‘Ram, you made it home before I did. How fantastic.’ Jeeja turned the ceiling fan on setting up a fierce breeze. Her sari, which she took off and tossed on the bed, made a translucent, grey-green pyramid that rose and fell with an urgent vibration. ‘Oh you can’t believe what today was like – that […]

Once upon a time, I was in love with a donkey. I did not know he was a donkey right away, of course. He had read so many books and he told me so many new things. Actually, he didn’t so much tell me new things as made me see old things in new ways. […]

This is going to be a lark, Ravi thought, as he ascended the ancient grime-smeared wooden stairs, slightly out of breath. He wiped his glasses and brushed aside the stray hair sweat-glued to his forehead, glad to be at last out of the searing noon glare. A silent sarcastic glee rippled across his face as […]

Madhaba, seven years of age, a pupil of Class One in A.K. Satpathy Municipal School, Baramunda, Bhubaneswar, had been sent out by his mother to buy some rock salt and a bottle of oil. Madhaba had been reluctant to go. On a shelf in their one-room hovel, above the figure of his mother bent over […]

Reeti was the daughter of the Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department in Patna. I remembered having seen her father’s name in the papers, but couldn’t recall any specific details because one scandal soon gets swallowed up by another. I met Reeti at Stony Brook where we were both new international students, and, when […]

घर जैसा घर नहीं घर घर था. चार दीवारें थीं. दीवारें तो चार के अलावा भी थीं. सरन को कई बार लगता कि घर में चलते चलते अचानक उसके सामने कोई ऐसी दीवार उग जायेगी जो उसको किसी खास तरफ जाने से रोकेगी. सरन जब चलती तब कुछ ऐसे ही एहतियात से फूँक फूँक कर […]

ला मोरा डोमिना सेंज़ा रिगोले (लव रूल्स विदाउट रूल्स) ” मैं चाहता हूँ दुनिया, वह चाहता है मुझे मसला बडा नाज़ुक है, कोई हल लिख दे।” मैंने उसकी – सी नकियाती आवाज़ बनाते हुए यह शेर पढ़ा और पास की झाड़ी में उसकी दी चॉकलेट और पीले गुलाबों को फेंक दिया. गर्मियाँ जा रही थीं […]

‘Search the sky carefully and you will find the stars hiding there,’ Gorai said. ‘But where, Babu, I can’t see any, Uhunuhhn,’ his son wailed impatiently. ‘Look, there is one. Can you see that purple moving thing? Pay attention to my finger. See where it is, that is a happy star, like you, and you […]

Excerpts from the Novel Nuclear energy is the hubris of humanity, like aspiring to fry bacon on the sun. * On Saturday, 26 April, 1986, at 01.23 am, something went terribly wrong with Reactor Four at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the Ukraine. Due to an experiment to try to produce electricity from the residual […]

Outside, in the tamarind tree, sits Sanwala. This room affords a full view of the tree. It’s a room made of glass where I am this moment, and now Suparna is too. Anyone on the tamarind tree can now see there are two women in this room. Suparna and I. In this glass room. Suparna […]