(Read the Part -I Here) Never trust the rains. Not when you have lost a ton of outdoor fun as a child to twisting torrents. Nor if your classmate’s skull was squished like a melon under a passing truck when…
The Evening That Killed (Part-I)
There hangs a small painting, silent and unnoticed by most, on a wall of my house. It is a lonely work of art, facing a quiet space in the narrow passage leading to the door. It was a present from…
Nor Sleep Nor Dream
I slept dreamless on a Sunday noon. Marooned on an isle of lifelessness, spurned by the mattress, night after night, battling slumber's flight, it came as a boon. Life sits heavily on the chest; The incest with the inhaler brings…
The Sour Flute
(Is fair work rewarded often? Du Fu was a great Chinese poet who lived from 712 to 770 AD. He was doomed to a sad and deprived life as he failed in his many attempts to qualify the official civil…
The Giggling Gladiator (Part II)
(Read the 'Part I' here) If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Nalini came right from Uranus. She was a female form hacked out of the purest permafrost. Everything about her was cold, sharp and angular, the…
The Giggling Gladiator (Part I)
Chhotu is the secret police. Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti. Period. For the incredulous, yes it still exists. Of course, it has a different name. Dare me not to come clean. If I expose him here, he will be soon found floating…
Zinfandel Moments
The mind is a muddle of Zinfandel. Unlike Coleridge however, no rhymes pour forth. I become an extension of the furniture I am wedged in. So, I can’t tell you about my crush who kissed the neighbourhood clown behind the…
To The Living
You want me to spread my heart on the bed, It’s both broke and cold; I watch my feet as I move ahead, There are cadavers on the floor. What is this they won’t let me peel? A sheet, a…
For My Eyes Only
We've been old mates, glasses and I! And when I was visited upon by the first installment of friendship, fancy dealerships were not in vogue. The optometrist, who pronounced my fate in terms of twin minus fours, also scribbled the…
Ghostwalker
Standing on the untilled land, The wind sliding past my hairless pate, I proffer water with trembling hands And light the lamp of a withered fate. They said your soul will wail and wander On the breath and the…
My son, must I stay?
“I fear yours is no living soul. How could it make this distant flight? You came: the maple woods were green. You went: the pass was black with night." ~Du Fu / Vikram Seth The hamartia that ruled my father’s life was…
A Burqa for the Budding Belle
On a day when Kisan Bapat Baburav Hazare threatens to take on Mumbai, on a day when Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar threatens to strike the hundredth hundred, I am moved enough to remember all those eyes that peer out of darkness…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 