Shaleen Rakesh

Shaleen Rakesh, is an Indian author whose work blends lyricism, philosophical inquiry, and an intimate attentiveness to the natural world.

His essays, reflections, and shorter writings have appeared across journals, platforms, and anthologies in India and Internationally.

Shaleen divides his life between Delhi and Dehradun, moving between the intensity of the city and the quiet expanses of the hills. His writing is deeply influenced by the landscapes he inhabits, the forests, rivers, and terraces of Uttarakhand, and by a lifelong curiosity about the human mind, its fractures, its tenderness, and its capacity for renewal.

Novels. Non-fiction, and Poetry:

His novel Madness is a visceral, slow-burning excavation of the human and ecological spirit, set along the Rispana River—a fragile, hemorrhaging spine that cuts through the heart of Dehradun, India. The novel follows an aging photojournalist, known simply as "the old man," as he navigates the daily ritual of the riverbank. His lens does not seek the grand or the panoramic; instead, it obsessively records the granular collapses—the quiet, systemic insanities that pulse through his community, his rotting marriage, the dying water, and the deepening shadows of his own mind.

Shaleen has written a non-fiction book of atmospheric philosophy called Constellations The book’s central thesis is that the modern human exists within a luminous prison—a state of hyper-visibility, moral performativity, and digital saturation that has exiled us from our primordial origin: what he calls the magnificent sea of red. To survive this exile, the author introduces the figure of the ghost. Unlike the upright man who seeks to master and rectify the world, the ghost is a figure of porosity and suave resignation. The ghost does not seek to fix the broken world but to loiter within its fractures with a state of amoral tenderness.

Shaleen is the author of The Lion and the Antler a collection of queer poems exploring love, loss, and the body, and An Equal Indian a non-fiction examination of queer sexuality, identity, and social structures in contemporary India.

His writing is known for its minimalism, emotional resonance, and a quiet philosophical undercurrent. He writes with the conviction that stories are not answers but invitations—to look more deeply, to listen more honestly, and to return to the inner landscapes we often abandon.

He currently writes several online blogs, including Shaleen Rakesh Shorts and Shaleen Rakesh Blog, and regularly publishes stories, essays and poems on Medium and Substack, His stories have been published in online magazines like Literally Literary and Curiosity Never Killed the Writer.