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Holding the Gate
Where Lohagad Fort measured courage one blow at a time… The gate had seldom seen peace. Long before men called it the Ganesh Gate of Lohagad Fort, before chisels carved its basalt stones into careful symmetry, before iron spikes were hammered into its thick teak doors, the mountain itself had stood listening to the winds…
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Mirrors Never Forget
When Amber Fort reflected secrets that no court ever recorded… The mirrors remembered every face. That was the burden no one ever considered when they admired the splendour of the Sheesh Mahal. Visitors gasped at the countless fragments of Belgian glass and polished mirrors embedded into the ceilings and walls, marvelling at how a single…
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Beneath the Paint
Where Bidar Fort quietly concealed truths brighter than its colours… By the time the cracks appeared in the kingdom, they had already appeared in the walls. Kamaluddin noticed them first while preparing the plaster. The lime surface inside the Rangin Mahal shimmered softly beneath the afternoon light filtering through coloured glass windows. Delicate floral patterns…
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Centuries Between Breaths
The jungle had spent nearly two centuries reclaiming the temple. Sea winds drifting in from the Bay of Bengal had carried salt into its stones, banyan roots had crept into tiny cracks and slowly split sculptured pillars apart, while monsoon rains had washed away staircases where pilgrims once climbed with folded hands and whispered prayers.…
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Waiting for Dusk
As Bhangarh Fort slowly surrendered its voice to the coming silence… The first thing Raghav noticed was that the peacocks had stopped dancing. For twenty years he had played the sarangi in the courtyards of Bhangarh Fort, and during every monsoon the peacocks arrived before the rain. They descended from the surrounding hills, spread their…
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After the Kingdom
Where Warangal Fort remained standing after every throne had fallen… When a stone is young, it listens. At least that was what Rudra believed. His father had taught him so while shaping temple pillars from granite blocks beside the quarries east of Orugallu, the city later known as Warangal. Before every first strike of the…
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When Stone Fell
The day Kangra Fort discovered that even mountains possess a breaking point… For most of his life, Pandit Narayan believed mountains were incapable of lying. Men lied. Kings lied. Chronicles lied. Even rivers lied sometimes, changing course without warning and abandoning settlements that trusted them. But the mountains endured. They stood where the gods had…
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Footprints Against the Tide
Where Sindhudurg Fort trusted the sea to remember a king… The sea did not trust walls. Every morning before sunrise, the Arabian Sea arrived roaring against the black rocks where Sindhudurg Fort was rising stone by stone from the coast of Malvan. Waves smashed against unfinished ramparts with the fury of something insulted by human…
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The March of a Capital
As Daulatabad Fort welcomed an empire that should never have marched… The order arrived in Delhi during summer, when even the shadows felt thirsty. By noon the stone streets outside the bazaars burned hot enough to blister bare feet while the Yamuna shrank sluggishly beneath clouds of flies and heat. Water sellers shouted through crowded…
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Facing Forever
When Agra Fort became the keeper of a love that refused to end… Every morning before sunrise, Yusuf carried water through the sleeping corridors of Agra Fort while the fort still belonged to silence. That was the only hour he loved. Before the guards changed shifts. Before the cooks filled the palace kitchens with smoke…
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Last Watch on the Ridge
By sunset tomorrow, the ridge would belong either to Kumbhalgarh… or to the dead. The thought lingered in Bhairav Singh’s mind as the last glow of the sun slipped behind the jagged shoulders of the Aravalli hills. Evening gathered slowly over Kumbhalgarh, filling the valleys with deep blue shadows while the highest ridges still caught…
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Breathing Sand
Where Jaisalmer Fort slowly became part of the desert it resisted… Nobody inside Jaisalmer Fort ever trusted silence. Silence meant the caravans were late. Silence meant the desert wind had changed direction. Silence meant someone far beyond the dunes had died beneath the sun without water enough to scream. So the fort listened constantly. To…
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The Price of the Wall
As Kumbhalgarh Fort learned what every great wall truly costs… The first body disappeared beneath the wall on a moonless night. No prayers were spoken. No funeral fire burned. No family received ashes in an urn wrapped in white cloth. By dawn the trench had already been sealed beneath stone and lime while labourers continued…
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Songs for Stone
Where Gwalior Fort discovered that songs can outlive chains… The sound reached the fort before the prisoner did. Long before the chained horses climbed the steep pathway toward Gwalior Fort, before soldiers shouted commands beneath the massive gates, before iron locks sealed behind royal captivity, the guards upon the eastern ramparts heard singing rise faintly…
