I’m Roshanara, and I’ve just released my maiden book. If you’re tired of the same old western tropes and want to step into a world of Mughal history, child-goddesses in Nepal, and rivers that eat sandals, I’d love for you to check out my collection.
These stories were born in the quiet hours between my A-level exams. They are about names that get stolen, rooms that were never locked, and a boy whose eyes felt like birds coming home.
Look, let’s be real for a second. This is not the kind of western story you are used to. You won’t find any golden-curled girls drinking ginger beer, eating pepperoni pizza, or wandering through suburban malls here. This is something else entirely. It is raw, it is earthy, and it smells like the first rain hitting the dry ground after a long summer.
I have spent two years pouring my heart into these pages, and honestly, I am so excited to finally share them with you. These stories are about the world I know—the one with turmeric in its veins and monsoon clouds in its soul.
Since you are looking for something different, let me give you a taste of what else is waiting for you inside:
In “Caged in Gold, Starved of Dirt,” witness the “Thirty-Two Perfections” of the Kumari, a girl whose stillness keeps a nation safe but whose heart just wants to play with a lopsided clay bird.
In “The Sun is Veiled,” step into the Agra Fort and feel the “measured, crisp space” of Mughal rivalry through the eyes of Roshanara Begum.
In “I’m a Waterfall, Not a Nuisance,” join a sharp-witted teenager trying to survive a physics exam and a “fashion disaster” morning.
In The Day Ma Forgot My Name, I take you into a house filled with the scent of memories and the crushing weight of a mother whose memory is slowly slipping away like sand. It is a quiet, devastating look at what happens when the person who gave you your identity can no longer recognize your face.
Then there is Static in the Phone Booth, a story that feels like holding a dying firefly in your hand—not for the light, but for the memory of what it was like to see it fly. It’s Tuesday, the hour Arjit used to call before his name became a diagnosis and his history was quietly “archived” by the people in power. Follow Meenal as she navigates a town that has moved on like a cracked pot, pretending it still holds water, while she uncovers the red ink of secrets hidden behind hospital printouts and school desks swollen with damp. It’s a haunting, beautiful story about the weight of symptoms they forgot to name and the quiet, powerful way a community can fight back when the truth finally starts to ferment.
I Sketched Him to Stay, and He Walked Off the Page: This isn’t your average romance. It’s about a grief so deep that the narrator hunts for a face through a “cluster of teammates” on a buffering laptop screen . It’s about an unreachable celebrity whose brown eyes made the space behind a breastbone feel like a “swarm of bright birds finding their way home” . It’s a story for anyone who has ever felt like a “missing-piece-shaped-hole”.
The Room that wasn’t Locked: Imagine a sister who didn’t “disappear”—she just “wandered” . This story takes place by a river that “eats sandals every monsoon” and follows a girl who finds her missing sister’s birds sewn into a pillow in a room that was never actually locked . It’s a heartbreaking look at how families hide their own secrets in plain sight .
The Orchard Cuts First: This one is set in a mountain orchard that “clawed up the mountain as if it regretted its own roots”. It follows Radha as she tries to save her family’s land after a government man with “boots that clicked like impatient beetles” comes to measure it . It’s a story about the “slow, deliberate pauses” of nature and the secret things—like lead and silver—buried beneath the trees .
The Colors that were Taken: This story is about a town where the walls were “louder than mouths”. The MC’s father, Master Rahman, painted birds and peacocks that felt like “green juice and saffron gold” until a minister arrived who “hated curves” and poured gray over everything . It’s a beautiful, sad look at what happens when a community’s color is erased by square, square buildings .
This collection is my maiden book, my little piece of home, and I really think you are going to find a bit of yourself in these characters, even if their world looks a little different than yours.
