It is well known that people ascribe different cities with their own identities; our urban landscapes most certainly have their own unique way in which they are represented in culture, film, and writing. But what interested me for this project was how those identities are so often transplanted onto their inhabitants. And while dispute continues over terminology to define contemporary literature, there is an undeniable shared quality in how we write, publish, and take in literature in the internet era. The “cityscapes” in this project are reflections on the urban environments that we all know and how the current generation of writers relates to them.

In "Hello Hyderabad," Nemana recalls the experience of being seated next to a migrant worker on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Hyderabad, India. The family she worked for had, completely within the ambit of the law, sent her home with only an hour's notice, forcing her to abandon her husband, her belongings, and the savings she accumulated over three years of work as a domestic maid in Abu Dhabi. Although the woman and the writer are co-passengers for the duration of this flight, an equalizing space far above national boundaries, their paths would dramatically diverge again as soon as the plane touched down in India.