustainability could guide us toward a more balanced future. This article attempts to read two of Vandana Singh’s stories, titled ‘Indra’s Web’ (2018) and ‘Reunion’ (2019), as asserting the entanglement of climate and the Earth’s inhabitants.

Examples of fable in cinema tend to continue the genre’s concern with the moral upshot of the tale: what is the message? Who is the victor? What did we learn? The promise of moral clarity is usually heightened when the film is filtered through the perspective of a child, to whom facets of the world reveal themselves in strikingly new light as the narrative resolves. What moral clarity, however, might we approach in fable films portraying occupation where lived conditions arrest the possibilities of resolution? Against such contexts, might the confirmation of the fable’s generic expectations, such as moral clarity and closure, constitute a betrayal of ideological and political integrity? Conversely, might the genre of the fable and its attention to—even insistence upon—moral thought and action be unexpectedly revealing for possibilities of political initiative and solidarity? In this paper, I take up these questions through two films with child-protagonists set in India-occupied Kashmir, Tahaan (Sivan 2008) and Hamid (Khan 2019). I contend that a comparative analysis reveals that their distinct approaches to the fable’s conventions impel or frustrate specific forms of recognition for a moral imagination and the limits of individual agency under occupation.

Focusing on the spatialized experiences of Afghan women, this article examines Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns through Edward Soja’s theory of spatial trialectics to explore how space operates simultaneously as an instrument of patriarchal control and a locus of insurgent agency. Drawing on Soja’s triadic model—Firstspace (material geographies), Secondspace (ideological constructions), and Thirdspace (lived and resistant practices)—the study argues that Hosseini renders space not as backdrop but as a constitutive dimension of subjectivity, power, and resistance. Through close readings of Rasheed’s domestic architecture, Kabul’s militarized streets, the orphanage, and the Ghazi Stadium, the analysis shows how material infrastructures and symbolic orders inscribe gendered domination, even as women’s everyday practices produce counter-geographies that subvert them. Acts of maternal solidarity, embodied care, and Mariam’s reappropriation of domestic space exemplify the emergence of resistant spatialities within oppressive environments. The article contends that A Thousand Splendid Suns enacts spatial justice not as abstract ideal but as embodied struggle, where agency is negotiated through lived geographies of constraint and renewal. It is concluded that the novel foregrounds the ontological centrality of space as both an archive of injury and a horizon of possibility.

This paper proposes to posit the Earth as a mnemonic agent capable of preserving humanity’s memory in the age of Anthropocene. Through a critical survey of two novels set against the historical backdrop of the Partition (1947) - Surma Gangar Pani (2012) by Ranabir Purakayastha and Surma Nadir Chokhe Jol (2013) by Imad Uddin Bulbul - this study examines their narrative strategies within an ecological framework. The paper aims to illustrate a paradigm shift in the environment’s role, transforming from a passive backdrop to political upheavals into an active agent shaping everyday lives of the individuals. Through the analytical lens of these narratives, the paper demonstrates how political powermongers manipulate environmental agency to serve their interest at the expense of the marginalized. A compelling case study unfolds around the river Surma, a pivotal resource for fishing communities on both banks to show how the arbitrary demarcation of borders along the river results in the severe deprivation of fundamental necessities for these communities. The study posits that such environmental transformations contribute to a deliberate act of ecocide, ultimately leading to the virtual demise of the ecologically reliant Kaibarta community of Sylhet within the framework of Assam. By unveiling the intricate interplay between ecological sensibilities, political objectives, and the consequences for marginalized communities, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of the ecological dimensions of the Partition, ultimately framing this political rupture as a veritable act of spacio-cide. It underscores the broader implications of environmental agency in shaping human experiences and prompts critical reflections on the intricate relationship between humanity and its ecological context.

Popularly known as Ekushey, the mass agitation of 21 February 1952, demanding Bengali’s recognition as one of the state languages of Pakistan, has since been memorialized by Bengali cultural and literary activists. Ekushey has been invoked in poems, songs, and novellas. Instead of the more familiar poetic tradition, this paper focuses on the Ekushey fictions. I define these fictions as creative renditions that dramatize the historical Language Movement. These narratives evoke the literary readership’s affective response, as they relive the traumatic circumstances of the brutal crackdown on the language activists. The novellas, Selina Hossain’s Nirantor Ghontadhoni (1987) and Zahir Raihan’s Different Spring (translated of Arek Falgun, 1999), capture the Language Movement’s progressive spirit. The connection between the Language Movement and the politics of communism is traced in Hossain’s novella, while Raihan’s novella (1999) delineates commemoration of Ekushey in defiance of police aggression in 1955. The Ekushey fictions, I argue, elicit postcolonial resistance, predicated on the demand for Bengali’s recognition in Pakistan.