The travel bug also mutates

Advanced age hinders accepting more than it hampers understanding. The resistance fuelled by conditioning than sound sense or fair play. My folks know there’s a contagion in the air and that it’s a mean one – after all, the chief minister of the state can’t be lying everyday on the dot at 6PM. But why […]
Midnight ice cream at India Gate

At this roundabout I give my turning the miss, deliberately. Once in the car I did it thrice prompting my co-passenger to firm up her mind on what she always suspected: I was a directionless nig-nog. Its hugeness doesn’t let me notice the hexagonal shape but allows me to zip, zigzagging through traffic. There are […]
Stilled life

Like my mother’s favourite refrain these days goes ‘every day is worse than Sunday.’ Then born and brought up bang in the middle of town with the landmark Kurisupally chapel next door and a busy junction where vehicles slowed to gather steam before springing in different directions, it was understandable that she found the quietude […]
Digits Entangled…AHU

(At home during the Corona lockdown, I decide to do some spring cleaning and come upon a bunch of albums where termites are having a ball. These happen to be of my folks from their years when they were younger than I am and dapper than I ever will be. As I show them the […]
The fastest Bullet

Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I have always believed this, in spite of the trouble it has caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being […]
Green skies, umber hills, white desert

Riding through a manufacturing belt has its rewards – the roads are laid out like duvets, nary a wrinkle; crouch a bit low into the wind and you can open throttle till your heart reaches your mouth. But there is a price to pay – vast swathes of the landscape, what would have once been […]
A boner for the goner

Love People who are getting ass always think it is funny when somebody else isn’t. Bukowski, Notes of a dirty old man ‘Quaranteens’ was a joke I received over WhatsApp. It was defined as ‘the generation of children born from quarantining entering teenage by the year 2033.’ I found it funny that is till I […]
Missing snakes and numen

The Gangaur Ghat rose resplendent in the path of the sun. The waters of the Lake Pichola on whose banks it loomed stood still awed by the grandeur that surrounded it – and in its midst. Pigeons cooed gratitude for tourists strewing popcorn, rising shortly in hordes indulging the Instagrammers among them. A gaggle of […]
Layam lives

She is probably the reason we are a nation of tea drinkers. A comely smile connects cherry-tan cheeks, a mop of lustrous black hair peeps from beneath a colourful headband that holds aloft a polished cane basket and between her dainty smooth fingers a rain-washed tea leaf. All around her the supernal green glow of […]