In 1980, Makhdumpur was the sort of town that seemed to have been left halfway between two centuries. It sat in the Magadh country between Jehanabad and Gaya, though Jehanabad was still part of Gaya district then, and nobody in Makhdumpur cared much for the distinctions made by maps in distant government offices. The town had a railway line, a bazaar, a block office, a government hospital that smelled of phenyl and neglect, a cinema hall that changed its posters only when the monsoon arrived, and enough tea shops for every man to spend half his working day discussing politics without ever having to stand for election. Beyond the last row of brick houses, the Jamuna wandered through the fields, brown and sluggish in summer, swollen and quarrelsome during the rains. Ten or eleven kilometres to the southeast, the dark shoulders of Barabar rose from the plain, ancient and indifferent, their caves cut into stone long before Makhdumpur had a name.
The town had other landmarks, but none was as important as the little barber’s shop at the bend of the bazaar. It was hardly a shop at all. Two wooden posts supported a corrugated tin roof, a cracked mirror hung against a wall blackened by years of smoke, and a narrow wooden bench served as waiting room, shaving platform and, when necessary, political meeting hall. A faded calendar of a goddess hung beside a calendar advertising a fertiliser company. On a shelf stood three bottles of hair oil, two cakes of shaving soap, a chipped aluminium mug and a glass jar containing something that had once been talcum powder and had now acquired the colour of dust.
The barber was called Chhedi. Nobody remembered his full name. He was Chhedi Hajjam to everyone from the railway porter to the block development officer, and even the schoolmaster who had once tried to address him as Chhedi Prasad had abandoned the effort after hearing half a dozen customers laugh. Chhedi was a thin, wiry man with a small moustache, restless eyes and the physiognomy of someone who had spent a lifetime studying faces. He could tell, merely by the way a man sat in his chair, whether he had slept well, whether his wife had quarrelled with him, whether he owed money and whether he had come to the shop for a haircut or for conversation. Mostly, men came for the latter. The razor merely gave them an excuse.
By ten in the morning, the shop would be thick with the smells of hair oil, sweat, dust, tobacco and the sweet, slightly rotten fragrance of overripe bananas from the fruit stall next door. Flies moved lazily over the mirror. A transistor radio, usually balanced on a wooden crate, crackled with news from Patna, film songs from Bombay or the stentorian voice of a politician promising that the country was about to enter a glorious new age.
Chhedi listened to everything. He knew that the mukhiya of a nearby village had secretly mortgaged two bighas of land. He knew which constable took money at the police outpost. He knew that the schoolmaster who lectured children about discipline had been seen drinking mahua behind the grain market. He knew that the block officer’s younger brother had failed his matriculation examination twice and had nevertheless acquired a government job. He also knew when not to speak. That was perhaps the reason people trusted him.
One January morning, just after sunrise, Chhedi was shaving Lallan Singh, a local grain merchant whose paan had stained his lips the colour of dried blood. “Did you hear?” Lallan asked. Chhedi stretched the skin below his customer’s cheek and drew the razor down. “Hmm.”
“About the woman.” “What woman?” “The one near Barabar.” Chhedi rinsed the razor. “What did she do?” “Nothing.” “Then why are you talking about her?” Lallan glanced at the doorway. “They say she walks there at night.”
“Many people walk at night.” “Not like this one.” Chhedi smiled. “well she has not yet come to me for a haircut?” Lallan laughed, “women do not visit the barber shop,” but his laugh ended quickly. “They say she carries a lantern.” “Then perhaps she is looking for the road.” “She doesn’t need a road.” Lallan lowered his voice. “She is dead.” The razor paused against his cheek.
Outside, a bicycle bell rang twice. A bullock cart groaned through the bazaar. Somewhere a woman shouted at a child. From the railway line came the long, mournful whistle of a passing train. Chhedi resumed shaving. “Who saw her?”
“Ramotar.” “Ramotar sees ghosts whenever he drinks.” “He was sober.” “That is more serious.” Lallan’s face became grave. “They say she is the woman who disappeared thirty years ago.” Chhedi looked at him through the mirror. For the first time that morning, he did not smile. He knew the name. Everyone of a certain age in Makhdumpur knew it. Shanti.
