Of Sounds that Stay — Part One

Sri's house was always full of sounds. Its little dimensions and the fact that she lived alone only accentuated these sounds, giving them a theatrical touch. Everything in the house somehow managed to get in touch with some other thing and resulted in a noise. Legs of her bed screeched when they skidded over the...

An Imitative Act…

From the sixth floor of his office, Saksham sees people, dragging themselves towards their office. Most of them dawdling, as if reluctant to enter the place. They seem to have forgotten the time when they had laboured to be given a chance to work there -- revision of the concepts, shortlisting of the resume, calls...

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 --...

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...

Of Birth, Death, and Life…

Why, by the end, does everything turn into a source of pain? Arham is known by his colleagues as someone who dwells in the past. In his defence, he always asks them "well, who doesn't?" While everyone else is talking either about the future or their 'could have been' versions, he prefers to think of...

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...

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 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...

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...

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.

Of Sweat and Dogs’ barks…

Dogs, as they say, happen to be a man's best friend. This post is to the music that their (dogs') band produce all through the night.