Reading The Hyphen

I heard that Vivek Shanbhag had launched a literary magazine with translations into English of stories from various regional languages. I think this is a great way to access works in Indian languages.

I saw the announcement on X while I was trying to follow the news of the Starship towing.

Excellent new literary journal launched by vivek shanbag. What it proves yet again is that the most serious, inventive and ambitious writing, working with the most interesting material, in India is coming from the writers working in regional languages. pic.twitter.com/KCaS60yDy6

— Chiki Sarkar (@Chikisarkar) August 3, 2026

I then read the Scroll interview with Shanbhag where he talks about the story behind the name:

Hyphen takes its inspiration from the poet, scholar, and translator AK Ramanujan, who once described himself as the “hyphen” in Indo-American. This striking metaphor aptly conveys the idea of connection and serves as a guiding principle for bringing diverse literatures and cultures into dialogue.

I visited the website and found that if I logged in with your email id, I could read one story. I read Benyamin’s The Postman.

Benyamin is a Malayalam writer I want to read in the original Malayalam one day. Manjaveyil Marangal is of interest to me. But, his most known work is Adujeevitam, which was made into The Goat Life.

The Hyphen carried his The Postman. This story was translated to English by J Devika. The story is about a postman who is otherwise very particular about following the rules of postal delivery but who does not delivers certain letters because he believes it could affect their lives. I would love to read this in the original Malayalam.

You can either read The Postman or see who else has written in this edition of The Hyphen. The best case would be to read someone you know of who has written in your mother tongue. After you read it in The Hyphen in English, try to read it in your mother tongue as well.

I subscribed to both the print and digital edition of The Hyphen which is available in India, but they do not ship it internationally yet. I plan to read the physical copy of the magazine and then donate it to the public circulating library that I am a member of. There is also a page on The Hyphen’s website that has a list of places where you can buy the magazine.

After The Postman, I am reading Indulkar, written by Kiran Gurav and translated from Marathi by Shanta Gokhale.