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Crowned Above the Clouds
When Raigad Fort lifted an ordinary dream into a kingdom… The climb to Raigad Fort always began before sunrise. By midday the stone steps became too hot for bare feet and the mountain winds turned deceptive, arriving cool against the skin while draining strength slowly from the body. So the workers climbed early, long before…
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When the Empire Whispered Goodbye
As the Red Fort watched an empire fade into silence… By the summer of 1857, the pigeons inside Red Fort had grown unusually fearless. They nested freely within cracked marble pavilions, drank from the shallow edges of neglected fountains, and wandered boldly through halls where emperors once received ambassadors from Persia, Arabia, and Europe beneath…
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Handprints of Chittor
Where Chittorgarh Fort chose to remember what history could not erase… The first thing Rajkunwar noticed about Mehrangarh Fort was the wind. Not the fort itself. Not the immense walls rising out of the rocky hill like a mountain carved by warriors. Not the seven towering gates scarred by cannon marks and elephant strikes. Not…
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Donali – The Shotgun Of Haider Ali: AUDIO STORY
Donali – The Shotgun Of Haider Ali is a gripping historical thriller set within the ancient Fort of Munger in Bihar. As a century-old shotgun passes through generations, an ageing guardian with an extraordinary knowledge of the fort’s hidden secrets stands alone against unimaginable danger, proving that courage and honour can outlive empires. Listen to…
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Sea Beyond Conquest
Where Janjira Fort finally persuaded the sea to surrender… The first cannon arrived at dawn, not by land where men announced wars with drums and banners, but through the Arabian Sea hidden beneath fishing nets wet with silver pomfret and the smell of old salt. The vessel came low against the water, its dark hull…
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Echoes of Betrayal
When Golconda Fort could no longer contain the whispers within its walls… At Golconda, even whispers travelled with purpose. A clap beneath the Fateh Darwaza could rise through the belly of the fort and bloom nearly a kilometre away inside the Bala Hissar pavilion atop the citadel. The sound moved through arches, corridors, domes, hollow…
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The Tail Lamp Never Died
The shrill whistle rose above the sleeping plains before dawn, long and melancholy, drifting over dew-soaked fields where the silhouettes of palm trees stood like silent sentries against the paling eastern sky. Beyond the station lamps, a goods train waited with the patience of a beast that knew no hurry. Forty-seven wagons stretched into the…
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Poetey: AUDIO STORY
Poetay is a heartwarming tale of an eccentric old sweet maker from the narrow lanes of North Kolkata, where tradition, craftsmanship, and humanity blend like the perfect Bengali confection. As modern businesses threaten to erase a century of culinary heritage, an unexpected friendship proves that true greatness lies not in defeating a rival, but in…
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Queen Beneath the Water
The first thing the traveller noticed was the silence. Not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of something that had watched centuries pass. The afternoon sun blazed over the plains of Gujarat. Dust drifted across the road like faded silk. Parakeets screeched from neem trees. Somewhere beyond the fields, women sang while drawing water…
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Ashes That Refused to Die
By the time the third gate fell, the smell inside Chittorgarh Fort had changed. For months the fort had smelled of siege: boiled grain scraped from bronze vessels, horse dung drying beneath the winter sun, oil burning through sleepless nights, and men whose armour had not left their bodies for weeks. But after the third…
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The Woman in the Auction Portrait
On certain monsoon evenings, Russell Street still remembers the British. Not through flags or statues, but through smell. The smell of wet teakwood rising from cracked staircases. Damp velvet curtains holding decades of cigarette smoke. Polish melting slowly from mahogany tables beneath tired yellow bulbs. The faint medicinal odour of old paper that has survived…
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Midnight Swimmers: AUDIO STORY
On the midnight waters of Kolkata’s old Hedua Talab began a promise between four boys, a promise born from friendship, philosophy, and the immortal words of a monk who once swam into history. Midnight Swimmers is a haunting tale of dreams, loss, resilience, and the extraordinary strength of the human spirit. From the lanes of…
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Chintu Chimney
The city woke before the sun did. In the narrow gullies of colonial Calcutta, dawn did not arrive as light. It arrived as sound. The clatter of wooden wheels over cobblestones. The hoarse cry of chai sellers stirring boiling leaves into tannin-rich darkness. The metallic clang of tram tracks stretching awake. And somewhere beneath all…
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The Blue Indians: AUDIO STORY
A forgotten tribe. A fading colour. A story that refuses to be erased. “The Blue Indians” is a lyrical journey into memory, identity, and the quiet resilience of people who exist on the margins of history. Through evocative storytelling, this tale uncovers a world where colour is not just seen, but lived, carried, and slowly…
