My journey with Joyce

There’s a story about my maternal grandmother, Mom-Mom, and it goes something like this. My grandmother was always an avid reader. Despite dropping out of school at an early age (10 or so) because reasons, she was a life-long and voracious reader. Like, reading is how I remember her. Often with a Penguin Classics edition […]
Rummaging around Anita’s Attic

I was terrified.
Of a book.
Not just any book. A book like A Fine Balance, for instance, which was so terrifying to me that I couldn’t make it more than a quarter way through. No, no, no.
This book was no literary tour-de-force.
This book was…
my book.
That’s right. My own book.
How blue is my sapphire

I stand in front of Diana’s bench. It’s my bench now. I’m a Diana, too. Not the Diana, of course, but that’s my name nonetheless. For me, this monument to love resembles nothing of the kind. It’s just a pile of rocks, crumbling after centuries of abuse and neglect.
Review: Defiant Dreams

Editor’s note Although I have never met them, I know several of the contributors to this volume, mostly through the online Facebook group For Writers, By Authors. I was a beta reader of Radhika Maira Tabrez’s short story in this volume, Built From the Ashes. Anirban Nanda has beta read for me. When Rhiti Bose […]
The hashtag

When the #DeadAdityaKapoor hashtag goes viral, Maya Kapoor races toward Lilavati Hospital–and her husband. But, a monsoon downpour threatens to stop her. Will she reach in time to say goodbye to Aditya?
Inspired by Ravi Subramanian’s Write India passage, The Hashtag wrestles with the real emotional toll of virtual rumors.
The Semicolon

“These wounds look self-inflicted,” said the nurse pointing to the bandage on Divya’s left wrist.
“Is it about a boyfriend, dear?”
“No, ma’am.”
“A half-boyfriend then? I hear the girls have those now.”
Divya hated this line of questioning. Why did it always have to be about a boy?