• English - Romance

    Tides of Yesterday

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    Aria Roy 1 The bus groaned and wheezed as it rounded the final bend, the narrow coastal road lined with swaying coconut palms on one side and the endless expanse of the Arabian Sea on the other. The salty wind carried with it the smell of the ocean, tinged faintly with fish, wet sand, and the sweet scent of mangoes ripening in the heat. Ananya Deshmukh stared out of the dust-streaked window, her heart pounding with anticipation and dread. She had left Dariya Nagar ten years ago with a suitcase full of dreams and promises of never looking back. But…

  • Crime - English

    The Alipore Ledger

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    Ishaan Roychowdhury 1 It started on a Wednesday, just as the first rains of June swept across the city like a waking god shaking off centuries of sleep, drenching Alipore’s colonial bungalows and whispering down the serpentine lanes that remembered secrets better than people did. ACP Ira Basu stood beneath the broken awning of the old Watchtower Lane police outpost, watching as constables cordoned off the site of yet another murder—this one more grotesque than the last, the body splayed like a crude offering on the steps of a crumbling cemetery wall, the eyelids meticulously removed and placed on a…

  • English - Romance

    Between Lectures

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    A. K. Menon It started with a spilled cup of coffee and a Shakespeare quote. Dr. Aanya Roy, Head of Literature at St. Helena’s College, was pacing across the staff lounge, a worn-out copy of King Lear in one hand and a cappuccino in the other, when Dr. Kabir Mehta entered, unsuspecting, balancing his own mug and a stack of philosophy journals. Aanya turned mid-step and collided with him. Coffee splashed on both of them, papers flew, and silence echoed—before she muttered, “Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.” Her lips twisted in dry amusement. Kabir blinked, then grinned. “Is…

  • Comedy - English

    The Great Curry Catastrophe

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    Deepak Sharma Chapter 1: If you had asked anyone in Pimplepur a month ago who Rajeev Banerjee was, they might’ve said, “Wasn’t he the boy who tried to bake a pizza on the car bonnet in Class 8?” Or, “Is he the one who added glitter to gulab jamuns thinking it was edible silver?” Yes. That Rajeev. The boy who left for “London” and returned with suspiciously little luggage, an accent thicker than mayonnaise, and a lot of ideas no one had asked for. Rajeev’s arrival back in Pimplepur was not exactly what one would call subtle. He didn’t just…

  • English - Horror

    The Silent Temple

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    A. K. Murugan  The Forgotten Path Tamil Nadu in June was a furnace of forgotten ruins and rustling palms, but for Meera and Tara, it was another tick on their growing list of offbeat travel destinations. They had been crisscrossing India for over a year now, documenting haunted forts, strange folk rituals, and abandoned villages on their blog, Whispers Unheard. What started as a quarantine boredom project had become a modestly successful travel page with a dedicated audience eager for the eerie and unexplained. But nothing they had seen so far compared to what Tara found one night on a…

  • English - Fiction

    The Whispering Forest

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Risa Kharkongor Part 1 The clouds hung low over Mawlynnong, like thick blankets of cotton pressing gently upon the treetops, as if they were listening to a secret only the forest knew. Twelve-year-old Lari Khongdup stood barefoot on the damp earth, feeling the mud cling to her toes, the scent of moss, bamboo, and wild turmeric swirling in the morning air. Her heart thumped like a tribal drumbeat inside her chest, both from excitement and fear. Her mother believed she was still asleep in her bamboo cot, curled beneath a faded woolen quilt. But Lari had slipped out before sunrise,…

  • English - Horror

    Whispers of the Dandak

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Priyanka Banerjee 1 The newsroom was always a chaotic orchestra — ringing phones, furious typing, coffee-fueled conversations bouncing off walls lined with award certificates and framed newspaper clippings. But Aparna Banerjee thrived in this cacophony. She sat at her desk near the window, where the Kolkata rain tapped like a Morse code from the skies, sipping lukewarm black coffee and scanning through online news alerts. She had a reputation — relentless, articulate, and unafraid. Whether it was child trafficking in Murshidabad or illegal sand mining in Birbhum, Aparna dove in headfirst. Her writing had teeth, and her fearlessness was her…

  • English - Romance - Young Adult

    When the Bell Rang Twice

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Advika Nair Chapter 1: The morning bell rang with the familiar sharp clang that echoed across the corridors of St. Mary’s High School, announcing the beginning of another Wednesday, another series of classes, and another chance for students to shuffle into their assigned seats like the pieces of a living, breathing jigsaw puzzle. In Class 10-B, the usual rush was on—bags thudding onto desks, notebooks flipping open, and voices rising in a soft chaos of teenage chatter. Amid it all, Riya Sen hurried into the room, her hair tied in a slightly crooked ponytail, her blue-and-white uniform neatly ironed, and…

  • English - Travel

    The Ganges Chronicles

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Prakash Tripathi The Invitation Raghav had spent most of his life chasing stories, following leads across cities, through crowded streets, quiet villages, and hidden corners of the world. But Banaras was different. Banaras had always fascinated him. The city’s name alone carried an aura of mysticism, an invitation to a deeper understanding of life, and death. Known as the City of Light, Banaras promised stories that were not written in books but lived in the very air, in the sacred flow of the Ganges, in the faces of the sadhus, in the temples that stood still while time passed by.…

  • English - Travel

    Whispers of the Himalayas

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Rinchen Lama 1 I hadn’t planned to go to Sikkim. In fact, Sikkim was a word that had only floated around in conversations—half-remembered from childhood geography classes or heard during travel shows playing in the background of my mother’s living room. What I had planned, after six years of numbing spreadsheets and artificial smiles in a Mumbai office, was to disappear for a while. Not forever, but long enough to breathe air that wasn’t laced with ambition or dust. The idea came quietly, like mist crawling over a windowpane. I was sitting in a mind-numbingly boring client pitch when my…