Boondock saints
A tribal woman, heavily pregnant, leaned against the iron gate sliding it open and walked into the health centre. Her gait was strained as she had broken water. Too weak to press the electric bell she just about managed to spread out a mat on the corner and collapse. She was alone; her husband was […]
Selfie culture to the rescue
The last time I came to Jharkhand was when ‘selfie’ was, forget the culture it is today, nowhere in the lexicon-horizon even. It was seven years ago to make a film for a livelihood program funded by the central government ministry of rural development and implemented by Don Bosco Tech in the more backward districts […]
Hitch hike
There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying. Why don’t you dance?, Raymond Carver. For most part of the wedding ceremony, the bride was missing from the altar. She was puking her guts out because of all the spice she ate. She was […]
Pushkar fair – Mela in the air
They are all Meeras Throbbing notes twanged out from a three-string kamaicha. Wood-ringed fingers tapped on a ghara. A sadhu with the longest dreadlocks sat like the sachem he was surrounded by attitude and subalterns and general onlookers including me. Thick wafts of grey-blue smoke rose from a smouldering chillum that briskly changed hands […]
Good food diaries – second day, third helping
It’s like your first dinner with a date – you take a while to gather gusto. Except for the food on the way you know little else. You look around and take in the décor with intensity, inspect the chandeliers, peer approvingly at paintings and nod at waiters. You laugh nervously, not mirthlessly, a few […]
Bahraich, international border
There is not much difference when you look at Bahraich from half a kilometre in the sky and from street level. It is a tumbleweed cluster of shanty dwellings, lean-to shops, road-facing sculleries, pointy minarets, lowing buffaloes snacking on plastic, milling rickshaw pullers and little figurines cowering in black, chaffering with lingerie and veggie […]
Red Fort revisited: In the footsteps of the last emperor
Heritage plays a temporal trick – it can make history feel within reach. I walked up the pathway leading to Lahori Gate, entrance to Red Fort, where friends waited. On my right was the eyesore barbican built by Aurangzeb; Shah Jahan, his father, who built the fort, was miffed with the looming gorgon in garish […]
Birdbrain? Ask the butterfly!
Butterfly, butterfly Fly in the sky Butterfly, butterfly Flies so high Butterfly, butterfly Lands on my thigh Butterfly, butterfly Motionlessly lies Butterfly, butterfly Gracefully dies (Full transcript of poem ‘Butterfly, butterfly’ by Adryan Bates.) For a life that rarely goes beyond a couple of weeks the amount of cloak and dagger was overwhelming. I, […]
Oh, blogger!
(Buoyed by the inclusion of my short ‘Highway 666’ in ‘Have a safe journey – The world’s first collection of short stories on road safety‘ I thought I’d do another zany one. While the first one takes place in a world I am yet to accustom – the underworld (of the Gehenna-order), this one I […]