The dust in the drawing room of the Basu household never quite settled, but on that fateful afternoon the Higher Secondary results were announced, it seemed to hang suspended in the shaft of pale, humid sunlight like an audience waiting for a cue. Sushma Devi sat on the edge of the velvet-upholstered sofa, her palm pressed firmly against her forehead as if holding her thoughts from scattering into the neighbourhood. Across the room, her husband, Naren babu, was carefully wiping his spectacles with the corner of his dhoti, his forehead beaded with a perspiration that had very little to do with the stubborn West Bengal summer. “If we can push Bablu and Tupur at least into B.Com at the evening college,” Sushma murmured, her eyes fixed on the framed portrait of Ramakrishna Paramahansa on the wall, “we might still be able to look Nukur-babu in the eye at the evening…
“Eureka!” An exclamation of triumph reverberates through the empty library of the Asiatic Society in Park Street. The whitewashed walls glare back in silence,…
The sun over North Bihar had a way of flattening everything into dull, dusty ochre, and the courtyard of the Rajendra Memorial High School…
I live in Anza, California, in the United States, and I have been writing for over 35 years. I have had books “conventionally” published…
Tears Into Wine Author: Joe West Publisher: Anxiety Press Copyright 2024. 290 pp. $18.00 Paperback. https://johnchristopherkriegbooks.com/ This book is rock ‘em sock ‘em masculinity…
Prescript: Last night as we all lie peacefully sleeping in our beds the U.S. bombed Iran, and it sure looks like the Orange Fuhrer…
Sundays were holidays for Oxford Coaching Academy too, so when my mobile rang that morning, I was in my room, slicing onions on an…
One must be somewhat mad to leave home at half-past four in the morning, but such are the demands of a working life in…
Ananda Mukherjee was, by all accounts, a contented man. At forty-two, he was a respected physics professor at a reputable college in Kolkata. He…
Introduction This collection of short tales from the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and Johnston Island is my embroidery on stories that my…
