Respected Mr. Gaitonde,
I have reached Tikwadi. As I had promised you in our last meeting when you had unnecessarily criticised me for the lack of seriousness, I have taken this job extremely seriously. Let me be extremely clear; your ultimatum that if I do not work sensibly very soon will lead to me losing my job had nothing to do with the deftness with which I have decided to travel.
Anyway, things are absolutely fine here in Tikwadi. There have been no untoward events until now. I think the...
The lady on the microphone announced in her squeaky voice, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Mumbai airport.” Oas groaned, closed his eyes, and contorted his face like only an exasperated 75-year-old can. Having heard her numerous times in the last couple of hours, he was tired of listening to her any more.
“Does she think I’ve never been to an airport before?” he muttered under his breath. “Bah. I’ve been on planes for longer than she’s been on earth!” The staff was running helter-skelter on t...
Raghav woke up from his deep slumber; he wasn’t prone to these breaks in his sleep as long as there wasn’t a reason for that. He felt he heard a constant buzzing sound; he wasn’t hearing any now. He attempted to gain his full senses. He looked at the dimmed screen of his iPhone; it hadn’t woken him up as there were no new notifications. He wasn’t fully awake yet as he could hardly see anything around through his dizzy eyes. He attempted to see the time again on his iPhone; the screen read 03:28....
“Yes?” Ninad heard a confused, deep whisper at the other end.
“This is God speaking,” Ninad spoke loudly, trying hard to control his laughter at the same time. “You have some dues to clear, mister. Can we talk?”
Ninad was having the time of his life, making prank calls from the comfort of his room. The rotary dial telephone had been his entertainment hub for the last few hours now. But things were about to change for the worse.
“Need a single-bed room for today,” Ninad ordered the receptionis...
Rick was following this foreign body across his own home for quite some time now. He did not like new people entering his den, rather he scorned all who did. The loneliness that the fate had stewed into his existence had made him finicky. For him, the life was far better when he was left alone.
And Rick was always alone. He was alone when he first opened his eyes in an orphanage. He was alone when he first learned to walk, when he uttered his first word. He was alone with his foster parents — p...
“Gotya, wake up, you bum.”
Gotya was shaken up from his sleep. He shuddered, then forced his face to point to where the sound was coming from. He let in as much of his father’s looming figure as his hazy vision allowed.
Gotya’s father was tired of Gotya’s utter lack of competence at any work there possibly was to do. Gotya, on the other hand, was fed up with the extreme truculent manner in which his father constantly chided him. Neither of them attempted to right anything. Gotya continued to l...
Rains were lashing the village of Tikwadi. No being, living, dead or inanimate, had had any respite from the persistent downfall of loaded raindrops. Pathways full of potholes were transformed into rivulets with uneven bed. Not that there was a dire need for use of any of these pathways.
Tikwadi was known for the distinct hebetude amongst the dwellers of this rugged land. There were different kinds of people - of varied nature, varied colour, varied beliefs and varied professions. What connecte...
Oas looked at the grumpy old sod again lying down in front of Sara’s picture. Well, at least that is what he thought Mr Marvel was. Somewhere deep down he knew he too was exactly the same — an old grumpy looking sod. And Marvel had made sure Oas is never allowed to forget that. He saw a human reflection in the feline every time he looked at him.
But as Sara had wished, Oas had made him his buddy, his partner for years now. They were inseparable — waking up and cleaning together; cooking and eat...
Sara is getting restless in the queue. There are still a couple of people standing ahead of her; they both look defeated. She wonders if she, too, is donning the same look. I am a Roy, she reminds herself, Roys may lose, but are never defeated. She plasters a smile on her face.
She has been standing in the queue for quite some time now. And that makes beaming further more difficult. Especially so, given she has no clue what the queue is for. She peers around; a vast, white, closed hall surround...
Thursday dawned on Tikwadi. For an outsider, no dawn in Tikwadi was any different. Villagers idled around just the way they always did. Men meandered, dilly-dallying with some unknown angst. Women hustled helter-skelter, pretending to be busy with some unknown chore. And kids spurted kooky from all directions, engulfed with some unknown euphoria. But for a resident of Tikwadi, every day dawned with a new crazy chapter.
Even today, a group of men squat around a smallish bonfire. They had Neem st...
Sam sat there in the corner looking at his fingernails. With a shrapnel in his hand, he was digging the dirt, which only he could see, out his fingernails. He looked up for a moment, and then looked around. Nothing much had changed.
It had been so long since he had locked himself up in this damp room on that fateful day that he had lost a sense of time. This was his personal man cave before that. This was a space where he ran all the experiments, all the projects that his day-to-day job did not...
Pia looked at the screen again and then looked down at her boarding pass. “AI-245”, she hummed, scrolling the screen flashing the flight numbers with her eyes. She was getting edgy unable to find the flight number on the list. She had long stopped relaxing in the passenger lounge. She had been standing right under the screen for last 20 minutes, every now and then darting her eyes at the Air India kiosk.
Such careless attitude, not an iota of professionalism, her heart snapped and sank. Should...
Shri sits on a roadside bench looking at the traffic as it crawls by. It is the early morning, and so is way too crowded being the peak office commute time. He looks on as vehicles drag themselves along past him. Now and again, there is that one lunatic who dares to zoom through such traffic.
Pedestrians walk around Shri trying to cross the road through this maniacal traffic. He sits there, staring blankly at nothing specific.
Tired, he looks at the calendar he holds. There are few scribblings...
Oas trotted to the window to peek outside, sliding aside the recently dusted curtains. He had dusted them just an hour back, but he still found some dust on his hands. He wiggled his hands and muttered few muffled swears towards the polluting city dwellers.
He went to the wash basin, took some liquid soap from the dispenser he had just refilled and washed off the dust. As a matter of fact, the dispenser did not need a refill. But a routine was the only thing that kept Oas’s life rolling. So ref...
“Remember that day when the Coffee House owner had thrown us out of his restaurant?” Jai stirred his coffee, and his memories.
“Of course,” Jui guffawed. “Any owner would have done that. We were shooing away every customer that was walking in.”
“There. That’s the laugh that was causing everyone to just freak out.”
Jui raised her brows and whacked him on his shoulders. “Yes, you had made me spit the coffee out of my nose, almost. Coffee running down my nose, water running down my eyes. And the...