Author: Tara Khandelwal

It was sixth sense that made Bharat drop his pace and look back over his shoulder. It was sixth sense that saved Bharat that night inside the Sanctum of the Fire. He turned and looked. The kshurika was a blur in the dark, almost impossible to detect, but the magic infused in its blade left… Continue reading Bharat – Ramayana’s Underappreciated Character – An Excerpt From Warlord of Ayodhya by Shatrujeet Nath

  Week Seven: This week your baby is about the size of a small blueberry—around 0.3 inches long. The lenses in the baby’s eyes have begun to form, and the color of the iris is visible. His limbs are sprouting, though at this stage they look more like little paddles than the cute hands and… Continue reading Conversations With The Unborn – An Excerpt From I Hear You by Nidhi Upadhayay

If we see Mallika today, it’s a legit sign from the fates, and you will not get married just now.’     We were sitting in a jeep, in the middle of a very quiet jungle waiting for a tiger to show up. It was a sweltering hot day, and I could feel the sweat… Continue reading How to Find Love in the Jungle – An Excerpt From Tiger Season by Gargi Rawat

They Came Like Swallows     I don’t particularly care for the drawing on the facing page. I didn’t draw it from life, from any specific observation. Instead, it is a work of imagination, provoked by a reading of William Maxwell’s heartbreaking 1937 novel, *They Came Like Swallows*. The title comes from a poem by… Continue reading Keeping Creativity Alive Even Amidst Crises – An Excerpt From The Yellow Book by Amitava Kumar

First, I’ll tell you the thing I learnt that made my life excruciating and joyful at the same time. But of course, like all things worth learning, it was a bitch to apply. When it was my time, the knowledge of it crept into my cells while I slept, the vibration of this truth spun… Continue reading Love, Loss, And Resistance In A Divided India – An Excerpt From The Girl Who Kept Falling In Love by Rheea Mukherjee

YASSER IS MY LITTLE PIECE OF PAKISTAN IN AMERICA   Our first meeting was online. It had to be. I was a media student in college in California, writing an article on the human-rights abuses in Kashmir. Yasser was majoring in economics, all the way across on the other side of America, in New Jersey.… Continue reading Portrait Of A Troubled Marriage And Its Compromises – An Excerpt From Heart Tantrums by Aisha Sarwari

2002, Borivali Station Endings are overrated. There’s only one true, certain end—everything else a load of bullshit, or how you call it, bakwaas. Beginnings, though. Beginnings are everywhere. It all began with that midnight-colored saree, thick with dark-blue sequins, its endless sea of shimmering dots stitched by hands that must have cracked and bled over… Continue reading The Murky World of Mumbai’s Dance Bars – An Excerpt From The Blue Bar by Damyanti Biswas

I. Their younger days spent in political activism, my parents knew many prominent personalities in Calcutta. One day in 1964, Ma took me to Dr Nikhil Ranjan Roy, a well-known educationist, for my initiation in learning. In Bengali, it’s called *haate-khori*, literally putting a chalk stick (*khori*) in the child’s hand (*haate*) to write the… Continue reading Witnessing The Horrors Of Post-Independence India As A Child – An Excerpt From Fifty Year Road by Bhaskar Roy

  March 27, 1964. “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” was a front-page splash in The New York Times. While the headline declared there were 37 bystanders, the article said there were 38. The write-up described how for more than half an hour “respectable, law‐abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab” 28-year-old Kitty… Continue reading Our egos, our identities and our struggles to let go: An excerpt from The Power of Karma Yoga by Gopinath Chandra Das

Chhamb 3 December 1971 War between India and Pakistan seems likely—the two have been provoking one another for months and now there are reports of foreign embassy staff being ordered to leave the two countries. If fighting does indeed break out, Captain Kamal Bakshi knows he will be in it, for his battalion is tasked… Continue reading The Mystery of Missing Soldiers: An excerpt from Nowhere Man by Shivalik Bakshi