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This zine is only a section of what the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean diasporas are, and can be. It represents a part of us, and we recognize there are always voices we have missed. We thank all the contributors who made it happen!
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Illustration Credits 0 3, 4 13, 14, 28 20, 21 24, 25 31, 32
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Sindu Sivayogam Madiha Shaikh Shanice Aga Imrul Islam Sazia Afrin Nashwa Zaman
zubaan
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Naina Chhiber
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NO LONGER
HOME
Saleem Gondal 5
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father to son,
patriarchy to liberation Will D.
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My ancestors blow good breeze on meh Their spirits are in every spice Every drop of dhal Telling me "nah fuhget yuhself!" "If yuh fuhget, you ah a neemakaram"
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Angela Nawang 9
Learn to live your memory. Learn to leave your memory. for archival. for your children to unlearn what you had to learn.
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lulululululu is the sound she makes for a bolbol tongue fluttering up and down it sounds more like running water like a - yes - like a babbling brook like the joob flowing alongside the street, running over stone and moss and trash, around tree trunks It is sound she makes It is nonsense I try to remember the word but the sounds come out in the wrong order have streamed out jumbled the water carries leaves and trash beside the street, plastic bottles congregate and tumble down, spinning and turning in running water the /gh/ from the back of the throat the /l/ from a curved tongue the /sh/ passed between teeth the furrowed brow, the blank stare I am speaking nonsense
2.babble 1.bolbol
“After two months you will speak like a nightingale� my cousin says mesl bolbol like the birds twittering loudly from small cages above storefronts lost in the general babble of the crowded bazaar
3.babel
A tower with only one language We grew up in a bubble It cannot sustain It is a straight line to the sky It has forgotten the ground it came from It has imagined itself as having always been among the clouds It is necessary to bring it down and scatter ourselves across the world and make us unknown to each other This is necessary violence This is entropy This is the value of chaos that we may find each other again and rebuild Am I babbling?
4.baby or babe I am a child here babies only speak babble “baba” was your first word, they think it is nonsense it is sounds I know the same amount of words here as someone new to this world I feel I have overstayed my welcome I am too old to be cradled so carefully I want to be thrown I want to be broken I feel like a half-formed thing You show your grandfather your homework rows and rows of carefully constructed like small boats with rickety masts each alef a tower ready to fall you don’t remember getting farther in class Upon hearing my broken phrases Their expressions become sad I imagine this as disappointment The guide tells us an ancient story of a princess fleeing invaders It is most likely impatience Separated from her family, alone, she climbed the mountains, I am too old to be acting like a child Weeping, she asked them to save her, They speak slowly or loudly And so they opened up Gingerly And she disappeared into their arms Barely touching to avoid breaking I do not know this history To avoid chaos I cannot tell you what this land was And nonsense Who conquered and who fell here A rope bridge slackening and tightening I cannot tell you names I smile and say merci I know vaguely of a clay cylinder I nod as if I understand With cuneiform letters I tear down the ropes when I walk away That spoke of repatriation Acceptance and tolerance A spinning tablet, words spiraling Niki Afsar On a circumference Can stone welcome? Can you return to a place that was never yours Can you be accepted or tolerated here Empires rise and fall, power Moves in cycles, we spin on an axis I watch the sun set when really I am spinning backwards into darkness I am moving backwards to a place my parents do not recognize The nightingale flies back to its rose I return to my mother tongue, the first language I spoke and the first I forgot I'm doing this all out of order I learn to read words backwards I unlearn backwards forwards left right I search for words on a cylinder and let history envelop me with the veracity of stone
5.babylon
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I try to produce little waste. There is someone at the door. This advertisement promises much. The world is changing. Love is a strange [thought]. The secret fell into oblivion. His breath froze in the frigid air. Organization must be productive. Their hooves left traces in the snow. Ishan Bose
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Nayantara Premakumar
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Dear Lola Faustina,
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KT Pe Benito
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Strange that it’s not human-like, nor humanness, or some other body-determined, physical confirmation. The affirming thing is also affront— only at www border control of the corporeal dot com (don’t come), do I find myself questioning how capable I am, and to what extend do I care, and how undiscerning the logic is that will ask both abuser and abused to prove the same quality of compassion. And no, not proof, but capture. What fluke, do you think, of humanity does it want to arrest, at the site of access?
Mon Mohapatra
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Wha Yuh Guh Do?
Noah Gokul 22 2
Oh.
Darshan Sittampalam
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Untitled
Parissah Lin
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ii. Hysteria
Thanu Yakupitiyage
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Recitation
Wasay Rasool
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If Esperanto Existed in the Diaspora, I Would Be Fluent
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The language of restraint and bitten tongues.The language of I’d-rather-hurt-myself-than-say-what’s-tr uly-on-my-mind. The language of I-cannot-possibly-continue-to-be-this-bri dge-because-I-am-crumbling. Today I will speak a new language. The language of truth. Of my truth. The one that says the things my heart has ached to say. The one with a vocabulary I have recently learnt. The language that allows me to tell you that I can be queer and happy, liberal and desi, femme and assertive, Muslim but not devout, intelligent without MD or Esq attached to my name. In my new language these things are not contradictions. Just adjectives that describe my existence. I open my mouth. Will the words come out? Noor Azad
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History is a Nightmare
(from which I am trying to awake) 32 2