Dear readers, contributors, and friends of Inklette,

We are thrilled to bring to you the fifth issue of Inklette magazine, themed on ‘Home.’ Home has come to mean so many different things for me over the course of these past few months. Here I am, living in the unstoppable city of New York, thousands of miles away from my hometown of Bhopal, India. As a stranger and a foreigner here, I have been trying to comprehend what home means and what it makes us learn, or forget.

I used to think homes are permanent. But the more I have grown and travelled, the more I have come to realize that sometimes our homes are not symbolic of who we are or where we come from, but what we choose to leave behind. Like most things, they are perhaps best experienced only in their absence.

I feel compelled to bring up the brutality of our homes. They can be politicized or discriminative entities, they can inflict pain or disappointment. But this summer, in Iceland, and now, in New York, I have found a home to believe in. I have found homes in the bodies we inhabit, the friends we make. I look for things that don’t change. I enjoy the color of water, and the tears that poetry brings. And that’s when I know I am nowhere but at home.

Our stellar staff members have worked incredibly hard to put this together. Without their passion and creativity, I am uncertain if I would have the kind of hope and love I am learning to take in. We received an overwhelming number of submissions from this issue and chose, with great care, the ones included in this issue to show to you. We hope you like this issue. We hope it allows you to look around, and love.

Sincerely,

Devanshi Khetarpal

Editor-in-Chief