In 1950, when Makhdumpur was little more than a bazaar strung along the road and the railway, Shanti had been nineteen. She was the daughter of a poor cultivator from a hamlet beyond the Jamuna, known for her singing voice and her stubbornness. One summer, she had disappeared.
The story had changed with every telling. Some said she ran away with a man from Gaya. Others said she had been taken by relatives. One version claimed she had fallen into the river. Another said she had gone mad and become a wandering mendicant. Her family had eventually stopped asking questions. That was how many things disappeared in those days. Not with an ending, but with silence.
Chhedi had been a boy then. He remembered Shanti. He remembered the blue sari. He remembered the silver anklets. Most of all, he remembered the man who used to come into his father’s barber shop and sit silently while his beard was trimmed. Bansidhar. The son of the largest landholder in that part of Makhdumpur. A handsome young man with a haughty face and polished shoes, who never looked directly at Chhedi’s father. Bansidhar had disappeared from town shortly after Shanti vanished. People said he had gone to Patna. Then they said Delhi. Then nobody said anything.
Three weeks after Lallan told him about the woman with the lantern, Chhedi saw her himself. It was a cold evening. The winter fog had descended early, turning the bazaar lamps into blurred yellow halos. Chhedi had stayed late because a railway clerk had come for a shave after his shift. By the time he locked the shop, the town had begun to settle into its nocturnal quiet. A dog barked somewhere near the grain market. A bicycle passed. Then silence.
Chhedi was walking home when he saw a light on the road towards Barabar. It moved slowly. A lantern. At first he thought it was a villager returning from a late visit. Then the figure stepped out of the fog. A woman. She wore a blue sari. Her hair hung loosely around her shoulders. She stood beside the road and looked at him. Chhedi stopped.
The woman raised the lantern. For one strange instant, the light fell upon her face. She was young. Far too young. Chhedi’s breath caught. The face was the face he remembered from thirty years earlier. Then she turned and began walking towards the hills. “Shanti!” he called. The woman stopped. The lantern trembled in her hand. Then she disappeared into the fog. Chhedi did not sleep that night.
For the next several days he told nobody. Then, one afternoon, an old customer named Rahim Ansari came to the shop. Rahim had worked for the railway since before Independence and had the habit of sitting quietly while Chhedi shaved him. Without looking up, Rahim said, “You saw her.” Chhedi’s hand stopped. “Who?” “Don’t obfuscate, Chhedi.” The old man’s eyes met his in the mirror. “Shanti.”
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Rahim said, “I thought so.” “You saw her too?” “No.” “Then how do you know?” “Because I saw her once when she was alive.” Rahim told him the story.
In 1950, Shanti had been in love with Bansidhar. It was not the sort of love that Makhdumpur approved of. Her family was poor. His family owned land. There was no question of marriage. They had planned to run away. The plan had been discovered. Shanti had gone to Barabar to meet Bansidhar before leaving for Gaya. Bansidhar never arrived. Instead, two men from his household found her. Rahim had been at the railway halt that evening and had seen them take her away in a bullock cart. “Why did you say nothing?” Chhedi whispered. Rahim’s old eyes filled with shame. “Because I was twenty-two.” That was all. Because he was twenty-two. Because they were powerful. Because the police would not listen. Because the village elders would advise silence. Because the poor have always been expected to possess an inexhaustible resilience.
Rahim told him what happened next. Shanti was taken to an abandoned stone shed near Barabar. She escaped during the night and fled towards the caves. One of the men followed her. In the morning, they found her sandals near the hillside. No body was ever found. Bansidhar left Makhdumpur soon afterwards. “Why are you telling me this now?” Chhedi asked. “Because Bansidhar came back.”
Chhedi looked up. “When?” “Last month.” The news struck him like a slap. “Where is he?” “Old Singh house. He has been staying there.” The next morning, Chhedi went to see him. Bansidhar was seventy now. He had returned as a shrivelled old man with a walking stick, cataracts and a cough that rattled deep inside his chest. Time had done its work without mercy. The polished shoes were gone. The haughty face had collapsed into folds. But Chhedi recognised him immediately.
