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The Punch Magazine The Punch Magazine is an international digital magazine of arts, literature and culture On PayPal, use this link to donate:.

The Punch Magazine is an independent monthly digital magazine of arts, literature and culture, being run from New Delhi, India. An initiative by Punch Art & Culture Foundation, a non-profit set up to promote the best of literary, artistic and cultural traditions around the world, it was founded by Shireen Quadri in 2016. Since then, the magazine has emerged as a vibrant space for diverse forms of

expression. The Punch Magazine features in-depth and insightful essays, interviews, reportage, narrative non-fiction, photo essays, poetry and fiction. Conceived as a literary and an arts collective with a focus to promote intellectual engagement and inquiry with regard to arts and literature, The Punch Magazine features well-researched pieces on arts, literature, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, hospitality, travel and tourism and businesses and start-ups. Striving to achieve exacting standards of excellence, the underlying quest of the magazine is to explore the points of convergence between the best of artistic, entrepreneurial and creative efforts. Brought out in a digital format, The Punch Magazine also brings out thematic issues every now and then in order to delve deep into a particular arena of arts and literature. Alongside original long-form and quick-read content (exclusive excerpts, interviews and essays), it publishes the best writings, videos and voices — emerging, established and experimental — from across the globe through a wide network of literary and cultural partners, both individuals and institutions. As a magazine dedicated to substantive and critical pieces on the different facets of arts and literature, we are forever in need of resources to keep the ambitious scale and scope of our work unhindered and unhamstrung. Your support, therefore, is crucial to help us stay on course, trudging along the path that we have created for ourselves with blood and sweat, a path that often leaves us sailing against the wind. If you come to like our substantive work as well as our core ethos, you can consider sending in your donations here: https://pmny.in/bIOoHPmr5CSw. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thepunchmagazine

Or send donations via PayPal to [email protected] Alternatively, you can transfer your donation online to Punch Art & Culture Foundation, Account No: 919010036898613, Axis Bank, IFSC Code: UTIB0000715

The Punch Magazine was founded out of an old belief that words matter because they shape space and not merely fill it. I...
23/08/2025

The Punch Magazine was founded out of an old belief that words matter because they shape space and not merely fill it. In a culture where the scroll has replaced the page and novelty has eclipsed memory, we hold on to the conviction that arts, literature and culture, like history, asks to be dwelt in, not skimmed across. If the present insists on acceleration, we answer with stillness.

We are not interested in echoing noise. Our concern is with what resists it: the essay that takes its time to unpick inherited truths, the story that ends without resolution because life itself rarely provides one, the poem that strains against language until silence speaks. As Theodore Adorno once argued, art is the “negative” that resists the world’s smooth affirmations; we trust that refusal more than any formula.

This is why we read and publish against convenience. It is also why our pages look both backwards and forwards: to the modernists who believed form itself could be an argument, to the realists who chronicled the ordinary as if it were history, to thinkers and critics who understood that interpretation is not an afterthought but an act of creation. We inherit from them a spirit: restless, exacting, open to doubt.










There are words that slip past grammar and find a home in rhythm, in pause, in the sigh of recognition. A simple utteran...
21/08/2025

There are words that slip past grammar and find a home in rhythm, in pause, in the sigh of recognition. A simple utterance becomes an entire mood, echoing across languages, cultures, and private moments of discovery. Think of how some sounds become shorthand for wonder. They carry no burden of definition, but still manage to frame delight, surprise, even a smile steeped in solitude. They belong not to dictionaries, but to the cadence of living.

Typography, too, is never just form. It’s intent made visible, voice given shape. The line, the curve, the spacing — they all conspire to elevate a word into presence. Suddenly, letters stop being letters; they become a gesture, a movement, a performance. On a quiet afternoon, you stumble upon such fragments. They aren’t shouting for attention; they’re simply there. Waiting to be noticed. Waiting to leave you lighter, with a little echo in your chest.

Perhaps the magic lies not in what’s being said, but in the fact that it can be said at all. It just shows that beauty often resides in the ordinary, until light, ink, and imagination conspire to make it visible. And in that pause, as the eye hovers on, all that’s left is the simplest of expressions, universally understood.

