Short Fiction
Pieces in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One Story, Boulevard, Salt Hill Journal, The Southern Humanities Review, and more.
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Reality,” Washington Square Review
Arvind has not yet made up his mind about the mushrooms when he and his wife set out for the Bhattacharjees’ cul-de-sac. Magic mushrooms, he’s learned they are called. “Magic,” he’d huffed. This nonsense is proof of the Bhattacharjees’ recent rupture with reality.
“Even if you do not do them, you must come,” his wife Lalitha declared, settling the matter. “Neeta has been so sick, and you have not seen her at all. You owe this.”
Arvind knows Lalitha keeps a mental ledger of social debts. Her greatest fear, other than dying of illness or accident before reaching ripe old age, is reaching ripe old age only to find herself socially isolated by Arvind’s ill-temper and therefore too lonely to enjoy her final years.
“The Love Lives of Gods and Ghosts,” One Story
It was Reshma’s first night in Bangalore. She had not been back to India in many years, and never for more than two weeks at one go. On each visit, there were tasks to accomplish, bank accounts to shutter or check in on, relatives to wheedle, a lawyer to chastise, calls to make about gas cylinder refills, something to fix with her mother’s sim card. Always an obligatory stop at the temple. The hours were packed, on these quick foreign returns.
“The Missing Limousine,” The Atlantic
The point is what happened on The Bachelor during Season 12. This was the year that David P. Li’s huge Asian blockbuster movie came out, and everyone was psyched about representation, which was another way of saying that people who previously felt invisible now felt like the world was made of infinity mirrors and they could see themselves multiplied and omnipresent, like a clone army. So when everyone found out that superstar David P. Li was super-single, ABC was like, Let’s cast him, and it did.
Art for The Atlantic by Paul Spella
“Mr. Ashok’s Monument,” Conjunctions and The Best American Short Stories 2022
The summer of 20—, when all this strangeness struck, was a hectic season in New Delhi. It was particularly busy in the Department of Symbolic Meaning, which is situated in the Ministry of Culture, National Identity, and Historical Interpretation. That year I was serving as Undersecretary of Historical Records, working beneath a Symbolic Meaning official named Mr. Satya Mishra, whose first name means Truth. Mishra-Sir, as we knew him, had not been in the office much of late, as he had been traveling the country in order to improve public confidence in the nation’s ITIHAS (GLORIOUS HISTORY). Mishra-Sir had on his person at most times a number of ITIHAS-Preservation Campaign pamphlets, which he distributed wherever he went. The pamphlets, translated into regional languages, read something like: IS IT TRUE THAT OUR ITIHAS (GLORIOUS HISTORY) IS IN DANGER? and included instructions on WHAT TO DO IF YOU ENCOUNTER AN UNPRESERVED/DAMAGED/ AT-RISK ELEMENT OF ITIHAS (GLORIOUS HISTORY).
‘How I Talk To My Mother,’ The Southern Humanities Review
My mother was losing her voice on the day she moved into her new pocket universe.
She wondered if she should postpone the move. But her house was sold, there was no space for her in my Somerville one-bedroom, and Jai was off on vacation with his secret girlfriend. We’d already cleared her out of this life.
“Mom,” I said, “I think you’re going to have to go in now.”
“Narada’s Ears,” The Master’s Review
“You told them you only do eyes,” Narada said. “You said, ‘Only eyes. For now.’”
“Yes,” I said, irritated; how many times had someone asked me—only eyes? Really? Not even a nose? I was trained in other things, besides glass, too—ceramics, sculpture. But what was so wrong with a bit of focus? “For now.”
“Catfishing in America,” Salt Hill
“Really,” I was saying. “I thought I was the only Sanjana Satyan in the world.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Sanjena Sathian said. “You are, technically. I’m just almost the same. But we’re still our own people, with our own individual identities, our own combination of letters. You've got a Y. I’ve got an E, an H, and an I. Hm. I guess I do have more than you.”
Boulevard vol 34, no 100. Art by Trang Nguyen
“New America,” Boulevard
Long before they sold curry-flavored Lays Chips at Safeway, James and Kali worried that their daughter would grow up without a homeland. They told her she had twin histories. You get two countries, they said. Most people just get one! What they didn’t tell her was that the land they lived in was actually built of cables under the sea; that its bricks were the work of scholars like James and its mortar the expatriate nostalgia of immigrants like Kali. They didn't tell her she would have to be brave enough to live in theory.
“Neighbors,” Joyland
Janani had once wanted to be an actress; she’d auditioned some in college before discovering that parts for Indian girls, even light-skinned ones with competent breasts, are hard to come by. But in Bollywood, she stood a chance. They chose Versova because it was cheap and Janani read online that it was where the up-and-coming artists lived. They had yet to meet any.
