All the linked posts under this blog are an outcome of my observations about the things that often go unnoticed and the things that are often taken for granted.
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 →
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.
It has been eight years since Ronit had last seen Akshita. He is sitting in front of his Laptop, his eyes fixed on a particular photo from a series of photos of all the girls named Akshita. He hovers upon her profile picture but something prevents him from clicking on it. Entering her profile would... Continue Reading →
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 →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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.
A Fine Balance 