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Showing posts from April, 2013

[Independence Day Special][Short Story] Pis-Aller

  "He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well"-John Milton He was in his nineties now, slow, fragile and nearing death. Still, every day he used to wake up at 6 in the morning and stare outside the window, blankly. They said when he was young, he was agile, healthy and quick, no one knew what his profession was, but he did retire rich at the age of fifty-five. His only son used to visit the old rooms twice a day, 'Baba, I request you again. Come with us to the big house. What is there in this dump?' his son used to question. 'I can't leave now, there is one final task left son,' he used to smile, 'One final task.' Baba had sent all the furniture from the room to the new house but kept himself a bed and the jewel beaded box. 'No one has ever removed the box from under the diwan since last 20 years, baba,' the daughter-in-law use to question, 'Don't let the servants, but please let me

The Prophecy of Indian Railways

The thing about prophecies is, they tend to start a war more than prevent it. If Kansa never heard the prophecy of Krishna we would never see the battle. If Voldemort never knew about the potter boy, we would be saved seven horrible movies. But the thing about prophecies is that they exist. Over the period of time, I have come to believe that someone somewhere is jotting down prophecies about me in an language illegible by human. You know something is amiss, and bam that thing is amiss right then and there. There is not a single moment of doubt in my mind about the prophecy of railway and me. Murphy had once said, if there is a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there is a ninety percent guarantee you will get it wrong. During my junior college days there are people who sleep on the railway platform who used to watch me run after a train almost every day. Sometimes I even ran after it from front. This made one day, a homeless guy come towards me and said, 'You ar