Bansidhar recognised Chhedi too. “You are the barber’s son.” “I am the barber.” The old man smiled faintly. “Still cutting hair?” “Still remembering faces.” Something passed across Bansidhar’s expression. Fear. It was unmistakable. Chhedi sat down. “Shanti.” Bansidhar closed his eyes. Outside, a crow called from a neem tree. “She died,” he whispered. “What happened?” “I was afraid.” “Of what?” “My father.”
Chhedi said nothing. Bansidhar’s confession came slowly, in fragments. He had intended to run away with Shanti. His father discovered the plan and threatened to kill her family. Bansidhar lost his nerve. He did not meet her at Barabar. He allowed the men to take her. But she escaped. And when he later went looking for her, he found her hiding inside one of the caves. “She was alive,” he said.
Chhedi leaned forward. “Then what happened?” “I left her there.” “Why?” Bansidhar began to weep. “Because I was a coward.” The words hung in the shanty. “She was frightened. She had injured her foot. She asked me to take her away. I promised I would return with food.” He stopped. “I never returned.” “How long was she there?” “I don’t know” “And then?” “I don’t know.” Chhedi stared at him.
For thirty years, Bansidhar had carried that uncertainty. Perhaps that was punishment enough. Perhaps it was not. The following morning, Chhedi closed his shop. He borrowed a bicycle and rode towards Barabar. The winter sun was pale. Mustard flowers spread across the fields like yellow cloth. Smoke from cow-dung fires drifted low over the villages, mingling with the smell of damp earth, woodsmoke and frying litti. Women in faded saris walked along the road carrying brass pots. Children ran barefoot behind buffaloes. A tractor passed, coughing black smoke into the cold air.
The road became rougher as he approached the hills. Barabar rose before him, austere and dark. The caves had been there for more than two thousand years, carved into granite by hands that had vanished into the anonymity of history. Their walls were polished so smoothly that even the weak winter light seemed to slide across them. Ancient inscriptions survived where men had carved their names and intentions into stone.
Chhedi entered one of the caves. His footsteps returned to him. He whispered, “Shanti.” The cave answered. “Shanti.” He heard another sound. A soft metallic jingling. An anklet. He turned. Nothing. Then the smell came. Not decay. Not incense. Jasmine. The faint fragrance of jasmine oil. The same scent he remembered from his childhood. He walked deeper into the cave. “Shanti?” The darkness remained still.
Then, from somewhere beyond the chamber, came a woman’s voice. “Chhedi.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw her. Blue sari. Lantern. Bare feet. Young face. She stood at the entrance, looking towards the sunlight. “Are you dead?” he asked. She smiled. “Does it matter?” Chhedi could not answer. She looked towards Makhdumpur. “Tell him I waited.” “Bansidhar?” She nodded. “Tell him I waited for two days.” The lantern flame flickered. “And then?” he looked at him. “I stopped waiting.”
That evening, Chhedi returned to Makhdumpur. He went straight to the Singh house. Bansidhar was sitting alone. Chhedi stood before him. “She waited two days.” The old man began to tremble. “Then she stopped waiting.” Bansidhar bowed his head. For a long time there was no sound except his breathing. “I loved her,” he whispered. “No,” Chhedi said. The old man looked up. “You loved yourself more.” Bansidhar did not argue. He died three nights later.
Nobody in Makhdumpur called it a mysterious death. The doctor signed the certificate. The priest performed the rituals. Men discussed the property. Women discussed the funeral. By the following week, the bazaar had found newer matters to occupy itself with. Chhedi reopened his shop. The transistor still crackled. The flies still gathered. Men still came to have their hair cut and their secrets heard. But sometimes, just before sunset, when the bazaar turned the colour of old brass and the smell of frying pakoras mingled with cow dung, dust and paan, Chhedi would look towards the road to Barabar.
Once, months later, he saw a woman walking there with a lantern. She stopped. Was she who he thought her to be? He was not sure. He did not call her name. He simply watched. The woman turned towards the hills. The lantern became smaller. Then smaller still. Until it was only a pinprick of light against the gathering dusk.
Chhedi stood beside his little shop, razor in hand, while the last train of the evening passed beyond the fields. Its whistle rolled across Makhdumpur. For a moment, the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, from the railway tracks, from the river, from the dusty lanes and from the ancient granite chambers hidden among the hills. Then it faded. The town settled back into itself. And Makhdumpur, as it had done for generations, carried on. Keeping its secrets. Growing over its wounds. Remembering only what it could bear to remember.
