• English - Romance

    Pearls Before the Moon

    June 30, 2025 - By 

    Anika Rao Part 1: The Taste of Irani Chai The clock struck six as Meher adjusted the silver jhumkas dangling from her ears, their soft chime blending into the evening azaan that echoed from the nearby Mecca Masjid. She stood by the rusted iron railings of the Charminar terrace, inhaling the scent of kebabs, rose attar, and the sharp, dusty wind that always carried whispers of stories untold. Hyderabad in December was always like this—cool, crowded, humming with history. And Meher, a 26-year-old calligraphy artist, found herself here every Thursday, sketchbook in hand, waiting to draw strangers and perhaps meet…

  • English - Romance

    The Equation of Us

    June 30, 2025 - By 

    Maanvi Shah The conference room was too cold for summer, like most VC firms that mistook temperature control for control in general. Rhea Mehta crossed her legs, stilettos clicking lightly as she adjusted her seat, eyes steady on the projected slide deck. “You’re up,” she said, voice clipped, betraying no emotion. Across the glossy table stood a lanky young man in jeans and a faded hoodie—unapologetically casual in a room full of silk blouses and cufflinks. He stepped forward, opened his laptop, and clicked the remote. “My name is Arjun Iyer,” he began, his voice a blend of caffeine and…

  • Crime - English

    Satpura Files

    June 30, 2025 - By 

    Rajat Bhatia 1 The air in the Satpura forest had always felt like a living thing—dense, watchful, sacred. But this morning, Kabir Solanki sensed something else: silence that felt tampered with. The usual melody of drongos and parakeets had been replaced by the low, uneasy whisper of a forest holding its breath. Riding his forest department-issued motorbike along a narrow dirt path cloaked in early mist, Kabir scanned the sal and teak trees with a practiced eye. He had served in these jungles for nearly five years since leaving the army, but he’d never seen this particular route—just beyond Jamni…

  • Crime - English

    The Tattoo Murders of Jaipur

    June 30, 2025 - By 

    Pramod Gupta Chapter 1: The Pushkar sky was ablaze with the twilight gold of November, washing the desert fairground in hues of copper and crimson. Thousands of camels stood tethered under brightly colored tents, while locals and tourists milled about—some bartering over livestock, others snapping photos of bearded snake charmers and turbaned herders. Drums beat in rhythm with the swirling ghagras of Rajasthani dancers, and the air smelled of roasted peanuts, camel sweat, and incense. Yet amid this festival of color and tradition, a shrill scream pierced through the evening cacophony. It came from a sandpit just beyond the edge…

  • English - Romance

    Unscripted

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Avni Sharma Cut. Camera. Chaos. Adil Mehta hated networking events. He hated the artificial laughter, the overflowing wine glasses, the desperate smiles hiding behind even more desperate scripts. But tonight, he had no choice. His rent was due, his bank balance read like a horror story, and his last script — a coming-of-age story about a grieving magician — had been rejected with a “Nice tone, but not marketable.” So he stood awkwardly at the corner of the Film Writers Guild mixer, nursing a warm soda and mentally rewriting every regret of his life. That’s when it happened. A shout,…

  • English - Young Adult

    Paper Tigers

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Tarun Roy Chowdhury 1 Priyajit Sen always felt something breathing beneath the skin of Kolkata—a slow, unseen pulse carried by the rusted tramlines, the cracked facades of colonial buildings, and the tangled mess of alleyways where stories clung like moss on old bricks. At sixteen, he had grown used to slipping away after school, sketchbook in hand, to wander the city’s hidden veins. It was on one such humid afternoon, when the smell of wet books and tea leaves hung thick over College Street, that he stepped into a dusty secondhand bookstore tucked between a tea stall and a shuttered…

  • English - Horror

    The Ghost Follower

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Rhea D’Souza She first saw the message at 2:13 a.m., glowing faintly on her cracked iPhone screen: @mydeathwasnotanaccident: You remember the swing. The blood. The lie. Tia Kapoor blinked, swiping the notification away. Half-asleep, she assumed it was a prank or spam. Probably a desperate bot scraping her older posts. She had, after all, posted a moody reel last week with a retro swing in the frame — filters, glitch overlays, and the caption: “Some childhoods don’t swing back.” It had gone viral. Of course, someone would try to ride the algorithm with a creepy reply. But when she checked…

  • English - Travel

    Passport, Please!

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Dinesh Rao Chapter 1: “Congratulations, You’re Going Abroad!” It was a dusty April afternoon in Kanpur, the kind of day where ceiling fans give up and men in banyans sit outside complaining about rising electricity bills. In the midst of this sweaty monotony, the Tripathi household was suddenly turned upside down by a shrill ringtone and a louder shriek. Sunita Tripathi had won something. She’d been entering supermarket contests for years—sending SMS codes, dropping coupons in steel boxes outside sweet shops—but this was different. This time, the universe answered. “Ramesh ji! Dekho! Dekho!” she shouted, waving a crumpled paper. Her…

  • Crime - English

    The Final Over

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Asish Kumar Chapter One: The Collapse The roar of the crowd at Wankhede Stadium was deafening, a cyclone of noise and anticipation as the scoreboard blinked “19.5 overs – 164/7.” One ball left. Five runs needed. And standing at the crease, helmet tilted back slightly under the blistering floodlights, was Punit Shekhawat—the poster boy of modern Indian cricket, the heartthrob of the nation, the boy from Jodhpur who had become Mumbai Thunder’s talisman. Sweat shimmered off his brow as he took his stance. In the commentary box, voices trembled with energy. In the VIP box, team owner Vikrant Bajaj sipped…

  • English - Horror

    The Drummers of Devikulam

    June 29, 2025 - By 

    Aritra Sen Chapter 1: The road to Devikulam wound like a serpent through the mist-laced hills of Kerala, each bend revealing a new secret of the land—clusters of tea bushes in perfect symmetry, skeletal trees clawing at the grey sky, and occasional shrines draped in red cloth and turmeric-smudged stone. Dr. Anirudh Menon sat in the back of a rickety jeep, gripping his weather-worn field journal and an old Sony audio recorder like a lifeline. The driver, a man of few words and fewer facial expressions, had merely nodded when Ani mentioned his reason for coming. “You’re here for the…