THE LAST PORTRAIT. Part 3

Love is the courage that stifles our muscles with rage, for one last fightback when all else had failed. It is an emotional strength that we choose to derive from our heart, sucking at our feelings, to get back onto our feet when reality had cracked up our bones and left us limp. It is the sweet, ineffable hope of kissing the face of the women we love that tightens our fingers to a hard, unforgivable fist, ready to blow up everything that stands between...

THE LAST PORTRAIT. Part 2

Calcutta, 1972 From the vantage point of the low doorway leading to the backyard, two enormous tress that rose up the overgrown lawn, seem to bend inwards towards each other against the radiant spring sky, as if leaning into a handshake. Branches of one tree escaping into the canopy of other. The breeze pampering their leaves and sunshine reflected upon the margins in a sparkling twinkle, as if the branches were but bejeweled arms of newly wed women. Rukshar...

THE LAST PORTRAIT. Part 1

October 2001. Manhattan, New York. It was just yesterday that the sun was beaming at its pinnacle and the sky, a crease-less sheet of blue overhead, stretched across the wide bed of heaven between the infinite horizons. Pillows of clouds rose stacked and the sun with its back against it, comfortably shone from its adobe. And the light was just brilliant, like on any late summer day, like spools of silk threads being unreeled from the sky,...