I won an argument I had with my girlfriend about how she forgot something important to me. She said I was right, but I was a jerk too for forgetting about how the harshness of my words eroded her self-esteem.
I won an argument I had with my mother about how she should tell people they are wrong without humiliating them. She said I was right, but I was a jerk too for making her feel stupid and unappreciated.
(more…)Prof. Subash C. Mishra taught me one of my most important lessons at IIT Guwahati. And he did it outside the classroom.
I had written a dramatized story in a student magazine about the Battle of Saraighat. Prof. Mishra sent me an email saying he really liked the story and wanted to talk to me about it.
(more…)“You can hear her too, can’t you?”
The woman under the tree pulled herself closer to the trunk and frowned at me. She was scared, of course, because I was a complete stranger to her.
I took a step forward, tapped the trunk of the tree and said again, “She talks to you too, doesn’t she?”
The woman didn’t say anything, but she kept looking at me with the same suspicion she usually reserved for stray dogs.
(more…)Nine-year-old Zeenat likes sitting with her father on the driver’s seat of their battery-operated rickshaw. Every evening from four to six, she is a companion to her Abba, who plies his vehicle between Bada Chauraha and Phoolbagh in Kanpur.
Abba is happy that he gets these precious two hours to spend with his noorain — the light of his eyes — as he hardly gets time after work to talk with any of his children.
One Friday, when I was the only passenger they could find for the trip, Zeenat asked me if I was a student.
“I am a writer,” I said. “I write stories.”
“Really?” she turned towards me beaming. “Then you must know how to write.”
“Haha, yes and no. I can write, but I am still learning how to write better.”
“Then why did you lie?” she frowned.
(more…)If you are wondering what one million words look like, consider this: the seven books in the Harry Potter series amount to 1,084,170 words. Now the second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is about 85,000 words. So, if we take the Harry Potter Box Set and pull out the second book, whatever is left is a very good picture of how many words I have written.
And this journey of a million words started with counting the fourteen in this line: “No matter how I start my career, I will retire only as a writer.”
(more…)I bought a copy of The Silence of Our Friends yesterday at Comic Con, Bangalore. It took me two pages of browsing through at the counter to know that this is a graphic novel I will enjoy reading and will cherish for a long time. And that is exactly how things seem to be turning out. I read the book today, all in one sitting, and kept going back to several of the conversations between the important characters and the oh-so-subtle imageries in the backdrop of the artwork. And it was in these revisits that I had the Aha! moment about this book.
(more…)“We should do this more often,” I told my friend.
I was with her at Urban Solace, Bangalore, in a room where a bunch of people had been cheering, clapping and high-fiving one another every two minutes. We had been playing Potpourri for almost an hour and a half and I had ended up laughing more than I had laughed in the whole week. I hadn’t realised I missed word games so much. Dumb charades, Pictionary, 20 Questions – I loved it. I had made new friends there too. And met an old one I hadn’t talked to in over six months. To top it all, I had gotten myself a free copy of Bhaavna Arora’s new book, a glass of green tea on the house and so many thoughts to munch over.
“Yes, we should,” she replied. “They have events like these every weekend before the parade.”
“Chalo chalo.”
(more…)“You remind me of the other men.”
Komal had not talked for a very long time. And for a very long time I had been trying to make her talk. It was painful to see an almost-eight-year-old girl always balled up in a corner, away from the other kids, beating herself up for faults that were not hers.
I had smiled, had joked, had played the clown, had even taken her to a very good ice cream place. But she had refused to talk. Until the day I almost gave up, cried, told her a bit about the sadness I carry in my heart, showed her a bit of the burden I carry on my shoulders and implored her to help me out. (more…)
Last year, Anandi had called me one afternoon with good news. “Bhaiji, I passed first class in Open University exam.” She had finally gotten herself a 12th standard degree. And she was betting on it to be her exit ticket from a life of suffering, the horrors of which very few of us can imagine.
“So, what now?” I asked.
“You know I wanted to be a doctor. But that’s too much to study. No no. I can never do that. So, I was thinking I will become a nurse. Tai also agrees.” (more…)
“Go, go. Get the cardboards. Can’t you see how the mosquitoes are all over the saab? Go go.”
We were on a street near a historical monument in a city that’s known all over the world for the most beautiful mausoleum any man has ever built for his beloved wife. The monument we were outside, however, wasn’t that mausoleum. It was a fort, some of whose inside walls had been red once and then yellow and finally white. Clearly, the father ruler hadn’t liked what the grandfather had built and in turn, the son ruler hadn’t liked what the father had changed. Yes, I was in a city of whims, where more stock was given to fancies of the emperors than was to the realities of its citizens. (more…)
Minakhi Misra