The Punch Magazine, a habit of mind, teaches us to read against the grain, to see meaning not just in the sweep of grand narratives but in the inflections of language, the minor chords of experience. It insists that culture is not consumed but inhabited, not explained away but wrestled with. The Punch Magazine is proof that literature and art need no justification to exist; their presence is argument enough. And in that presence, we are reminded of what lives on: not the rush of the moment, but the resonance of words that refuse to vanish.

In a climate in which the arts are often reduced to tokenism, The Punch Magazine insists on depth: longform essays that ...
20/08/2025

In a climate in which the arts are often reduced to tokenism, The Punch Magazine insists on depth: longform essays that probe, interviews that reveal, fiction and poetry that beckon you to their beatific worlds, and visual narratives that expand how we see. It is a cultural journal, rigorous in thought and generous in scope. The pieces in The Punch Magazine double back, and insist that the reader stay with them long enough for meanings to come to him/her. That is the rhythm The Punch Magazine claims for itself: a refusal to confuse noise with vitality, speed with clarity.

The magazine’s work has always been guided by the belief that art and literature are not ornamental. They are not diversions, but the very ground on which we stand to make sense of ourselves. To hold that ground is not a retreat from the world; it is a way of seeing the world more fully, with the textures and contradictions intact. Every essay, poem, interview, or story published in The Punch Magazine carries a faith in the intelligence of the reader. That faith is rare in a culture where words are often flattened into slogans or broken into fragments designed only to be consumed. The Punch Magazine wagers on attention, on care, on the reader’s willingness to inhabit complexity.

This wager does not pine for a lost age of letters. Instead, it speaks to the present with all its fractures, but on its own terms. The magazine acknowledges the urgency of our moment, but it answers that urgency not with simplification, but with depth; not with certainty, but with honesty. In our pages, writing is allowed to find its weight, to reveal its silences as much as its statements. There is space here for doubt, for ambiguity, for the unfinished thought that resists being made marketable.

Such spaces matter, because without them, the cultural imagination risks being reduced to little more than a commodity. The Punch Magazine resists that reduction. It exists to argue, to listen, to unsettle, and sometimes to console. It does so without making a show of it, without apology, and without the pressure to explain itself at every turn. What remains is not a slogan, but a practice: to keep faith with the written word, and with the reader who seeks more than distraction.

was born out of the conviction that literature and ideas deserve a home that is not dictated by speed, trend, or conve...
18/08/2025

was born out of the conviction that literature and ideas deserve a home that is not dictated by speed, trend, or convenience. In a time when words are too often reduced to content and reading is measured in clicks, we hold on to the belief that language can still unsettle, that stories and essays can still interrogate the present, and that criticism is as vital as creation. Our work is to make space for writers and thinkers who are not afraid to be rigorous, difficult, or slow because some truths demand that kind of time.

Each piece in The Punch Magazine carries the essence of discovery. From bold new voices to established writers, from intimate reflections to sharp cultural criticism, The Punch Magazine celebrates the written word in all its depth. We invite you to read not just to consume, but to engage, to pause, and to return. We publish essays that take apart inherited certainties, fiction that refuses the neat closure of formula, poetry that strains against silence, and conversations that place urgency above comfort. Each issue is a reminder that the act of reading is also an act of resistance: against forgetting, against simplification, against the flattening of experience. For us, publishing is less about producing a magazine than about creating a record, a trail of questions and arguments about culture that others might follow, resist, or expand.

To read The Punch is to enter a dialogue with voices across borders and disciplines, across histories and urgencies. We ask our readers not just to consume, but to inhabit, to engage with ideas that demand patience, with stories that disturb as much as they illuminate. We offer them attention. In that attention lies the possibility of a culture that takes itself seriously enough to doubt, and doubts itself seriously enough to grow. Join us in shaping a community that values nuance, expression, and the power of stories. Whether you’re seeking thoughtful essays, timeless poetry, or conversations that matter, you’ll find them here.

“In Japan, sonder is not just an idea. It is a way of being. To travel sondered is to let the world happen to you. Slowl...
24/07/2025

“In Japan, sonder is not just an idea. It is a way of being. To travel sondered is to let the world happen to you. Slowly. Soulfully. With grace. And to leave, not just with memories, but with a new way of seeing. Discover immersive journeys into Japan’s inner world at sonderinjapan.com.

