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If you were a real man, she said, you wouldn’t have tolerated me talking to you like that. She thought it would be her final knock-out blow — victory hers — drumming her point home; feeble loser. And by your definition, he replied, if you were the real deal you wouldn’t have talked to me [...]

I read the graffiti on the wall. In big, bold letters, scrawled a foot high, it said “APNI MARZI KARDHI!” I didn’t understand. Next to it, written in white correction fluid, the words, “THE POOR CAN TAKE NO MORE: RESIGN”. My conscience was jolted and I took a pen from my pocket and wrote, “The [...]

When Vijay sat down next to her and she felt happy inside, she knew that it was wrong. Thaira knew that she wasn’t supposed to think like that, but she did. For weeks she let it go, knowing that she could never let anything become of it. There were days when it got too much [...]

The war was over, but the scars remained. Pushed together, the people lived in compounds scattered across the vast landscape. It was better like this; not much better, but better than the urban squalor that faced the returning refugees. The compounds were a sanctory from the ever threatening outside world: The minefield hell holes. The [...]