Life isn't all about the hustle and bustle. Sometimes taking a break can make you feel more alive than anything else. It's only when we slow down that we truly appreciate the people and things around us. You realise the value of those who stand by your side once you have lost them. Wealth, power, fame, a man can attain it all but in those moments of your life when you feel empty and lonely, nothing can fill up that void.
I am afraid of being alone. Not like I fear ghosts or that I am weak but I...
Childhood|बचपन|Tafoliyat
Every definition I have ever read of childhood painstakingly fails to capture my yearning. To me, it’s a foregone age, when I was so full of love, for no one but myself. If I could run across the ocean into my own arms back then, I would.
For me, childhood will always be about waiting for the cotton candy man every Sunday morning by the porch of my house or being coerced into narrating a poem in front of a bunch of relatives, or having my shoelaces tied every morning b...
Jaagte raho! Jaagte raho! yu chilata to nhi par raat bhar nazar sab jagah pe rkhta hu”
Hi, I am Ramesh, the security guard of this society. My job is to keep an eye on the streets at night, pretty simple, right? Yeah, I usually roam around on these streets in the night, in shifts with the other guard who stays at the entrance. These cold winter nights are very lonely and silent. There’s no one on the streets because people go to sleep early these days. But I don't feel alone since I have bee...
Friendship, perhaps is not like a forest fire or a quick flint. It's an ivy that grows on the front door of your heart. Shiny, dark, and evergreen, knocking gently every now and then. Such was the remarkable friendship of Abhigya and her teacher, Ms. Surbhi.
It's been seven years since Abhigya left for the US, breaking free of the shackles of her emotionally abusive family. Ms. Surbhi was Abhigya's sixth-grade English teacher, although she went on to become much more than that in the life of...
Since childhood, I've had this peculiar dream on my birthday. I used to wake up the following morning feeling odd. The last part of the dream would always be a pair of hands clutching a beaded mala, but I could never recall anything more. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, but it started occurring every year. My parents advised me not to dwell on it, and it was just a dream.
When I turned 18, my parents decided to have a pooja at our home for my well-being. I got ready for it an...
Prakash was a hardworking and content man. For a daily wage laborer by the day, and a Matka kulfi seller by the evenings, he had a peculiar perkiness about himself, one only heard of in unjustifiably optimistic fables and folklore. He would set up his stall at the same spot outside the central park of a posh colony where the elite lived, where the distinctions between the lives of rich and poor were sickeningly stark and apparent.
His regular customers included old people who came for their ...
Vipin lost his wife to cancer about five years ago. Coping with grief was an art he was never really good at, hence, in those moments of weakness he resorted to smoking to drown out the voices in his head, to fill the void his wife’s death left behind, with smoke. His son, a hopeful young soul, however, never liked this coping mechanism of his. He hated it when Vipin’s clothes reeked of cigarettes, of dying lungs and curtailed age. The house filled up with incessant coughs of despair and hopeles...
“Mohanlal and sons, since the 1950s”, engraved in gold letters on a board, stood a gigantic shop in the heart of Nehru Place. The shop possessed a legacy of more than 60 years, having a name for itself in the city. Mohanlal’s great-grandson, Heeralal was currently running the shop, smoothly and with grandeur. They were known for being the best in the game, one of its kind in the tailoring business. But then came the dark times as the pandemic kicked in, at the beginning of 2020.
Fast forwar...