Dear Readers, 

Welcome to Berkana! Ever since I started this newsletter, the constant nag of creating meaningful high-brow essays has been my troubled companion throughout this journey. Creation is a messy pursuit of marrying hope with despair, secretly sneaking in reassurance and comfort while delivering many bitter truths. Being a writer is no different from being a trapeze dancer, the elegant suspension, mid-air spins, gravity-defying back flips, and holding on to and letting go of the swivel at the perfect moments. Writing is a balancing act for consciousness explorers and storytellers. One miss can cost a lot of lost bets, including a significant diffusion of subscribers. All of us who want to become successful writers, carefully tread those lines. We walk constantly on eggshells, to create meaning and inspire adulation while simultaneously risking negative criticism. All of these are parts of a creative life, a process to live by. Therefore evidently, we fail as well, and frequently at that too. We struggle with our elaborate ways to self-destruct while dealing with imposter syndrome. However, in midst of all this too, we struggle to keep offering the work we promised our audience. The punches of evocative prose, the lyrical symbolism, the shocking epiphanies, and a decorated word dance through the stream of consciousness. It is hard work, to say the least. And like everyone else in society who creates a service or product through a concentrated effort of their skill, a writer too deserves to be paid - a sentiment extensively explored and contested these days. 

Leave a comment

So far into the journey, Berkana is independent and free of cost to all its readers. However, I am planning to launch an exclusive edition available only to Berkana patrons. Recently, I have repurposed the content branched under the overarching umbrella of Berkana. Since I started creating Berkana, several themes have recurred throughout my research into the dark side of myths, lores, fairytales, and culture both prevalent and obscure. To make the archive more comprehensible, I have categorized them under appropriate sections. All the content is now tagged under their respective sections and you can visit whichever section that ignites your curiosity. I have included the map of the Berkana cityscape below for your reference. 

Here are the prime Berkana City Destinations

1. History Parlour: Linking People to Places by Tracing Cultural Tools of the Time

2. Rumination Station: Profound Epiphanies on the Human Experiences of Love, Longing, and Loss

3. Folklore Studio: Revelations Hidden within the Dark Crevices of Folklores Both Old and New

4. Macabre Museum: Treading through the Tightrope of Discomfort to Initiate Difficult Conversations

For those of you who are new to Berkana 

This newsletter offers a critical lens to observe the intersection between history and socio-cultural anthropology. At Berkana, I prod into the conditioning of the collective social psyche through the lenses of scrutiny. I focus on peeling away the cultural inhibitions to reveal the truth that many will comfortably brush under the rug. The goal is to awaken dynamic changes in the social framework in the light of storytelling. Berkana gives you a chance to integrate obscure yet valuable ideologies and find meaning through connection with the old. If you care about marginalized inhabitants of our planet, then Berkana is the place for you. From the fringes of its unpopular existence, I bring many thought-provoking narratives of human conditions to the forefront of consciousness. I have many vices, but pretense is not one of them. I have baked Berkana in the same fire of authenticity, and it leads to the demise of cultural fallacy.