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Weekly Contest #178
Sheila tapped the right heel of her brown pump on the cold floor of the corridor outside 6B. Her hands were freezing. It was five minutes past the bell. The cacophony inside the classroom with the young art teacher shouting, “Okay, that’s enough. Wind up! Those who have not finished, please complete it at home!” refused to subside. The 11-year-old marauders continued to work with a frenzy on their masterpieces by snatching the supplies from each other.Sheila glanced at the second hand on her watch ticking away for another minute and took a d...
Weekly Contest #176
My new mom has a moustache. He calls me by my old name Charlie and feeds me out of purple-coloured pouches.I don’t want to relive the trip along with my brother in a cage to this new house. I just sleep on the upper edge of the sofa on my old mom’s t-shirt. The new sights, smells, and spaces are a bit overwhelming but I am trying to fit in. My brother who is hiding in one of the lofts right now could never fit in though. He made his escape within a week of arriving here and left my new mom in guilt-ridden grief. For a while.My new mom is a f...
Shortlisted for Contest #173 ⭐️
Every time I visit you, which is roughly once a year, I notice, the sharp edges of the glass, cemented on top of the high compound wall have become fewer and grown smoother.The iron gate, on the threshold of which we grandchildren sat on those summer evenings, as you called out to the passing ice apple vendor and peeled the juicy delicate fruits on which we pounced and suckled like piglets, could use a coat of paint.There is still that pomegranate tree with its gnarly branches, guava with its mottled leaves, and bushes of plantains with thei...
Weekly Contest #171
Taking a bike trip on the unforgiving mountain roads in winter was for the headstrong, or the heartbroken.Capt. Sanjay Singh stepped out of his cozy company commander’s hut in Fukché. Sepoy Tshering, his buddy, tagged along with a duffle bag that had canned food, winter clothing, and a sleeping bag.They met Subedar Asif Ali and two more sepoys, outside the compound wall on which the regimental emblem- an ibex with ‘SCOUTS’, and Julé were painted in deep maroon. The three gave a snappy salute as the captain approached them. Subedar Asif Ali h...
Weekly Contest #167
After Ma tucks in the edges of the net, and turns off the light with a “goodnight, kanna”, the show starts. It begins with a candyfloss man with holes for eyes and a gaping mouth pedalling a bicycle at the far end of the grid around me, the bell a-tringing. Once he comes close to my face, his fluorescent form hops off the bicycle, prances around, and opens his mouth wide enough to let out a school of fish that quickly swim on the net in all directions and slide off it; all but one. That one grows bigger within seconds and bites my toe. And t...
Weekly Contest #165
This was all my fault. To be born as a disappointment, to have lived a dishonest life, and then to have died as a discontent being. Yes, this was all my fault. You see, when I was born, I was dressed in pink, and placed in a blue crib in a blue-walled room. I cried in suffocation. It was my fault. As soon as I started waddling in my diaper and started joining the dots of what people said to me, about me, and after me, I sensed I wasn’t welcomed into this world with a happy heart. I was held half-heartedly by those who would have loved to dre...
Weekly Contest #163
Violence has a way of breaking you. Even if it’s the other guy whose bones are crushed.The food is all right. Mostly vegetarian. Suits me fine. It’s the sun and the wind; one splitting your skin open and the other rubbing the salt in. I am beginning to get used to that as well. It’s not for nothing I walked miles in the Mexican desert following a General. Or ran across the streets of London as the air raid alarms blared in 1917. After all, my muscles hold the miles they walked to cover stories along the length and breadth of Michigan as a yo...
Weekly Contest #162
Dosa has been a constant in my life ever since I got the first explosion of Andhra gunpowder in my mouth. It is steadfast, satisfying, and never leaves a bitter aftertaste. Today, I need to order something big. Like a 4-foot-long dosa, with a bucketful of sambar, a mound of mashed potato, and four types of chutney. To celebrate my release from the clutches of a salad-munching witch, who snorted gingerly every time she rode on my pillion to this hallowed hall. I look at the menu of 101 Dosas, even though I know it like the back of my hand by ...
Weekly Contest #161
CW : Reference to suicide, violenceThe mofussil bus threw a cloud of dust and smoke on Lokesh’s face before he could turn away after getting down. The peepal tree stood at the same place, he noted; and the platform around it. Only the wastrels and old men who sat under it, a few chewing betel nuts meditatively, and others gossiping and observing who came to the village and who left it, seemed to have changed. Fifteen years would have sent a few to their graves and others back to their homes.He hoisted his light backpack on his right shoulder...
Weekly Contest #158
CW: Mention of death by suicide/homicide.“Normally, one cannot distinguish between homicidal poisoning and suicidal poisoning,” a hoarse voice from the witness stand rasps.Unless someone cries too much or too little.I shush my mind. I am not here in the capacity of an advocate or a private investigator. But just as a teenager sent to the courtroom to figure out if she is meant to pursue law.The Judge, honourable C.K. Gopal looks on impassively at the prosecuting witness. And coughs.“That will be all, your honour,” the rotund prosecuting advo...
Weekly Contest #157
Mr Roy was sure of one thing the day he retired. He would bury the trophies won in his 30 years of corporate battles in the backyard of his home. And grow brinjals on them. He had observed; how the gardener tended to the lawn, grew seasonal flowers in the meticulously prepared beds, and harvested bountiful vegetables from the backyard of his company-given accommodation. He had envied the meditativeness he exuded as he tilled the soil, sowed the seeds and pruned the shrubs. A life full of beauty and harmony surrounded by nature, not sniping i...
Weekly Contest #156
Growing up, my father taught me two things.Don’t talk to strangers. And never try to turn the clock back.Yet, the precarious situation that I find myself in, demands that I do both. Or at least one of them.I stop the turban-clad man on the high street and ask “Where am I?”He is taken aback. I’m sure he doesn’t get asked this question every twilight by a proper white girl in her teens, strolling past a temple.He communicates through incoherent speech, head nods, and movement of his forearms. I catch ‘Mysore’, ‘mem sahib’, ‘danger’ and ‘go hom...
Weekly Contest #155
I gallop on the steep pathway that leads to Red Hearts Inc. The dewdrops on the rolling meadow down the slope cradle the newborn sunshine in them. On reaching the plateau sprouting the giant facility, I canter towards the entry gate. The blooms have fired up the trees close by and fill my breath with fragrance. Only after I punch in do I ease into a trot and make my way along the cold labyrinth of the facility. I manage to take my position in the assembly line before Mr. Eagleye begins his rounds. In the division where I work, the demand is ...
Winner of Weekly Contest #154 🏆
Your eyes pour the moonlight on my path as I turn my back to you. In the dead of the night, I walk with my family, away from my home, my street, my town, and what was till yesterday- my country.There are other families with us. Snaking their way to Lahore railway station. In fear, pain, and certainty that their lives are not theirs anymore. It can be cut, morphed, or smoked out within a matter of seconds. Even if they get on that train to Amritsar and arrive there in one piece, they would just be a wisp of what they once were.I walk. With a ...
Weekly Contest #153
CW: Language, violenceThey had an inkling something was not right when the bundle didn’t bleat. But it was dark and they were a bit drunk. And desperate. Now, under a lush tamarind tree close to the hills and far from the village, they were jolted into sobriety and daylight by the tiny human in the bundle.Rarely in their career spanning 10 years did they commit such blunders. They had occasionally bagged an earthen pot mistaking it to be an ash gourd or heaved a sackful of cow dung cakes believing them to be potatoes. But carrying a human ki...
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