Rishabh Malhotra Episode 1: The Fading Connaught Place The night was unusually warm for late October, and Delhi’s streets pulsed with their familiar energy—autos rattling through intersections, street vendors shouting over the hiss of frying oil, and neon lights reflecting against colonial pillars. At Connaught Place, the heart of the city, Arjun Malviya adjusted his satchel and checked the time. His phone screen glowed 10:57 p.m. He had promised to meet his younger sister, Kavya, at the outer circle after she finished her theatre rehearsal. She was never late. Tonight, however, the crowd seemed thinner than usual, and Arjun noticed…
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Neha Banerjee The Rooftop That Wasn’t There Aarav didn’t mean to miss the last train. It just happened, like most of his mistakes—small, accidental, and irreversible. One late night line of code at work turned into another, and another, until he looked up at the time glowing on his cracked phone screen and realized the metro gates would already be shuttering. He left the office anyway, stepping out into a city that was still awake but somehow lonelier for it, the neon lights buzzing like a swarm of mechanical fireflies. The streets of New Delhi after midnight weren’t empty; they…