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…
Tag: west bengal
Bandook Gali
Some stories arrive softly. They do not announce themselves. They wait. Bandook Gali – A Fiction Drawn from the Margins of History, began with a name that lingered longer than expected. A lane crossed often, rarely questioned, in the city of Kolkata in India. A sense that the past had left behind traces rather than…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
St. John’s And The Spolia Of Lost Gaur
Chanak Chakraborty adjusted the shotgun mic with gentle care, like a craftsman tending to a fragile bloom. It was dusk in November 2025, and the dying sun painted the pale neoclassical façades of St. John’s Church in soft gold. The hush in the courtyard felt sacred, broken only by distant traffic and the rustle of…
Saltwater Songs Beneath The City Square
As the metal claw of the tungsten carbide-tipped drill inched forward deep below the bowels of the bustling city above, Tunnel Manager, Arya Agrawal, suddenly felt a strong hunch to proceed no further. “Stop the drilling. There is something wrong,” she shouted. The sound of the metal claw of the drill screeched to a reluctant…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 