This Audacious Dust
Short story by Ayaan Halder: ‘I could feed my children chicken and rice for a week, without having to shout at them for not wanting the fried bhendi they’ve been eating for the last three days. I could cover half a month’s rent with that money, for god’s sake! And you spend it on a wretched T-shirt that doesn’t even bear the colour of the sky?’
Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”