Prose

Almost all the examinations at Jamia were over. Most of the students had gone back to their hometowns for the summer holidays. Only a few students were left at the university who used to come to the library to study. I too had gone home for a few days but returned early because I had to prepare for a competitive ...

She burnt her shabby hut with her dead father’s freezing corpse inside it, slowly embracing flames. Consumed in the fire and turned into ashes, not just the flesh of the dead and the wooden chips, supporting the old dilapidated structure which was her home for 20 years, but even her very existence was burnt inside today. The last 6 years ...

Dusk had fallen in each one of our lives as a sign for all of us to leave every ray of hope for the next morning. The azure skies dived into the sun-kissed sea, adding a tinge of greyrose to itself, while mellowing doves glided back to their harbours. In the midst of all the mayhem, that eventually sought cosmos, ...

Once upon a time there was a dreamer He was loved. Love become his mirror and made him see himself as prince. He never use to talk much, Neither he was rich. The joyful warmth of love causes me to sing, of a self-created kingdom i am the King.* When he was young, His mother and father Had faith on ...

[Following is a satirical take on the government’s incompetence in dealing with the culture of sexual violence against women in India. This is a work of fiction.] The Indian State has come up with a never tried before path-breaking formula, what it calls a “sure-shot way to produce a rapist.” In fact, for the first time ever, there seems to ...

Last November in 2011, my classmate Irshad, who is an alumnus of Aligarh University,  told me of his plan to go for the annual day celebrations, also called Sir Syed Day, at Aligarh University. He asked if I wanted to come along, to which  I readily agreed. We decided to go to Aligarh in the morning of November 8th. I ...

[The following short story by Zakaria Tamer, a Syrian Arabic writer, has been translated into English by Mahmoud al-Zayed, a Syrian postgraduate student in the department of English .] The forests travelled far away from the tiger imprisoned in his cage that he could not forget. The tiger stared angrily at few men surrounding his cage. They were looking at ...

Dear Society, Hope this letter finds you in good spirit and health. I had never intended to write to you but because of the messages that I have been receiving from you lately, I could not resist myself from penning down this letter. I have many things on my mind but the question is ‘where do I begin?’ Oh, let ...

Chapter 1 Shocked, suffocated and horrified, I woke up, breathing heavily and sweating feverishly. It was the middle of a dark, moon-less night and dry air moved the curtains of the window. I reached for the glass of water, removed the coaster that was covering it, and gulped the water down in one go. It was slowly turning to be ...