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…
Tag: books
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
Fat Mama
The wok hissed like a temple gong struck in fire. Fat Mama’s large, seasoned hands dipped the last wonton into shimmering oil, its skin puffing golden almost instantly. Steam rose, twirling into the dusky air of her drawing-room-turned-eating-house. The smell of pork, garlic, ginger, and a whisper of sesame clung to the cracked lime-washed walls,…
Baburam
The sun was soft gold over a teeming park in Kankurgachi, North-East Kolkata, early 1980s, but to galloping fitness freaks, vegetable‑laden housewives, wandering loafers, fish‑loving babus with bags of silver‑scaled Hilsa, and children skipping along, the heart of the day was held in a mystical man’s hypnotic melody. Baburam sat cross‑legged on a frayed grass…
Last Cup For The Day
The market slept beneath an ink‑black sky, Burrabazar’s labyrinth of lanes silent at 1 AM. A pallid moon hung low above shuttered shops, warehouses looming like sleeping beasts. Rickshaw wheels rested, bamboo handcarts fitted with truck tyres stood stacked one after the other, piles of cloth lay dormant, and only an occasional distant clang of a…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 