Photo by Shanai Tanwar Yesterday I found the soul of Delhi in London. As I gathered alongside hundreds of Indian students and allies in Aldwych to protest the recent hunger strikes asking for education reform and government accountability in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the energy was palpable. Under the greenery, surrounded by Urdu poetry and chanting “Inquilab Zindabad,” I could have sworn the homeland had manifested itself in this colonial capital this evening. Which is funny because last...

Each person’s heart is its own archive layered with the sediments of romance, friendship, family, grief—but not everyone has quite the right words for it.

Photo by John Cobb When London-based intercultural theatre company, Border Crossings, invited me to the opening night of their latest production about Syrian refugee women, I was immediately invested. I found myself at Hoxton Hall last week eagerly looking forward to a night that would transport me to a sensorily and culturally rich experience of the Levant. ‘Suppliants of Syria’ is a modern retelling of Aeschylus’s Greek tragedy, ‘Suppliants', one of the earliest classics to consider the...

From a young age, I was taught that my passport was synonymous with my identity in the world. Alongside my name, handy phone numbers, and home addresses, I had branded this fact into my brain. Even in my sleep, I could recite my passport number and its expiry date in a heartbeat.

Writer Shanai Tanwar reflects on her experience as an international student in London as her first term draws to a close.