The Vagrant Trust

‘You’ve all my mother’s trust.’ I heard the words come off her mouth, as easily and instinctively, as pleasantries exchanged in a greeting: without any reflection or consideration, unrehearsed and spoken raw, the way it first originated in her mind. The way truth is spoken perhaps, as I believed – on the face and without a flinch. We were seated at the promenade of a buzzing Calcutta theatre. The evening show had just ended and people boisterously...

A Quiet World, A Better World

Imagine all the people you ever came across staying back, never leaving your side, a world without goodbyes or heartbreaks, of all friendships and acquaintances retained, of never being through abandonment, of no one ever forgetting anyone or letting go; our lives would've been a bloody chaos. An incorrigible disarray of lives breathing down our neck about their dreams, desires, and apathy. Much like the city's Sunday market strip: an alley thronging...

Diwali: A Realization

It's much more than just lighting the lamp.In fact, it's the easiest of all - to strike a match and lend the flame, guarded in the cave of your palms, to an oil-slicked wick curled in the hollow of the earthenware. That's it. The lamp comes to life, its muffled-yellow sheen encroaching upon the dark, like weary ocean waves closing around rocks, catching our appreciation altogether, our love. But that's not all - the oil, meanwhile, would be quickly depleting...

Oh! Poor Man

What's hugely distressing, sardonic and unpardonably hypocritical, and in all probability is leading our society down helpless despair and imparity is, where a happy looking man in neat, ironed clothes at work, carrying lunch boxes packed with delectable, sumptuous food is attributed to being blessed with wonderful and loving wife; is, on the contrary, audaciously endorsed as a disciplinarian with so-called high morals, when she starts panicking of being...

Fools, Flowers and Falls

I remember keeping your rose in an empty beer bottle on the bedside stool, as I got home that night. Passing the stem through its mouth and withdrawing my fingers, letting it drop. Its petalled bulb coming to rest against the rim in a soundless thud. I do not know why I did that. On other days there would have been no bottle at the first place. Having never realized sense in the idea of a person dutifully showing up at my door and asking for a bagful...

Just Hugs

Let's just hug each other to sleep tonight. No, don't get me wrong - I am not saying you're unattractive or that you don't turn me on. Trust me, my feelings belong to no one but you, moored to your soul like sail boats at the harbour from being blown, for you to cut me loose with your own hands and row me ashore. Nor do I possess any dark desire for someone from the past either. If there was a way to click and save everything I see once I close my...

The Bookcase

I love sitting hidden between the doors of my wooden bookcase. In fact, when I am too unsure about picking a new read or simply feeling worn out by the chores of a routine life, needing a deliberate escape, I do exactly that: pull up a chair in between; the doors hanging from the hinges by my sides forming impenetrable walls to the most private, quietest, thought-inducing space I can have to myself, and sit with my legs crossed on my lap, smelling...

going away: a night left behind

you wouldn’t know this day coming. the 3 AM alarm buzzing by the pillow, and my dismissing it instantly, as if waiting, which I were in an acidic insomnia; before staggering through the dark hallway to your room. with a soft tap, i wait with my knuckles on the door’s shiny timber hearing you wake: the rustle of your clothes, your bare heels lowered to the marble. it’s always the same. platform number 2. sparing its somnambulist travellers the...

going away: the day before

the kitchen’s unusually quietthis morning.no clankingof pots or ofwater runningdown the sink.the counterstoo are clean;untouched.there’s no marinatedmeat glowingsaffron in turmericawaiting by the flame.only a pot of ricesteams quietlyon the oven,boiling starchbubbling to its neck.and next to itin a deep bowl,shimmers the lastsupper’s remains. i cut out the rice’s flame, looking for her. she is in the adjacent room, hauling from under the bed her maroon...

The Joke of Being Alive

Indu was in the kitchen, bent over the counter and removing spongy, biconvex discs of idlis onto a plate from the steamer’s belly. Plumes of hot smoke dispensed through the open lid and grazing past her face died on the low, oil-filmed ceiling. The mixer grinder rumbling in a corner on the shelf, choked and crackled to a sudden stop. ‘Aargh.’ grunted Indu. ‘It’s high time I get a new one.’ Grabbing the rolling pin, she, twice, struck the head of...

In the Autumn of Life

A shadow on the hall room wall, cast in hot bright stripes of the August sun seeping through the curtains, of his still forlorn head and shrunk shoulders ended abruptly like a cliff on both sides as he sat at the table, was what it took me to look at the despair, the melancholic social abandonment that had gradually descended his life.  Four slices of crisply warmed bread, buttered, waited beside a bowl of chopped cucumber on the plate. Just...

Traitor Tree

Traitor Tree: A Short Story There is a Gulmohar growing at the fence. Its slender brown trunk though arising from the soft, grassy earth of my compound, has its crimson canopy, like a cloud stranded at dusk, floating low beyond on the other side. While it wore my rains for years, lived my sunshine and slowly depleted my breast with its roots; now inadvertently sheds its blossoms over a different world, strewing its path in a flaming red. A little...

Gautam Gambhir: An Underrated Prodigy

No, we do not wish to see that face— the sadness in those handsome eyes and the evergreen glee drained from his smile, as SRK stands upfront at the Chinnaswamy balcony in a sleek black tee-shirt, clapping a gentleman’s consolation clap for all the hard work put in by the boys to reach to the semi-final, only to be outplayed by their long-term nemesis. (For representational purpose only) Despite a win against the Sun Risers in a rain curtailed...

The History of Our Being

This motionless Agra sky like a chalky dust hat, hangs from the finial of Taj. Its enormous yellowing dome roofs the mausoleum like Time’s blessing palm frozen over History’s head; housing deep under in sacred stone chambers, the ivory remnants of star crossed lovers. In its huge curvy shadows, Yamuna passes like a muddy brook. Dark and ash grey; awash with the spirits of dead, rolling on eternally with sea...