Author’s Note
Makhdumpur is a work of fiction, but its landscape is real. I have always been fascinated by places that seem to exist quietly at the edge of history, carrying the weight of generations without ever appearing in the larger stories of a country. Makhdumpur, in Bihar’s Magadh region, is one such place. For this story, I imagined the town as it might have felt in 1980, when life moved more slowly, roads were rougher, information travelled by word of mouth, and the distance between power and poverty could be measured in little more than a few dusty lanes.
The story also draws inspiration from the ancient Barabar Caves, whose austere granite chambers and extraordinary echoes provide a fitting counterpoint to the ordinary lives of the people around them. The caves have witnessed more than two thousand years of human history, while the people of Makhdumpur have carried their own smaller histories, some remembered and others deliberately forgotten.
Chhedi, Shanti, Bansidhar and the events surrounding them are entirely fictional. Yet the silence, inequality, fear and social hierarchies that shape their story belong to a recognisable world. Sometimes, a town remembers what its people have chosen to forget.
Copyright © 2026 TRISHIKH DASGUPTA
No part of this story may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored in a retrieval system, translated, adapted, or reproduced in any form or by any means, including printing, photocopying, recording, scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews, academic commentary, and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by applicable copyright law.
This story is published exclusively on StoryNookOnline.com. Any unauthorised reproduction, distribution, translation, adaptation, or publication on any website, social media platform, digital service, printed medium, or artificial intelligence training dataset without the express written consent of the author is strictly prohibited.
For permission requests, send an email to the author at trishikh@gmail.com or get in touch with Trishikh on the CONTACT page of this website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trishikh Dasgupta
Adventurer, philosopher, writer, painter, photographer, craftsman, innovator, or just a momentary speck in the universe flickering to leave behind a footprint on the sands of time... READ MORE
This story is Free, and if you have found something here that stayed with you, some of my other books (collection of short stories, novels, and more) are available in print and digital editions. They gather many unique journeys, quieter questions, grand adventures, hair-raising anticipation, and stories that continue beyond this page.
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 
What a haunting and beautifully crafted story! “The Road That Vanished” brilliantly blends history, mystery, folklore, and human guilt. The atmosphere of 1980s Makhdumpur feels remarkably authentic, while the characters—especially Chhedi, Shanti, and Bansidhar—carry the emotional weight of the narrative.
I particularly loved how the ancient Barabar Caves become more than a setting; they almost feel like silent witnesses to a forgotten tragedy. The ending is subtle yet deeply moving, leaving the reader with a lingering sense of loss, memory, and unfinished justice.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Verma’ji, thank you so much for reading the story so closely and for capturing its essence so beautifully. I am particularly glad that the atmosphere of 1980s Makhdumpur came through, because I wanted the town itself to feel like a living character. And yes, I too saw the Barabar Caves as silent witnesses to something that had been buried for far too long. Your words about memory, loss and unfinished justice mean a great deal to me.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you for this wonderful story. I have been melancholic lately. And this acrually helped cheer me up.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thank you so much, MM. I am truly glad that the story could bring a little lightness to your days. Sometimes, a story finds us at just the right moment, and knowing that Makhdumpur helped lift your spirits makes writing it all the more worthwhile. I hope the melancholy has passed, and that many more stories bring you a little cheer along the way.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes my friend. I have had far too much on my mind as of late. Tell me, are these characters real people as well? Or fictional? They seem a lot more detailed than normal characters.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear MM, I am sorry to hear that you have had so much on your mind lately. I hope things ease for you soon.
And no, the characters in Makhdumpur are fictional. Chhedi, Shanti, Bansidhar and the others were created for the story. But they are rooted in the people, social realities and atmosphere of the Bihar I wanted to evoke. Perhaps that is why they feel more detailed and lived-in. I tend to spend quite a bit of time imagining who my characters were before they entered the story, even if the reader never gets to know all of it.
