As the sounds of a moonless night descended on the nameless little village of twelve tiny huts situated amidst the dense sal-wood forest in the heart of Bengal on the 12th night in August of 1854, Pandu tossed and turned in his jute-rope bamboo charpoy. Anxiety of the journey at the crack of dawn, just…
Tag: india
The Varanasi Seer And The English Shadow
Pandit Pankaj Pandey had been waking at the auspicious hour of 3:00 AM for as long as he could remember. Long before the swelling roar of the city fully stirred from its dreams. On this particular winter morning in 1984, as the faint chill of mist clung to the crumbling rooftops of Banaras, he rose…
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…
Chitey Dakat And Commander Chakrapani
A moonless night smothered the dense forest in velvet darkness; not even a single star dared pierce the sky. Deep within this wild, an old temple – its idol of Goddess Durga made from the wood of the Lilac or Margosa Tree, commonly known as Neem, glowing in vermilion paste and smeared with blood –…
Ogni
Have you ever tried to burn paper or a dry leaf with a magnifying glass? Have you ever tried lighting a fire out in the open, in a desolate desert, on the icy surface of a frozen landscape, in the unbroken wilderness, beside a murmuring stream, somewhere high up on a mystic mountain, in a…
The Climber
When the dark aura of a cold and misty night gasped its last breath before surrendering to the faint illuminations of the awakening sun, a tall and dark figure walked through the nodding wheat fields to reach a solitary palm gently swaying in the chilly breeze of an early winter morn. Barring only a white…
The Tunnel
Deep in the bowels of the Eastern Ghats Mountain Range nestled the small and obscure village of Cheenna Gato, meaning a tiny hole in the native tribal dialect, a mix of the Odiya and Telugu languages. The year is 1960, and while the rest of the world celebrated many human advancements, the villagers of this…
Bat Brigade
“Steady your breathing Naba. You are one with the forest. The jungle is an extension of you, an amplification of your senses. That which grows, creeps, crawls, and moves in it – you are aware of its presence. The night is your prowl and darkness your element,” whispered the ninety-year-old warrior Akoijam to his prodigy. War…
Bhuto’s Banyan Tree
On a chilly December morning, as the first rays of sunlight pierced through the veil of fog created by the condensing water vapour rising from the forgotten Adi Ganga river passing nearby, it revealed the silhouette of a massive and ancient banyan tree the likes of which perhaps nowhere else could anyone find. The golden beams of…
The Boatman
Robi’s boat gently swayed in the cool evening breeze of the mighty Ganges at the mouth of the estuary as he prepared his supper in it for the night, a little bit of rice, a bowl of dal and two fried Tilapias. His life as a boatman in this part of the river, especially after dark…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 