“Earthly Playing Field” by Radhika Singh
Roma has a steady job, a mortgage, and a surrogate family in Queens. But as she moves through her daily routines, the powerful Empire that rules her world bares its teeth elsewhere—crushing freedom movements across the planet, including the Punjabi farmers’ uprising where her younger brother struggles on the frontlines.
Roma’s life is upended when her older brother entrusts her with a strange gift: an ordinary-looking plant that manifests a sophisticated bio-engineered technology. The ‘cell’ opens a portal for an extraterrestrial spirit-body bearing news of a liberated future–and the potential to hack AI warfare—propelling Roma and her family into the core of a rising resistance.
As dreams and dialectics converge, Roma meditates on the role of faith, ruminating on mystic poetics and anti-colonial legacies while yearning for a bewitching woman whose heart will only ever belong to the revolution.
Earthly Playing Fields
by Radhika Singh
Common Notions Press (May 2026)
