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