Allahabad Afternoons

Allahabad Afternoons by Shefalika Ghosh Samaddar is a vivid bouquet of short, warm, and sharply observed narratives — “picked up from all the corners” of Allahabad and from other small towns in India. The book captures a city that uniquely blends colonial modernity with living tradition—Civil Lines, the university town spirit, and the larger cultural aura of the Ganga-belt—making Allahabad a microcosm of India itself. The book is essentially about some of the experimental writings that was carried out on the pages of Sunday Magazine, Northern India Patrika, Allahabad. The stories evolve around the relationship with mortal beings, social environment and feelings of variant age groups. The book has emerged out of the precious coffee breaks during author’s PhD work at MNNIT Allahabad.

Across its pages, everyday moments become memorable portraits: the heat and poetry of “Allahabad Summer,” friendships that turn into comic rivalries, and a full-fledged murder mystery set inside an old elite household. The author also turns ordinary scenes—morning walks, the rhythm of afternoons, plastic bags, and the pressures of being a working mother—into thoughtful reflections on class, aspiration, love and self-respect.

The collection moves beyond Allahabad too, opening windows into other Indian spaces and experiences—such as the moving remembrance of teachers and childhood learning in the Maranga Refugee Camp in Purnea, born in the aftermath of displacement from erstwhile East Pakistan. Along the way, the stories carry humor, nostalgia, and human tenderness, while also touching deeper themes: changing times, the inner world of writers and readers, encounters with fear and mortality, and the sweetness of a first valentine in an earlier era. Most of the stories can be summarized by a one-liner.

Altogether, Allahabad Afternoons is both an affectionate city-portrait and a gentle mirror of Indian middle-class life—full of small details that stay with the reader long after the last page.