The first part of a series on , founded by and , which seeks ‘curated trips to Japan for the quietly curious’. Link in bio

Some mornings arrive like a sentence half-formed — open, unhurried, waiting to be finished. There’s no need to rush when...
06/07/2025

Some mornings arrive like a sentence half-formed — open, unhurried, waiting to be finished. There’s no need to rush when the coffee is dark, the blanket or the duvet still warm, and the books splayed out in that just-read way. The laptop hums quietly, surrounded by the clutter that creativity often leaves behind. It’s evidence — of thought, of pause, of a life lived in drafts.

This is where The Punch Magazine belongs — in the folds of mornings like these, where stories, essays, poems and photographs don’t interrupt your day, but slip into it gently. Between the steam of a cup and the margin of a page, offers a kind of editorial companionship that notices and listens. Whether it’s fiction that stirs or essays that spark, this is a magazine for the ones who mark time with words.

So if your idea of a perfect morning includes reading something that reminds you of language’s quiet power — not to overwhelm, but to connect — you’re already in the right place. Come with the coffee. Stay for the sentences. The Punch Magazine is on your desk, ans by your side.

There are certain kind of morning or evening, day or night when time doesn’t rush you. The coffee cools slowly. The page...
30/06/2025

There are certain kind of morning or evening, day or night when time doesn’t rush you. The coffee cools slowly. The pages stay open a little longer. And something — a phrase, a colour, a design — slips into your mind and stays with you.

The Punch Magazine is created in that spirit. Where literature and aesthetics meet with no urgency to explain themselves. We curate contemporary fiction, poetry, travel pieces, interiors, and essays that pause for breath and give room to thought. Whether you’re drawn to a passage of prose, a photograph of a sunlit hallway, or the fine tension of a handwritten line, you’ll find something that you’d like to hold on to for a long, long while.

It’s not about trends or what everyone is doing. It’s about atmosphere. And in a world that often demands speed, here’s your reminder that reading — like good coffee — works best when unhurried.

Not everything meaningful needs to be loud. On a quiet desk, with a blank tablet and a half-thought scribble, something ...
30/06/2025

Not everything meaningful needs to be loud. On a quiet desk, with a blank tablet and a half-thought scribble, something essential begins to stir. It could be a story you haven’t written yet, a line of verse still forming, or an idea waiting to be held gently in your hand. In the background: the hum of a keyboard, the stillness of a white page, and a kind of silence that asks nothing from you except presence.

The Punch Magazine was imagined for such moments — deliberate, open, and alive to the texture of thought. We bring together contemporary writing and art across genres — fiction, essays, poetry, design, travel, and culture — for readers who don’t want to rush the act of reading. For creators who know that what matters is often quiet and slow. We’re inviting conversation — over time, across disciplines, and in tune with a more mindful way of engaging with the world.

So whether you find us over coffee, between edits, or during that mid-afternoon lull when ideas come uninvited, know that we’re here — in print, online, and in spirit — to be part of your creative rhythm. This isn’t content for the algorithm. It’s nourishment for those who pause, reflect, and create.

Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 film Umrao Jaan, which re-released in theatres on June 27 in a 4K restoration, is adapted from Mirza...
29/06/2025

Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 film Umrao Jaan, which re-released in theatres on June 27 in a 4K restoration, is adapted from Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s late 19th-century novel Umrao Jaan Ada. The film is set in mid-1800s Lucknow, in the final flicker of the Nawabi era, a time of crumbling opulence, dying etiquette, and the fading aroma of a refined culture soon to be overrun by British modernity and masculine nationalism.

Amiran, a young girl abducted from her home in Faizabad and sold to a Lucknow kotha, grows up to become the legendary courtesan and poet Umrao Jaan (Rekha). She dances, writes, seduces, loves, and is ultimately left to survive with nothing but her verse. However, to reduce the film to that are is to miss its entire method. This is not a bildungsroman. It’s an extended lament. Ali’s gaze is steadier, more fatalistic. He makes a film that moves like grief.

