Four different places, four different pairs of people – one common setting. Two chairs across a table and a solitary object between them. Parth Pandya writes four small stories around this theme.
A multitude of ideas and characters from Jeevanjyoti’s earlier stories make an appearance in his special story for the anniversary issue. Read on to rediscover Bincuus (from “The Dream Bandit”, June 2010), the idea of characters telling authors their stories from a different world (from “Requesting an Extension”, July 2010), and Nuovo SPARK (from “‘Autumnal’, Heard of it?”, May 2010 and “Nuovo SPARK”, January 2012).
A scene unfolds in the Delhi international airport on an unexpectedly hot winter afternoon, and different people see it differently. Shreya Ramachandran transmits the thoughts for us in her story.
Nine-year-old Monu wants to collect fireflies in a jar, his father eggs him on, while his mother wonders when the child will learn to be serious and score better in his school exams. Nirupama Sudarsh tells us what eventually happens on that rainy evening.
Nandita and Ayushi are thick friends since childhood and nothing could ever come between them to disturb that bond. But do good things last forever? Gauri Trivedi’s short story reveals the answer.
A discussion at an interview Rajani conducts has her questioning her approach to life, which she passes on to her young son. A M Aravind pens a story which begins with the mother observing her son walk on someone’s footprints on the shore.
A 29-year-old woman moves into a beautiful, breezy apartment, and finds that it has a strange relationship with mirrors. It’s all amusing until forces she can’t rationalise take over. Vani Viswanathan tells the story.
Anjali is hit by an epiphany when she gets over her fear of the ocean and walks across the shore. Harish V tells her story in a piece of flash fiction.
A man and a woman meet online through a language learning group and an interesting online relationship blossoms between the two, until one day when the lady, Kay, vanishes suddenly from the web and his world as well. Vishnu Prasad captures the essence of online relationships through an interesting short story.