I miss the days. When cupcakes were just vanilla sponges with icing. Sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. I miss the days. When I wore fake gold bangles and played pretend in our building’s abandoned stairwell for hours. I miss the days. When I would go to sleep in Prague and wake up in Zurich. When cupcakes could heal, gold was kept for … Continue reading 5/24
How To Kill Your Daughter? A feather a night while she sleeps. You pluck her wings with a knife. One by one so she doesn’t feel a twinge. When at last you’ve scrapped her skin raw. You sit her down at the dinner table. And tell her she’s now free to fly. Again she’ll ask her; maaye ni meriye…Chamba kitni durr? You smile … Continue reading 4/24
Sitting in front of an unopened shop in Shazhou market. The cold stairs gives some salve to my buttocks’ spasming muscles. I think of Pluto. Maybe I’m from Pluto. Scraping its foil between my teeth, I savour last of the choco-pies (original) I found earlier. Maybe declaring it a non-planet cut its transmissions to earth? What if they are still looking for me? … Continue reading 3/24
Both of their eyes were on me. One in a checkered lungi in the front, the other in trousers at the back. Thick thighs, curly hair, bulging eyes, darkest of skins; like apes I always heard them say. It was the first time for all of us. I raised my fingers to my lips, their chests heaved and froze. Velvety warmness coated my tongue. One … Continue reading 2/24
8.35 a.m. I wedge between an armpit and a belly just as the metal doors slide shut. There’s a collective let go of sucked breaths and the gaps between bodies close in. Snug, dazed, slithering in each other’s fluids. Infused with burnt rubber, morning breaths, unwashed hair and hastily splashed colognes. A tin of human sardines moving at 110km/hr. Digging into the plush soles of … Continue reading 1/24
1/24 That first session back is always the hardest. No matter how many times you promise yourself that this time I won’t quit the gym, something always happens to make you fall off the wagon. Purists would say you don’t have what it takes but I’d ask back if life has ever happened to them. The life coaches would probably say you need to stop … Continue reading Day Two
I finally figured out how to loop the digital radio through the lounge speakers yesterday. A rather smooth unplugged version of 90’s “ghar se nikalte hi” is streaming through this early Sunday morning. There’s a slight autumn chill in the air but the sun streaming through these huge overhead windows over the lounge is beautifully toasting everything including my cold toes. It’s been a long … Continue reading Those You Love, Don’t Define Who You Are
You know how sometimes you watch something on television or listen to on the radio and that moment gets etched in your memory forever? I’ll never forget Indra Nooyi in an interview with David Bradley some years ago when he asked her whether women can “have it all”. I remember slumping back in my chair, the wind knocked out of me when she replied, “I … Continue reading To the Single Woman Busy Making Her Story Count
9. /Stuck/ Florence, Italy One cannot be anything but be in gratitude to wake up on a cool, cloudy Sunday morning in Florence, Italy. To spend the morning lingering through the open air markets in San Lorenzo, drinking coffee and eating fresh pizza slices. To walk around the Piazza del Duomo in slight drizzle under your umbrella observing the romanesque, gothic and renaissance influences in … Continue reading 9. Stuck
8. /No/ Barcelona, Spain I should have known when we landed well after 12am, through a rattling thunderstorm at Barcelona-El Prat aeropuerto. I should have known when I found out that the metro in Barcelona stops running after midnight on weekdays. I should have known when I sat through 34 stops on the night bus and managed to get off at the wrong one somewhere … Continue reading 8. No
Where is Shyamni? 