By: Carl Papa Palmer Dad, are you on the website? No, I’m on the telephone with you, Son.I know that. Do you have the website up on your laptop?Oh. Yes. I think so. It says, ‘Verify your identity.’ Good! Click…

By: James Aitchison The 1940s saw the rise of a new genre in pulp fiction — noir.  On movie screens, Warner Brothers brought black-and-white noir masterpieces to their fullest potential; think Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. And while it might…

By: ALI Hasnain Instructions for Returning a Borrowed Moon Do not polish it.The fingerprints are the point. Carry it under your coatthrough the laundromat’s blue hour,when every dryer windowturns a small planet by itself. At the corner, a bus will…

By James Aitchison It’s a common enough English saying.  When someone’s behaviour or actions are unacceptable and outside the bounds of normal limits, their conduct is deemed to be “beyond the pale”.  Being “beyond the pale” covers a plethora of sins:…

By James Aitchison Dappled sunlight spills into the little Paris courtyard.  Across the Seine, Notre-Dame rises above the rooftops.  Nothing is hurried.  Occasionally a cover is opened, a page is turned.  We are on the Left Bank, and time has…

By: Alex Dzhoganov At the beginning of The Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville does something that looks almost like a magic trick. The monastery servants are looking for a runaway horse, and William, who has never seen it,…

By: ALI Hasnain The elevator in the Marlowe Building had buttons for twenty-three floors and one blank brass circle beneath them. Nobody mentioned the circle during Adrian’s first week at the records office. By his second week, he had learned…

By: Snigdha Agrawal An old vendor, half-lungi tied,settles beneaththe Gulmohar’s shade,his cart heapedwith chusni mangoes. As evening leans in,they come, as they always do;children who have missed a meal,unleashing laughterlike birds erupting from a leafy tree They are happy enoughwith…

By: Sreelekha Chatterjee I’m sitting in a bus, set off to College Street, the Boi Para or the books’ lane, stocking all college and university books—rarest of the rare ones. A handful of passengers. All part of an unknown motion….

By: Jim Bates Afternoon heatQuiet backyardSuddenlyBuzzingBuzzing, buzzing, buzzingCicadas callingEmerging from years undergroundInto the warm soilMales serenading femalesA true delight of summerThe old man sets aside his bookHe listensEntrancedA summer melodyUnlike any otherA singular symphonyHe smilesHeart warmedBy the buzzingBarrage.