The Barabar Caves and Makhdumpur itself are real, of course. I simply allowed my fictional characters to inhabit that very real landscape, and perhaps the landscape lent them some of its own memory.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you my friend. I hope one day you will visit Miami, Fl. I would like to hang out with you some day
LikeLiked by 2 people
Maybe that will happen sometime.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That would be good my friend 🙏
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙏👍
Aum Shanti
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much. Blessings and peace to you too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Society may bury a truth, but it cannot always bury its memory!
LikeLiked by 6 people
What you are saying is so deep. I completely agree.
LikeLiked by 3 people
What a wonderful, thought provoking story.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much for reading Makhdumpur and for sharing your thoughts. I am delighted that the story made you pause and reflect. Knowing that it stayed with you beyond the final line makes the journey of writing it all the more rewarding.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I usually read your stories in the morning with a fresh mind. Yes, I require a particular mindset to read your stories. No hurry. No nagging thoughts. No worries. I won’t call it peace but tranquility – yes.
I read this story as dusk fell. Dusks generally make me wistful almost melancholic. This story seems to float across time and space. I remembered khaap….honour killing….women in bondage…..350 concubines of the Maharaja of Patiala….ages of patriarchy and it’s follies which made history. Will this established but disguised anarchy ever change ? I don’t think so …it may only change forms. Because dominating a woman is just not lust it’s power play. Even when they are recruited in defence services we hear stories of sexual harrasment, gender discrimination and even rape. Once one if my colleagues justified the last saying the poor chaps have to spend countless days in hardship zones without a scope of satisfying their biological needs. I was too surprised to counter that. His laughing reply was boys will always remain boys…
I am watching a Pakistani Serial – Zanjeerein – about tribal feuds where to settle an inter family dispute a woman of the household is bartered. They are called badley ki aurat – a derogatory address. If the barter is rejected by the other party the tragedy is that the rejected woman may also not accepted through respectable institution of marriage…ab issey shadi kaun karega ??? A catch twenty two situation…
To praise about your writing skill and craft I am short of words. This is atmospheric, layered, wrapped around a timeless saga of betrayal, waiting and may I say revenge… There’s just a wee bit of a hint of it almost a whisper… Who is Chheddi by the way…the arbitrator??? The vehicle of poetic justice….a white space of Japanese Poetry…the readers can fill in and finish the story as they want….????
For me this stays forever :
“Once, months later, he saw a woman walking there with a lantern. She stopped. Was she who he thought her to be? He was not sure. He did not call her name. He simply watched. The woman turned towards the hills. The lantern became smaller. Then smaller still. Until it was only a pinprick of light against the gathering dusk.”
I think I should come more often to this space. My loss….
LikeLiked by 4 people
Dear Geeta, I am honestly humbled by this comment. You have not merely read Makhdumpur, you have lived inside it for a while, and that is perhaps the greatest compliment a writer can receive.
I love that you read it at dusk. The mood you describe is exactly the kind of space I hoped the story would inhabit, somewhere between memory and melancholy, where the past does not remain entirely in the past. And your connection of Shanti’s story with the many forms of patriarchy, power and the silencing of women through history is very perceptive. The forms may change, as you say, but the underlying power play can be remarkably tenacious.
As for Chhedi, I am delighted that you asked who he really is. Perhaps he is the arbitrator, perhaps the vehicle of poetic justice, perhaps simply the man who remembers when an entire town has chosen to forget. I deliberately left that door open. The reader’s interpretation is as important as the writer’s intention, and your idea of Chhedi as a kind of white space in Japanese poetry is particularly beautiful. There are things I could have explained, but I felt the story would lose something if I did.
And I am especially grateful that the final image stayed with you. That little lantern disappearing into the gathering dusk carries much of what I wanted to leave behind: loss, memory, waiting, and the possibility that some stories refuse to remain buried.
Thank you for always coming back to this space, Geeta. And yes, please come more often. If this is your loss, it is certainly my gain to have a reader and friend like you who engages with the stories with such depth and generosity.
LikeLiked by 3 people
As always, beautifully written.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you Ana. I always treasure your appreciation. So glad that you liked the story.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent story. You had my attention from start to finish. Her line when asked if she were dead, “Does it matter?” is arresting. Did it? She still existed to some. Thanks for visiting Story Chat. As a thank you for commenting, I linked this post to the August Poetry post. 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear Marshs, thank you so much for this lovely comment. I am delighted that Makhdumpur held your attention from the first line to the last, and I am especially glad that “Does it matter?” stayed with you. Perhaps that is the heart of the story. Whether Shanti was dead, alive, memory or something in between almost becomes secondary. She still existed in the minds of those who remembered her, and perhaps that is another kind of existence altogether.
