Short story by Vishnu Bagdawala: ‘Sometimes, I would lie in bed waiting for the tears to come. Sometimes, I would wonder how it was strange that we needed to sleep in order to be awake for the rest of our lives. Until the day when, like my grandfather, we fall into an eternal sleep.’

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.”