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Babika Goel

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2021

Stories (13)
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34 Followers
12 Following

13 Stories

365 karma pts

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Everything Happens For A Reason

Adra and Mini had only met a few months back. They were both in their mid-thirties and only a year or two apart. They had shared similar life goals until now. Which was to have a successful job, be happily married to a wealthy man, and have an amazing social life by the age of thirty. Until recently, they were happy with what they had, till they met and realized what they didn’t have.Despite having a loving husband Ahmed, who backed her every career move, starting a family had become difficult for high-achiever Adra. She had come to New York...

6 likes 3 comments 3
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The Karmic Debt

Submitted to Contest #104

Preface-Dr. Mini, a psychiatrist with years of experience in addressing the underlying causes of mental disorders, sat in her chair, her gentle face etched with disbelief as she heard the announcement that woke her up from deep slumber. Dr. Mini, welcome to Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport. The local time is 8 am, and the temperature is 55 degrees Celsius. Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the Captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign for your safety and comfort. This will show that we have parked at th...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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The Photograph Will Speak For Itself.

Submitted to Contest #103

After a hot shower, Mini was searching through her cabinet, dumping clothes on the floor in search of well-coordinated and attractive nightwear. All she could find were enormous sweatpants and shirts; she did not know how they had ended up in her life, but there was nothing suitable to wear tonight. She went around to the far end of the dresser, where she stored her old clothing in a dresser unit, leaving the pile of garments on the floor.She opens the top drawer unit and finds the rusted and battered tin box with her name in large black cur...

20 likes 2 comments 2
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The Descent

Submitted to Contest #102

Authors musing-Arjun from Mahabharata was a warriorAnd faced a dilemma as a barrierTo do or not to do made him weakerWho else but Krishna stepped in as a preacherStages of life were explained deeperFrom duty-bound to being a renouncer All came in a particular order5000 years since then have passed in leisureFrom seeds to weeds, all are in disorder.I, an eternal seeker, asked why can’t all this be better?Why can’t Krishna and Arjun live among us as trendsetters?I let my thoughts run wilder And penned down their descent like a writer...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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The Face In The Mirror

Submitted to Contest #101

Adra woke up in a strange room with the sounds of doctors and nurses at the far end discussing something. The air was stuffy, and the clean white walls appeared to be sweating. As she lay on a bed, she did not know where she was. She could barely move her head. Only her eyes moved and she looked through the window to glimpse the world outside. The view revealed a large, old cemetery at the far end. Where was she? Was it Riyadh? She wondered. She could hear the physicians and nurses conversing in Arabic about her recent surgery. She turned ...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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Divine Amnesia

Submitted to Contest #100

Disclaimer: The names, characters, and events portrayed in this story are fictitious. Resemblance to actual people (alive or dead) or locations is unintentional.***Ari’s phone rang a sixth time. He had recognized the area code: it was from Heaven. Who could it be but big brother Yudi thought Ari and instead of picking it up, he just stood staring at its screen, frozen to the spot, still undecided whether to pick or let it go.As the ringing died down, he heard the buzz of his answering machine and the loud booming voice, “Hey, this is big bro...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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The New Revelations

Submitted to Contest #99

“Why don’t you live with your wife?” Adra asked Ahmed, without sounding curious.“It is a long story, but I will try to cut it short. It was just last year I was searching for some documents on my wife’s laptop that I came across a few hundred texts and many intimate emails between my wife and an old friend of hers. So this was not about one secret message but several. And then she had been meeting her not once, but several times in a week. I had unearthed a secret affair. ”“Wait! then her lover is a woman? Now this cannot overshadow your mar...

22 likes 16 comments 16
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The Lady Who Brings Death

Submitted to Contest #98

Eleventh day. I’m still on the seventh floor of Al-Zabeera Hospital, in the heart of Riyadh. Doctors transferred me here as a patient under observation after having spent six months in the intensive care unit. My room is at the end of the desolated wing of this private ward.“Move” is what I hear being yelled out from the far end. The voice is deafening. It's likely that one of the ward lads is bringing a patient. But just then, a deathly silence descends on everything, and I’m gripped by a strange sensation.Unannounced and uninvited, a visio...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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The Prophecy

Submitted to Contest #97

Ahmed noticed her pleasant expressions fade as she pointed outdoors into the absolute darkness “Can you see the flickering candle flames in the cemetery?” she questioned, her brownish-black eyes losing their sparkle. "Never has there been so many."She was lying in her bed, surrounded by life-saving equipment, on the seventh floor of Al-Zabeera hospital, in the heart of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital city, pointing to the public cemetery, at the far end that served as a burial ground for both royals and commoners.Ahmed walked up towards her a...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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A Chance Meeting

Submitted to Contest #96

Ursmouth is a tiny town in Saudi Arabia near Riyadh, its society a little unvarying. As a result, any visitor to this place would draw a lot of attention."Adra, I have never seen such a handsome man," her friend Anne exclaimed as she broke the news to her. She had seen him at the church gathering and had come over to Adra's worried about not being able to find her."How come you didn't show up?" Are you in good health? Your father was worried, you speak very little these days, are you alright? The priest hardly remembered the visitor's name i...

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Am I Home

Submitted to Contest #95

The discussion was in full swing. Should they hand over the body to the police and let them trace the family or should they get together and perform the last rites. The neighbours faced a dilemma. According to Hindu tradition, the eldest son is the kartaa (meaning, ‘the principal performer’) of the last rites, In the absence of a son, the grandson or any other close male relative of the deceased performs it. The neighbour who had heard Mr Patel’s scream from inside his house that sounded like a cry of wild abandonment had knocked on the ...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Why I Want a Wife

Submitted to Contest #95

Few events are inevitable, I guess. So when Mr Patel died his neighbours said it was the news of elopement of his only daughter with a Parsi boy that drew him to his untoward death. No one talked about how his deteriorating health had been for the last few months. No one talked of how stressful his work had become and no one talked of how finding a suitor for his daughter had become an impossible task.And then I heard that slow pitched old haggard voice- “Fate got him”.Confused, I looked at her and asked, “Why to blame fate, Amma?”. For year...

19 likes 9 comments 9
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The Big Black Hole

Submitted to Contest #94

Millie was 23 years old when she eloped with her boyfriend. Born in 1951, some seventy years back, in Lucknow the city of nawabs, and the most populated city of India. Having lost her mother during her birth, her father, an overtly honest administrative officer in the government, gave her the very best upbringing he could. She grew up running around in the football fields and cycling with neighbourhood boys scraping her knees and coming back home covered in dirt and stinkingly filthy. Girls her age were not allowed as much freedom as she was...

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