As Fulbanu waited for Syed Ali, she thought about her only son, Suruj. She remembered that Suruj was the first man among five neighbouring villages to acquire his bachelor's degree

When Mr. Vik Roman looked at the time with flinching eyes, it was around 3:30 am.

Then you will vanish—becoming Amma, Chachi, Mami. No one will remember your name.

The city still wants to breathe.

At a gathering in the unfinished community hall, Saleha raises a question: "They gave us walls. But what do we want to grow inside them?"

I made my first kite out of white paper scraps; on my 16th birthday, it came to me that they needed a pop of color.

I rush to the mirror. My gums are pristine, no wound, no sin. But when I look back at the fruit, the truth reveals itself: the flesh is blackened, writhing with tiny, hungry mouths. The rot has teeth

Now, an automated metro-rail glides silently through the city. Conversations have become clipped, calculated. Efficiency replaces spontaneity. They call it peace. Rahim calls it absence.

It was not often that I received odd parcels. True, my job at the paper did occasionally warrant a few peculiar hate-mail or rebuttals, but this was nothing of that sort

Mrs X's parents were not interested in spending money on their daughter's room because they would have to give her new furniture when she got married

Mohsin would burst into laughter, saying, "Justice for rape? Is that even a crime worthy of justice?" Rabeya, laughing alongside him, would add, "People expect justice for rape these days? I'm speechless at their naïveté!" 

You tell me stories of the sea—of its waves, of how it speaks to you in a language only you can understand—whenever you write back to me.

The rain began at dusk, its cold fingers tracing the cracked panes of the house like an unwelcome visitor. By midnight, the storm had grown wild, wind howling through the trees, rattling the fragile bones of the dwelling. I stood before the door, my hand trembling on the tarnished brass handle.

The cream colored bowl held the steaming, almost translucent yellow broth with traces of white, garnished by an array of green onions slashed in an angle.

Nuri had just swallowed a little orange pill dry, when she noticed that the portrait of ‘The Sexual Revolutionary’ had been taken down from the wall of her childhood bedroom.

I see her now, but not in the way I have always seen her—through the lens of service, of duty, of roles—but as a woman whose edges were softened long before I learned her name

At last, God heeded Sisyphus’s prayer—a plea he had been making for countless centuries. Each time, he hoisted the rock onto his shoulders, convinced that this would be the time it ascended with ease

One sits silently. Her eyes blink sometimes. Sometimes her lips tremble a little, or they don’t tremble at all.

He had consistently disregarded the villagers' accounts of bhoot-prets as local folklore. To him, they were just stories to scare the gullible

That night, the wind howled like the wolves as Shyam and Alameen rowed silently, their boat traversing through the misty air and the water rippling gently beneath them.