October brings truth, shame, and reckoning to the centre. The Gisèle Pélicot trial is examined through two powerful essays — one on visual truth-telling in France, one drawing Draupadi into the same conversation. G.N. Saibaba’s prison poems arrive in their raw defiance. Alongside: fiction about madness, myth, and agency; an excerpt from Dwapar Katha; and two conversations on mental health and writing. An issue that asks: what does it take to make shame change sides?