The Suitcase of Stories
Category A: Highly Commended (2025) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Prathamesh Kalani
Aryan Mehta would rather swallow glass than spend summer in Ahmedabad.
No Wi-Fi. No video games. Just heat, endless power cuts and his Dadaji’s endless stories about gods with elephant heads and too many arms. His Indian heritage felt like a needlessly heavy burden - loud, strange, and old.
One afternoon, bored out of his mind, Aryan poked around the attic. Under a moth-eaten quilt, he found it: a dusty leather suitcase. The lock was covered in strange carvings - eyes, flames, snakes - and glowed faintly when he touched it.
Click.
A whoosh of cold wind knocked him backward. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the attic.
He was in a jungle. A real one - thick vines, howling monkeys, and a massive, golden mace hovering in midair.
“Pick it up!” a voice boomed.
A monkey with a crown leapt up from a thick tree - Hanuman. Aryan grabbed the mace. Power surged through him. He swung it just in time to crush a serpent-headed creature lunging at him.
“What is happening?” Aryan gasped.
“The stories are calling you back,” Hanuman said. “But you’re not the only one they’ve called.”
Before Aryan could ask more, the world shifted.
Now he stood on a battlefield. Arrows blazed across the sky. A chariot stopped beside him, drawn by magnificent white horses. On it stood a boy - dark-skinned, calm and glowing.
Krishna.
“Every story is a doorway,” Krishna said. “But doorways can be stolen.”
Suddenly, the sky cracked open. From the clouds descended a figure cloaked in smoke, face hidden, holding a twisted black suitcase. “You don’t deserve these tales,” the figure snarled. “They’ve been forgotten, buried. Let them die.”
Before Aryan could move, the black suitcase pulled at him - ripping stories from his mind. The memories of the jungle, the mace, the gods - they began to fade.
No.
He reached into his own suitcase. Nothing was left - except a tiny diya (oil lamp), flickering weakly.
He lit it.
The flame exploded, shooting out light that formed the shapes of Durga, Shiva, Lakshmi - gods and heroes rising from the fire. Aryan stood tall as their power flowed into him.
“I’m not done,” he said.
He ran through memories made real - leaping across mountaintops with Garuda, swimming through rivers guarded by naga serpents, arguing riddles with Yudhishthira. Every answer brought a story back. Every step weakened the figure of smoke.
Finally, Aryan hurled the glowing diya into the black suitcase.
It vanished in a flash of gold.
Back in the attic, Aryan collapsed, chest heaving. The suitcase was closed again - but this time, it shimmered like it was smiling.
Downstairs, his Dadaji was waiting.
“You opened it, didn’t you?”
“You knew?”
“I did. But it chooses who’s ready. You almost lost the stories.”
“I almost lost myself,” Aryan murmured.
Back home in Melbourne, Aryan started carrying a notebook. Not for homework - but for stories. Ones he was remembering. Ones he was now ready to tell.
Because some suitcases don’t carry clothes.
They carry worlds.