Museum of Memories
Memories. They’re good and they are ugly at times. They’re fascinating and they can be terrible. Despite variations, I am fond of all of them as they together make up what I am today. Most of the time memories have a bit of restlessness meandering between large spaces of pure joy. One of the fondest...
That’s how stories happen
I tried rubbing the edge of my study table, whispering, ‘Appear, my lovely story. Appear!’ It didn’t. I tried this with the walls in my home, with trees in the park, and once even slyly tried rubbing the end of the shawl of a woman I didn’t know at all. Nothing happened. No story appeared...
The backlash of an opportunity
The backlash of an opportunity My existence is no less than the life of characters in a thriller because like them, I was born the day my mortal creator decided that I was to be born. But where characters in a novel get authors to patronise them, nurture them and nourish them and they...
We need stories everyday
My life is a set of stories. Let me tell you one with a lake that forgot to reflect my face… and until then I thought no one could beat those people who invariably forgot my name. ‘What’s your name?’ Atsü asked me the day we were introduced at a press launch. ‘Forget my name,’...
Stories Within Us Wish to Live
NOTE: This story was first published in ‘Open Road Review’ dated 01 August 2015… . My father is 83 and still goes on his morning walks. He is fond of solving Sudoku puzzles and calls up long distance to remind me to get newspaper clippings with these puzzles. ‘We don’t get this newspaper here in...
Mating the meeting
‘Forget grammar. Forget logic. Forget the logic of grammar or the grammar of logic. Just remember that I have a meeting today.’ This is what Ajay told me in a few hurried punches. Now before you shoot your left eyebrow up in a gesture of surprise, let me add that I am Ajay’s laptop and...
Come over here and taste me
Anthologies are like our own Goa beaches with scantily clad tourists walking lazily across your vision, the sudden delight of a shore fisherman having caught a reasonably large fish, gulls swooping in for its quota of sea food, chatter, pitter-patter, and the sun forcing itself in even through the thatched roof of the shack you’re...
Failure is just a bruise, not a tattoo
Team: Maximus Dramaticus Read the previous part of the story here Darkness has strange properties. It appears to swallow everything that comes its way but what no one realises is that it is cunningly selective. ‘Just try walking on a dark road where stones are strewn,’ said Jennifer to no one in particular, ‘and...
Listen to your mind but follow your heart
Team: Maximus Dramaticus Read the previous part of the story here The air on the first floor of the house in Chuna Mandi was pregnant with the sort of tension that you could actually cut with a knife. Jennifer sat in one corner peering into the eyepiece of her camera and pretending she...
Raindrops on paper
‘Another wayward white strand into the bin,’ he muttered, as he stretched his right hand to throw in the bin whatever it was that he held between his index finger and thumb. I was sitting right behind him and could see and hear what Param was doing. We shared the same room in the hostel....
Her paintbrush is a razor
Team: Maximus Dramaticus On that dark and cold late December night, Cyrus sat on the tilted pushcart and stared ahead. The street dogs were not howling. There wasn’t even the expected rustle that a gentle breeze inundates a silent night with. His mind was as silent and as numb as the night seemed to...
You make me nervous, dear
‘No, don’t… please don’t look this side now… I really need to get over my awe of you and get some exercise,’ whispered my gorgeous girl-friend, ‘But you… you make me nervous, dear.’ ‘Me?’ I rolled my eyes and swiped my tongue in ecstasy, as all lizards are fond of doing. ‘Not you, you useless...
