by Aashisha Chakraborty | Jan 20, 2026 | Essays
Welcome back to the Ironist series. Today, we delve into the third ironist – the earth, humble but powerful. Having absorbed human ambitions with geological patience, it has witnessed empires crumble to dust, ideologies sink into nothingness and kingdoms pass like...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 11, 2025 | Essays
Writers have always feared and worshipped the most perilous ironist of all — the restless, consuming, and merciless fire. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Few first lines have scorched themselves so deeply into memory. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury gave us a world where...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 4, 2025 | Essays
Aashisha traces writers’ obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Sep 23, 2025 | Essays
In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Aug 19, 2025 | Essays
Zadie Smith has called On Beauty an “homage” to E.M. Forster’s Howards End, though not in a plot-by-plot sense. Zadie Smith has used Forster’s structure as “scaffolding” – as a way to learn to write an English novel, something that made her feel like she’d...