I am also touched that you linked the story to your August Poetry post. Thank you for welcoming Makhdumpur into that space. It is wonderful to see a story travel a little farther than the place where it was first told and find its way into another reader’s world. Your thoughtful comment has made the conversation around Makhdumpur richer.
And it is my pleasure to visit Story Chat. I shall visit again.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m so glad. Most of my mission with Story Chat is to give other authors a place for their stories to get exposure. It’s just a tiny drop in the bucket, but it’s what I have to offer.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thought provoking, Trishikh. The Barabar caves became the Marabar caves for E. M. Forster, I’m sure. I hear echoes here, of men and society, and the cruelty involved in social structure, stories as old as-dare I say it-the hills.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you so much for this thoughtful reading. I particularly love your observation about the echoes, because the Barabar Caves in Makhdumpur are not merely a backdrop in the story. They carry the weight of something much older than the characters themselves. And yes, the connection with Forster’s Marabar Caves is fascinating, especially the way the caves in both cases seem to amplify something unsettling within human beings rather than merely produce a physical echo.
The cruelty of social structures is indeed as old as the hills, and sadly, perhaps just as persistent. In Makhdumpur, I wanted that cruelty to remain woven quietly into the fabric of everyday life, rather than become a separate subject of the story. I am glad you heard those echoes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Fine story. And the Author’s Note is very revealing and, I think, an extension of the story.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you so much. Yes, of late I have been including Author’s note to my stories as so much goes behind writing a short story, and everything cannot be shared in the story, so an Author’s note helps to bring some more clarity for readers who want to do a deeper dive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Where do I start, Sir? You and a friend liked one of my many posts and I’m just getting up the courage to visit. My writing is short in nature—yours is massive, detailed and masterful. I lived the story. My blog, BY THE MIGHTY MUMFORD, links my poor attempts with masterful works of creativity like your writing. I know this isn’t the official channel you have delineated, but perchance might I repost this story and your other works for the delight and deep satisfaction of my blog readers? I look forward to reading more, Sir!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear Jonathan, what a wonderfully generous comment. Thank you for finding your way to StoryNookOnline, and I am delighted that Makhdumpur allowed you to live inside its world for a while. And please do not describe your own writing as “poor attempts.” Every writer has a voice, and the fact that you are brave enough to put yours into the world is what matters.
As for your request, you certainly may repost Makhdumpur and my other stories on BY THE MIGHTY MUMFORD. I would be happy for my stories to find new readers through your blog. I only ask that the stories are reproduced in their entirety, credited to me as the author, and accompanied by a link to the original story on StoryNookOnline.
There is no better compliment to a writer than knowing that a story has travelled from one reader’s space into another’s. So thank you for opening the door. I look forward to visiting your blog as well, and I hope Makhdumpur is only the beginning of many stories of mine that you would like to share on your blog.
And please, no “Sir.” We are both writers here, and that makes us fellow travellers. Call me Trishikh.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you so much Jonathan for sharing my story with the larger world. Now so many more people would be able to read it. I treasure your kind gesture.
LikeLike
Another wonderful story, rich with vivid detail and a moral about true love. :0) I think you are a person of physiognomy :0) (had to look it up so, I learned a new word too) but I see you carefully observing everything that most of us overlook. That’s why I want to see your paintings lol ;0)
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much for this wonderfully generous comment. I am glad that “Makhdumpur” gave you not only a story but also a new word to look up. And yes, perhaps physiognomy is part of the writer’s affliction. I do tend to observe faces, gestures, places, sounds and all those little details that most of us pass without noticing. They often find their way into my stories, sometimes without my even realising it.
