By Amita Roy
The childhood of Sangeeta’s mother was spent in a village of Narayangung in erstwhile East Bengal. Their house was situated at a stone’s throw distance from the river Shitalokkha. Little Sangeeta and her sister would listen to their mother with wide eyed interest as she unfolded her past.
By Partha Sarathi Mukherjee
Scream and other Urbane Legends is a genre-bending collection of short stories – a powerful, unique, memorable, and original collection. Ampat Koshy can be called one of India’s genuinely experimental writers, carving out an uncharted road in these times.
By Dev Chaudhry
The producer’s words broke his tandra, the reverie. In hard crisp and distant voice, he was saying, “Cut the girl from the story”. Without fully listening and comprehending what the producer had said, Bhudho said, “What? Remove the girl from the story? The girl is at the centre of the story. If we remove the girl, then what will be the centre of the story?”
By Bina Biswas
In Nineteen Seventy One and Other Stories, Askari’s fictional aesthetic focuses on the exploration of characters, their motive, and psychology. His privileging of psychology over plot, characters’ interiority over external action frees his stories from the generic conventions of popular fiction. In the true modernist vein, the stories bring together psychological realism and physicality.
By Dev Chaudhry
She opened her folded hands and folded them again to the skies above first and then toward the cots, where the elders were sitting and said, “I only want to say one thing – I want to take the names of all the people who visit me.”
By Tapan Mozumdar
Ten minutes later, Neera came out of that ramshackle home nourished with a glass of buttermilk on the matriarch’s insistence. Notwithstanding the slippery bathroom that was offered to her after flushing it with a bucket of water, she was relieved of the pressure on her bladder and years of prejudices.
By Fahad Hashmi
There is no denying that there are other stories that can also be called ‘the greatest Urdu stories ever told’. However, the tales that have been incorporated in this anthology are certainly greatest. Since one has read most of these tales in Urdu, one can vouch for the fact that the original stories are not lost in translation.
By Dev Chaudhry
Why so much fuss over these two young souls falling in love, why has the whole world turned against them, why has the whole world become their adversary? Why was love so abhorred, why was it so threatening that people come to this stage in their hate, in their opposition?
By Srirupa Dhar
Rik is overtaken by the uncanny resemblances between the boy and himself. The idea of throwing up vanishes from Rik’s mind. Rik stares at his doppelganger – his own smiling eyes, thin nose, small, pointy ears, and cordate chin – who seems to say: “See yourself”.
By Suranjana Choudhury
Dismas Bambai working with Indian Angle, a seedy news agency in New York, plays the interviewer, interlocutor, interrupter in Newton’s life. Newton Xavier is his subject. Through this venture, Dismas both creates and disrupts fictional illusions. He accumulates Newton’s childhood, his growth as an artist, his obsessive association with suicide, his whims and his desires.
By Dev Chaudhry
I started walking towards the dhaba. I had on my mind tandoori paratha along with dollops of white butter on top of it and some hot strong tea. At least for the next half an hour or so I was safe, I thought. This very thought and the thought of the crisp hot tandoori paranthas and him stuck with the broken car brought a wicked smile on my face.
By Kamayani Kumar
Ammi had been violated; her pristine chaste body had been trespassed upon by men while my father watched in horror. He had been incapable of resisting the mob, largely constituting of my Sikh ‘uncles’ from the neighbourhood.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 