• In the Name of Love | Bobby Hajjaj

    They would have called Khaleq a degenerate, a vile beast. He claimed he was in love. Wise men have said that we contemplate all of existence through words; that words have strengths beyond their phonetic constraints, they tether our world to the heavens. But not all words are made equal.   What of the word ‘love’?…

  • The Man Who Ate in Hospitals | Meera Rajagopalan

    You might spot Sabapathy at an odd place. The place is not by any means odd; it is Sabapathy’s presence, that is. You see, Sabapathy likes to lunch in hospital canteens. Every second day of the month, he devotes about an hour (or more) to planning out his sales visits at the offices of Papyrus,…

  • Comic Book Collector | John Tavares

    In Yonge-Dundas Square downtown, Dan observed Lori seated in a comfortable lotus position, sketching, drawing, and even painting, reading from an art history book, or a volume or paintings of photographs, taking photographs with her camera, but he didn’t recognize her from their hometown. Lori sometimes saw him in the square, wearing a suit, reading…

  • The Stench of Flowers | Prarthana JA

    Nila hopped on a train to Mansoori, on a day the sun was skippy in the sky between the long ropes of clouds. Her father slid her suitcase overhead and tucked another wad of notes into her palm. “Here, put this away safely,”he said. “You’ve already given me enough, papa,” Nila said.

  • The Debt | Steve Carr

    Several macaques scurried across the wires that stretched above the street as the motorized rickshaw stopped abruptly, halted by the traffic jam ahead of it. The driver slammed his hand down hard several times on the horn, as from behind his seat, Arjun pounded on the back of the seat, sending vibrating jolts through the…

  • Thambi | Jeyamohan

    Name: M. Saravanakumar. M.A. English Literature. Works at a private college. A dark, well-built body. Black, trimmed moustache. I leaned forward from the table and observed him. Whenever I do so, I fix a well-practiced smile of warmth and sympathy on my face so that the patient doesn’t feel that it is a look of…

  • Subarnarekha | Sounak Krishna Biswas

    December 2013. The house reminded one of an illustrated Grimm’s fairy book scene – greens and gardens on all sides – exotic floras of our Gangetic heartland, all trimmed to perfection; yet there were a few places where it seemed untended since parthenium had grown; perhaps, it was intended. I have known people to love…

  • August Rains | Roudri Bandyopadhyay

    “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” – Jawaharlal Nehru,…

  • Water Wars | Priyanka Mathur

    Arnav came inside the house hurriedly and double locked the door to their cramped one bedroom apartment. “It’s happening” He said to Aditi. She swiftly opened her system. “How much time do we have?” she asked calmly, concentrating on her screen. They had expected this to happen and were ready for it. Almost ready.

  • Waves of Solitude | Shashank Chimbalkar

    The journey back home was tedious and disappointing than the last one, six months ago. I slept more than usual in the twelve-hour flight in spite of the bustle by twenty first-time flyers. The taxi to the apartment reached at midnight, and I slept instantly once inside. Amma has been stubborn, refusing to leave our…

  • Orientalism in Disney Movies | Arnima Singh

    “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West)…

  • Stages of a Cocoon | Sasheera Gounden

    I Shells form part of a uniform for blue crabs and members of the mollusc family. The blue crab undergoes an uneasy process of moulting. The pressure of a blue crab’s growing body becomes so heavy and intense that it breaks open the exoskeleton. Moulting takes about thirty minutes. The newly formed crab with the…

by: Bobby Hajjaj