As so-called grown-ups, most of us build expectations on ourselves filled with presumptions about our parents and friends. In the pursuit of living up to them, we not only forget to live as we wish or should but get carried away doing more than anything needed or expected.

“The Stance” by Gayatri Sharma explores the story of a girl who is filled in such a presumptuous thought-process that it takes her to reach the very end of the ride to realise it was in reality never expected of her.​

During the medieval era in India, an architect named Haider and a commoner named Noor fall in love. Even when their religion, era and circumstances obstruct them to be husband and wife, they never give in to those constructs and passionately care for each other until their Emperor commissions Haider to build him a monument of an original design that the world would be impressed with forever.

Read Santhosh Annabattula’s short story “Noor” to know how passionately loving someone could dictate one’s thoughts, pain and profession so much so that they are empowered unlike anyone else.