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Bandook Gali – Gun Lane: AUDIO STORY
In a forgotten lane of Kolkata, where time lingers like incense in an old fire temple, a boy unearths a relic buried beneath silence, a century old gun that once whispered through the veins of India’s freedom struggle. Bandook Gali – Gun Lane is not just a story of a weapon, but of memory, legacy,…
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Unknown Companions
Twenty Short Stories of Famous Indians and Their Animal Connections History remembers people. This book remembers who walked beside them. My new book, Unknown Companions, my 4th published book, is a collection of twenty short stories about famous Indians and the animals who quietly shared their lives. Not the speech. Not the applause. Not the…
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City Measured in Wings
I was not born in a tree. I was born in a cavity between two slabs of curing concrete, in the small accidental darkness where rainwater had once hesitated and then withdrawn. The sea was close enough for its salt to crust on the edges of metal rods. The traffic below was still learning its…
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A Mountain That Remembered the Sea
They first tasted it in the wind. Not with their tongues, not yet. It came as a sting on cracked lips, a dryness that did not belong to thirst alone, a strange whisper carried through the air that licked their skin and stayed. The men of Alexander the Great’s army had crossed mountains that tore…
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Sparrow Against the Season
The sparrow arrived at half past four in the afternoon, precisely when the applause had begun to thin inside her memory. It did not knock at the window. It struck the sill once, sharply, as if testing the strength of wood, and then began to hop along the ledge with the self-importance of a tenant…
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Republic of Quiet Evenings
Power does not always enter a room with the noise of boots. Sometimes it slips in with a soft paw, pads across polished floors, and rests its chin upon the knee of a man who carries a nation in his briefcase. In the fading gold of a Delhi evening, at 7, Race Course Road, the…
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When Thalaivaa Bowed Down
There are days when a city falls at a man’s feet. Cutouts rise like temporary mountains. Milk is poured over painted faces thirty feet tall. Drums split the afternoon. Firecrackers rewrite the grammar of air. His name travels faster than the wind, shouted, printed, lit in neon, offered to the sky like a prayer that…
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Mother and Bhola
The city kept no minutes of mercy. It recorded rainfall, elections, tram delays, the rising and falling prices of fish at Manicktala. It remembered riots and festivals and the names of new flyovers. But it kept no ledger for the small gestures that slipped through its fingers like water. The stray dog did not know…
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Hooves at Dawn
In the beginning, there was a sound. Not the crack of a pistol at a starting block. Not the roar of a stadium rising to its feet. There was only the rhythm of hooves striking the earth before sunrise, a measured thunder that rolled across the sleeping fields of undivided Punjab. It was the kind…
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A Simple Bond in Mussoorie
The morning arrived on four paws. It did not knock. It leapt lightly onto the desk, scattered a disciplined pile of papers into a small white rebellion, and settled its warm, breathing weight squarely across the final paragraph. The ink was still wet. The word “loneliness” lay half-formed beneath a soft grey belly, its tail…
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Refused to Fade
This story stands complete on its own, but if you wish to start at the beginning, you may read the prequel, Ramkingkong, first: The lane had not changed. Or perhaps it had changed only in the way a battlefield heals, by covering its scars with ordinary life while never quite forgetting the violence that once lived…
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Feather, Fur and the Little Master
In Mumbai, afternoons do not invite children outdoors. They press down like a palm on the back of the neck. The tar on the lanes glistens. The bougainvillea droops in exhausted pink. Even the crows fall silent, their arguments postponed until evening. It is in such a suspended hour that a boy stands in the…
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Profit in Pawprints
At half past eight each morning, before the traffic on DN Road had gathered its full-throated impatience, the old stone building inhaled. Bombay House stood in its Edwardian solidity, grey and composed, like a man who had seen empires arrive in carriages and leave in motorcars. The brass handles on its doors were cool with…
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The Draftsman and His Sleeping Dog
The night in Delhi did not descend so much as it settled, deliberate and unhurried, over the sprawling capital that was still learning how to call itself free. In the high-ceilinged room where the air carried the mingled scents of paper, ink, and fatigue, a single lamp burned with unwavering resolve. Its yellow light pooled…
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Equations in a Garden
In the quiet hour before Bombay fully awakened to its own ambition, a bird stitched sound into the morning air and altered the course of a thought. The study window stood open to the sea, admitting salt and light in equal measure. On a broad teak desk lay sheets dense with symbols, their disciplined geometry…
