In Varanasi, Pappu Pandey gazed at his dear friend Lalu Mishra’s dead body on the pyre. He stood next to Lalu’s son Pratap waiting for proceedings to begin. He was at a makeshift crematorium ghat next to the main one at Manikarnika. It was for people who had passed away due to the lethal pandemic … Read more
Do you like stories about life, death, and human behaviour with a twist? Welcome to Kaleidoscope – short stories of many hues – which will haunt you, tingle your spine, provoke thought and, often, bring a smile. What if a patient in coma can hear everything around her? Why does an old man find an … Read more
It was a place where time stopped. The beauty was overwhelming. Rohan couldn’t get his eyes off the scene. He saw his father get the camera out and click a picture. “Tavleen would have loved being here,” Mr Rana said. “If only…she were here,” he sighed. “It is a spell-binding scene of nature,” Rohan agreed … Read more
Swami woke up the following day counting his blessings and realised that the tally did add to something that was not insubstantial by any means. “We have each other for company first,” he told Jigneshbhai and me. “And I have a boss like Raichand who gave me a week of leave on his own,” he … Read more
The strange thing about my new neighbourhood is that the screaming happens every day. Or more precisely, every night. It starts just before midnight and goes on way past it. Sometimes it goes on for two hours or more. With every passing minute, the screams just keep getting louder. They start with a loud scream … Read more
“It is quite extraordinary,” Swami said as Puttuswamy drove past Town Hall, “that whenever I do some research on a medical problem before going to a doctor, the symptoms I read about suggest that I have got all the diseases listed in their most malicious form.” Jigneshbhai realised that Swami and his Google doctor had … Read more
“Today is Friday, so let me wear casuals to work,” Swami thought while having his breakfast. The sun was bright in the sky and Ghatembur had risen to a pleasant Friday. Like most mornings, it was a hurried one for Swami, though being a Friday, it was slower than normal. “There’s nothing new in the … Read more
“My son doesn’t know what he wants to do. He only knows what he doesn’t want to do,” Swami told me and Jigneshbhai the other day while we sipped our coffee. “That’s not such a bad thing,” Jigneshbhai said. “Most people his age or for that matter, any age, don’t know even what they don’t … Read more
I have never woken up a single day of my life thinking that today I am going to protest. Actually, there haven’t been many things in life that I have felt like protesting about. The same holds true for Jigneshbhai. He likes a quiet life and doesn’t have much to complain about. So, that makes … Read more