Recently, an old friend of mine who also is under the bondage of a commercial bank, confessed to me he has been contemplating digging a well in the backyard of his house. The gushing fool that I am, I broke…
Author: umashankar
I am just a watcher then. Sometimes I watch life, sometimes I watch death; many times I watch in between...
The Same Night
“The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.” ~Pablo Neruda I was young when I first read those lines by Pablo Neruda, from a poem that I still hold as one of…
A Byte of Moonshine
Sharpen now a crescent for the rite of moonshine, Bullets will not halt the flight of moonshine. Clouds germinate on the zephyrs from wet hills, The heart leaps windward with the kite of moonshine. I count my blessings over…
A Dewdrop Ghazal
Get me worms of silk for the runes and a dewdrop, Seven folds of veil for a cocoon and a dewdrop. The mirror is in youth, and the jasmine in bloom, Smoky is the kohl like the moon in a…
The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan
“Those who can really represent China are digging dirt and paving roads with their bare hands." ~Mo Yan Sidestepping the polemic surrounding the Nobel citation of Mo Yan, and the seeming incompatibility of the Chinese tongue with English hoes and…
Nightfall of Blogging
As the nightfall of blogging closes in on me, I am more inclined to exhaling in private than gasping online, more willing to navigate through the bushes and backwaters than honking in the perpetual crescendo of the world wide web.…
With the Cicadas
The evening is long with shadows of the afternoon chopped and spent at the edges of green black leaves of pubescent jackfruit trees. With the cicadas I pause and creek. With the cicadas I wax and shrink. A blackbird took…
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Somewhere in the pages of his unforgettable autobiography, Paul Kalanithi alludes to the concept of areté, the ability achieved through a confluence of human faculties at their peak, to describe neurosurgery’s unforgiving call to perfection. Neurosurgery, where a scalpel’s journey…
Three Tamarind Trees -Part II
*The beginning It was half past six in the morning as I trod the bridge over the moat to the looming entrance. My heart matched the pitter-patter of my hastening steps. Unlike the stolid façade I had come upon in…
Three Tamarind Trees -Part I
I swear I will tell you each word of the story as he had whispered in my ears. I first met him at Sadar Bazar in Agra. I had just purchased a paperback called Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and…
Protected: Wind in the Ruins
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Protected: Life of a Hollow
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
One Grain Amongst the Storm 