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Lata’s Lullabies
The microphone had been waiting longer than anyone in the room. It stood upright in the centre of the studio, silver ribs catching the soft amber light, its wire coiled like a patient serpent at its feet. The tanpura strings had already been tuned, the tabla skin tightened, the harmonium tested with a cautious breath.…
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Frame 23
The pencil broke at precisely 2:17 in the afternoon. Not with drama. Not with protest. It simply surrendered. Graphite snapped against paper, leaving behind a thin, incomplete line across a face that refused to resolve itself. The face belonged to no one yet. It hovered somewhere between hero and coward, between lover and witness, between…
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The First Light
This story stands complete on its own, but if you wish to start at the beginning, you may read the prequel, The Last Click, first: There are photographs that capture a moment, and then there are photographs that wait. They wait in darkness, in drawers that smell of camphor and old paper, in forgotten corners…
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Moonlight in Kanha
The night did not fall. It assembled itself, leaf by leaf. In the forest rest house, the kerosene lamp hummed with a tired glow, its flame bending each time the wind slipped through the ill-fitted wooden shutters. Beyond the veranda, sal trees stood in their tall, patient silence, their trunks rising like pillars in a…
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The Crossing: AUDIO STORY
A barren desert. A relentless journey. And a crossing that tests not just the body, but the very will to go on. The Crossing is a stark, haunting tale of survival, endurance, and the fragile line between despair and hope. Set against an unforgiving landscape, it captures a moment where every step forward feels like…
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Prime Minister and the Cub
In the middle of the night, the Prime Minister of India was not asleep. The lamps in the long corridors of Teen Murti Bhavan burned with a patient yellow glow, illuminating polished floors that had known both empire and independence. The portraits on the walls, stern ancestors of administration, fading generals, forgotten viceroys, watched with…
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Ramkingkong: AUDIO STORY
In the narrow lanes of North Kolkata once lived a man who seemed carved from myth. Towering at seven and a half feet and weighing more than 150 kilos, Ramkinkar Dey looked less like an ordinary human and more like a legend walking among people. After watching the film King Kong in a cinema hall…
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The Captain Who Could Not Command
In Ranchi, mornings do not arrive with applause. They seep in quietly, like dew threading itself through blades of grass. The farmhouse lies still under a pale sky, its long driveway scented with damp earth and faint petrol from machines that slept through the night. Beyond the gates, the city stirs in low murmurs, but…
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Rooftop Ruffians: AUDIO STORY
Before mobile phones, video games, and the endless distractions of modern life, childhood in the 1980s had its own kingdom of adventure. In the old neighbourhoods of Kolkata, a gang of restless boys claimed the city’s rooftops as their playground. From daring leaps across terraces to secret missions under the blazing summer sun, these self-proclaimed…
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Silent Tracks
There are railway stations that exist on maps, marked with crisp letters and precise coordinates, and then there are stations that exist only in memory. Suryanagar Halt belonged to the second kind. It stood a few kilometres away from a small eastern town where mustard fields stretched to the horizon and dusty roads wandered lazily…
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The Bard and the Deer
In the early mornings at Santiniketan, the earth does not merely glow. It smoulders. The red laterite soil holds the memory of last evening’s heat and releases it slowly into the pale blue hour before sunrise. A faint scent of shiuli blossoms lingers in the air, mingling with the raw, metallic tang of dew settling…
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Mudskippers: AUDIO STORY
On the muddy banks of the Ganges in North Kolkata, two mysterious twins are discovered by a humble idol maker from Kumartuli. Raised among clay, river tides, and the ancient craft of sculpting gods, the boys grow up with an uncanny bond to the water that first brought them into the world. But when a…
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The Fragile One
At dawn, the Sabarmati does not glitter. It exhales. The river lies low and patient, a silver ribbon pressed into dust-brown earth, the wind moving gently across its surface carrying the smell of damp clay, spun cotton, and last night’s ash. The ashram wakes without noise. There are no clanging bells, no shouted instructions, only…
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Derinchi: AUDIO STORY
Derinchi is a dwarf who grows up as the constant target of jokes and ridicule in his village. Mocked for his height and even named after it, he learns to live quietly on the margins of society. Yet life has its own mysterious way of balancing cruelty and kindness. In this poignant tale, a man…
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Missile Man and the Mutt
