A few days later, when they reclaim some of their courage, they call their daughter once more. Kavita explains that her condition is called PTSD.

Megh flings himself on the bed and takes the calendar from the table beside his bed. He has marked today's date.

His covers were bunched up and his arm was stretched out towards the door in the ordering gesture. He laid back down.

The police asked him “to come down the station”.  Those were their exact words, as if spoken on a television show, as if there were a script for this kind of thing.

She left the next morning. Asif did not put up a fight. He simply sat at the kitchen table while she packed her things.

Yes, yes, she continued to work while I was building the company but look at what she has now? She drives a Mercedes!

As Didi walks away, you look around and notice the acadia tree by the neighbour’s yard. Two boys are gathered around it, struggling to reach the top branch which holds a prized mango.

Mansi looks at them. They seem terrified. A sense of guilt starts seeping into her heart.

There was no brain death. Even the night of the full moon came and went, but his brain had other plans.

I had my first seizure age 14. This created another original fear.

Only the car door and that chain-link fence separate me from the most glorious

She was determined to get the shop closed. It was destroying too many families.

The next day I wrote myself a check for $400, detasseling money from the summer,

He had the same easy smile as Patrick, but his eyes were more calculating. They roved over her red flared pants, her pale blue shirt, her hair done up in ringlets.

Father had gotten the fabric from a business partner who had been to Bombay and it was rumored to be the most expensive of fabrics.

Earlier at dinner Johnny had been singled out, oldest boy, to perform. “Tell us what’s up in the sky at night, Johnny.”

He watches it drop silently into the trench between the soldier’s legs. Yuri clenches, as if the grenade has dropped into his own lap. The Russian soldier scrambles to rise up as the grenade explodes. Yuri stubs out his cigarette in

We found a middle-aged couple standing statue-like next to a new grave, a garish sign on the stonework reading Ghulam & Sons. I remember finding that interesting—a Muslim name in a Christian cemetery. Niharika said something about how sad the

I get hungry, so I swim close to the surface. When fish are together, turning in tight patterns for no reason other than to be social, it’s called shoaling. Birds I have seen, when I lived on land, do the same

A high-pitched staccato called out from the street behind, hawking kitchenware. Streets dotted with Durga puja pandals were in various stages of being undone. A few feet away, my mother’s rounded frame bent over a fruit cart, busy trying out little

Sundar’s voice had risen. His shawl had slipped into his lap. He sat there in the wind, in his torn vest. He appeared smaller and shrunk, his thin bones poked out of his shoulders like a sparrow’s. A single teardrop quivered at the end of his mustache. A part of...

He didn’t want to put out an ad. Online or newspaper, anywhere. The moment you do that, the phone will begin to ring constantly, he said. All kinds of people calling. Brokers! Who wants to deal with the brokers! He hoped to get someone through word of mouth. There were...