Himesh is fussy about the order in which ingredients should go into vegetable pulao. Butter, followed by an equal amount of mustard oil, cumin seeds, chopped chillies and onions, crushed ginger and garlic, minced mint and coriander leaves, a handful…
Tag: Short Story
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 shall tell you the story exactly as he whispered it to me. I first met him at Sadar Bazar in Agra. I had just purchased a paperback called Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and was sipping a…
The Bungalow by the Tracks
Five years after she fled to Delhi in an unreserved coach of Lucknow Mail on the eve of her proposed marriage, Miranda returned to the town where she had grown to be a woman from a blob in a womb.…
The Crusted Slice
Always on Dussehra, my sister who is a rung up in the family ladder would remember the older one who lived with us briefly. She was not too old when she fell ill on a winter night that thundered and…
End of Dusk
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. His lungs cannot pull in half the air they used to soak till the last…
A Far Cry from Mr Darcy
The concluding part of 'Never Forget a Ruby' As I stood stiff under a jet stream of water, the set of four faces kept throbbing in my head, they all saying something to my eyes squeezed shut. Hemant, Robin, Sonia,…
A Polar Bear Remembers
'There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.' ~ A Study in Scarlet Read the preceding part 'The Man from Baker Street' here. The story begins here in 'Never Forget a Ruby' ‘Yes, I am…
The Man from Baker Street
(The story begins in 'Never Forget a Ruby' Read it here. ) I was about to begin hating ‘dodger blue’ cars for years to come but I didn’t know it then. It was morning still and we were swarming the…
Never Forget a Ruby
She was not a friend, nor a classmate, nor a social sibling –the veil under which some people fraternised in the college. We were graduating in the same year and we both had English Literature and she was in the…
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…
The Monk in the Rain
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with March, the onset of summers since early days. The weather in that small patch of year is just perfect, neither hot nor cold and rarely wet. The air is fragrant with panicles bursting on…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 