HORIZONS

His jaw lies here but he is no more.He was not his bones turned to ash. He was not his flesh melted away.'At the first step of a promising career Ranchor returns home to face the sobering reality of his father's demise. A railway employee prevents a young man's desperate attempt at suicide. Elsewhere a doctor faces the harrowing prospect of facilitating euthanasia for a friend. In an idyllic city Keshav's life is slowly engulfed by a terminal illness and the spectre of death looms large. Written in searing prose these stories by debut author Himanshu Asnani are a rich portrait of lives that mirror countless others. Probing and often edifying they capture the pathos of life while offering succour to those traversing similar paths – a reminder of fiction's singular ability to lay bare life's fundamental questions.