I The ringing of the bicycle's bell was the first thing Shaman heard in the morning, the chirping of the birds came later. It had always been this way. Quite unlike what they showed in the Bollywood movies. He owed his acquaintance with the reel world to the 'screen on wheels'. An arrangement in which... Continue Reading →
A Grandma extraordinaire…
Today, 16th of May, marks the first death anniversary of my Grandmother. The below words are to her and to all the grandmothers in the world who make this world a better place to be alive in.
Love At First Laugh – Two
A few days after they had met near her PG, things had begun to change. The air of inhibition that had shrouded his natural behaviour so far had finally begun to subside. He no longer had to be careful about his hair, or if his shirt was tucked in or not, or about if there... Continue Reading →
Love At First Laugh – One
The first time when Ronit and Akshita had met each other alone she had asked him to wait at some distance from her PG. Hers was a ladies' PG and the caretaker of the PG, Sunita, had a reputation of being a tattletale to the girls' parents. Sunita had ruined many relationships, even the nascent... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 --... Continue Reading →
The Absence Of Light…
The table lamps stood at an awkward angle to each other and together with the paraphernalia -- the books that he had read, the book he was currently reading, the book he had decided never to flip any more page of, the kindle, the empty pen stand, a Rubik's cube that had jammed for not... Continue Reading →
That Feeling Called Love…
The last time he had let anyone touch him, Tanishq was 27 and had nothing on his body. And after the session of the passionate lovemaking was over, it had begun to rain outside, and it had continued to rain like that for some time. He was sitting on his bed, wiping the sweat off... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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.... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
Love on a dead branch…
He felt like a bird on a dead branch. Only that he didn't crave for all the view that this absence of foliage now offered him. He needed obstructions, something in his sight preventing him from seeing her, something like a dense foliage from another branch. A few persons perhaps. But sometimes, he is now... Continue Reading →
Heart and its reasons…
This blog has been written in sheer haste. Because misery, when given the slightest of time, has terrible habit of finding a vague substitute for it that we call hope.