• 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…

  • 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…