Of Compromises and Love…

Shubhadra had always found the summers strange. It seemed to change everyone around her. Her father left for his office before his usual fixed time, and her mother together with her grandmother finished their morning chores by 9 A.M. and that gave them all the more time to monitor her actions and point out all...

Of Dreams and Love…

The clock in the hall room sprung to life, its speaker chimed four times, and then turned silent again, leaving the house tranquil. Arun was already up, struggling with his breaths. The post-monsoon season aggravated his sinusitis, and so he kept switching between the sides. Restive, he sat atop the bed for some time, adjusted...

Of Lights, Life, and A Little Loneliness…

The sun grappled with the clouds all day long. Tired, it went to the bed a bit early than the usual days. By the evening, the clouds had enshrouded the sky, convincing Shama that it'd rain, but it didn't. From her room on the seventh floor of a nine-floor apartment, Shama sees lights everywhere --...

In Conversation With Nadine – Part 2

This post is in response to a few 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 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 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...

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...

Washing Machine and Life…

I stared into my washing machine while the clothes were whirling inside it. What came out along with the washed clothes has been jotted down.

Hospital, Ganesha, and Hope…

This blog took birth in the hospital and grew outside of it, much like us.

Of Journeys and Pilgrimages…

This is as much of a piece on Hope and Courage as it is on what the title suggests. But, I believe, that the only way to overcome anything is by moving towards something, a place, a person, or even a void if one firmly believes in it.

Fortitude, and the game of Eyes and Heart…

When faced with the situations demanding fortitude one must exhibit it, or pretend its possession. There isn't really anything else that remains at one's disposal in such situations.

Of Ghost, Night, and Tide…

This piece was born when I was scared. There was darkness all around and everything seemed daunting.

Promise amidst Questions and Answers.

Questions. Some days are filled with questions. There is a single question at the core but there are numerous around it. Surrounding it as its paraphernalia. The ones capable of fusing the nights and day into one or making either incomprehensible to you. You wake up, there is the sun, as usual. You know it...

Shadows and the diabolical lizard…

I never really understood what he meant when he talked about shadows. And he always talked about shadows. Like, a lot. Frankly speaking, it is not just about him or what he used to say. It has to be something with me. A foible. Like some people are bad with Physics, others with Maths. I...