Electric Dust and Other Truths

<p>This collection began not with an idea but with a noise.</p><p>The clanging of steel cups at a roadside stall. The yawn of a bus braking too hard. The furious whisper of a politician's denial. The deadpan bark of a watchman who speaks five languages and is invisible in all of them.</p><p>These stories were written in the cracks - between headlines and footnotes in auto rickshaws and overheard conversations and in the spaces where people are seen but not always noticed.</p><p>They do not seek to represent India in its totality (what madman would?). Instead they shine a light - sometimes mocking sometimes melancholic - on the absurdities resilience ambition and quiet defiance found in its shadows.</p><p>There's satire here yes but it's satire that hurts because it's too close. Humor that laughs while standing knee-deep in floodwater. Characters who are fictional but whose situations have been lived a thousand times before by real people with real stakes.</p><p>If you've ever bribed someone to fix a leak faster if you've been promised power within 24 hours if you've laughed at your own despair - then this is for you.</p><p>Fazal Abubakkar Esaf<br>August 2025</p>