I can’t exactly remember what happened in the days before the blockade was imposed. But I do remember that just as the gates in the mysterious south went down and prices went up a beautiful girl with dark curly hair moved in to the next building.

“Pārijāt only blooms at night”, Ama tells me.

“No it doesn’t,” I giggle in disbelief.

Mr. Neupane woke up one day not wanting to go to work.

Raman took his first photograph at the age of eight. An oblong window in northern Kathmandu looking out on land that had turned to marsh in the monsoon rains, peopled with frogs and the young of mosquitoes.

पार्टी वार्तामा जुटेको समय थियो । त्यसैले पार्टी खुला थियो ।

Love is the huge suffering that grows and grows within you like cancer when the one you love isn’t within your reach. Sometimes it’s not even about physical reach, but just a deep longing that makes us miss people, even when they are close enough to touch.

किरियापुत्री बसेजस्ता डाँडापाखा। नौनी पग्लेझैँ हाम्रो घरवरिपरिका डाँडापाखाबाट हिउँ पग्लिन थाल्यो। हेर्दाहेर्दै केही दिनमै रापिला हातले हिउँको लुगा फुकालिदिएर डाँडापाखालाई बुङ्गै बनाइदियो घामले।

डाँडापाखा पनि मेरो शरीरजस्तै उराठ देखिए। मनै नरमाइलो भयो।

 (excerpted from a short story by Prajwal Parajuly, who is on the shortlist for the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize) Studying abroad was a malaise that was yet to afflict the northeast the way it had swept over the rest of India. It was uncommon, especially during Asim’s times, for a native of Shillong to study […]

The sudden drop in water pressure and the croaking shower awakened me to the muddy reality swirling around my feet. I stepped aside for a moment, but the water stayed murky, slimy. So I killed the shower and moved to the washbasin, but the faucet gushed forth something equally fetid. The signs pointed to a […]