• English - Travel

    Midnight Maps of Meghalaya

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Aneesha Marak Part 1: The Broken Route It was past nine when the cab took the sharp bend near Cherrapunji, the headlights cutting through curtains of mist that clung to the hills like secrets. The driver muttered something in Khasi, tapped the dashboard thrice, and the engine made a coughing sound that didn’t feel reassuring. Inside the cab sat three people who hadn’t planned to meet each other—much less rely on one another. But Meghalaya, with her moody skies and rain-polished roads, has a way of bending fate like bamboo in the wind. Anaya, curled up in the backseat with…

  • English - Fiction

    Gulab Jamun, Guilt & Goodbyes

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Ritwik Pal Part 1: The Last Request The ceiling fan creaked like an old man with secrets. Outside, the mango tree swayed gently in the early April breeze, its leaves whispering things no one could understand anymore. Inside, Dida lay still on the teakwood bed, her body fragile, eyes closed but not asleep. She hadn’t spoken much in days, her voice now a thread unraveling slowly. But when she finally did, it brought the whole house to a standstill. “I want… the diary.” Tuli, sitting beside her, held her hand tighter. “Which diary, Dida?” “The one in the kitchen drawer.…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Sky Beneath Jaisalmer

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Sreeparna Bajpai Chapter One: The Desert Exile Inaaya Khan squinted through the dusty window of the jeep as the golden sprawl of Jaisalmer crept into view. It looked less like a city and more like a mirage—a honeycomb of sandstone rising from the endless dunes, its turrets and balconies blurred by waves of heat dancing above the ground. The driver, a leathery old man with a marigold behind his ear, had barely spoken since they left the railway station, except to complain about the temperature and how the summer came early this year. Inaaya didn’t mind the silence. She leaned…

  • English - Fiction

    Dilli 6.5

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Ankur Kaur Part 1: The Bag That Wouldn’t Leave The morning sun rose over Old Delhi with the usual chorus of honks, hawkers, and the sizzle of parathas on the tawa. In a narrow bylane of Chawri Bazaar, where every house shared its secrets through the cracks in their walls, the Khurana family was preparing for an exodus. Not the biblical kind. More like the modern middle-class one—from chaos to “development,” from pigeons to peacocks, from Dilli 6 to Gurgaon. Mrs. Saroj Khurana stood in the middle of the living room, hands on hips, commanding like a general. “Harpreet! Don’t…

  • English - Romance - Young Adult

    Bleeding Blue

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Ayesha Rao Part 1: The First Dive The pool was colder than she had expected. Zoya Narang stood at the edge, staring into the shimmering blue, her toes curled against the tile. The whistle had already blown. Others had dived. But she hesitated. Not because she didn’t know how to swim—Zoya could glide like a whisper—but because this was the national camp, and those lanes held sharks in Speedos. A drop of water slid from her temple to her lips. Chlorine. Fear. And something more. “Jump, wild card.” The voice came from behind her—low, amused, and irritatingly familiar. Zoya didn’t…

  • Crime - English

    The Docks

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Tumpa Chatterjee Chapter 1 The night the ship MV Samudra Falcon limped into Mumbai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port, the sky was a black, bruised canvas, streaked with furious lightning that split the monsoon clouds like shattered glass. The Arabian Sea roared with the rage of the storm, waves slapping against the hull of the vessel as if trying to wrest it back into the depths. Dockyard sirens wailed, their echoes swallowed by the wind that howled through the skeletal cranes and rusting cargo containers stacked like tombstones across the yard. The storm had delayed the unloading, and the men of the…

  • English - Romance - Young Adult

    Red Ink on White Paper

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Tara Deshpande Part 1: First Paper Cut The essay was titled “Love is a Knife with a Sugar Handle.” Rayan D’Souza read the first paragraph, then the last, then the whole thing again in silence. It wasn’t just good—it was surgical. Each line left a mark, a strange blend of emotional vulnerability and cold detachment. The author was Aranya Sen. Roll number 07B/LIT/019. He remembered her vaguely from the second row, a girl who didn’t take notes but always looked like she was memorising the whole room. Her photograph was stapled to the file, standard college protocol, a small passport-size…

  • English - Horror

    The Saree That Sang

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Madhumita Ray Chapter 1: The Trunk in the Attic The late March sun hung lazily over Shobhabazar, its amber glow falling across the shuttered windows of Anwesha’s ancestral home. The house, with its high ceilings, red oxide floors, and fading portraits, had been silent for years—like a tabla with loosened skin, still noble but mute. It had belonged to her grandfather, a man she barely remembered except through his letters—always inked in blue, always signed “Dadu.” Anwesha had returned from Mumbai after almost a decade, driven by equal parts nostalgia and necessity. Her mother’s sudden passing left the Shobhabazar house…

  • English - Suspense

    The Ink That Vanished

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Rudra Ahuja  Chapter 1: The Pen in the Attic It was the last stall at the farthest corner of Daryaganj Sunday Book Bazaar—the kind of place where stories go to retire. Beneath yellowing tarpaulin sheets and towers of old files, Neil Das spotted a flicker of brass. He had walked this market a hundred times before. But this morning, the damp October air had pulled him toward the stall like a tug on a forgotten thread. A wrinkled shopkeeper sat cross-legged amidst dusty encyclopedias and cracked leather briefcases. Neil’s eyes drifted past the usual—old college yearbooks, British-era maps, a few…

  • English - Horror

    The Ghats of Midnight

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Chapter 1: Arrival at the Ghat Tarak Nath Tripathi stepped off the rickety auto-rickshaw with his backpack slung over one shoulder and his thesis notes clutched tightly in a cracked leather folder. The heat clung to his skin like a second garment, thick with smoke and the smell of burning sandalwood, flesh, and Ganges water. He stood at the edge of the Manikarnika Ghat, watching the sacred river flow as if it had no memory of the centuries it carried. Bodies wrapped in saffron cloth were being carried down the steps by chanting pallbearers, while others burned on pyres whose…