A pipal tree no village will cut, and one engineer who looked up. A flat that was cheap for a reason, where the second bedroom hums. A hospital wing where the bell from an empty bed still rings, and somebody always comes. A cassette in a dead schoolmaster's almirah that knows your name.

The Pipal Tree at Midnight is a collection of original horror stories from the India of load-shedding and candle-light: village rules nobody wrote down, night duties nobody volunteers for twice, shops that open after dark, wells that count and never finish. No cheap gore. The fear here is the older kind - the feeling that the world has rules we were never told.

Read them at night. That is what they are for.