Sabr: A care collaborative

Dear Reader, 

Thank you for following us on Sabr. We have had the delight of bringing something to you every month this year, with a minor break in August. Do drop us a line to tell us what you would like to see more of in 2026.

Here is our end-of-year Sabr list for you, featuring books, movies, a playlist, and more – all broadly themed around care and sabr, or so we read.

Books We Recommend 

1. Is a River Alive: Robert Macfarlane:

We love this book because: How can I translate – not in words but in belief – that a river is a body, as alive as you or I, that there can be no life without it? Natalie Diaz (2020)

2. Backstage of the Care Economy: Helma Lutz

A great read for understanding transnational migration, focusing on caregivers from Eastern Europe working in the West.

3. Mother Mary Comes to Me: Arundhati Roy.

I learned that day that most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination – and that we may not be the best arbiters of which is which. So read this book as you would read a novel. It makes no larger claim. But then there can be no larger claim. Fiction is that strange, smoky thing that writers don’t entirely own, even if they think they do. Where does it come from? Our past, present, our reading, our imagination – yes. But perhaps from premonitions of our future, too? How else can it be that like the characters of my second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I too, am now the caretaker of a sort of grave in the grounds of a sort of guest house?

4. Forest of Noise: Mosab Abu Toha: This moving, powerful collection of poems of life under occupation in Palestine, an archive of survival during a genocide.

5. Meet the Savarnas: Ravikant Kisana. This is a book that firmly turns the gaze on the savarnas, offering a sharp commentary on the graded privileges in contemporary Indian society. The book spans gated communities, over-worked corporate India, elite universities, popular culture, technocrats, the unimaginative start-up ecosystem… While the book is not explicitly on thematics of care, how does one understand care infrastructures, and the utter carelessness of destroying them, without squarely engaging with caste privilege?

The spectacular capacity of the savarna gaza to understand social privilege, exclusion, advantage and disadvantage from only a narcissistic, self-referential perspective suggests that perhaps the glass beneath their feet is deeply photochromic. The more brightly the fires burn in the paatal below, the darker the glass becomes, shielding their eyes from the sight. But the glass, thus far tightly sealed, is begininng to crack. Smoke, smells, and screams are all beginning to leak into their floor.

6. A Good Life: The Power of Palliative Care– Of course, Jerry Pinto has so many books that are on our must-read lists. But read this one to see how good writing – beyond dry, academic prose – can drive home a message so powerfully, so intensely. Jerry starts from a point of profound personal loss and grief that shaped his life, and reflects:

We pulled through somehow, but it would have been so much easier on all of us if we had someone to walk with us, someone with whom we could have talked about the pain… Pain is inevitable. But the suffering need not be. Palliative care seeks to lessen both the pain and the suffering caused by illness.

Films We Love 

1. Working Girls: directed by Paromita Vohra. The film traverses India, documenting women’s work from care work and domestic work to surrogacy and sex work. Look out for screenings near you!
2. Bonobibi: directed by Annu Jalais & Joy Banerjee: In the Sunderbans, Bonbibi protects the fisherfolk. The documentary film takes us through situated cultural practices and belief systems that transcend sectarian divisions of Hinduism and Islam.
3. Comrade Poopy: directed by M: Comrade Poopy makes us gush a little, chuckle a little, as only cats can, while we witness resistance fighters battling the military coup in Myanmar.
4. Log Kya Kahenge: directed by Rafina Khatun: In this documentary, Gulnaz takes your heart, fills it with hope, through her community radio program. She refuses to be silenced by oppressive structures. The documentary calls you to join forces with her!
5. Ladai Chodab Nahi: directed by Aastha. In this brilliant documentary, Aastha focuses on women as they fight against the expansion of mining activities in Jharkhand that displaces and disproportionately harms Indigenous populations. 
6. Homebound: directed by Neeraj Ghaywan: This film narrates a beautiful story of friendship woven against the backdrop of the COVID-19 lockdown, and the crises that workers in particular faced as thousands walked back home. Blindspots around state apathy and abandonment. But if there’s one Bollywood film we would recommend, this is the one!
7. Feminichi Fathima: directed by Fasil Muhammed. This Malayalam movie follows a housewife in coastal Kerala who sparks a quiet rebellion when a simple act of refusing to replace a worn mattress becomes her way of rejecting years of invisible care labour. The film uses this mundane moment to expose how patriarchy depends on women’s silent endurance and unpaid domestic work. Through her defiance, she reclaims agency and rest, turning neglect into liberation.

OTT

1. Pluribus: Pluribus resonates at many levels. A collective hive mind that links people’s thoughts and choices. Everybody is happy, with little autonomy and individual differences. Sounds familiar? In this sense, Pluribus is also not entirely speculative or about digital worlds. Places like Singapore and the UAE, already appear Pluribus-like.
2. Adolescence: This is a hard-hitting Netflix series, so all caveats and trigger warnings applied – social media’s impact on the young, incel culture, online radicalization, mental health. If you are winding down by taking stock, this is a must watch!

Sabr Playlist: Finally, here’s a motley bunch of songs on our playlist about the thriving more-than-human world around us, protest, hope, and revolution.

We realize not all these recommendations are warm, fuzzy, end-of-the-year chocolates and plum cake accompaniments. This has been a year of war, genocide, and continued brazen ecological destruction. All work of cleaning the debris, healing, repairing, salvaging, and patching up this bitter earth, must perhaps begin with a care-ful reflection and a reckoning of this debris? Share your recommendations with us!

Signing off, with love, with sabr.