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…

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…

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…

Over The Rainbow Bridge

Hatchu opened his eyes and found himself in a mesmerising meadow of greens. The constant pain in his hind limbs was no more there. Neither was there the nagging agony in his kidneys. He slowly lifted his right leg just a little bit to mark his territory. He was scared, that like every time, there…

Haunting Howls of Hanabari

About forty-kilometres north of the city of Kolkata on the west bank of the two-hundred-sixty-kilometres-long river Bhāgirathi-Hooghly, a distributary of the mighty Ganges in the state of West Bengal in India lies a once important port town during the pre-colonial times, the ancient borough of Hooghly-Chinsurah city. Hooghly was founded right after the decline of…