The intemperate hand slides through the pack of photos. I glare at them; non-existent to my remembrance, they have become use to my iniquity. Some of them have developed a cast of furtive cracks, a rub-off of the surroundings. I look at the tree behind me; it looks like a serpent gliding its torso hunched by a heap of leaves. We both stand under its shadow, serene and unstable—me and my memory. I disliked creating memories. It is unaffordable to tender to them in the precarious precepts of life. A person gone, a day gone but the memory lives. I often ask the intolerable dust prying under the s ..read more

I sit with my arms tightly embracing the folds of my knees, rocking back and forth. The spell of chill sends shock waves through the nerve impulses, and I cry for a warm tusk to coil my fragile silhouette. I am in cognizance of what’s happening; it has happened before. The thought leaves me not and the grip of it, formidable enough to saunter my mind for affirmations and denials—A typical stratagem by the OCD crusade to make you go through an undesirable emotion again and again. OCD is ritualistic! It’s venom that lives with you circulating your mind to adhere to its morality, and in doing so ..read more

Cancer comes in as a distinguished guest, and with no fault of it is saddened by how execrably the human fanatic imprecates it. We are often so unapologetic in its condemnation. It has neither a face nor a semblance to the ghost pirouetting in the dark shadowy nights; but around its forbidding fief lays a fiendish propensity to slaughter the hubristic melancholy.  I often indulge in a self-exculpating distressed sledging of my body, if there is actually a cancer in me? After all, it’s gratifying in the end to be free of any lump or an unusual ache. In situ, I voice from the alleged narcis ..read more

I am poor today; more in mind than in pocket, though the tailored-cut cave in propriety finds the flesh of the feeble hand clutching the unseen stitch tightly. What has made me feel riven, I don’t know? I have a good bank balance, enjoy the razzle, drive in obnoxity as it’s the driver who drives, and I can be the crow cawing literally on weekends when impertinence and me are a pas de deux. But, I feel poor today! Maybe I am stuck around the wedding mess. If marriages are made in heaven, I personally saw ‘heaven’ arriving all ritzy and palmy at ‘Anant Ambani-Radhika Merchant’ pre-wedding bash a ..read more

A SHORT STORY SCENE 1 I sit feverishly on the mount of pebbles, spine awkward to legitimize a position that has applause of the milieu; after all it’s an impulsion to get the right click for Instagram. I smile but the photographer urges me to smile more. Now, I smile more but dogged to be a bit more acrobatic; spreading the arms in the mystified glory of being a bird. Did I say ‘bird’? Well! I am just a human. The enthusiast implores, ‘look up at the heavens’. I do and then finally clicked. The patriarch post reveals; The striking caption on Instagram, ‘I will love you forever’. SCENE 2 The bl ..read more

‘Ramayana’ is one epic tale that talks about keeping the mind sane among the doolally and dudgeon. If Lord Ram would have thrown an insouciant tantrum about the ‘delay’ in finding his beloved wife Sita and be the recluse de trop of imperfections, Sita would have died burdened, in chagrin, decrepit in the dystopic empire of Raavan. But, that was not to be! Ram knew how to fight; not the exuberant anger that deprives the soul of equanimity but applying a discerning mind that accepts the fragility of time, and that there is an appropriate time for things to happen. A desultory by the time is ‘del ..read more

The callous attitude of many leaves me drained! Already, Menstruation is seen as a leaking bucket of slimy waste, haggard women fighting off the heavy-handed flow conspicuous in its arrival and caterwauled in its affection. What more? The idea of paid leave during Menstruation is now being muddled in the discursive culture of equality and stoicism. What has menstruation to do with the turpitudes and eccentricities to make a woman look like a mighty tree weathering storms or foresting terpsichorean paces on a single branch? Isn’t she free to act cynical with the hagridden impulses or shout a lo ..read more

How tricks and battles play a folly; God knows better? But, when it comes to ‘The Archies’, I am reminded of the riley flowing through a rill and the cascading innuendos of the ‘bitter betty batter’ crying over her easily crumbled love for Archie. It’s Betty who is seen as the ‘funny bone’ fawning to get Archie’s attention until the lucid parabole of life tells Betty, ‘Veronica has a share in the pie too’. Doesn’t all this sound familiar in the gnarled stories of ‘Archie Comics’; a bit of flounce and frisson and the so easily managed persiflage? The gnomic love triangle and the ‘funny-buddy’ f ..read more

A new voter sensibility emerges in the state election 2023 The grandeur of Prime Minister Modi has again branched out a pansy leaving the Congress Party in a panicle of delusions and desultory distress. Who thought that ‘anti-incumbency’ penultimate would shatter like a glass in a hailstorm, letting Shivraj Singh Chouhan pirouette in the hem of his political éclat? BJP’s win in Madhya Pradesh, one of the three ‘Hindi Heartlands’, aspires today that power restores responsibility through awakening to ‘what empowers a voter’ rather than binging on airy-fairy promises. The soft cone of ‘Rajasthan ..read more

India has lost the ICC WORLD CUP FINAL 2023; an ineluctable deepening despair that will seethe our hearts for a few weeks and then the normal ‘move-on’ panjandrum will take on a rotation. The country is in grief and finding what made the goose loose its eggs. ‘Loss’ of any kind is an entity in ‘perpetuity’; the mulish face of it looks staggaredly at us, it’s inevitable—we can see it, but drowned in the flamboyancy of irretraceable ‘springs & spoils’ it takes time to admire its sarky scupper. This is exactly what happened with India during the ICC World Cup Final 2023. They were all disport ..read more