by Jasper Sanchez | Sep 19, 2017 | Fiction
Sam’s father tells him bedtime stories about the people by the lake. Or, better to call them one bedtime story, repeated so often, it takes a different shape each time, a shadow puppet morphing in the penumbra of a flashlight. Sam’s father calls it his earliest...
by Anil Menon | Sep 19, 2017 | Excerpts, Fiction
“Who’s the most beautiful woman of all?” asked Padma, with satisfaction. He smiled. He was glad to be her truth-telling mirror. He was glad Padma had pressured him to attend the 10th Annual IAPTA Fashion Show party. He was glad Eshwar Pillai was in town. He was glad...
by Tehseen Baweja | Sep 19, 2017 | Fiction
I started smuggling things at an early age: ice-cream for the chowkidar, cold drink for the sweating gardener and chocolate for the maid’s kid. There was a sense of adventure in sneaking things out of the kitchen — basic things that were available...
by Priya Sharma | Sep 19, 2017 | Fiction
“When did you go bald?” Only Clarice would ask such a forthright question. “Leave her alone,” Jake drains his beer. Only he would dare contradict his sister. The clock hands have gone from late at night to early in the morning. Jake’s bar is empty of customers. The...
by Shveta Thakrar | Sep 19, 2017 | Fiction
“You worship idols! Ooh, you’re going to hell!” I was so young when they took my tongue away. They needed no scalpel to silence me, only the sharp edge of their judgment. The worst part was, I let them. — “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” We’ve all...
by Vandana Singh | Sep 19, 2017 | Fiction
They had been climbing all afternoon. First it was a game of hide-and-seek in the underbrush and over rocky outcrops. But by accident or design their game had taken them higher up the slope until the roof of the guest house was lost among the trees below, and the...
