• English - Fiction

    Operation Kaalnetra

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Karan Vaidya Part 1: The Man at Platform Nine It was 6:07 a.m. when the Howrah-Kalka Express pulled into Platform Nine of New Delhi Railway Station. The fog hung low, clinging to the tracks like a secret. Among the passengers stepping onto the platform, one man stood apart—not because of what he wore, but how he moved. Precise. Intentional. Almost like he didn’t belong to the chaos of Indian mornings. His name was Arjun Sen—or at least that’s what his current ID said. Officially, he was a mid-level policy analyst with the Ministry of External Affairs. Unofficially, he was something…

  • English - Fiction

    100 Rupees and a Dream

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Bimalesh Sarkar Chapter 1: The Last Note The Patna Junction platform trembled under the thunderous arrival of the Howrah-Mumbai Express, sending ripples through the rows of barefoot porters, impatient vendors, and women clutching brass tiffin boxes. Ravi Yadav stood among them, not as a commuter, but as a hopeful fugitive escaping the suffocation of poverty. Dressed in a faded shirt two sizes too large and rubber slippers worn thin at the heel, he carried a single plastic bag—inside which were two pairs of clothes, a dry roti wrapped in newspaper, and a notebook with laminated pages now wrinkled from sweat…

  • English - Fiction

    Code, Coffee & Consequences

    June 20, 2025 - By 

    Vishal Suri 1 The fluorescent light buzzed overhead as Arjun paced the narrow living room of their two-bedroom rented flat in Indiranagar, Bangalore. His glasses were fogged from the steam of the masala chai in his hand, and the laptop screen on the table blinked with the latest rejection email from a potential investor. Rajeev, sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapped furiously at his keyboard, immersed in code. He hadn’t spoken for an hour. Kabir lay stretched across the worn-out sofa, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan spinning lazily above him. No one wanted to say it, but the silence…

  • English - Fiction

    THE RED CORRIDOR

    June 20, 2025 - By 

    Mohit Bansal The Death in Dhaulpur The bullet tore through the morning stillness like a scream no one wanted to hear. It was just past 8 a.m. in Dhaulpur, a dusty town carved out of the political belly of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Outside the town hall, Ramveer Bharti was standing atop a makeshift podium, his kurta slightly wrinkled, voice echoing over loudspeakers that had seen too many rallies. A crowd had gathered—farmers in faded dhotis, students with angry eyes, a few women clutching cloth bags, and some just there for the free tea. But they listened. Because when Ramveer spoke,…

  • English - Fiction

    The Silk Thread

    June 19, 2025 - By 

    Meenakshi Varadhan Threads of Destiny The sun had barely touched the morning mist that hung over the mountains of Sichuan, casting a pale silver hue over the fields of mulberry trees. In the heart of a humble village nestled beside the Yangtze River, a girl named Lian stirred awake before the rooster’s crow. Her fingers, long and slender like the silk strands she wove, were already twitching to touch the loom. Lian was seventeen, quiet-eyed, and often mistaken for a spirit-child by villagers for the way she disappeared into the forest and returned with silkworm cocoons and strange patterns of…

  • English - Fiction

    The Honey Path

    June 18, 2025 - By 

    Sayak Banerjee Part 1 The morning sun rose slowly over the muddy banks of the river. A soft orange glow spread across the sky, while the air hung heavy with the smell of salt, mud, and silence. In a small village near the edge of the Sundarbans, a wooden boat rocked gently by the dock. Inside, there were ropes, nets, sickles, smoking pots, and earthen jars—empty now, but waiting to be filled with wild forest honey. Four men stood near the boat, ready for the journey ahead. Buro Kaka, the eldest, had skin browned by the sun and eyes full…

  • English - Fiction

    Halfway Home

    June 17, 2025 - By 

    Shreya Mukherjee The air in the Bangalore metro smelt faintly of wet concrete and deodorant. Anaya Sen adjusted her tote bag, balancing herself as the train jerked forward. Her headphones were in, but the music was off. She wasn’t in the mood for playlists. Not this morning. Outside, the city passed by in a blur of glass facades, auto-rickshaws, and trees trying their best to stay green. Inside, her inbox buzzed with reminders of the town hall meeting she had helped organize — the one everyone was quietly dreading. After the leak last week, things had been spiraling. Whispers. Slack…

  • English - Fiction

    The Pivot Point

    June 17, 2025 - By 

    Piyush Jha Founders and First Breaths The early morning drizzle of Bangalore clung to the cracked pavement of HSR Layout as Aarav Dev brushed aside the steam from his chai and stared at the blinking cursor on his MacBook screen. His co-founder, Neel Roy, sat across the room, legs tucked under him, mumbling code like mantras under his breath. The rented two-bedroom apartment doubled as their office, home, and war room. The seed of their startup—an AI-driven local commerce aggregator—was barely a sprout, but already the roots were clawing through sleepless nights, pivot pitches, and unpaid electricity bills. “We need…

  • English - Fiction

    The Memory Archivist

    June 17, 2025 - By 

    Rukmini Ghosh  1 The hills of Shimla were cloaked in monsoon mist, the kind that seemed to creep into your very bones and whisper secrets from forgotten winters. Raina Mehta stood in the fading light of her grandmother’s colonial bungalow, perched on a quiet slope near Chhota Shimla, its dark green shingles weeping rain and its iron gate groaning with age. The house was a time capsule, untouched since Meher Bano’s death two weeks ago, and filled with that strange aroma of old paper, mothballs, and rose attar that always lingered in her grandmother’s sari folds. Raina had arrived from…

  • English - Fiction

    The Man Who Painted Rainbows

    June 16, 2025 - By 

    Rhea Mukhopadhyay Chapter 1 The city had forgotten how to breathe. Its skyline was a jagged monotone of dull stone, concrete ribs pushing upward into a sky that had been the same color of ash for seven years. Seven years since the last rain. Seven years since the clouds had parted in anything but a lifeless smear. No thunder, no lightning, not even the scent of petrichor. Just stillness. Grey had settled like a parasite into everything: the windows of apartment blocks, the uniforms of the Bureau, the faded billboards with slogans that had lost all meaning. Grey had leached…