The baby's eyes are brown, and when she sleeps on you, her hand the size of your thumb clutches the hair on your chest, tugging it like you are a garden in need of weeding.

Shruti never once said, 'Let's make a baby'; always, 'Let's fuck.'

If you showed her funny videos of babies eating lime or being cute, she said, 'Pop one if you want one so badly.' Read it here

I’m home from school, face red from the sun, neck itchy from sweat. I consider telling Amma about the woman who followed me today. I’m home from school, face red from the sun, neck itchy from sweat. I consider telling Amma about the woman who followed me today. I have seen her many times by the school gate, observing me, with her rage-reddened face. Read it here.

Pinki hates to beg, the way it makes her feel. But she has no mother or father to take care of her, no other way of making money. She’s up at the Apollo Cinema stoplight, knocking on car windows, tugging at the pants of men on two-wheelers. Read it here.

It’s noon, grandma’s on the cot, next to the wall next to the window, peeling hot potatoes, her swollen feet blue, smell of her half-dry sari in the closed room, al dente dreams, parts you can’t chew, grandma’s white teeth uncooked corn. Read it here.

In Karol Bagh, New Delhi, the streets are narrow, crammed with low-rise houses, people and bicycles and the housewives prefer buffalo milk to cows’. Read it here.

I don’t usually get nervous but I get nervous when my publicist tells me the next city on the promotional tour of my book is Vancouver. My heart beats, beats, beats, makes its own tune. Read it here.

A beautiful man with a rich beard and a nose sharp enough to slice a tomato stood ahead of Viju at the Falafel cart. He looked a lot like the man he’d seen Gita with at the cinema house last week, his Gita, at least she used to be. Read it here.

It was a mistake trusting your parents will come back to get you. It was a mistake turning your back to them, clapping idiot-like at the spinning top that lit up red in the dark. They left for Bombay, leaving you behind in Delhi with your grandma, your paati. Read it here.

Dev pulled down one of the two shutters at the wine store to save time. That way he’d be able to leave on the hour. Few more minutes to seven. His eyes scanned for the woman, who’d been by the store every Friday for the past few weeks. Read it here.

The year is 1995, and across cities, idols of Ganesha are making milk disappear. Devotees are flocking to temples with bowls of milk to see the miracle for themselves. Amma and I won’t go. We never go anywhere. Read it here.

You’re ten, Grandma’s moving around the kitchen, limping, unable to put weight on the once-fractured leg that should’ve healed; the hiss of potatoes in the wok, burning, screaming, weeping tears into the oil, the cumin pops. Read it here.

Asif wants beer. He’s thirsty. An unquenchable thirst that only a good, hoppy IPA can quench. Okay, a good, cheap, on-sale IPA. He indulges once in two weeks, always buys from the store. Never goes to a bar, never. Read it here.

So the man and woman, with their two perfect sons who were of marriageable age, booked a new flat in their younger son’s name because the elder one was already burning his blood repaying the loan he acquired for his education two years ago. Read it here.

Winner of the The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Annual Short Prose Competition 2024

Shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize 2024

Shortlisted - Open Season Awards Fiction 2024

Honourable Mention - Craft First Chapters Contest 2023

Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Fiction 2023

Longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize 2023

Shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2022

Runner up in the Prime Number Magazine Award for Short Fiction 2022

Longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award 2020

Semifinalist in the University of New Orleans Press Publishing Lab Prize 2020

Shortlisted for the Into the Void Fiction Prize 2019

Longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2018