Of Life and Love

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...

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...

"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 ...