Between temple bells and train whistles, between the scent of rain and the sound of bangles, between the rivers and the mango orchards - a woman remembers who she is. Saffron Threads is a collection of twenty haikus tracing her journey from silence to selfhood - weaving together Bihar's soil, Hindu faith, and the eternal fire of womanhood. Each verse remembers a prayer. Each breath, a rebellion.

{UPDATES RESUME FROM JUNE 1} Two strangers. One marriage. And a love story that grows the way mangoes do-slowly, quietly, sweetly. When Dharani is married off to a shy farmer in a remote Maithil village, she expects duty. She does not expect tenderness. Or the drought threatening the land. Or the silent boy who becomes her husband. Under the shade of an old mango tree, Dharani and Madhav learn the meaning of partnership- not in grand gestures, but in everyday kindness, whispered fears, and standing together when the world turns dry. A gentle, slow-burn romance set in 1990s Bihar- about love that grows not with fire, but with patience.

[WILL UPDATE WHEN I AM FINISHED WRITING BOOK 1: UNDER THE MANGO TREE] Two hearts. One fleeting summer. And a love story that runs like trains do-fast, loud, unstoppable... until it disappears beyond the horizon. Ruchi never meant to fall in love, and absolutely not with the boy from two villages away. Not with the letters he scribbled under lantern light, Not with the dreams he carried in his pocket like loose coins and candies. But Dhananjay must leave for Delhi. Responsibility is calling. Hunger is louder. Life is unfair. Across railway tracks and city miles, their love stretches thin, is held together by promises, broken by smudged letters, remembered in sighs. This is the story of a girl who loved once- fully, foolishly, fearlessly. Of a boy who wanted more than life allowed. And of the love that waits, for a train no one knows will return. A tender, aching tale set against the changing India of the 90s- about first love, distance, and the kind that doesn't always come home.

A woman moves through a day- morning, work, evening, night- while carrying the quiet knowledge of her husband's infidelity. This is not a story about confrontation or forgiveness. It is about the social, emotional, and economic calculus behind staying. Set in contemporary urban India, Why Women 'Forgive' Infidelity examines marriage, silence, and the cost of leaving- without spectacle, without resolution. _ Cover credit: @calyxandchocolates

Teenage years do not announce their endings. They fade quietly-between exams and festivals, friendships and farewells, the slow learning of who we are allowed to become and what we lost. Where Summer Ends is a collection of haikus tracing that in-between spaces: the warmth of growing up, the ache of outgrowing it, and the small, ordinary moments that linger long after they pass. Through spare language and fleeting imagery, these poems reflect on youth not as nostalgia, but as transformation. For readers who remember being young, not loudly, but honestly.

ONC 2026 Prompt 109: A professor realizes a student's mystery stories mirror real missing person cases in town - and the newest one points to them. Prompt 80: "Monsters don't live under our beds; they live in the recesses of our own minds." (a variation inspired by Edgar Allan Poe) - For over twenty years, Professor Vivek Acharya has taught literature at an elite government college; how narratives are shaped, how ambiguity is controlled, and how meaning often lies in restraint. When a gifted student begins publishing unsettling mystery stories online, he notices a disturbing pattern: her fictional disappearances mirror real people vanishing across the city. The stories never mention anything sinister. Only absence. As speculation grows and the newest story points uncomfortably close to him, the professor must decide what should remain unedited, what can be quietly revised, and what consequences annotation can no longer contain. Annotations in the Margins is a psychological literary thriller about complicity, authorship, and the dangerous comfort of believing that silence is neutrality.