Romance
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Where the Bell Ends
Tara Dutta Part 1: The Last Bench always felt like a refuge. From here, Meera Kapoor could watch the world unfold without being noticed. The rustle of papers, the scrape of chairs, the lazy ticking of the wall clock—all part of the ritual she had come to know by heart in Room 21. It was…
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Monsoon at Marine Drive
Aarya Malik The Message The rain hadn’t stopped since dusk. It fell like memory—persistent, soft, and impossible to ignore. Marine Drive, usually buzzing with honking taxis and lovers escaping deadlines, lay blurred under a monsoon haze. The Arabian Sea raged in the distance, waves crashing against stone with the kind of wild certainty Aarav had…
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Backspace and Butterflies
Soma Sen Chapter 1: The Ink That Blurs Souvik Khurana hated the sound of pens scratching against paper. To most people, it was nothing more than a background noise—a classroom lullaby of sorts—but to him, it was a cruel reminder of how far behind he always was. The letters on the page swam before his…
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When the Light Changed
Reyan D’Souza The First Red Light It began, as many quiet revolutions do, with something small. Aria was running late again—not disastrously, not enough to be fired—but just enough to skip breakfast, mutter at the broken coffee machine in her apartment building, and step onto the pavement at exactly 7:58 a.m., breathless. The traffic light…
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The Many Faces of Love
Subhankar Roy The Face in the Mirror In the clay-walled room of his mud house, Gokul sat cross-legged before a cracked mirror, the bristles of his paintbrush trembling slightly as he dipped it into a pot of red. The morning sun filtered through a bamboo blind, casting lines across his bare chest. Today, he would…
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Burning Hours
Mohit Khanna The Lift Between Floors The first time Tara met Armaan, it was in the lift of the Raaga Residency complex. She lived on the ninth floor with her investment-banker husband. He lived on the fifth, newly moved in, unmarried—or so she thought. The air was heavy that evening, monsoon rain clinging to the…
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The Sky Between Us
Riya Chowdhury 1 The desert had its own kind of silence—thick, stretched thin across salt plains like an invisible cloth drawn over the earth, humming just below the level of human hearing. In the small town of Khavda, where every house was painted with fading lime and the wind carried more memory than sand, seventeen-year-old…
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Raindrops by the River
Ashutosh Roy Chapter 1: The Book and the Bench It had just rained in Delhi. Not the torrential kind that makes the streets flood and autos stall in mid-traffic tantrums. This was the soft drizzle that left the air smelling like soaked earth and wild chameli. The Yamuna River, still and quiet, flowed beside the…
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Tea Leaves & Torn Pages
Pranit Biswas Chapter 1: The train to Shimla groaned like an old man remembering youth, dragging itself along curved mountain tracks as fog pressed against its windows. Dr. Amit Roy sat alone near the back, a well-worn leather satchel tucked beside him and a battered paperback of The Old Man and the Sea unopened in…
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Silent Letters of Love
Rhea Solace Part 1 There was nothing extraordinary about the small writing desk by the window—except perhaps, how it held hundreds of lives within it. Neatly stacked ivory paper, a brass fountain pen with fading gold initials, and a mug forever stained with tea. This was where Aanya wrote love stories… not hers, but everyone…
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Pages of Silence Author: Anirudh Shenoy
Anirudh Shenoy Part 1: The First Page It was a quiet Sunday evening when she first walked into the Indigo Reads Café on Church Street, the new venue for Bangalore’s freshly launched Silent Book Club. Outside, the sky threatened rain but held itself back, as if not to disturb the pages yet to be turned.…
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Silent Evenings, Hidden Mornings
Sudipta Sen The Pause Between Verses The morning fog had lifted just enough to let the sun trace the old Mughal arches of Lodhi Gardens. It was January in Delhi, the kind of cold that didn’t bite but lingered, like a half-finished conversation. Rituporna wrapped her shawl tighter around her and sipped from the paper…