Vagrant Meander

It had been a tiring night. The old man’s cough  wouldn't  stop despite all his efforts. Jivak tried the medicine given by the vaidya and when it was finished, he boiled some water in the dead of the night. On a good day, he could have added some cloves to it but today, there was none to be found. But the fits  wouldn't  stop. He sat by his bedside trying to soothe him by putting a wet towel on his head or by rubbing his chest. It was only when the dawn broke up that his father could catch some sleep. Jivak wrapped the rug around him tightly and despite his best efforts to remain awake, slept with his hand still on his forehead. Soon, his father was wheezing again. The medicinal syrup was over and there was not enough money to buy another one. The last time when Jivak went, the vaidya was kind enough to render a week’s medicine with only half the payment. Jivak thought of heating up some water again but the coughing was growing severe with time. It w...

The fading orange of the sky reminded him of the cheeks which went red yesterday due to the thrashing he received from his father. The colour and the pain had receded but there was a constant ache in his heart. Why my parents are always so unreasonable? yeah, he understood, smoking, as is written, must be injurious to health but is the constant beating useful in some way? He knew of peoples’ parents who never raised their voices on their children but his parents somewhat act like they get pleasure from the atrocities they commit on him. He had thought of running away from the house but there was nowhere to go. "May be, I should kill  them ?” he laughed at the thought; it seemed too childish and so the life went on with its mirth, joy, triumph and losses and every other emotion constantly interfered by his father's beatings. I would never act so unreasonable when I will have children of my own, he decided. He grew along with the fees paid for his education and the height of th...

‘Is there a story inside me?’, I asked myself. In the dead of the night, bored after watching an endless series of mindless youtube videos, I posed the same question I was trying to answer since morning. My insides were dry, thoroughly vacuumed of any remnants of creativity left, it seemed. It was only yesterday, while returning from office, that my mind was full of ideas; ideas conspiring to get themselves out, impatient to be conveyed, waiting to be laid out. And now, it was a parched earth; a river which had run its course; a graveyard of thoughts through which I was wandering aimlessly. ‘Is there a story inside me?’, I ask again. The sound echoed in my ears as if I am staring inside an empty well. There was no story inside me and I was not sure when again I might have one inside me. Through years of observation I have come to the conclusion that ideas come with an expiry date. Unless, made evident at the right fateful moment, they die a slow death and what is left is starve...

Two and a half years ago, the nation cringed, held its head in shame and erupted in protest. What of it? It’s Bu siness as usual. Girls are still being pinched, pushed, shoved, felt, caricaturised, discriminated and yes, are still worried. Worried to reach home by the evening, worried to move out at night, worried when in public transport, worried in Homes, Offices and between them and worried about their friends, mothers and daughters too. Being of eight or eighty doesn’t matter; someone needs to show the women her place. May be, two and a half years is too less a time,too less for a nation teeming with people to understand humanity. Too less to realise that may be, the other half (often referred as better but probably, the worse) is asking for its legitimate space in the milieu and to provide it such, won’t be an act of gratitude but to right the wrongs of a millennia. Too less to cast away the misogyny and accept what we should be and not what we have become. The wound is ...

'Why do you need to smoke? I mean always', said Harold. I smiled and looked at the warning scrolled on the packet: Smoking is injurious to health. The half burned cigarette was dangling from my lips while I leisurely leaned against a wall, a pose I assumed almost 20 times a day. ‘It doesn’t say whose health’, I said nonchalantly. I needed cigarettes as much as I needed Harold. Harold was my friend for last 15 years or more I am not sure as I had stopped counting. Friendship like cigarette settles down with time, the initial kicks and excitement you feel when you ignite it for the first time gives way to layers and layers of warmth, ash in case of cigarettes, which settles down in your physical system. Friends become a habit, sublime in their presence but conspicuous in their absence. We were a group of 7 friends: Harold, Tim, Esther, Andria, Henry, Luke and me, Sith. We went to the same college, landed in jobs in the same city where our college was and have been tog...

In the world we see today, mathematics stands for specific generalisations, absolute truth based on empirical data and testable principles falling in the domain of science while Philosophy deals with abstract theorising, conflicting rational views and contested principles falling in the domain of humanities. Mathematics seems to have grown out of our material needs (how much meat should be hunted given that it turns bad in x days) while Philosophy seems rooted in our morals and conscience trying to give meaning to human existence and its values. But are these domains so different? One of my friends used to draw concentric circles writing knowledge in the smallest one illustrating how all knowledge started from one common point and then, started branching out in different specialisations (so, the second one might be Science and Humanities with third as its various streams and so on), thus somehow creating his own ‘Big Bang’. He would sit in his pressed kurta in the veranda on...

Out of a beautiful dream, I am plunged into a nightmare. “Where’s the booty?” A tall lanky man asks. He is hiding behind a veil. I see around. There are three of them all with their faces hidden. None of them is particularly well built unlike me. I can take them on. After all, I wouldn’t part with the booty so easily. I can feel my racing pulse, my pumping heart, my throbbing veins. I can feel the sweat on my forehead. I can also feel something else. The cool metal. My heart stops racing. The gun has a calming effect on me. “Where’s the booty?” the tall lanky man asks again shoving the gun against my forehead as if he wouldn’t need to fire a bullet to kill me but would rather pierce me with the gun. I point towards the sky. One of them hauls himself on the bed and in one jerk severs the fan from the roof. And there it is. Wrapped in a paper four gleaming white gems inside the canopy. It has been six months since I saw them. No, I couldn’t part with them so easily. I got a b...