Read More: A Q&A with Nandini Bhattacharya
My mother kept not only one or two cats in the house at any given time, but also a large full-grown lion. She wouldn’t hear of sending the lion away. “He’s tamed,” she said. “He won’t hurt anyone.” “It’s a ticking bomb,” I said. “An animal acts on instinct, and you can never predict what it might do if aroused or provoked.” She wouldn’t hear a word. I said it had to be me or the lion in the house. She was unmoved. I couldn’t fathom it.
The lion proved dangerous, as I knew he would. One night he ate one of the cats. We saw the dead darling’s accusing eyes, milky in its torn-off head in the upstairs hallway. My mother cried piteously. “Send him away now,” I said. “Where will he go?” she asked. “Will you worry about that when he kills me or you?” I asked. She only cried more.
The killings went on. The lion had become addicted to fresh blood. It was the paper delivery boy next. My mother was charged with murder for illegally harboring a grown lion in the house. She went to jail; the lion went away in a big black van. “You destroyed your own life, and maybe mine, and now you’re going to jail for an animal that couldn’t help acting like one,” I told her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought he’d get old, loose his teeth and cravings, and die in his sleep.” […]
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Nandini Bhattacharya’s first novel Love’s Gardenwas published in 2020. Her short story collection Somewhere, Once, Now: Stories is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press, and her second novel Fake Lives is forthcoming from Roundfire Books. Shorter work is published in The Common, Cincinnati Review, Bellevue Literary Review, River Styx, Rumpus,Chicago Quarterly Review,Notre Dame Review, PANK, Oyster River Pages, The Bombay Review, and more. She has attended the Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Artists Residency, VONA, and others. Her awards and honors include a Best Microfiction 2026 nomination, a Pushcart nomination for her short story “After the House Burned Down” (2021), and first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest (2017-2018). She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Read More: A Q&A with Nandini Bhattacharya