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…
Tag: dog story
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…
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…
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….
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…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 