It happened when I was eight or nine. What refreshed the memory this past month was the hurried confession of a rookie Australian batsman to his captain, as he scrambled for the loo, “When you need to go to the…
The Siege of the Bog
Tag: Memoirs
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…
The Pentagon Down
The commander of the forces of associate provinces barged through the door of my tent two days before the clash of the legions. His chubby face was ashen with nothing less than volcanic fear; his fingers shook like peepal leaves…
Unnameable Things
Hailing from a childhood both untainted and unenlightened by television, I have fond memories of the whole bunch of siblings huddled up in the box room that our parents had converted into a common study, which also served as a…
Flames and Ashes
It is a Sunday morning and folks are huddled up in sheets. The protesting whine of autos whisking the unwilling souls to their workplaces has been lulled for the interregnum. The birds are a riot of notes and I am…
The Indian Shepherd
In a deal that clicked a couple of years too late for me, Syed would sell the disused Nikon from his studio for a thousand rupees to me. He loaded it with a complimentary black and white roll too, making…
An Owl Reflects
I was born before I was born. All owls are. True to the species, my fate was chiseled on ancient rocks by comets hurled from alien space. No one could change it after that, not even God. Certainly not father.…
It Happened to a Wobbly-legged Boy
Many years ago, when time had still not shriveled my mother, and I was still a shy little boy, I was struck by a bout of measles. The only memory of the suffering that has survived the quicksand of consciousness…
Truth Alone Triumphs
There was this ordinary man who having found an ordinary job found himself an ordinary girl who became his wife. Man’s parents were miffed as they had queued up several astrologically perfect girls for him to choose from. The man…
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…
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…
