• Crime - English - Travel

    Shadows on the Salt

    June 26, 2025 - By 

    Nitish Joshi One The desert shimmered like an illusion, an expanse of white and gold stretching endlessly under the early winter sun. From above, the Rann of Kutch looked like a cracked mirror, its salt flats fragmented into wild geometries — but down here on the ground, it felt alive with movement, heat, and secret rhythms. The wind dragged dry whispers across the land as the colors of the Rann Utsav unfolded like a fever dream — turbans spinning in the breeze, mirror-work lehengas glittering, the scent of fried fafda and jaggery jalebi wafting from the festival stalls. Kabir Pathak,…

  • Comedy - English - Travel

    Mishra Family’s Puri Panic!

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Renuka Chanda Chapter 1 It was early morning in the small town of Rewa, Madhya Pradesh. The Mishra household was in complete chaos. Shrikant Mishra, the head of the family, ran around the house holding the tickets like they were some ancient treasure. “Lalita! Did you pack the pickle? We cannot eat outside food every day!” he shouted, wiping sweat from his forehead though the fan was on full speed. Lalita, his wife, stood in the kitchen stuffing the last of the theplas into steel dabbas, praying that the luggage would close. Pintu, their 12-year-old son, had already put on…

  • 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 - Travel

    Monsoon Letters from Kerala

    June 22, 2025 - By 

    Ria Bhattacharya Part 1: Landing in God’s Own Country It was just past noon when our flight dipped beneath a curtain of clouds and revealed a lush, endless green below. From the window seat, Kerala didn’t look like a state—it looked like a watercolor dream. Patches of paddy fields, snaking backwaters, tall coconut palms waving lazily, and a brief glimpse of a red-tiled rooftop—a warm welcome to God’s Own Country. As we landed in Kochi, a light drizzle greeted us, the kind that smells of wet earth and sea breeze. It wasn’t hot, just humid enough to make your shirt…

  • English - Travel

    The Misadventures of the Mukherjees

    June 22, 2025 - By 

    Subhasish Ghosh Chapter 1: The Itinerary of Dreams (and Doom) If there was one thing Mr. Subhash Mukherjee believed in more than government bonds and early morning power yoga, it was planning. So when he announced the “long overdue” family road trip from Kolkata to Bhutan, his Excel sheet was already color-coded, laminated, and tucked into a blue plastic folder titled ‘Mission Mukherjee: Himalayan Harmony 2025’. His wife, Jaya, barely looked up from her WhatsApp group of Probashi Ladies with Recipes when he declared this at the breakfast table. “You want us all to travel together? In one car?” she…

  • English - Travel

    The River That Remembers Everything

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Pranab Sinha Chapter 1 The compartment rattled like an old memory — uneven, persistent, and vaguely nostalgic — as the Doon Express cut its way through the northern plains, carrying Digvijoy Guha through the thick, velvet silence of early morning. He sat by the window in a second-class sleeper, wrapped in his rust-coloured shawl, watching the countryside smear into a painter’s blurred stroke. A flask of lukewarm tea trembled slightly on the steel fold-down tray beside him, untouched since Saharanpur. Above it, tucked into the mesh netting, a book of poetry by Agyeya and a leather-bound diary silently waited to…

  • Comedy - English - Travel

    The Great Kolkata Picnic Blunder

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Soumitra Deb 1 It was a lazy winter Sunday in south Kolkata—the kind where the sun was gentle enough to soften the edges of reality, the kind where even alarms gave up and let people sleep a little longer. In the modest Ghosh household of Lake Road, Mr. Biswajit Ghosh was already up by 7:30 a.m., fully dressed in his house kurta, socks on, and sipping tea while reading The Telegraph, shaking his head every five minutes at something he claimed was “kintu bipodjonok”. Purnima, his wife, had just started preparing luchi-alur tarkari when she heard a firm clearing of…

  • English - Travel

    The Elephant Who Remembered

    June 20, 2025 - By 

    Tushar Samanta 1 The leash still hung on the wooden peg behind the door—looped neatly, as if Bruno might return any moment and nose it with the soft thump of his tail. But the house knew better. It echoed differently now, like it, too, had fallen silent since Sukrit stopped speaking. The once-lively mornings, when Bruno’s barks woke up the sleepy sun and Sukrit raced him to the kitchen for treats, had been replaced by a strange stillness. The boy who used to talk to butterflies and name the clouds had now become a shadow in his own home. He…

  • English - Travel

    Streets of Spices and Stories

    June 19, 2025 - By 

    Zoya Mirza Chapter 1: The Clocktower and the Chaos The air in Old Delhi is not something you breathe—it’s something you step into, like a dense fog of memory, spice, and relentless sound. I surfaced from the depths of the Chawri Bazar metro station like a diver breaching the past. The escalator groaned under the weight of a hundred lives and then spat me out into a world that felt more alive than anything I had known in years. The street outside buzzed like an old radio dialed between frequencies. Rickshaws honked as if they were in competition. Men with…

  • English - Travel

    Side Roads and Stories — A Family Travelogue

    June 17, 2025 - By 

    Shubho Basak Chapter 1: Before the Sun Rises The house was still half-asleep when the alarm rang at 4:30 a.m. The only things fully awake were the bags waiting by the door, the thermos of tea mom had packed the night before, and my younger brother’s overexcited energy that somehow ignored the hour. Outside, the world wore a blanket of mist, soft and shivering, like it didn’t want to be disturbed. But we were already up, wide-eyed and ready to chase a road that didn’t yet have a name. This wasn’t our first trip as a family, but it was…