"I was slowly realizing it was important for my identity to inform my work; in no small part because so little of it informed my reading." Creative Nonfiction: Writing About People Like Me by Rhea Dhanbhoora

Announcing our new board members! Disruptors 2020, clockwise from top L: Tom Pyun, Anna Allen, Rhea Dhanbhoora, and Kevin Dublin.

Sometimes when I am half asleep, I curl my toes, twist my ankle, and stretch my leg till I can feel it from hip to toe. I do this often, waiting till I can feel any stretch, poke, twinge, twang…hoping none turn into spasms, aches, pains, throbs…

Capsule Stories Autumn 2020 Edition: Burning Up Featuring autumnal poems and prose by emerging and established writers, Capsule Stories Autumn 2020 Edition explores the theme Burning Up. POETRY “Itemizing My Identity,” “Collective Shame,” and “In Diaspora” by Rhea Dhanbhoora

I spent weeks looking for my sister the second time she ran away, then the day I found her, I wished I hadn't. It was on a Friday after work, I’d been passing by the church we used to go to with our mother who wasn't Catholic but liked the services, and the priest waved me down, saying a woman who looked like my sister had been bleeding over the pews. I’d made such an effort to forget about her this time, what I really wanted to do was leave her behind, kneeling there in whatever vain appeal...

Welcome to Season 2 of Blight: Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair. A series of episodes on confronting our uncertain future in the time of the COVID19 Virus, through essay, interview, storytelling and song. Episode 3: Planes Come In features host Sean Williamson on worry and runways, Adam Krause on the correlations between human stress on nature and pandemic, Jake Newborn from the Wisconsin Bike Fed, and Rhea Dhanbhoora on the life of sand. “Ease Your Soul, Chapman” by LeAnna Eden. Theme music by Shawn Stephany. Mix by Shane Olivo at Bobby Peru Recording

Crystal Radio Sessions Upstate is the new, local outpost of the NYC reading series, committed to showcasing the work of both established and emerging writers from our region. Come hear short stories by David Rabe, Ashley Mayne, Harris Lahti, Courtney Maum and Rhea Dhanbhoora, read by AOH audience favorite actors. Crystal Radio believes in the power of the spoken word and is devoted to transmitting compelling literary expression through the ether.

They can't book the baug because they're from a mixed family and the husband hasn't had his Navjote, but their eight-year-old wants to be like the other children in the colony, so they decide to have a ceremony on the terrace instead. She's more interested in gifts than prayers, she says, twirling desperately in her polka dot dress...

All the other images fade, but for the orange flags. Stiff nylon, fighting lazily against a balmy breeze. Orange. Always the strangest in the spectrum. A colour, a fruit, a flower — all rolled into one lazy word. As if there were no other way to describe the ghastly coalescence of red and yellow. A marriage of pigments, arranged quite conveniently between colours I have mixed feelings about. There was red, a reminder of period blood and bindis and rage and lipstick, muddled with yellow, a seemingly duplicitous shade that spits up images of Wordsworth’s daffodils as quickly as it will Eliot’s yellow fog.

My mother had been an entomologist. It seemed almost fitting, for a small, wiry woman who looked like an insect herself. She saw herself as a 20th century Maria Sibylla Merian, but apart from her fondness for insects, had nothing in common like the formidable, accolade equipped naturalist from Germany. Instead, she was a mildly respectable professor, who often came home with a stack of papers that she insisted...

ISSUE-XVII November 2012 Page 9 Battleground By Rhea Dhanbhoora The battle-axe prepared to strike, upheavals heavy in the murky air. Let the tears drip like the pitter patter of raindrops as they sink below rays of light

Psychological thriller novel by author Sumit Pramanik, edited for Pirates Publications, India, 2017

Mosaic tiles, steam rising up from deep square marble blocks, splashes of colour sending you into what seems like a psychedelic wave as your vision blurs and strong hands knead tension out of your neck and shoulders — the Turkish hammam is not for the faint-hearted, especially in the most traditional format (with a more public steam than most of us would like!). This is why L’Occitane makes for a good place to get an introduction to the therapy.

Prime zip code aside, the wood flooring, platinum grey upholstery, subtly fragmented (designed to resemble a beehive) panel lighting and icicles dripping down from an arched ceiling lend the entire space a proud patrician air. Those who prefer warm, cosy spaces will not really feel at home in the slightly steely space, but if you’re looking for a swanky dining experience, there’s nothing quite like it. Like most restaurants so obviously built to cater to the upper echelons of society, Jia too will leave your wallet a little lighter. However, the food does stand out enough to warrant the exorbitant prices on the menu, making it more of a worthy indulgence than an extravagance.

Three-time Grammy nominee, New York-born singer Shemekia Copeland is a force to reckon with in the industry. Rhea Dhanbhoora finds out more about her music and the inspirations behind her sound

If you, like most city slickers, breathe a sigh of relief courtesy cooler weather and open skies outside city limits, roll down your windows and take a deep breath in Akluj. Over six hours of alternating between smooth highways and bad roads, snaking through picturesque villages and looping around lakes can leave you euphoric and exhausted in equal measure. Once we found the sharp curve in the road leading to the vineyards, all traces of trepidation were swept away by the breeze swinging over the rolling hills...

Tasting food is serious business, or at least that’s what I’ve learned over what has been close to a decade sampling all the flavours that Mumbai has welcomed with open arms. If you spend enough time on the task, you can train your palate to identify whether dishes are good or bad, al dente or raw, and whether your soup has packet purees or the real deal. And, while I can’t claim to have a finely-honed palate (or even honed enough to pass the most basic litmus test for chefs), it’s hard to miss a mouthful of mustard in your mousse or a dash of dill in your dessert.

When you turn to see if the signal has broken, a man in khaki flashes a smile, tobacco-stained teeth on display. You avert your eyes but feel him staring, trying to engage the girl next to you, who scurries away. You follow. You’re competitors for the next rickshaw but in that moment, there is solidarity...