The Saturday is melting away like an ice lolly in afternoon. Swift bursts of rain have given a washed look to mould-ridden walls and rooftops. Even the mounds of garbage look clean. It is a noisy old suburban rail coach,…
Category: Such is Life
A Glass of Ice Water
‘It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.’ ~Steve Jobs, about iTunes on Windows computers. Perhaps you missed me in my period of quiet, or shall I say disquiet? Allow me to explain, though I may…
Shakespeare’s Email
'The evening is still, the birds silent, the wind dead like a tramp, flopped on a footpath. The sky is dressed in dust and dusk.' (From my short story: End of Dusk) I look at my face in the mirror…
Diamonds in the Detritus
I remember how in my childhood time was like a river of molasses where I’d twiddle my thumbs like a noonday fly waiting for my father to return with the promised goodies. Waiting for the monthly issues of comics was…
Writing is So Long
As a student of Logic in my younger years, the first two examples of absolutely positive and negative statements I stumbled upon were, (1) Man is mortal. (2) No man is perfect. So utterly true are these sentences and so…
Exit Motherboard
One fine afternoon a fortnight ago my desktop Titan slipped into a deep sleep, ignoring all attempts to power it on. Having mulled over the lull, the wilting grey lump in my balding skull concluded a malfunction in the circuitry…
Beyond I, Robot
It was in the early Nineties that I started reading Isaac Asimov. Goaded by lingering childhood urges, I picked up I, Robot, a collection of stories about evolution of robotics, sometimes supervised by Dr Susan Calvin, a phenomenal Robopsychologist, never…
Fungus on the Filter
The opposite of time is memories. Memories, a span with no beginning, no end, no periods, only nebulous swaths of consciousness. Memories don’t tumble terminally like the sand in an hourglass. Or tick away with the finality of the arms…
Dear Father of the Nation
“Leave India in God’s hands, in modern parlance, to anarchy; and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time, or to unrestricted dacoities. From these a true India will arise in place of the false one we see.”…
A Sliver of Platinum
I have paused for a siesta on the promenade, Faakir, Hush up the gathering commotion, that I live still.. ~Sudarshan Faakir I guess it is a pale shadow of the original. I have always had this problem with translations. But…
Breeze on the Grass
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible." ~Vladimir Nabakov My dear readers, we have been together these past years. I have known…
Sam Was Sad
It was a sultry summer morning when I first met Sam twenty five years ago. My roommate was groveling for an omelet, sprawled in his bed. He had been missing his turn at cooking breakfast for the fourth day in…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 