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Dear Readers

10 is a good number, because it is the first of a repeating pattern in the decimal number system, and also because it has been the jersey number of the iconic football players over the years. But I guess I am just making this up. We have these ways of identifying milestones in our lives, however insignificant they might appear to be to the larger group of people. I am just happy that a free magazine like DoubleSpeak could complete 10 issues in 27 months and I am trying hard to find the right words to express that happiness in a more ceremonial fashion. A free space is a bit dicey, because it seems to be a place without ideologies, boundaries, values or even standards. And there are several instances where such spaces gave rise to mindless ranting in the name of art, culture or even science. I hope DoubleSpeak doesn’t become that one day but continues in its mission to curate words and images that are expressed artistically to speak about perspectives, feelings, ideas, helping us to reach a level of truth.

To make this issue special, I decided to keep, for the first time, a theme for all the pieces. The theme is the old and the new. This is, to be fair, not a unique theme, neither a one that is being explored for the first time in any such artistic spaces. As a keen observer of the human life, I have notices, several times, that there remains a strained relationship between the old and the new. The new demands for its own space, the old holds on to its. The new questions the old, eventually replaces it in practice and yet the old lives in the memories. There are several old importants which demand a longer stay with the new essentials. Sometimes the old is created anew, sometimes the new is destined to be old in quick time. A desire for the new sometimes fail, sometimes the new is just a repetition of the old. Yet the hope for a revolution for a new dawn has inspired generations of thinkers. I hope the pieces published in this issue will give you slices of all such conflicts, contrasts and juxtaposition of the old and the new.

There are several interesting pieces, and I encourage you to read them, appreciate them and critique them. I believe an artist could do as much from the appreciation as from a well written critique of the work. And as always, I urge you to write letters to me, so that I can publish them in this section. So far, it’s just me who writes here. I remain grateful for your support as without your encouragement and adulation, a free online magazine like DoubleSpeak wouldn’t have survived.

Arpan Krishna Deb

Founder and Managing Editor