• English - Fiction - Romance

    Seasons Between Us

    July 2, 2025 - By 

    Elina Thomas Part 1: Spring Will Not Ask Your Name The bus wound up the narrow road, wheels kissing the edge of the mountain like a daredevil child. Aanya sat by the window, her duffel bag pressed to her side like a comfort blanket. The sky outside was an impatient shade of blue, and the hills wore a fresh green robe, tender leaves swaying in spring wind. She hadn’t spoken a word in the six-hour journey from Chandigarh to Chail. Not to the conductor. Not to the woman beside her who smelled of boiled peanuts and turmeric. Words felt like…

  • English - Fiction

    The Window Seat

    July 1, 2025 - By 

    Rimi Bhasthi Part 1: The Silence in the Hallway It was always the hallway where she first heard herself disappear. The long, echoing corridor of the Sharma household carried more than footsteps and scoldings—it carried absence. Asha, seventeen, was the kind of girl people described in passing as “quiet but clever,” the kind whose achievements were applauded just enough to not feel threatening. She had learned early that noise—especially from girls—was suspicious. The house had three women and five men, and even the walls seemed to know who mattered. Her mother, Meenakshi, moved like a shadow behind her husband, wiping…

  • English - Fiction

    Beneath the Tamarind Sky

    June 30, 2025 - By 

    Aarushi Sen 1 The air in Lucknow smelt of jasmine and rust. Under the domes of the Chota Imambara, where chandeliers from Belgium sparkled even on cloudy days, Zohra Begum walked barefoot through the marbled corridors, anklets jingling like restrained laughter. She was not born into the kotha, not raised with kohl-rimmed dreams, but life had turned a schoolteacher’s daughter into the most sought-after courtesan of the Awadh court. Her ghazals melted into the air like perfumed smoke, and men with titles heavier than their hearts begged to be named in her verses. But Zohra only sang for silence. She…

  • English - Fiction

    The Sky Below Us

    June 28, 2025 - By 

    Kiaan Ray 1 They said the Earth was dead. No roots stirred beneath the dust, no rivers flowed with memory, and no horizon ever changed. In the Loftworlds, that was the gospel. Up here, above the clouds, survival didn’t depend on soil or sun, but on filters, floating engines, and fear. Aira Sen had never seen the ground—not really. But she dreamed of it, in colors her eyes had never known. The dreams weren’t hers. That much she was sure of. The day the drone fell was the day the sky cracked. Aira was lying belly-flat on a rusted support…

  • English - Fiction

    Life in the Emergency Ward

    June 28, 2025 - By 

    Soumyadeep Dutta The fluorescent lights above flickered like tired eyelids, buzzing faintly over rows of rusting stretchers and sweat-drenched bodies. It was 7:58 a.m. when I stepped into the emergency ward of Nilratna Chatterjee Memorial Government Hospital for the first time as a junior resident. My stethoscope clung around my neck like a nervous talisman, and in my coat pocket sat a new blue notepad with clean pages—still innocent of blood, signatures, and regrets. The smell hit me first—disinfectant poorly masking urine, vomit, and something else, something warm and fleshy, like decaying hope. Patients lined up the corridor, lying on…

  • English - Fiction

    The Fifth Protocol

    June 28, 2025 - By 

    Neel Kashyap Part 1: The Minister Who Knew Too Much The monsoon had arrived early in New Delhi, but the rain did little to cool the simmering corridors of power. The South Block offices glistened under streetlights, guarded by protocol and paranoia. At 2:03 a.m., a white government Scorpio pulled into the back entrance of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. Inside, Minister Prabir Kundu sat motionless, his lips taut and fingers trembling over a brown leather file embossed with the Ashoka emblem. He shouldn’t have had this file. But he did. Earlier that evening, Kundu had received an anonymous courier…

  • English - Fiction

    Strings Attached

    June 26, 2025 - By 

    Ishaan Talwar Part 1: The First Note The first time Aryan strummed his guitar on the old green bench outside the Fine Arts Block, the sun was melting into the Delhi skyline and the air smelled of samosas from the canteen. He wasn’t playing for anyone. He never did. But someone was always listening. That evening, it was Tara—the girl with the nose ring and the journal full of angry poetry. She was standing near the rusted railing, scribbling something when his chords cut through the dusk like the beginning of something they didn’t yet know was coming. He looked…

  • 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 - 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 - Fiction

    Shadows of the State

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Ravi Srinivasan Part 1: The Letter and the Leak It started not with a murder, but with an envelope—sealed, unmarked, and slipped under the newsroom door of The Dakshara Daily on a monsoon-drenched morning. The building still smelled faintly of damp paper and printer ink when Ananya Raghavan picked it up. She was the first one in, as always, her raincoat dripping near her desk, the hiss of boiling water already building in the pantry behind her. She slit the envelope open with a metal ruler, her journalist’s instinct prickling even before the contents were revealed. Inside: a single typed…