Here we are at the last issue of 2011. It’s nearly a year since we launched Reading Hour as well - a year of many discoveries and lessons. We have collected a modest following that will hopefully stay loyal even as it is supplemented in the coming year <more>

The first time I saw him I was lying stretched out on my planter’s chair in the front verandah, happy as a cat in the sun. I must have dozed off, for one moment I was admiring a yellow butterfly fluttering among the hibiscus flowers and the next I saw hovering over me, a tiny man, his face split open in a toothless smile.

Of all my friends in college, Sanjeev Jha stood out as the laziest. Except that most times he never did stand, he lolled under the shade of an old tree, blew his money up on cigarettes and on the canteen coffee while the rest of us swotted over borrowed notes, held earnest discussions with seniors on ways to clear the civil service, taking a break once in a while to alternately berate or ridicule him.

The newspaper lining the spice shelf is so caked with oil that it’s turned into a sticky, smelly multi-layered wad of waxed paper. More than a month has passed, but you still haven’t found the time or desire to change it.

At Vaagdevi engineering College, second year was when flower-tipped arrows flew about with reckless abandon. It was impossible to tell from appearance alone which way each was headed, but at a wager nearly ninety percent of them carried a male address...

No one knows what the future holds. Abdu doesn't know it either. Abdu would never admit even to himself that he knew he would be killed by a snake.

Dastambu is the story of Ghalib's days in Delhi during the mutiny and its aftermath. Ghalib produced the book and inadvertently placed future generations of his admirers in a quandary.

By 9:00am we had left Belgaum and were on our way to Mundgod. There is a 50-odd-years old Tibetan settlement at Mundgod, one of the largest settlements of Tibetans in South India.

The earth shook. Uninvited guests invaded Ivory Court, Tower 1, 201. They were 18 long stemmed roses and a note that read 'Sorry had to rush. You were wonderful last night.'

Russia. The very name conjures up images of vast snowy tracts hugging the Arctic circle.A land remote and inhospitable, much of it uninhabitable.

Jack was a bright kid with a perpetual twinkle in his eyes. In school he was among the top graders. He wasn't into competitive sports and neither was he a daredevil but he had an adventurous streak.

I want to visit as many institutes as possible in India and teach the children something, give them a chance to stand on their own feet.

History inevitably repeats itself. One simply needs to observe the patterns. This pattern is what interests me, not the history in itself and this is what is central to my fiction.

Yangchenla awoke drenched in sweat. She'd dreamt of Kyorang again. Blanketed with snow and dwarfed by the mountains, her village Kyorang.

Wednesday... I park my bike under the dusty gulmohur and push the glass door open. From the corner cabin, the cannonade of battle thunders forth into the small lobby. LC and her husband RM are at it again.

Cola and cool drink companies try to position themselves as thirst quenchers. No matter what they do however, it is that good old glass of water you reach out to on a thirsty summer afternoon.

I broke out of my prison today. I don't know much about the other cells but mine was black and wooden and had a big glass window that I could look out of. Believe me when I say no one wanted me released, it w as twist of fate, and wrist.