By late evening the laboratories at the Defence Research and Development Organisation campus did not fall silent. They merely changed their breathing. The clang of metal softened into the hum of air-conditioning ducts. The sharp, acrid tang of solder and heated circuitry gave way to the faint sweetness of night jasmine from somewhere beyond the…
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Fish n Rice: AUDIO STORY
A frantic morning. A superstitious mind. And a plate of fish and rice that was never meant for him. Fish n Rice follows Bipin Bihari Choudharee, a ritual-loving, fish-obsessed Bengali gentleman whose perfectly predictable life unravels on a day when everything seems cosmically misaligned. After a series of absurd mishaps at the bustling Maniktala fish…
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The Map Seller of College Street
There are streets in a city that merely carry traffic, and then there are streets that carry memory. College Street in Kolkata belongs to the latter. In the early mornings, before the buses begin their impatient honking and before the tram bell rings its metal warning, the street wakes slowly. Booksellers lift the tarpaulin sheets…
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Bagha
At four in the morning, the Ganga does not speak. She breathes. Mist hangs low over her patient waters. The air tastes faintly of wet clay and incense long extinguished. Somewhere in the distance, a conch has already surrendered its cry to the dawn. The Math still sleeps, wrapped in saffron shadows and the smell…
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Lives Between the Dates
Twenty Short Stories from India’s Unrecorded Hours History records its milestones with precision. A year. A battle. A proclamation. A coronation. The dates remain fixed, neat and unquestioned in the margins of textbooks. Yet between those dates lie hours that history rarely pauses to notice. Hours of hesitation before a decision, of doubt before courage,…
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The Ground Before the Name
The land did not yet know what it was meant to become. It lay open and undecided, grass bending unevenly where the wind found reason to pass, red earth showing through in patches that refused neatness. A line of trees stood at a distance, their shade unoffered, their patience untested. Jamsetji Tata stood still long…
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Before the Bell Finished Ringing
The bells did not ring all at once. They answered one another across the temple complex, sound arriving in layers, folding back on itself, refusing to settle quickly. Madurai received it with practiced ease. The city had learned how to hold excess. Camphor burned near the thresholds, its sharp sweetness cutting through the heavier smells…
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What the Snow Did Not Silence
Snow arrived early that year, not with drama, but with persistence. It softened Srinagar until sound forgot its own confidence. Footsteps learned caution. Voices lowered themselves without instruction. Woodsmoke curled through narrow lanes and lingered, carrying with it the smell of pine and damp wool and meals stretched carefully across days. The city seemed suspended,…
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The Sound the River Kept
The room held the heat as if it were a duty. Walls breathed dampness back into the air, and the floor retained the day’s warmth despite the hour’s attempt at mercy. Outside, Guwahati moved carefully along the river’s edge, its houses listening more than speaking. The Brahmaputra was close enough to be felt even when…
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Where the Serpents Remember
The forest does not begin with trees. It begins with hesitation. Before the roots grip the soil and before the leaves argue with sunlight, there is always a moment of listening. The earth waits. The insects wait. Even the wind seems to pause, as if asking the old question again. Who belongs here? For centuries…
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The Hours Between the Tides
The harbour did not pause for war. It smelled as it always had, of fish laid out too long, of spice sacks sweating in the heat, of wet rope coiled and uncoiled by hands that knew their work. Boats knocked gently against one another, impatient not with danger but with delay. The sea breathed in…
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What the Stone Would Hold
Stone dust rose slowly, reluctant to leave the ground that had held it for centuries. It caught in the air and settled again on skin, on cloth, on the shallow grooves already scored into the earth. The smell of it was unmistakable. Dry, mineral, patient. Around the marked foundations, men moved with measured purpose, ropes…
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The Matter of a Signature
The court was modest by design. It did not announce power so much as contain it. Pillars stood without ornament. The floor bore the soft polish of years of movement rather than display. Incense burned lightly near the doorway, its presence more habitual than ceremonial, a faint sweetness that mingled with paper, oil, and the…
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The Distance Between Stones
Morning arrived carefully, as if it knew it was being watched. Pune held its breath in that hour before heat decided what kind of day it would be. The street outside the house was quiet, swept too early by someone who believed cleanliness could persuade fate. A crow argued with itself on a tiled roof…
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What the Courtyard Remembered
