Between the Lines: Genre Wars by Namrata

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she explores the genre wars between the popular, the unpopular, and the quietly rebellious.

Welcome back to Between the Lines, where we explore the shifting textures of literature, one theme at a time. This week, I have been thinking about literary genres, the ones we celebrate, the ones we side-eye, and the ones we quietly read under the covers.

Let’s admit it: We have all been genre-snobs at some point. Perhaps we dismissed romance as frivolous, crime fiction as formulaic, or sci-fi as too far-fetched for the real world. But genre, at its heart, is just a lens. It’s a way of looking at stories. And in South Asian writing, those lenses are rapidly expanding, mixing, mutating, and sometimes, exploding altogether.