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Happiness lives somewhere under the white roof in green fields of regeneration. I hope recycling transforms shapes but retains the purity of the core. How does one define joy? A moment of exhilaration, trust and pleasure creating awareness of the privilege of existence. Decades ago, it was a smile. Now it is a smiley. We … Continue reading Back Home

Ostracised

“It’s only your interpretation. We don’t hate you.” Someone tries to calm the agitated woman. “You don’t …. But you expect me to be like you for acceptance with open arms. And that is not going to happen. Neither am I born like you nor will I make any effort to be there.” Silence follows. … Continue reading Ostracised

Free Flow

“Haven’t we done this word before?”, screams the disciple, “there’s a whole damn dictionary with 2,73,000 words to try.” “I wish you a successful career being a web crawler scanning words or an AI tool internalizing all that you read”, says the teacher as she engages in her newfound passion for experimenting with web tools, … Continue reading Free Flow

Fodder

Water boils in search of meat to become a broth. The journalist’s imagination becomes an itch. Will he find a story to metamorphose into an article? The girl walking alone on a desolate street, the vendor hawking fake goods, the couple recording a Reel in the hope of going viral – do they know someone … Continue reading Fodder

Uniqueness

It takes courage to stand alone. It takes time to accept that you may be shunned by a community for being different. There is someone out there pouring venom because you dare to reach out for something they did not think about. It takes protective armor to keep the sarcasm from damaging you. Uniqueness is … Continue reading Uniqueness

Wolf Meat

The long, dark hair and red lips are beautiful. But the extended eyeliner and lip color leaking out of the perfect bow-shaped mouth makes one feel as if she just walked out of a horror flick. Then she smiles and the aura changes. Well, it could be the makeup artist overdoing his job. Her beauty … Continue reading Wolf Meat

Desire and Destiny

Abandoned seeds grow into lush gardens, while I count the rocks on other paths, where milestones are vibrant but do not carry my name. I keep running incessantly in the hope of being first on the horizon. Pathways that miss the soles of my feet play host to temples that consecrate all that I wanted … Continue reading Desire and Destiny

Aria

I will take off from the point I ended my last piece on cats. I said, FM wanted to be with me. FM is back. I had decided to get a dog at a late stage in life so that the darling lives as long as I live. The separations I’d suffered of Chappy, my … Continue reading Aria

Musings

I lost the license to the stock photo despite having paid a hefty price for it. Is it a consolation that the photo has lost its premium with the advent of artificial intelligence? We mourn losses on losing the exalted ground beneath our feet built over decades of hard work, attention to detail and manipulation. … Continue reading Musings

Tribe of hunters

I walk on these streets like a hawk, though outwardly in casual mode. Why is that girl looking forlorn? Why is this guy staring at the window on the third floor? How many secrets does the hawker on the street carry? He tells me that the bazaar on the next street is called ‘Chor Bazaar’, … Continue reading Tribe of hunters