Of An Ant And A Man

The inept Ant began the ascent. On a day when a man's hopes shatter the way a leaf plummets down the ground and cracks up, Pran gawped at the ant trying to crawl up the room's shabby wall. The ant tried to climb up the wall but it slipped. It tried again and the result...

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In Conversation With Nadine – Part 2

This post is in response to a few questions asked by Nadine.

In conversation with Nadine…

This article is in response to the Mystery Blogger Award and the questions asked by Nadine.

Of Men And Their Ways – Continued…

He always woke up before the sun shone, and it had been that way for as long as he can recall now. His wife, when she was alive, used to bicker with him for his early morning alarms. "In the morning the sound of your alarms going off, and during the day your mother with...

Of Men And Their Ways…

At dawn, when all the boys with whom he used to play cricket in the ground are still asleep, Balu is woken up by his senile father. The sixth child in his father's brigade, as the old man used to call his children together, Balu was the youngest. His two elder sisters were married and...

Of A Voice and Faded Songs…

It was a Sunday, and it was a melancholic voice that woke Samaksh up from his slumber. 'The kind of voice that he would have otherwise only tolerated if he were drunk' he told Pradhaan -- his colleague -- when they later met at the workplace. 'Who sings such songs in the morning, yaar?' he...

Of Sour Relationships and Dirty Tables…

There was something overwhelmingly disappointing about the movement of the sun that day, or perhaps it was the movement of the clouds, enshrouding the sun like a mother protecting her son from evil eyes. He stayed atop his bed, struggling with his breaths, taking turns between his sides, and this continued for long, for almost...

Of Making Babies and Driving Trains…

The coaches in the Indian passenger trains, despite all the discomfort they offer to its passengers, provide them with the facility to stop the train at their will. An act of reparation for something wrong that the train or the railway management has nothing to do with, for a predicament that has been created by...

Of Scaffold and the first steps…

Ramesh balanced himself on the scaffold - a temporary arrangement of sticks and ropes built around the naked and ugly building that he was to paint and transform into a beautiful house. The same building that he and a few others like him had worked on persistently and had erected in over a year. And...

OF CLOCK, LAUGHTER AND LEGS…

He had moved out of the previous apartment when it had become impossible for him to touch anything in it without feeling her touch on his hand. And this, he came to learn, as is the case with most of the other things a man learns only with the passage of time, happened to a...

Of Rats and Awakened Conscience…

The room was reeking when he returned from the office, and the moment he unlatched the front door, the smell reached to him like a gust of wind. He retched, and though his ribs ached nothing came out from inside. He had never vomited in his life, not even when he was an unweaned child....

Of Motions and Emotions…

His stomach rumbled the third time in what could not have been more than ten minutes, convincing him that he'd finally have to get up and make his way to the toilet. The digital clock mounted on the wall displayed some numbers, but at his age and in his predicament, the numbers no longer made...

Love, Togetherness, and Time…

Reblogging this post here, as the family of readers has now grown much bigger than when I had first written this piece, and also more importantly because I want you – a few new readers, who have been reading my works lately – to read this one as well…

A Fine Balance

She would come on the balcony, her hair almost dried. Ruffling her hairs with the fingers of her left hand, in an attempt to drain the last drop of water that often sneaks through the strands of hairs and settle down as dew on the scalp, she’d then gather her hairs in her fist. For someone observing this scene, it seemed as if she would lift herself off the ground using these hairs. Grabbing them in her right fist just above her head she’d meticulously unhitch the hairband from between her teeth. The hairband always matched her top and anticipated between her teeth until she was done with this hair business, this pulling and catching. She’d then try to confine these hairs into the hairband. A few strands, however, always alluded her and swarmed around her temple, at sometimes curling behind her ears while at others sneaking just to the…

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Talk to me, forever.

She hated it whenever anyone used the word forever in their sentence. As if they really understood the word, or in the least if they really meant it. The word forever, she believed, had only one significance, and that was to make any assertion solemn. 'I am here with you' makes so little sense when...

Of Alcohol and Love…

It was only when she roared did he first realise of the fury she contained within. Some people manage to hide their other selves for so long, and then surprise everyone around them when they finally reveal it. So calm had she been all the while they have had been together - a face that...

Of Sun and Sinusitis…

The Sun played tricks like an unweaned child. Now sticking its face to the mother's breast and then turning with a jerk towards its father, as if filled, only to resume the feeding by turning back towards its mother the moment it sees his father extending his hand in its direction. An act of defiance...

Of Shehnai and Love…

His earliest memories of a Shehnai and its sound were from a mandap -- a platform raised temporarily for marriages and around which couples vow togetherness, their families surrounding them in all the directions, rejoicing in these avowals. He was 7 years old then and was seated on his mother's lap, deaf to what the...

Of a girl and a bird…

The girl. If one were to capture a panoramic view from where she stood and saw the birds go about in their daily chores, three-fourths of the captured image would be filled up with tall multi-storeyed buildings, full of people, working inside them. The remaining quarter would show something that now resembles a hill. Atop...

Of Rain and Relief…

He disheveled everything she had neatly stacked up. He was running late for the office, yet again, and now searched for his ID card everywhere except where it actually was. He upended his backpack emptying all its contents atop the bed on her side. This sight filled inside of her with rage, more than the...

Of Music and Road Trip…

Three urchins cladded in dust guarded the gates of the famous Rama Temple located atop one of the many hills that adorn the town of Ramanagara. Their clothes lacked any signs of lustre, convincing the seer that it had been long since they were last washed, or changed. The three of them bore a welcoming...