Includes index.

The Pact / P. S. Rege -- This Night / N. Revathi Devi -- On Reading a Love Poem / Kedarnath Singh -- Mother / P. Lankesh -- The Girl's Desire Moves Among Her Bangles / Gagan Gill -- Flute-music / Rabindranath Tagore -- Women in Dutch Painting / Eunice de Souza -- Outside the Furnace / Aziz Qaisi -- The Knot / Vinda Karandikar -- Love Poem for a Wife, 2 / A. K. Ramanujan -- Woman, 2 / Jyotsna Milan -- Consolation to Empty Pitchers / K. S. Narasimhaswami -- The Forest of Yellow Bamboo Trees / B. S. Mardhekar -- from Hymns in Darkness / Nissim Ezekiel -- The Void / G. M. Muktibodh -- Woman / Hira Bansode -- Man / Archana Varma -- The Wall / Ismail -- Tall Buildings / Munib-ur-Rahman -- Monday / Vijaya Mukhopadhyay -- An October Morning / Jayanta Mahapatra -- The Well / Padma Sachdev -- Drought / Sitanshu Yashashchandra -- If Hot Flowers Come to the Street / R. Meenakshi -- Desert Landscape / Agha Shahid Ali -- A Pond Named Ganga / Chandrashekhar Kambar --

Spell / Anuradha Mahapatra -- Two Women Knitting / Mrinal Pande -- Household Fires / Indira Sant -- To Mother / S. Usha -- Salutations / Shanmuga Subbiah -- This Man / G. S. Shivarudrappa -- Amalkanti / Nirendranath Chakrabarti -- Compromise / Akhtar-ul-Iman -- Fear / Devdas Chhotray -- Humiliation / Kaifi Azmi -- Freak / Chandrashekhar Patil -- Robinson Crusoe / Soubhagya Kumar Mishra -- The Buddha / Daya Pawar -- My Father Travels / Dilip Chitre -- Girl in the Kitchen / Vaidehi -- Hot Noon in Malabar / Kamala Das -- To My Daughter / N. Balamani Amma -- Her Garden / Meena Alexander -- Avatars / V. Indira Bhavani -- Husband / Popati Hiranandani -- Man: 1961 / Pranabendu Dasgupta -- Genesis / K. Satchidanandan -- Sisters / Saleem Peeradina -- Family Pride / T. S. Venugopalan -- Time Wins / Benoy Majumdar -- Forensic Medicine / Gieve Patel -- Another Me / Api -- Birthmarks / Rajani Parulekar -- from Some People Laugh, Some People Cry / Sri Sri --

The Roys / Arvind Krishna Mehrotra -- The Pleasure Dome / Shrikant Verma -- The Master Carpenter / G. Shankara Kurup -- Poem / Labhshankar Thacker -- What Is Worth Knowing? / Sujata Bhatt -- Situation / Kaa Naa Subramanyam -- The Creative Process / Amrita Pritam -- A Pair of Glasses / Savithri Rajeevan -- The Diamond of Character / Kabita Sinha -- Tamil / Gnanakoothan -- Our Hindi / Raghuvir Sahay -- Woman / Siddhalinga Pattanshetti -- The Naming of Things / Bahinabai Chaudhari -- The Yellow River / Nabaneeta Dev Sen -- Old Leaves from the Chinese Earth / Sadanand Rege -- The Itch / K. Ayyappa Paniker -- I and 'I' / Khalil-ur-Rahman Azmi -- White Paper / Nara -- Wind, 9 / Subramania Bharati -- Forgive Me / Shakti Chattopadhyay -- On Bismillah Khan's Shehnai / Chennavira Kanavi -- Still Life / Shahryar -- The Alphabet / Arun Kolatkar -- Green Snake / B. R. Lakshman Rao -- Snake / Paresh Chandra Raut -- Dawn / Nirmalprabha Bardoloi --

In Camp / Jibanananda Das -- Fish / Bhanuji Rao -- Santhal Poems, 1 / Bishnu De -- A Page from the New Diary / Nida Fazli -- Next Page / Atmanam -- Whirlwind / Ravji Patel -- National Bird / N. Pichamurti -- Face to Face / K. V. Tirumalesh -- Frogs / Buddhadeva Bose -- The Black Panther / Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena -- Sea Breeze, Bombay / Adil Jussawalla -- Calcutta and I / Sunil Gangopadhyay -- Tryst / Sunanda Tripathy -- New Delhi, 1974 / Vinay Dharwadker -- The City, Evening, and an Old Man: Me / Dhoomil -- Winding Sand / Naresh Guha -- Jaisalmer, 1 / Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh -- Speaking of Places / R. Parthasarathy -- Almora Spring / Sumitranandan Pant -- On the Slope of this Hill / Shamsher Bahadur Singh -- Passing through Rajasthan / Umashankar Joshi -- Rice / Chemmanam Chacko -- Of Mohenjo Daro at Oxford / Keki N. Daruwalla -- Fire / Amiya Chakravarty -- American Tourist / B. C. Ramachandra Sharma -- Days in New York / Shiv K. Kumar --

Towards Delhi / Kunwar Narain -- Lifetime / Narayan Surve -- Stone-masons, My Father, and Me / Namdeo Dhasal -- Babur / Dom Moraes -- The Corpse / Jagannath Prasad Das -- Come Back, Alexander / Sati Kumar -- Hiroshima / Agyeya -- A Doctor's Journal Entry for August 6, 1945 / Vikram Seth -- America, America / K. Nisar Ahmad -- Burn this Sari / A. Jayaprabha -- Purdah, 1 / Imtiaz Dharker -- I Never Saw You / Jyoti Lanjewar -- Morsel / Ali Sardar Jafri -- The Election / Sitakant Mahapatra -- The Task / Subhash Mukhopadhyay -- The Betrayal / Nirala -- Do Something, Brother / M. Gopalakrishna Adiga -- Salaam / Mangesh Padgaonkar -- Afterword: Modern Indian Poetry and its Contexts / Vinay Dharwadker.

Chiefly English translation from fourteen Indian languages.