The turbulent waters of the river Hooghly were still half-asleep when the sky cracked open, in the circa of our Lord 1632 AD. A roar, low, rolling, the sound of hooves, boots, and the metallic breathing of war, tore into the Portuguese settlement on the banks of the river like a monstrous tide. Those who…
St. John’s And The Spolia Of Lost Gaur
Chanak Chakraborty adjusted the shotgun mic with gentle care, like a craftsman tending to a fragile bloom. It was dusk in November 2025, and the dying sun painted the pale neoclassical façades of St. John’s Church in soft gold. The hush in the courtyard felt sacred, broken only by distant traffic and the rustle of…
Saltwater Songs Beneath The City Square
As the metal claw of the tungsten carbide-tipped drill inched forward deep below the bowels of the bustling city above, Tunnel Manager, Arya Agrawal, suddenly felt a strong hunch to proceed no further. “Stop the drilling. There is something wrong,” she shouted. The sound of the metal claw of the drill screeched to a reluctant…
Whispers Of The Unholy Trinity
It all began with a shriek, a siren slicing through the silent night. The people poured into the streets, faces pale in the ghost-light of fires. The air smelt of cordite and singed wool. Mothers clutched children to their bosoms; men ran with buckets, their steps slipping in soot. Somewhere, church bells tolled once and…
The Valley Of Thundering Hooves
The dawn fog of 1850 clung to the Imphal valley like a half-remembered dream when Lieutenant Joseph Ford Sherer first heard the thunder of hooves. It came faint at first, like a heartbeat rising through the mist, then nearer, stronger, until the ground itself seemed to breathe beneath him. He drew rein, his mare snorting…
Taj Of The Raj
The monsoon-misted dusk of September 1943 softened the edges of Victoria Memorial’s white marble dome. Once pristine, the edifice now stood muted beneath the grey Bengal skies. Its shining Makrana marble slowly wrapped in shadows, and its great bronze angel atop the dome, almost invisible in the gathering gloom of wartime blackout. At the height…
Elephants Beyond The Horizon
It was a smouldering dawn in May over a battlefield strewn with thunder and ruin, 326 years before the birth of Christ on the banks of the river Jhelum, which the Greeks called Hydaspes. The plain was littered with shattered armour and half-buried bodies, the metallic stench of blood heavy in the humid air. In…
Unseen Lines – The Haque and Bose Story
The monsoon had just lifted above the Calcutta sky of 1896, leaving behind a smell that was half ink, half sweat, and half the ghosts of mangoes gone to rot. Inside a narrow room of the Anthropometric Bureau, located in the British colonial Writer’s Building, ceiling fans creaked like lazy sentinels, and the light from…
The Man Who Could Hear The World
Bhaskor Mollik was born on a humid summer afternoon in the year of our Lord 1900, in the narrow bylanes of Jessore, in undivided Bengal. The monsoon clouds hovered heavy above, the scent of wet earth and mango blossom swirling in the air. His first cries mingled with the drone of mosquitoes and the distant…
Bonomali’s Cathedral
A cold winter dawn lay across the St. Paul’s Cathedral grounds, in the heart of Kolkata, like a thin veil of grey. Faint mists curled between ancient tombstones and evergreen shrubs, and the air tasted of damp earth and the distant tang of dew. On one side of a narrow pathway, under the skeletal arms…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 