And now you have mentioned my paintings, you have rather cleverly cornered me! Perhaps I shall have to bring them out of hiding one of these days. Writing lets me observe the world with words, while drawing lets me chase the same world with strokes, and photography also has a deep reverence in my heart and crart. I am delighted that you would like to see them.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Beautiful story of Makhdumpur . It’s a great story of mystery and history
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much, Priti. I am delighted that you enjoyed “Makhdumpur.” I wanted to weave together the mystery of the story with the history and atmosphere of a real place, especially the ancient Barabar Caves. It means a lot to know that both these elements came through for you.
LikeLiked by 3 people
💐🙏🏼
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a mysterious and atmospheric story. I really enjoyed it
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear Angela, I am so glad that you liked the story. Especially the mystery and atmosphere around it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A wonderful, haunting story. The little details, the images that mingle through the story were perfect. Good story.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much for reading “Makhdumpur” and for such a generous comment. I am especially glad that the little details and images stayed with you. I wanted the sights, sounds and smells of the place to become part of the story rather than simply serve as its backdrop. It means a great deal to know that they helped make the story feel haunting and alive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I definitely enjoy a good mystery and this story reigns supreme! As always, the characters and descriptions of the story’s setting transport me to where it takes place. I feel like I am right there watching the story evolve and learning more of India’s intriguing history.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you so much for such a wonderful comment. I am delighted that “Makhdumpur” gave you the sense of being right there in the town, watching the story unfold. For me, the setting is never merely a backdrop. I want its people, sounds, smells and landscape to breathe alongside the characters. And I am especially happy that the story also gave you another glimpse into India’s fascinating and often little-known history.
LikeLiked by 3 people
What a quietly devastating story this is. You have crafted something that feels less like reading and more like sitting in that little barber shop yourself, watching the dust motes dance in the afternoon light while history exhales its secrets through a cracked mirror.
The writing is remarkable in its restraint. There’s no melodrama here, no grand gestures—just the slow, patient accumulation of detail that makes a place and its people breathe. The description of Chhedi’s shop, with its “three bottles of hair oil, two cakes of shaving soap, a chipped aluminium mug and a glass jar containing something that had once been talcum powder,” is the kind of observation that can only come from someone who has truly seen such spaces. The smell of phenyl and neglect at the hospital. The cinema hall that changes its posters only when the monsoon arrives. These are not decorative details; they are the architecture of a world.
The story’s treatment of time is especially haunting. The Barabar Caves—”two thousand years old”—sit in counterpoint to Shanti’s thirty-year disappearance and Bansidhar’s seventy-year lifetime, suggesting that human cruelty and human grief are not new things, merely newer forms of ancient patterns. The polished granite walls that have witnessed millennia are offered no moral judgment; they simply are. It is left to the people of Makhdumpur to carry their smaller histories, their remembered and deliberately forgotten wounds.
What moved me most was the story’s refusal to offer easy resolution. Shanti may be dead, may be a ghost, may be something else entirely—the story wisely never decides. The line “Does it matter?” when Chhedi asks if she is dead is devastating precisely because the answer is ambiguous. Perhaps it does matter. Perhaps it doesn’t. Either way, she waited, and she stopped waiting, and that is the only truth that counts.
Bansidhar is portrayed with a complicated mercy. He is a coward, yes—”I loved myself more”—but the story does not make him a villain of the mustache-twirling variety. He is simply a man who failed, whose failure had consequences, who lived long enough to carry the weight of that failure. His death comes as quietly as the rest of the story, and Chhedi’s refusal to forgive him in any grand way feels more honest than any dramatic confrontation could have been.
The final image—the lantern becoming “a pinprick of light against the gathering dusk”—is perfect. It gives us closure without closure, a farewell that is also an open question. And that final passage: “The town settled back into itself. And Makhdumpur, as it had done for generations, carried on. Keeping its secrets. Growing over its wounds. Remembering only what it could bear to remember.” This is not romanticism; it is a recognition of how communities survive—not through healing, necessarily, but through the quiet, imperfect business of continuing.
Trishikesh, you have written a story that feels like it has always existed somewhere, waiting to be told. It has the weight of oral tradition, the texture of lived experience, and the quiet authority of a writer who trusts his readers enough to leave spaces unfilled. The note at the end—the acknowledgment that Makhdumpur is real, that these hierarchies and silences belong to a recognizable world—only deepens the story’s resonance. This is not fantasy or allegory; it is memory work.
