Short stories

10 year old Rahul went to his mother one day and asked, “Friends are friends. Why do we say ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’?” To that her mother-in-law said, “I will tell you a story. Then you will understand.” This was what Rahul’s grandmother told him: There ...

He almost bumped into Radha Srinivasan when she was returning from the beauty spa, where she had taken some beauty services for the month. She was immediately suspicious of the man. The man, who was a courier boy, was hurrying out of her building. Did she see some drops of ...

Ajit and Deven went outside the house and Deven said good bye. As Ajit entered his home, his grand father, who had recently come from their native place, stopped him. “You are fast friends. It is difficult to find friends like you in today’s times,” his grand father praised him. ...

“Her parents died of AIDS, you know. She could be infected,” Vijayeta Sinha heard someone speak. She turned and saw Manish Umrao within a group of students pointing out to her. Vijayeta had come from Mumbai to Delhi only to escape from her past and her past now had caught ...

“Bihari, tomorrow I have to leave for Pune at 5.00 AM,” said Sujata Ramachandran Iyer to Mundu. She continued, “So keep coffee and biscuits ready at 4.30.” The next day she left the house at 5.00 AM. Bihari was alone in the house. He did all the household work quickly. ...

Poornima Sharma’s family got transferred from Amritsar to Mumbai. She was with her 22 month old son Harsh and husband Shravan. Theirs was a love marriage, Poornima being a Tamilian and Shravan a Punjabi. They had come to Mumbai with the minimal essentials and had tried to settle in the ...

Sujata Ramachandran Iyer settled herself in her Kandarpada home and relaxed. She had just returned from the US in the afternoon. Ganesh Sharma, who had been her husband’s colleague back in the US, had helped them to get a house in the Mumbai suburb of Dahisar. The next day, Sujata ...