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The Welcome Break

You need a break from office! Your clients can sense that when you start answering their questions with “that’s wonderful”. Your boss can too and so can most of your colleagues. Those who know you, that is. Those who don’t, shrug or raise an eyebrow like they always do. Being strange and being weird are the same things perhaps. You have spent the better part of client due diligence meetings conducting deep research into the resort you would like to visit. And you didn’t forget to read the ‘family’ section of the reviews, of course. Your 4 year old son will accompany you. So will his mother. You check in on the morning of D-day, looking appropriately tired from your back-breaking corporate job. Even the bell-boy notices. And you notice that he noticed. The resort and the rooms, and yeah, the pool – they all look almost the way you saw them in the travel portal. Almost! As soon as the bell-boy leaves after a hesitant wait for the tip you never gave, take a moment t
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A Caravan of Dreams

Mingled with the lack of breeze, the afternoon heat was oppressive. And to top that, the sunshine was so bright it hurt the eyes. Abhishek sat in the small college cafeteria, on a spartan metal/plastic chair at a metal/plastic table. There was just another couple slouching over their drinks in a corner of the cafeteria, whispering to each other, smiling often. He, on the other hand, sat alone. He had just bought himself a coke bottle, the small one that has the legendary feminine shape. As he sat watching the bottle placed on the table in front of him, the bottle sat and sweated. Moisture had formed on the surface and one of the droplets had just acquired an existence large enough to pull it out of its static, rooted perch and push it on its journey down the glass surface. The droplet moved fitfully, in jerks, stopping to weigh its new situation, its next moves. His eyes had caught the movement just when the droplet had left its birthplace and they had followed it with a
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A MOMENT AGO

"Dammit!" Raghav cursed with clenched teeth, his brow lined with sweat drops shaking from the effort his jaws were making. He could barely remember what had happened and how he had reached here. His mind seemed bizarrely fluid. Ear-piercing hooters broke out just then and the whole facility was agog in the harsh noise; lights flashing red everywhere. The lockout gates would have started falling into place, remembered Raghav, as he knelt with his head bowing down and nearly touching the hard rough concrete floor. He held a device with an LED panel that was glowing red, with the words "FATAL LEVEL" flashing in black letters. He recalled how demurely the night had begun. He had settled down in front of his large computer screen at home with a favourite documentary about the Egyptian Pyramids, beer at his left side, cheese-lings at his right. He had placed his feet on the fluffy foot rest under the computer desk and sank back, feeling the cold wet beer
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Amnesia

Floopy the mouse sat on the window sill. White rings floated in her vision and her body ached. She felt as if she had recovered from a blackout. Just then she heard a faint sound of a paw hitting the floor boards and realized to her horror that the filthy obese house cat Morgan was close by. She had to get away, and fast! The window sill was an easy jump for the monster. Floopy frantically surveyed the kitchen and saw the open skylight on the opposite wall. If only she could reach there! Jumping aboard the cabinets under the skylight was the easy part; the trick lay in crossing the open floor. She heard the cat again and judged that she was some distance away, probably in a crawl. Floopy eyed the chopping board sticking out from the kitchen shelf running between the two walls. She gathered air in her lungs, courage in her heart and jumped, only to land short of the appliance. One of her claws caught the edge of the board and she desperately gripped it and hung on, as panic gr
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Living On The Edge

This is not the first time that I have encountered ideas about something best described as inevitability. But events of late and a documentary I recently watched made me realise that even though inevitability is far grander and far closer than I thought, that it is both general and intensely personal, there exists an equally strong foe that counters and overcomes it completely. Interest in technology, science, history and engineering has always, from a very young age, made me aware of the destructive power that the weapons of late twentieth century have bestowed upon man. And I realised later that this power does not rest in the hands of the best of men, but in most cases, in the hands of politicians, demagogues, deluded autocrats and weak wavering democrats. Momentous is the realisation that a small glitch, an incorrect reading or result of a computer system, and a weak and panicking mind in charge of acting may combine anywhere in the world even today to deliver that first irr
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Chaah Na Paya Tujhko Phir Bhi

This one is dedicated to my lovely wifey, who has always been curious, encouraging and supportive of my poetry and writing, egging me on; and dedicated to the experiences that shape life. After many years of a poetry-less rat race... "Chaah na paya tujhko phir bhi Chaahat ka anjaam pata hai, Naam juda na tera mera Par main tha badnaam, pata hai; Jannat mein bhi tab charchey they Tere mai ke, maikhaney ke, Chhalke they mere bhi paimaney Palkon se har shaam, pata hai? Madmast zamaaney ne gaye, kissey Aur guney taraney bhi, Teri aankhon ke aagey tha Ye afsana gumnaam, pata hai? Chaah na paya tujhko phir bhi Chaahat ka anjaam pata hai, Naam juda na tera mera Par main tha badnaam, pata hai; Na hai kusoor tera ismein, Na hai kusoor mera ismein, Hai mera par koi mulzim, Us mulzim ka kya naam pata hai? Chaah na paya tujhko phir bhi Chaahat ka anjaam pata hai, Naam juda na tera mera
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Wadala Bridge - a child's tale

It wasn’t that Hamid had been born to see days of luxury, days of worldly comfort, or even days of simple basic human dignity. It wasn’t that he was accustomed to bright night lights and breezy afternoons. He was not. His world had always been a dim world. But even so, he vividly remembered that night, the darkest of all nights. Hamid had not known many seasons in his seven year old life then but he could make out the difference that night. He had only known the sweltering summers and the wet, damp, putrid, almost nauseating rains. He couldn’t have known any better and any different, for the city had no other seasons. Mumbai was an endless summer worsened by a seemingly endless, alarming and sometimes lethal monsoon. But he knew that season to be different. December had brought along a certain firmness in the chill the air carried at nights, a certain stubbornness. Actually, the air even used to feel biting sort of! Hamid had not known such sensations. Oh! The shivers, most inc
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