The barber’s shop, with its cracked mirror and its calendar of a goddess beside a fertiliser advertisement, will stay with me. So will the image of Rahim Ansari, the railway man, who was “twenty-two” and therefore silent, because silence was what survival demanded. And the jasmine oil. And the anklet that Chhedi hears, that might or might not have been there at all.
Thank you for this. It is a gift to be reminded that the smallest towns contain the largest stories, and that fiction, at its best, lets us feel what history’s official accounts often cannot.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Dear Srikanth, I am honestly at a loss for words after reading this. Thank you for giving Makhdumpur not merely your time, but such an extraordinarily close and perceptive reading. You have noticed details that I placed almost instinctively, and then taken them somewhere deeper than I could have explained myself.
Your description of the barber shop as “the architecture of a world” particularly moved me. That is exactly what I hope such details can do. The bottles of hair oil, the cracked mirror, the smell of phenyl and neglect, the cinema posters waiting for the monsoon, the transistor crackling in the background, these small things are often what make a place real to us. I am delighted that you felt you were sitting inside Chhedi’s shop rather than merely reading about it.
I also love your reading of the Barabar Caves as silent witnesses. I wanted the ancient landscape to stand against the much smaller, but no less painful, histories of Shanti, Bansidhar, Rahim and Chhedi. The caves have endured for thousands of years, while human beings continue to repeat variations of the same old cruelties. Perhaps that is one of the uncomfortable truths buried beneath the story.
And you have understood exactly why I left Shanti’s nature unresolved. I did not want to tell the reader whether she was a ghost, a memory or something that could not be explained. “Does it matter?” was perhaps her way of refusing to let that become the important question. She waited. She suffered. She was forgotten. And finally, she stopped waiting. That is the truth that matters.
Your reading of Bansidhar also means a great deal to me. I never wanted him to become a conventional villain. His crime was not only what he did, but what he failed to do when courage was required. “I loved myself more” is perhaps the most honest thing he could have said. His punishment was not imposed by Chhedi or by some supernatural force. He had already carried it inside himself for thirty years.
And yes, “memory work” is a beautiful way of describing what I was trying to do. Makhdumpur is a real place, Barabar is real, and the social realities behind the story are recognisable. The characters are fictional, but the world that produced their silences is not. Perhaps fiction sometimes allows us to approach truths that history records only in footnotes, if it records them at all.
I am particularly grateful that you noticed Rahim’s “Because I was twenty-two.” That little sentence carries an entire lifetime of fear, powerlessness and regret. And then there is the jasmine oil and the anklet, both deliberately left hovering somewhere between memory and the inexplicable.
Thank you, Srikanth, for saying that this story feels as though it has always existed somewhere, waiting to be told. That is one of the finest compliments a writer can receive. And you are absolutely right about one thing: the smallest towns often contain the largest stories. We simply have to stop long enough to listen to them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for liking my post Music 🙏🥀
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear Raj, you are most welcome.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You remember me ,great
LikeLiked by 2 people
Of course I know you from our interactions of blogging. I enjoy your posts and appreciate your likes and comments on my stories too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A haunting and atmospheric story with a strong sense of place and mystery.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you so much, Myrela. I am delighted that the atmosphere and sense of place came through for you. Makhdumpur and the ancient Barabar Caves were almost characters in their own right, carrying their own memories and secrets. I am especially glad that the mystery stayed with you after the story ended.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Trishikh,
This is another excellent short story thats takes the reader wherever they are from into the story.
Best Wishes
Kevin 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you so much, Kevin. I am delighted that the story carried you into Makhdumpur and made you feel part of its world, from the place you were reading from. That sense of taking the reader somewhere beyond the page is one of the greatest joys of writing for me. Your continued support and kind words mean a great deal to me.
Best wishes,
Trishikh
LikeLike
Thanks for liking my post Resigned 🙏
LikeLiked by 2 people
You are most welcome Raj.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your focus on Chhedi’s barber shop accurately demonstrates how informal spaces function as primary information networks. We consistently observe local vendors preserving community memory far better than municipal archives during our field assignments. Mapping these micro-hubs provides a highly practical framework for understanding regional social dynamics.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your beautiful comment. You have understooda key element in this story very well, thanks for bringing this up.
LikeLike