Once upon a time there was a rajkumar. Rajkumar? You mean a prince? Not a king and a queen? Nope. Just a rajkumar. Interesting…what next? So, as I was saying, once upon a time, there was a rajkumar. His looks?

  “It’s me, me, the cursed one, I am guilty!” —Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov   I It was the eighth day after my transfer to Lake Police Station, and it was a cold afternoon. I had just returned from

  वो दोनों बग़ल की बिल्डिंग में थे। फि़रोज़ सुबह सुबह अपनी किलेरिनेट (clarinet) लेकर, खिड़की के पास बैठ जाता, और मेरी बालकनी की तरफ़ मुंह कर के बजाने लगता—और ये मामूल हो गया था कि झड़प हो, और मैं अपना अख़बार,

She steps out of the black-and-yellow taxicab and looks around. Not because of any unfamiliarity. Mostly because she imagines someone else in these surroundings, not him. But is that even possible, this imagination? She hasn’t even met him once. For

  “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.” —Ernest Dowson I Thirty seconds after the engines roar to life, the Earth sunset stretches below them, casting a spectral shade on the walls. Meera hears the latch on

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. His toe taps and crushes each of those nine pale fag ends that lay strewn on his balcony’s floor. He has exceeded his self-imposed quota, of four cigarettes a day, by

Epilogue But then,” he countered, “you’ve been in the same situation before.” “True, but does that mean I have to accept it?” “Not really. I didn’t quite mean that. What I did mean, though, is that you need to look

A brooding and disheartened Nikhil sat in front of the ceremonial fire inside the wedding mandap, surrounded by four improvised towers of festooned clay pitchers under an ornate red and gold canopy while watching his sister and future brother-in-law walk