Fiction by Chitra Gopalakrishnan: ‘Ganika is, of course, what I chose to call myself. Others in the town called me a woman of the court. Or a woman of the night.’

Fiction by Jigar Brahmbhatt: ‘Their office was fixed in time, no different from any other office: the neat partitions, cold furniture, and glass, glass, everywhere. Like a simple rule to add two numbers, the office was never going to change. Only the folks playing table tennis seemed ephemeral, like shapes made of fumes.’

Fiction by Neera Kashyap: ‘The next week he, Paltu, joined the moulis. To gather honey, to pay off debts, to induce his mother to eat two meals again, to oil her hair, to soap her body, to close the door to their hut. For his father had gone, and would never return.’

Fiction by Anannya Nath: ‘Prosenjit forgets to react. What would he do now? How should he talk her through this? Is this what happens once you forget about being a father?’

Fiction by Rijuta Pandey: “Anyway, when your life depends on a thread, you learn to weave anything out of it. You can weave even the blue sky.”

Fiction by Adrija Chatterjee: ‘For twenty-eight consecutive days, there had been no phone call from Oli’s house, from Ravti. You understand how the grave the situation is, an already unelectrified village, perhaps now shrouded in some unimaginable stillness.’

Short Story by Ananda Kumar: ‘He saw the black hairy tops of their heads, less like decked on top of each other, and more like the Siamese version of foreheads stuck together, threatening to break skin and bleed to death, if one were to try pulling them apart.’

Fiction by Urmi Chakravorty: ‘She lived in a community where a woman could cement her position only after she bore children. Without a biological offspring, her worth was limited: she was like another supermarket product, destined to be discarded after a brief shelf life.’

Fiction by Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar: ‘When my foot slipped, I felt a familiar sense of suspension, the weightlessness of a social pariah, a suspension that now waited with a terrible consequence.’

Fiction by Aarushi Agrawal: ‘She couldn’t believe this was happening to her—these conspiracies, these trending hashtags, all playing out in real life. There was no need to engage. By now, Vaani and Aaqib were walking as briskly as the woods would allow.’

Fiction by Divy Tripathi: ‘Suddenly, a new hunger arose inside. A desire for instant retribution enveloped him, a sudden need to right this particular slight. “I am not your servant,” he said. “Talk with respect.”’

Fiction: “‘Please check my future,” you say, as if I were a doctor, and your future a disease.’ By Suvrat Arora