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, wide and unhurried, its surface breaking occasionally where something unseen chose to surface and disappear again. From across the river came the faint sound of a drum, not rhythmic enough to be celebration, not urgent enough to be alarm. The city listened with the practiced attention of something that had learned to survive by overhearing…
To read the full story and 19 other short stories in this series click on the links below:
This story is a part of the book “Lives Between the Dates“, my first printed collection of short stories, bringing together twenty well thought moments from twenty well known lives across twenty Indian cities. These stories do not revisit achievement. They enter the quieter hours around it. The hesitation before action. The doubt behind conviction.
Rooted in real places and shaped by history, this collection gathers the unrecorded moments that define a life more truthfully than any monument.
If you have found something here that stayed with you, some of my other books are now available in print and digital editions. They gather longer journeys, quieter questions, and stories that continue beyond this page.
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 
🙏🙌🏻
Aum Shanti
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May the peace of the universe fill your being too.
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For you too 🙏
Aum Shanti
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This is beautifully atmospheric and deeply evocative. Your opening paints Patna with such quiet intensity that the reader can almost hear the river breathe and feel the night listening. The language is subtle yet powerful, and the idea of exploring the “quieter hours” of remarkable lives is especially compelling. A graceful, thoughtful piece that lingers in the mind.
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Dear Vermaji, your words flow with the same quiet breath as that river.
Patna at night has always felt to me like a city that listens before it speaks. I wanted the river not as scenery, but as presence. Something ancient, patient, bearing witness long before and long after the lives we call remarkable. If you could hear it breathe, then the current carried the story well.
Your attention to the quieter hours encourages me deeply. We often celebrate the daylight of achievement, yet it is in the dim, listening moments that a life gathers its true weight. That is where I try to stand as a storyteller.
Thank you for reading with such grace and for allowing the piece to linger with you. When a story stays, even softly, it has found its shore.
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The images merge with the writes. As usual wonderfully written and breathtakingly visual.
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Thank you. Imagery is so important for me.
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Never knew Patna would be this beautiful
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I think there is beauty in everything, we just need to look for it and we shall find it. Thank you for appreciating my writing, nothing gives me more joy than appreciation.
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Congratulations, Trishikh!
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Dear Annie, thank you so much. I treasure the years of support and appreciation that you have provided me through enjoying my stories. I am glad tat I was able to publish finally. This was my third published book, I will publish many more in the coming days. And will also keep on writing free stories for my friends to enjoy.
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To naprawdę fascynujące historie. Zaczytuję się 🙂
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So glad that you find my stories facinating. You honor me much by sayingg this. I am thankful to you for this. Keep on rading my stories.
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Your sentences are so compelling that I have bought the paperback. Thank you for such thoughtful and perceptive writing of stories.
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That is so nice of you. You honour me deeply by doing this. I treasure your support forever. Keep on enjoying my sories. Many more to come.
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You know, I myself do not have a hardcopy (paperback) with me yet. So nice I am based in India, I would have to import the book for myself. So congratulations once again on this.
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What stayed with me here was not only the river, but the moral weight carried in the quiet. When you wrote that patience was never free, it felt less like description and more like a reckoning. The city does not merely listen; it survives by listening.
There is something powerful in the way the night refuses to finish its sentences. It suggests that history is often shaped not in declarations, but in suspended moments — where endurance itself becomes a form of cost. The river moves, but it does not absolve. It remembers.
Thank you for letting the stillness carry that kind of gravity.
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Dear Livora, your reading carries the same depth as the current itself.
You understood the river not as landscape, but as conscience. When I wrote that patience was never free, it was indeed meant as a reckoning. Endurance is often praised, yet rarely examined for its cost. Cities like Patna have learned to survive by listening, by absorbing, by waiting. That survival leaves a residue.
I am especially moved that you noticed the night refusing to finish its sentences. History often arrives incomplete. It pauses, it withholds, it lets consequences gather before they are named. In those suspended hours, something is always being measured.
And yes, the river remembers. It carries ashes and offerings alike, but memory clings to it like silt. It does not absolve simply because it flows.
Thank you for standing in that stillness long enough to feel its gravity. When a reader senses the moral undercurrent, the story has found its true depth.
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