Exile had its own weather. In Nepal, the mornings arrived quietly, without the elaborate courtesy Lucknow had once insisted upon. The air was thinner here, cleaner in a way that felt almost impolite. Begum Hazrat Mahal sat near the window of the house allotted to her, a shawl drawn close though the day had not…
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The Joke That Would Not Come
The room was loud even when it was quiet. Sounds arrived from the street without knocking, voices arguing over nothing, a cart complaining about its load, a radio coughing between stations before settling into a song that did not belong to this hour. Amritsar had not learned how to lower its voice yet. It spoke…
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The Waiting Outside the Gate
The gate did not open all at once. It never did. It released men and women in uneven measures, as if the mill were reluctant to let go of what it had taken for the day. Cotton dust floated in the heat, visible now that the sun stood directly overhead, turning the air pale and…
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When the Sky Refused to Answer
The sky had closed itself early, a high, unmoving lid of grey that admitted neither sun nor explanation. From the terraces of the observatory, the city spread out in careful order, its avenues aligned, its walls washed in a pink that softened authority without denying it. Jaipur was ceremonial even at rest. Its symmetry suggested…
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What She Did Not Say
The compartment smelled of coal dust, iron, and something faintly sweet that clung to saris folded and unfolded too often. The train stood still, its patience frayed, its windows open to a platform that had not yet decided what hour it was. Porters moved with practiced urgency. A whistle sounded and was answered by another,…
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The Margin of Error
Rain arrived with discipline, not force. It tapped the tiled roofs in measured intervals, a sound that kept time rather than demanding attention. The cantonment lay quiet under it, its roads rinsed clean, its hedges holding their lines. Eucalyptus hung in the air, sharp and medicinal, as if the city preferred clarity to comfort. Bengaluru,…
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A Language That Waited
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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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The Radio That Roared
The radio arrived in the village like a rumour. No one could remember exactly who had brought it, only that one evening it was there, sitting on a wooden stool in the corner of the schoolteacher’s house, its dark casing catching the last light of day. It was not large, nor ornate. Its knobs were…
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What Remains: A Life Practised Carefully
Some stories arrive loudly. This one arrived by sitting down and waiting. For years, many of you have walked with me through short stories on StoryNook. Stories that travelled through forgotten histories, unnamed griefs, quiet courage, and lives that rarely ask to be remembered but deserve to be. This book grew out of that same…
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Three Disguises to Berlin
The night Calcutta learned how to hold its breath was not announced by thunder or proclamation. It arrived softly, wrapped in fog and the faint smell of coal smoke, as if the city itself had conspired to lower its voice. January of 1941 carried winter in its bones; the air bit gently at exposed skin,…
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The Lost Letter To RSS
The monsoon had not yet slipped fully into the memory of summer; still, the scent of wet soil clung to every dusty lane, every narrow row of bricks, everywhere the city breathed in and out the musk of rain yet to come. Calcutta in 1939 was a city straining against itself, like an unfinished poem…
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Barry Baul
In the year 1902, when the Hooghly carried more silt than sorrow, and Calcutta still smelled of ink, indigo, horse sweat and empire, Lieutenant Barry Banks stepped onto Indian soil with a spine straightened by duty and a heart not yet bruised by history. He was twenty-seven, pale as unslept paper, his boots polished with…
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Roscoe And The Others
The Lower Circular Road Cemetery woke each morning before the city of Kolkata did. Before trams clanged awake, before kettles whistled in nearby kitchens, before the first newspaper slapped against a veranda floor, the cemetery breathed, slow, ancient, and vegetal. Dew clung to marble like unshed tears. Moss thickened the edges of bevelled names on…
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From Cana To The Coconut Coast
When dawn flared on the Persian horizon, it splashed salmon and gold across restless waters, and there, between fierce waves and trembling light, stood Thomas Cananeus, his fingers wrapped around the battered wheel of his ship, his heart still clinging to the echo of burning homes and frightened faces. It was the fourth century, sometime…
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Invisible Footprints
They carried a carton wrapped in old newspaper, the dull thud of shoes on stone echoed in the narrow lane as the young couple and their teenage daughter climbed the stairs of their small rented room in the Bhowanipore area of Kolkata in 1990. Outside, the morning brooded with humidity, and the smell of damp…
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Beneath The Basilica Of Bandel
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Weekend Stories by Trishikh 