By Sunil Sharma
I was everywhere, yet nowhere. Hounded out everywhere. Cursed. Powerless. No voice. No clout. The dispossessed. I am Mr. Nobody. A human, yet not human. A native, yet an alien among my own. A man without any dignity. A soft target everywhere. An unseen man. A zero man. Phantom.
By Vivek Nath Mishra
I manured and watered them regularly but the plants were not that shiny anymore. She had some tricks that I didn’t know, perhaps the plants knew her touch. The sparrow that built nest there in my roof garden chose some other place, and the bulbul found another hand, I guess.
By Puja Roy
I intended to show a holistic picture of Pakistan to the Indian readers, and also remind Pakistani readers that humble environs of the desert of Baluchistan, the mountains of the Hazara belt, the sandy terrain of Waziristan and the dingy neighbourhoods of the urban cities, too had stories that were waiting to be told and read.
By Anirudh Kala
Ten minutes later, with a steady hand, Zalim Singh Bisht pulled the trigger of his service rifle, which was pressed firmly between the ground and his temple. The report was drowned in the din of the firecrackers.
By Rashid Askari
Really the Hindu girls were sweeter than the Muslim ones. He claimed to be a devout Muslim. He disliked everything of other religions except for women. He loved to graze in others’ fields leaping over the fence. He became the right producer of Angurbala.
By Anirudh Kala
And people swear that both sides, which were just one side now with many roads connecting them, had in front of houses, many flowers which came out tentatively in light colours, as if testing waters. And the breeze was balmy and the sea actually cool at least in the evenings.
By Varsha Tiwary
The stories in Sucharita’s collection, Cast Out and Other Stories, pull you into their world with a shiver of recognition. They explore the world that lies beneath the fact ridden headlines that shock and then numb every Indian. The characters belong to the world of the forgotten, the overlooked, the ones buried in history, mythology, memory. They ask difficult questions, without falling in the trap of giving easy answers.
By Nishi Pulugurtha
On the day of the school reunion, we school mates looked different, we were different, but that day when we met and spoke, we became school girls all over again – those giggles, that laughter, those stories, it was as if that time in between had not wrought much change.
By Dev Chaudhry
I took my pen from the counter and we left the shop, without saying anything. Nobody spoke anything on our way back to school. We had never had such a long journey in our life before. A senseless journey with dead feet and lead laden hearts.
By Binay Majumdar
I told Mona—Hey Mona, do you know Leonardo Da Vinci was born in a village near Akuli Hills in Italy? He painted the Mona Lisa. You are a Mona; and even she is a Mona! This Leonardo was an engineer and a mathematician too. His hand-painted pictures of helicopters are still there.
By Moinak Dutta
A song played at the bar. ‘Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy…’ Poorvi took the shots. They were lovely. There was a slight burning feeling in her throat. But that was better, much better than all the burns she had borne within.
By Debarshi Mitra
She kept gazing at platforms outside while the ‘Rajdhani’ sped past them, past the paddy fields and the temples, the streets and the factories, the garbage piles and impoverished men in decrepit houses. I did little to break the spell of silence.
