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In the Name of Love | Bobby Hajjaj

They would have called Khaleq a degenerate, a vile beast. He claimed he was in love. Wise men have said that we contemplate all of existence through words; that words have strengths beyond their phonetic constraints, they tether our world to the heavens. But not all words are made equal.   What of the word ‘love’? What is it but a crippling fear of loss? If one’s soul is the rent of all earthly longing, then does not that fear disintegrate? Yet, they still say that love, human love, transcends the divine.   They say that all stories ever told are love stories, no matter how banal or how replete with anfractuous twists; there are those that unfold like salacious epic tales of the Mahabharata or the Arabian Nights; and then, there is the tale of Khaleq and Shahana.   [Read the rest...] “In the Name of Love | Bobby Hajjaj”

Wobbly Shades | Aditi Jain

Aasha wrapped the leftover rotis from last night's dinner in a faded, tattered cloth. The cloth seemed to be yielded by a worn-out lungi. The part of the rotis, which were over-baked, visible from the frayed patches, looked like black pustules on pale skin. She kept the thin wad in the outer pocket of Raghu's basta, rolled over its rugged canvas upper flap, and pressing the basta at its various panels, fastened the latches. Her hand span, while fastening them, was no less than a complacent yawning mouth, with the thumb on the upper flap and forefinger on the latch. The muted click sound of those shoddy aluminum latches was enough to balm her frowning forehead. She slung the bulging basta over her feeble shoulder. The strain of the rugged canvas strap was enough to prop a nuanced shallow chasm among the loosely gathered pleats of her pallu. Those pleats were the trough to the peaking ghoonghat, which was no less than a sand dune when casting a closer glance. Her eyes, which looked chronically jaundiced, were veiled, for they would itch inexorably, and the resulting purplish puffy tear duct with scarlet tear line rimming the yellow sclera was a nightmare in daylight. [Read the rest...] “Wobbly Shades | Aditi Jain”

The Man Who Ate in Hospitals | Meera Rajagopalan

You might spot Sabapathy at an odd place. The place is not by any means odd; it is Sabapathy’s presence, that is. You see, Sabapathy likes to lunch in hospital canteens. Every second day of the month, he devotes about an hour (or more) to planning out his sales visits at the offices of Papyrus, an intelligently named, but not-so-intelligently run retailer of office stationery. The planning is more elaborate than it sounds, for he does not just plan to make the sales calls; he plots them out so he can catch lunch at one of the hospitals nearby. Not for him, the glitzy hotels with shaded stickers to keep the light out, and air conditioning in. Not for him the elaborate printed menu cards with waiters by his side—he likes to visit hospitals where he can select from a limited set of dishes, where he must go and get the food himself, in an environment that is unmatchable for how little eating means. At night, alone in the suitcase-sized room of the Pandian Lodge in Triplicane, he relives his lunch to make his nightly dosai or idli more palatable. [Read the rest...] “The Man Who Ate in Hospitals | Meera Rajagopalan”

Doctor Aarnay and the case of Numbers | Angandeep Kr Chatterjee

I have never done this before. I have no idea how to do it. Writing a journal has never been my thing. I prefer medical blogs and articles rather than wasting my time in writing daily chores in a diary, or as in this case, a journal. Ah, well, I guess everybody needs to evolve in life. In any case, life is all about changes. That was what Professor Bloombelt used to say. [Read the rest...] “Doctor Aarnay and the case of Numbers | Angandeep Kr Chatterjee”

The Story In The Middle: Brooklyn 1996 | Leslie-Ann Murray

When I was young, my mother used to tell me that she was given the shittest end of the stick at birth, and as a result, her life would always follow the same path. So we can start this story anywhere in my mother’s life and the conclusion will be the same. When my mother stole my identity and left my brother Christopher and me to fend for ourselves in Trinidad, while she lived the supposed American Dream, I realized she told me about her shitty life because she was preparing me for my future. The day my mother vanished with my passport and documents to America, I started engaging in the art of - dis-remembering where I worked on forgetting my past, people from the past, and any feelings that would bring me down to my last skin. I curated a surface existence, full of quibbles about the weather, celebrities, local politics, and the latest trends. I’d post on social media about my happy childless marriage, share funny memes, and repost my husband and my vacation pictures we took three years ago in Paris. Side note: Brahim and I took that vacation because our marriage was failing again and it was another attempt to save the dredges of our love. Three years later, we are still paying off our credit cards from that vacation, and I have quietly moved into our spare bedroom. [Read the rest...] “The Story In The Middle: Brooklyn 1996 | Leslie-Ann Murray”

Mathai’s tryst with the wild | Sangeetha G

During the 1940s, many Syrian Christian families of Travancore were migrating to the sparsely populated forest lands of the Western Ghats. Sons of larger families, who were not satisfied with their meagre share of family property, felt the need to replant themselves in greener pastures. Syrian Christians then measured their success and achievement in life with the land they owned and with each added acre of land, their pride too swelled- the pride of having achieved something on their own and pride of being a respectable member of the parish community. Churches and the clergy weighed their members in terms of their wealth, which was measurable by the land they owned. The pomp of the parish church was directly proportional to the wealth of its members, as it was run with mandatory collections from the members. They had to part with a certain percentage of their earnings regularly to the church. If delayed, the church also had its parish “members” who would visit the houses and take away the church’s share of the farm produce. Needless to say, the wealthy always received better treatment from the clergy.  [Read the rest...] “Mathai’s tryst with the wild | Sangeetha G”

Biryani Blues | Sarthak Sharma

Some said that Saleem put afeem (opium) in his biryani. Rumour or not, all of our townsfolk had, at some point in their lives, believed it. Once, after getting into a verbal spat with Saleem’s son, my father announced confidently that he had heard from a villager that another villager had seen Saleem pour afeem in the biryani, and that from then on we were to eat at Kareem’s instead. [Read the rest...] “Biryani Blues | Sarthak Sharma”