Umrao Jaan is a portrait of suspended melancholy, of beauty in captivity. What Ali offers is neither revisionist feminism nor romantic glorification. Instead, Umrao Jaan becomes an elegy: to a culture, to a woman, and to the idea of belonging itself. His directorial approach is radically restrained.

To say that Rekha is the soul of Umrao Jaan would be accurate but inadequate. She inhabits the role through her body, her gaze, her restraint. It is one of those rare performances that does not rely on dialogue or narrative momentum but lives entirely in the spaces between words, in the flicker of an eyelid, the elongation of a pause, the turn of a wrist as she breaks into a ghazal.

Jawaid Hassan writes…

https://thepunchmagazine.com/culture/entertainment/muzaffar-ali-amp-rsquo-s-umrao-jaan-a-courtesan-amp-rsquo-s-lament-a-culture-amp-rsquo-s-elegy

The Punch Magazine is a space for the curious. It moves between poetry and essays, fiction and interiors, travel and eve...
29/06/2025

The Punch Magazine is a space for the curious. It moves between poetry and essays, fiction and interiors, travel and everyday design. It’s for those who don’t compartmentalise their interests — who think slowly, read widely, and take pleasure in detail.

On your screen, between deadlines or design drafts, between tabs or tea breaks, we offer writing that holds your attention without demanding it. With each issue, The Punch builds an archive of thought, taste, and imagination — for anyone drawn to the places where ideas live with feeling.

You know that quiet hour between work and dinner, or late into the night when the world falls silent and your mind begin...
29/06/2025

You know that quiet hour between work and dinner, or late into the night when the world falls silent and your mind begins to wander? That’s when The Punch Magazine finds you best. From a poem that stays with you longer than expected to an interview that opens a window you didn’t know was shut — this is a place where literature, culture, interiors, photography, and travel are not separate sections but one flowing conversation.

We don’t chase trends. We follow moods, moments, and meaning. Our stories are made for the browser who is not in a tearing hurry, the reader who savours, and the wanderer who reads with a cup of something beside them, relishing both. Wherever you are, whenever you’re ready, The Punch is waiting with something worth your attention.

Evenings on Sundays are for unhurried scrolling, legs curled into cushions, and discovering writing that wins your heart...
29/06/2025

Evenings on Sundays are for unhurried scrolling, legs curled into cushions, and discovering writing that wins your heart. The Punch Magazine brings that feeling to life — whether it’s through a short story that unfolds like dusk, an interview that breathes space into your thoughts, or a photo essay that captures the in-between moments most people miss. In our world, storytelling is like music played low.

So, when the light dims and you’re looking for something richer than a quick click — come here. Wander through poetry, linger on stories about the interiors, lose yourself in essays about longing, art, memory, travel. At The Punch Magazine, we create moods and memories. And maybe it’s time we all drawn on all these int a little more.

Tell us: what have you read lately that stayed with you or may be made you go back to your iPad or your writing desk?

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The Punch Magazine is an initiative by Punch Art and Culture Foundation that endeavours to promote arts and literary and cultural traditions around the world. It was founded by Shireen Quadri, who is the director of the foundation. A monthly digital magazine of arts, literature and culture, The Punch Magazine features in-depth essays, reviews and interviews.

The magazine has been conceived as a collective, a community of people bound by similar interests. It aims to showcase the best in arts, literature, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, hospitality, travel and tourism. Striving to achieve exacting standards of excellence, the magazine brings together the best of all creative efforts, underlining its core belief that these efforts are all connected and the process of creating good arts is similar across disciplines.

Alongside original long-form and quick-read content (exclusive excerpts, interviews and essays), it is designed to showcase the best writings, videos and voices — emerging, established and experimental — from across the globe through a wide network of our literary and cultural partners, both individuals and institutions.

The Byword, one of the sections of The Punch Magazine — earlier a quarterly magazine of literature, arts and culture, both in print and online — was started in 2015. It was reinvented in 2016 as The Punch Magazine. Since then, it has emerged as a one-of-its-kind platform that showcases the richness and diversity of arts and literature around the world. It has earned high praise from a cross-section of award-winning writers and artists.