Witness Press / A novel by Jay Moksha
He has spent his life being overlooked. He has been paying attention the entire time.
Move to look closer
Everyone is looking down.
He is the one looking back.
The book
Kal is an IT programmer in Melbourne, originally from India, in his late thirties. He has social anxiety, ADHD, and a quiet history of being bullied. He is the man on the tram you have never once noticed.
The novel follows a series of encounters in which his presence quietly shifts the people around him. He does not intend it. He does not explain it. It simply happens, and then he goes home to a life smaller and lonelier than anyone would guess.
Underneath it runs Hayley, a woman who begins to notice the pattern he leaves behind. She is the first person who ever has.
Something happened to Kal years ago that changed how he perceives people. He has never told anyone.
The opening
Kal had stopped trying to explain what he noticed about people. It only made them uncomfortable.
The tram was already three stops in when Kal found the seat he wanted, back row, left side, the one where the heating vent was broken and nobody stayed long. He sat down with his bag on his lap and his jacket still buttoned and looked out at Melbourne moving through a Tuesday in July.
Moving. Getting somewhere. Not looking up.
Outside, the city was the colour of a decision not yet made. Low sky, the grey of winter in the southern hemisphere that looked nothing like English grey or Indian grey: it was its own thing, this Melbourne grey, without drama in it. The plane trees along the boulevard were stripped back to their essential shapes. They looked more honest in winter. He appreciated that about them.
He liked this hour. Before the noise built. Before the day announced its requirements.
From the opening of KAL: The Witness
Every book we publish carries this seal. It is a promise about structure, not a warning about content.
Chapters are short and interlocking, and each one largely stands on its own, so putting the book down never means losing the thread. Scene breaks are frequent and clearly marked. Nothing is padded to reach a page count.
Books built this way are easier for everyone. For some of us they are the difference between finishing and not.
Forthcoming
Different forms, one preoccupation. All in development.
Contemporary folklore
Ten original fairy tales set in 2026, encoding the real fears of the present: algorithms, surveillance, loneliness, misinformation.
In development
Literary fiction with magic realism
Five vehicles, one flooded roadhouse, and a track that appears on no map. It reveals itself only to those who make the right calls.
In development
Young adult
A solar storm kills the internet. The girl who watched everything sets out to find the people whose skills were always real.
In development
Ensemble fiction
Twenty chapters, twenty two people, one street, and everything they carry from everywhere they came from.
In development
Non-fiction
A forensic account of damage done at scale, by systems that were never going to be asked to answer for it.
In development
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Contact
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