Life Inspires

2nd January 1996 – I was taken away on this day. Kidnapped, if you would like to use the word. I was only an hour old then. My mother had planned this long before I was born. If I turned out to be a boy, I would stay in the family, grow up with them, and one day help on the fields. One day I would bring in a wife and then help create a son to carry on the family name. However, if I turned out to be a girl, I could not stay. I had to leave. So my mother had arranged with the widow who lived at the end of the village to sneak me out and take me to the Mahila Kalyan Sanstha and then leave me there to find my destiny, to fight my own battles. And as the fate would have it, I was born a girl. My father did not want me. My grandparents did not want me. I was useless to them. And my mother knew this very well. She knew secrets that were thought to be buried so deep that no one could ever uncover them. She knew why so many baby girls were born dead in the village. She knew why after nin...

Based on the fairy tale "Princess and the Frog" in which a princess kisses a frog that turns into a handsome prince upon being kissed. As always, they live happily ever after. Click here if you want to read the whole story. "Kissing a Frog" is my take on the fairy tale. Kissing a Frog It was the most beautiful night possible. High up in the sky, a full moon shone brightly and around it twinkled countless little stars. Fireflies fluttered from shrub to shrub and the moonlight reflected off delicate drops of dew. The whole landscape was bathed in a silver light. There was hardly any noise except harmonious sounds of little creatures of the night. Things were as serene as they could be and the air was cool. Tired birds had just started to fall asleep in their little nests when they were cruelly shaken out of their stupour by the sudden, crashing noise of Princess Greta emerging out of the shrubs. “I will catch him tonight,” she exclaimed loudly to the wilde...

It was a game they used to play often. They would sit across on a table and stare into each other's eyes. The one to blink first would lose. For Anand, it was an opportunity. Anand sat with elbows resting on the table and both his hands under his chin. Mamta sat straight back right across. And they tried hard not to blink. "Deep blue just like Pacific ocean!" he thought as he considered the unusual hue of her eyes. "How lovely would it be if I could just look at her like this every second of my waking hours!" The tables, the chairs, the walls, and rest of their friends disappeared gradually to be replaced by angels playing harps on cotton clouds. A deep fragrance, possibly her new perfume, filled the room. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes for while. "Caught!" she cried. "I win again." (This was done as an exercise on the flow of time in fiction during one of my classes today. The first sentence of this short piece of fiction is it...

(Wrote this about four years back. But has remained my favorite till now.) Vinay was a sound sleeper. He usually slept late in the night and, as a result, woke up late. Very few things could disturb his sleep. He barely stirred when there was an earthquake. He would not budge if clouds thundered themselves away. He would not even wake up if his cell phone shrieked right next to his ears. Things looked the same that night too, when after a wild evening at the local pub, Vinay came back home and slumped down on his bed. He fell asleep right away and started dreaming almost immediately. He dreamt that he was back in the pub surrounded by beautiful girls and having the time of his life drinking and flirting. This was his favorite type of dream and he was thoroughly enjoying himself when something very unusual happened. He woke up! Surprised, Vinay looked around for the source of this nearly impossible interruption in his sleep. A very low but continuous static could be heard. He t...

Once upon a time, in a city full of traffic, houses, and people in Northern India, there lived a curious cat. For the sake of this story, lets call her Curie. Though she had a perfectly acceptable name in Cat language. She was a very likeable, furry, black and white, one year old kitty, just on the brink of her youth. She had just one annoying habit, Curiosity. Curiosity, in itself, is not bad. But in Curie's case, curiosity often got better of her and she nosed around in people's houses, kitchens and even refrigerators, if she could get her paws into one. If a door was open just a crack, she would open it and enter, prowling around in people's living rooms, hiding beneath the couches, beds and trying to figure out what all was happening in their homes. If she was fortunate enough to get into a kitchen, she licked the utensils and tasted all uncovered dishes. Milk was her all time favorite. People in the neighbourhood were kind and put up with Curie most of the times....

A wild creature shrieks close by, and it startles me out of my sleep. When did I doze off? I shouldn't have. With danger at every step, falling asleep is unforgivable. But I am tired and my feet hurt. I know I need to keep walking. What do I seek? What am I so restless about? The warmth of the cradle that I so often dream of fills my heart and I suddenly have no more doubts. I must keep walking till I arrive. Till that mysterious voice whispers calmly in my ears, "My child, you don't need to run anymore. You don't need to seek. You will be well taken care of. Just close your eyes and relax. Sleep, if you must. When you wake up, you will still be safe." But that voice, that cradle is not yet near. Why do I feel that it is going farther away? It's getting cold around here. I must keep walking. Huge black trees surround me. The forest is so dense that I cannot see the sky. I fight my way through the tall grass. I cannot see what lies ahead or, for that matter, wh...

Morbid Warning: If you don't like to read about death, I would advise you not to proceed. The writing is, however, the least I could do for a cousin to whom justice was denied even after she died. No one knows who killed her. The only thing that is known for certain is that she had last been seen with a school friend at the market. The school friend accepts that she was with her but did not know where she went after the market. No one knows how she was killed. However, she was found with a wound on her head next to the railway tracks where the high speed Shatabdi Express runs. Some say that she was drawn in by a passing train. But her wounds were too few for this kind of a ghastly accident. No one knows how she died. Whether it was because of excessive bleeding from the wound on her head or some internal injury invisble to the entire world? All that is known is that she died in the hospital with her hand on her wounded head so that her bandage as well as her right hand were c...