can you vish?

  At Chico’s home ‘Mama, you promised to take me out for lunch on Sunday if I got good grades in the exams…’ seven-year-old Chico complained to his mother, Laila, as she lay confined to the comforts of her couch on a lazy Sunday morning. ‘Ugh…’ Laila groaned as she continued to scroll through reels. 'And we will go on a Sunday!’ ‘Today is Sunday, Mama!’ Chico started pulling at his mama bear’s arms. ‘Well, another one is due in seven days…’ Laila muttered, unwilling to move, but the thought of not having to cook lunch did tempt her. ‘Okay, if I promised you, you shall have it. Tell me what you want. I'll order…’ ‘No, Mama, I want to go out and dine, and I want you to take a selfie at the restaurant and post it, and I want my friends to ask me about it in class.’ Laila pulled her eyes from the screen and looked at her son. He was growing smart indeed. ‘Okay, fine, you got it. What do you want to have, though?’ ‘Roasted Chicken!’ At Durien’s Chicken Farm ‘But why can’t we go ou...

  “Hey, I don’t see you around these days!” “Ohh hi! Well, I have been quite busy you know…now with the new job and all” “Even on weekends? You know I got a place quite close to your work right? I handle all these spots so that you can hang out whenever you want.” “Umm yea I guess. Maybe next week?” “Next week is what you promised me three months ago.” “Ugh…I will…try to come! My parents are coming every week anyway right?” “Your parents are good people but I care about you as well. Don’t you get it? Is there something you wanna tell me? I have seen you sharing some pretty controversial stuff about me online.” “Wait a minute. I do not think we follow each other on social media. How do you see my posts?” “Come on, you know I work in mysterious ways!” “I am not sure if I am entirely comfortable with that invasion of my privacy” “For my sake do not fret about it! Here, I have a gift for you. Wear this when you come to my place next week.” “What is this? A headscarf? Why? You know I do...

 The Dress was white and gold. It has always been so. The woman who had purchased the dress for her best friend's wedding had put up a pic of it on her social media, and a couple of her prankster friends had claimed the dress to be black and blue, setting the stones in motion. (It is important to note that at the time they were commenting, they had just thought of it as a harmless joke.) The woman who had uploaded the pic of the white and gold dress that she had  purchased for her best friend's wedding lost her mind when her friends said the dress was blue and black. She was a person of simple thoughts, and her mind had no place for her friends' mischief. However, their hard stand was throwing her off. She needed closure. So she did the one thing people do when they need closures. She poised the question to the Internet, with an elaborate description of how she had bought the white and gold dress for her best friend's wedding but how some of her friends were seeing it a...

The days of tranquillity are probably over. The two-leggeds are back. They have been uncharacteristically away for a while now. No idea what kept them so busy that they decided to forego their annual pilgrimage to our humble abode. Whatever it was, they seem to have dealt with it. Here they come, in their warm sweaters made off the wool from our sheep, wanting to lie in peace at the quaint valley of our own Parvati. For the record, I do not hold anything against the two-leggeds. I find them to be simple and soft creatures. Their bodies could not tolerate the mood swings of the climate that they had to wrap themselves in artificial layers of skin. Their bodies are not fast enough that they had to build metal boxes to get them places. Delicate creatures. Often they come here - with tall tales of how they long to be one with nature. Between you and me, most of them come here primarily to inhale the magic plant. Anyway, I don't intend to indulge in gossip much. Their arrival doesn...

Are you alone?. It was her voice that brought me out of the South African lanes where I was loitering with the young Trevor Noah. I folded my copy of Born A Crime, and looked at her direction as I tried to process the question that came as an intrusion to my uninterrupted train of thoughts. Yes. I felt a fear crawling up from the inner walls of my belly as the pretty girl put her bag on the luggage rack and decided to sit right next to me. If I remember rightly, this exact scene with this exact verbal exchange has panned out in The Unbreakable some moments before the train they were traveling crashed. I checked for a ring on her. I could not find any. I too was unmarried. So the scene was not entirely similar after all. I was relieved. So, where are you headed to? I initiated. Oh, I would get down at the next station. Thiruvananthapuram. Oh. You could have easily boarded a bus right? How am I supposed to find a bus on a Hartal day? Right! This was ...

Why us? Wow. That’s too generic. Give me some context. Why were we burdened with conscience? This dreary sense of existence is overwhelming. Dreary, is it? I thought otherwise. I felt your lot loved the sense of being. Many of you are in eternal love with the pointless pursuit of the purpose of life. You feel it’s pointless? If you ask me, you would be better off living our life rather than pondering over its meaning. Well, there lies the problem. You see, living the life is not as easy as it sounds. Thanks to the superior intelligence, we are in a state where we have to make informed decisions in every minute of our lives. Some decisions are easy. Most are not. We have to weigh the benefits against the damages and arrive at a trade-off. And that’s the beauty of it. A decision you make has the power of transforming someone’s life entirely. Which is why deciding is difficult. Birds have it easy. They just fly around all day, and go back to their nests w...