How I wish the book was never found….. It contains recipes for potions used to cure village folk. The healers were worshipped, and charged a king’s ransom for healing poverty-stricken patients. Amanda, the oldest maid in the palatial household, mentions boxes full of gold bars in hushed tones. She’d earned the honour of visiting the … Continue reading Dis-ease
The sequence of events matters in establishing the cause-and-effect scenario. It’s the meat of the story. Promos are just crumbs thrown around to build up an appetite. The words ring in my ears as I listen to different versions of an unusual incident. It’s a lesson in building narrative. What’s scary is the impact these … Continue reading Storytellers’ Nightmare
Why has she not woken up today? The alarm rang half an hour ago… His granddaughter asks him to open a box, and he indulges. The slap from a toy trapped inside shakes him up, but he smiles and moves away. The beaver slap comes in the form of a message from his wife, “Just … Continue reading No prying rights
A young man from a premier management institute says “My father told us we can only do well in jobs, not business.” Anita suffers injustice in her marriage because her father once told her, “You are neither beautiful nor a heiress, so do as you are told to do.” Nyla, a qualified gynaecologist, is a … Continue reading Yellow Bellies
Another award function, journos pushing around for bytes, broken statements scattered around with no resemblance to the spirit of the conversation. He is tired, dog tired of celebrating a successful persona, a persona built painstakingly to meet expectations, a persona that’s not him. It reminds him of the plastic excitement of puppies who escape with … Continue reading Dog tired
She has been wearing white clothes for decades, and least of all because she is a Hindu widow. Black was discarded because it revealed the darkest parts of her subconscious. She thought about all the people and events which brought misery to her life, and the non-verbal outpourings from her mind came close to what … Continue reading Flying envelopes
She had been waiting for this day for months. The day when the results of the national writing contest would be announced. She had poured her heart and soul into her story, hoping to impress the judges and win the grand prize: a trip to Paris and a chance to meet her favorite author. She … Continue reading Lost opportunity
Observing mental health issues brings a different kind of awareness to me. Is it only about chemical reactions in the brain? It seems to me that it is more about boundary lines – boundaries we grew up in, boundaries in which our thought processes were dumped in and locked up. Someone decides to transgress the … Continue reading May – Mental Health Awareness Month
It's a treasure I found, and let me hide it somewhere. I’ll open it at leisure and extract toys to play with. Guess it should keep up the novelty for a week. And meanwhile, I need to keep the humans humoured. They have a bad habit to come looking for things. And how Mama shrieks… … Continue reading Treasure
“Age-ism may turn out to be the biggest mistake in decades to come”, opined the auditor. “Businesses lack the perspective of experience.” “Cultural fit is a problem, and then baby boomers and Gen X ask for a lot of money”. “It’s good to keep an eye on the bottom line, but without losing sight of … Continue reading Age-ism
Reena Saxena 