The Devil's Invitation
“It's a fact. I hate hearing about other people's success. It gnaws at me. Vindictive. Co”
The Ardee School, New Delhi · India
Twelve voices. Seven countries. Languages that cross every border we thought we'd drawn. This is what it sounds like when the world writes honestly.
When we launched Aporia in May 2026, we made a single promise: to read everything that arrived with genuine attention, and to say yes whenever something told the truth. We didn't expect the volume. We didn't expect the range. We didn't expect Uzbekistan.
Issue Two is what happened when we kept that promise for a full month. Twelve writers from seven countries — India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, the United States, and beyond — submitting poems, essays, fiction, and criticism in English, Hindi, Urdu, and the shayari tradition. Some of them had never submitted anywhere before. Some had been declined by us once and came back with something better. All of them, in their own way, wrote something they couldn't not write.
The issue opens with Shaunak Pathak's "Mulberries" — a poem that holds two timelines and two geographies simultaneously without announcing either, and ends in five words that contain the whole thing. It moves through Sriyukta's triptych "Flesh over Flesh," three poems that form an arc from consumption to grief to longing.
There is also criticism here, for the first time. "The Grammar of Grief" is a close reading of Ghalib and Jaun Elia — two Urdu poets separated by a century and a partition, speaking to each other across the line. It is the kind of essay that makes you want to read everything it mentions.
What connects these pieces is not subject matter or geography. It is the quality of attention each writer brought to their own experience — the willingness to stay with something difficult long enough to find its shape. That is still the only thing we look for at Aporia. We hope this issue shows it can be found anywhere.
“as winter loosens into bloom,”
“a snake eating its own tail.”
“Ghalib Sahib died in 1869. Jaun Elia Sahib was born in 1931.”
“Perhaps I should begin from the start.”
The complete issue — all twenty-four pieces — formatted for reading offline.
“It's a fact. I hate hearing about other people's success. It gnaws at me. Vindictive. Co”
“And for reasons I still cannot fully explain, I asked.”
“Now even my mind has stopped thinking about you,”
“"The hair is the continuation of our nerves."”
“Perhaps I should begin from the start.”
“a snake eating its own tail.”
“as winter loosens into bloom,”
“Then my father spoke.”
“I started reading it that day. I finished it four months later.”
“Paris is the most romantic city in the world. With breathtaking views of the Eiffel Towe”
“If a gardener were a prisoner of دیدار حسرت”
“Ghalib Sahib died in 1869. Jaun Elia Sahib was born in 1931.”