• 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…

  • English - Fiction

    Flavours of the Forgotten Lane

    June 16, 2025 - By 

    Abeer Khurana The Man with the Empty Tiffin Every day at exactly 2:15 p.m., after the lunch crowd had dispersed and the oil had cooled in the karahis, a man in a faded brown kurta appeared at the entrance of Parathewali Gali with an empty tiffin and a look that was hard to read. His beard was trimmed but uneven, his eyes carried the weight of too many forgotten memories, and his slippers had long lost the war with the cobbled Old Delhi stones. He never ordered from the menu. Instead, he would quietly lean into the counter of the…

  • English - Fiction

    Ashes of Tomorrow

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    Rani Westwood Part 1 The sky had not been blue in seventeen years. People still talked about the last clear morning in whispers, like it was a folk tale passed down through ash-coated generations. They said the light used to feel warm, not searing. That clouds were once white and fluffy, not permanent smears of smoke stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. But I was born three years after the Last Sky, so to me, the world had always been grey. I adjusted the oxygen mask over my face and tightened the seals of my jacket.…

  • English - Fiction

    The Whispering Forest

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Risa Kharkongor Part 1 The clouds hung low over Mawlynnong, like thick blankets of cotton pressing gently upon the treetops, as if they were listening to a secret only the forest knew. Twelve-year-old Lari Khongdup stood barefoot on the damp earth, feeling the mud cling to her toes, the scent of moss, bamboo, and wild turmeric swirling in the morning air. Her heart thumped like a tribal drumbeat inside her chest, both from excitement and fear. Her mother believed she was still asleep in her bamboo cot, curled beneath a faded woolen quilt. But Lari had slipped out before sunrise,…

  • English - Fiction

    After the Wedding: Siya’s Silence

    June 9, 2025 - By 

    Neelima Verma The Wedding Dream The mehendi hadn’t yet faded from her palms when Siya stepped into the grand foyer of her new home—her new home. The deep maroon stain curled along her fingers in delicate paisley patterns, a reminder of the rituals, the singing, the whispered jokes between cousins, and the scent of jasmine that still clung to her hair. Her wrists were heavy with glass bangles, red and gold, and they jingled with every hesitant step she took across the marble floor of the Malhotra mansion. Her heart fluttered with a strange mix of excitement and nervousness. At…

  • English - Crime - Fiction

    The Minister’s Mistress

    June 8, 2025 - By 

    Mira Devika The Bride of Power The rain in Delhi had a peculiar scent that evening — part jasmine, part diesel, part something burning somewhere far away. The same scent Meher Kapoor remembered from her childhood, watching her father practice speeches before the mirror, shirt sleeves rolled up, his eyes alight with some unknowable fire. But now, Meher was twenty-four, and her father was a framed memory garlanded with marigolds in their ancestral home. She stood in front of a mirror in the bridal chamber of the Oberoi, a deep red lehenga clinging to her like memory. Bangles jangling, lip…