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In life, we stumble upon stories of many kinds — stories that terrify us, stories that entertain us, stories that make us cry, stories that make us love. The entire world is just an amalgamation of stories, in the form of books, art, people, music. Some stories, however, leave an indelible mark on us. They inflict an emotion so profound upon us that we may spend our entire lives attempting to describe their impact and only fail. Idgah remains one of those stories for me. Premchand succeeds in adding such depth to quite a simple narrative, employing a child’s innocence and point of view most often to do so. One is left marvelling at the author’s ability to make you feel so much. Very few short stories can come close to hitting you like a brick wall the way Idgah does, urging me to draw comparisons with O. Henry’s The Last Leaf and The Gift of the Magi. There is a degree of purity and sheer unadulterated human kindness and love in these stories that reminds you of the beauty in the world amidst its ugliness.