The street belonged to another flag. It announced itself quietly, without hostility, through signboards that curved their letters differently and uniforms that carried their authority with casual ease. Bharati stood at the edge of it, just where the shade from the building thinned and the light sharpened, and watched the children play. Their game required…
The Weight of the River
Night settled over Patna without finishing its sentences. The lanterns along the riverbank flickered unevenly, their flames bent by a breeze that carried the smell of mud, oil, and old water. Mosquitoes announced themselves with a persistence that felt almost moral, a reminder that patience was never free. The Ganges moved past in the dark,…
The Price of the Crossing
Dawn arrived without ceremony, a pale loosening of the dark that crept along the river like a habit learned over centuries. The Ganga lay broad and patient, its surface carrying the smell of wet stone, ash, and old flowers. Bells began to find their voices one by one, not yet in agreement, their metal notes…
The Letter That Stayed Unsent
The ink refused to behave. It spread where it was not invited, turning the paper faintly bruised, as if even words were learning the city’s new habits. Ghalib lifted the pen, shook it once, and set it down again. Outside, Delhi breathed unevenly. Smoke lingered where it should not. A smell of gunpowder threaded itself…
The Flag That Stayed Folded
The room was small enough for the afternoon to feel crowded. Light from the Paris street entered reluctantly, filtered through dust and the thin curtain that smelled faintly of soap and damp wool. The bed had been pushed close to the wall. A chair stood beside it, holding a shawl that carried the memory of…
The Name on the Wall
The gas lamps hissed like impatient insects, their glass chimneys sweating in the heat. Backstage smelled of attar and dust, rose clinging to skin, chalk to cloth, old wood to everything. Someone had spilled rice water near the doorway; it had dried into a thin white crescent on the floor, a quiet moon that nobody…
The Shadow of Renko-ji
The temple does not face the street. It turns inward, as though whatever it guards is not meant to be seen in passing. Renko-ji stands quietly in Tokyo, its wooden bones darkened by years of incense and weather, its steps worn smooth by feet that have arrived carrying questions heavier than luggage. There is no…
Bandook Gali
Some stories arrive softly. They do not announce themselves. They wait. Bandook Gali – A Fiction Drawn from the Margins of History, began with a name that lingered longer than expected. A lane crossed often, rarely questioned, in the city of Kolkata in India. A sense that the past had left behind traces rather than…
The Tokyo Cadets
They arrived in Tokyo carrying the smell of salt, sweat, and old paper. Some had crossed oceans. Some had crossed borders that no longer existed on maps. A few had crossed nothing more than the narrow circumference of their own fear. Yet when they stood together on the parade ground, boots aligned, shoulders squared, they…
The Secret Voyage Aboard U-180
The sea does not announce itself when it decides to swallow the horizon. It simply closes in. Somewhere off the coast of Madagascar, the water lay dark and deceptive, its surface betraying nothing of the steel behemoth slicing through its depths. The submarine moved slowly, deliberately, like a thought one dares not complete too quickly….
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 