[They are i]nspired by a very effective technique for dealing with anxiety I was taught long ago, which is to let the sensation envelope you without judgement.
Writers Tashan Mehta (The Liar's Weave) and Prayaag Akbar (Leila) and writer-editor Salik Shah (The Mithila Review) got together with Articles Editor Gautam Bhatia to have a conversation about the present and the futures of English-language Indian speculative fiction writing.
Gautam Bhatia: Five years ago, Strange Horizons ran a discussion about Indian speculative fiction with writers and editors, hosted by Anil Menon (Part I and Part II), called "Splitting the Difference." They talked about problems of nomenclature (what is Indian SF), theme (what is, and what should, Indian SF be about), and authorship (which writers—past and present—make up the field). You are all writers and editors, living and working in India and writing in English, who have emerged after that conversation—at the risk of sounding dramatic, the next generation.
I want characters who value their friends, who see perfect strangers as full-fledged human beings worthy of their help, and who fight the world with hope and kindness to be rewarded for it.
Catastrophes, especially ones that are made infinitely worse by racism and disaster capitalism, resist metaphor, even if those metaphors are initially beneficial.
Asking cis readers to bend themselves just a little to read our works can be a form of education in itself: recognizing how much they've been centered when suddenly they're not.
