And it is delicious 🙂 Go check it out! The Editorial Sometimes the universe does conspire. This time, it conspired without any design on Rochelle’s or my part, to make this an issue which puts the spotlight on women. The two authors  – Jayanti Naik and Roanna Gonsalves – may at first glance seem to…

Dear Friends, Very elated to share with you the launching of the ‘Joao Roque Literary Journal’. It is my pleasure to team up with its founding-editor, Selma Carvalho, a British-Indian writer and columnist. The primary objective of this review is to showcase the Goan short story. The secondary objective is to further audiences for Goan…

‘The sky is the limit for 37-year-old fiction writer and poet Rochelle Potkar, as she forays into acting, in Kollywood no less, with director Ram’s Taramani. Her command over her works speaks volumes about her views on several pressing issues — from baby commercials to opinions on women and sexuality. For Rochelle, it all began…

Seed (haibun) My 13-year-old breasts are a growing, budding nuisance that feel weighty and uncomfortable under my petticoat and school pinafore. It is too early for a bra so my mother buys snug cotton vests meant for very young boys. I wear them for a year before graduating to a bra. It takes time getting…

Now that molestation is getting its rightful attention at dinner table conversations — something  it duly deserved a long time ago — I remember a presentation I made in Iowa (while at the International Writing Program)  on feminism. We were female writers from different countries on the panel. https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Potkar_ICPL2015.pdf    

Debuting in the feature-length Tamil film, ‘Taramani’ was good to explore another artistic side. But when I watch this lyrical video, I am not the short story writer who can disengage from her characters, however biographical. Here, the mind screams, “Me! Me! Me!” And I have lost objectivity.

Pardon my jump in timeline but these posts are getting just as non-linear as memory. This post was supposed to come before the Goa-events post. But nevermind. Kolkata was fun too. I am now the alumna of the University of East Anglia’s creative-writing course too. It was a privilege to learn so much from Amit…

I went to Goa twice in December. One for poetry readings at the GALF 2016 (Goa Arts and Literature Festival).   And then again, for the launch of the anthology, Monsoon winds: short stories from Goa. This anthology has stories in English, Konkani, Marathi, and Portuguese, from the Fundação Oriente Short Story Competition, 2015 selections. If…

In a 1982-interview, Namdeo Dhasal said that if the aim of social struggles was the removal of unhappiness, poetry was necessary because it expressed happiness vividly and powerfully. Later he stated: Poetry is politics. It is possible that as I engage with Chandramohan S’ poetic constructs in his collection of poetry, Letters to Namdeo Dhasal,…