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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019
Submitted to Contest #50
At her age, it was absolutely unpardonable. After standing on the stage and facing nearly two hundred eyes boring into her day after day, Kala was not expected to have pre-performance jitters. But she did before every important event she had to preside over and something invariably went wrong. It didn’t help to watch ‘How to Fight your Nerves’ manuals or to listen to narratives of professional performers who confessed to pre-performance anxiety even after having become stars. Kala would begin her day with deep breathing, yoga and meditation ...
Submitted to Contest #49
Pratiksha waited for fourteen long years for an answer to a question. Fourteen years is a long time to wait. Since Kaikeyi, King Dashratha’s youngest wife, demanded the throne for her own son and a fourteen-year-long forest exile for Rama in the Ramayana, the magic number has echoed in the Hindu mind as a signifier for an interminably long period. True to the meaning of her name, Pratiksha [Hindi waiting] decided to play Patience and put herself in the position of Rama’s newly wedded wife Sita who had to face enormous hardships and trav...
Submitted to Contest #44
This was the year when everyone huddled around family or community radio sets to listen to names of those who were dead or had gone missing in the riots. Like every evening, the special radio bulletin began with the names of those who had died in the riots. Labhayaram, 35, son of Gainda Ram, Lahore; Bhannaram, 45, son of Fakirchand; Pyarelal,40, son of Lainaram, Lyallpur; Jagga,25, son of Gurmail Singh, Rawalpindi; Veera,16, daughter of Madanlal, Mianwali; Meshi, 8, son of Lalchand, Montgomery; Hakim Tarachand, 80, son of Bhairamal, Jha...
Submitted to Contest #40
Sonia was one of the friends I could always count on. She did not like gossiping or spending time in idle conversation but was the first one to reach the spot when help was needed. I was only too eager to offer help when she inquired about getting her insurance money released from the Accounts Office. After tending to her husband who was hospitalized for a serious illness, she would be free to accompany me at 11 a.m. In my earnestness to return the many favours I owed her, I agree to complete my tasks for the morning at home and leave w...
Submitted to Contest #39
Chandni made a dart for the French window that opened out to the terrace and peered at the sky. She couldn’t see a single star. Where did the stars disappear? She had been following this ritual religiously for the last forty days in the hope that she might be able to recover the lost sky twinkling with stars. She even pulled out an old bioscope from a chest of drawers to scan the night sky. But the stars had begun a rare sight visible only in old movies. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a starry night. She had taken for ...
Submitted to Contest #38
In the days before people had begun to sell their ancestral houses to the developer in exchange for three floors in the apartment blocks with all the rooms opening out to balconies, the chajja or chhat offered a mixed use space ranging from flying kites, sunning pickles and papads, hanging out the washing, sleeping under the stars and socializing with the neighbours. A lone ancient house with a terrace held out against the onslaught of highrises that had mushroomed on all sides. It was rumoured that it was owned by a nawab whose ancesto...
Submitted to Contest #37
On 13th April, the day the Indian New Year begins, I came upon a secret that changed my life forever. The Indian new year is based on the Hindu calendar in which astrological positions play a key role. The nation’s renowned astrologers had appeared on television elaborately explaining planetary positions and how they would impact each sun sign. I had opened the newspaper that morning and briefly glanced at what the stars had in store with me. “You are going to come on a secret that will transform your life. One phase of your life is goi...
Submitted to Contest #36
April 8, 1947I was seven years old and in Standard 3. Hindi Miss was teaching us how to pronounce the word Stree [woman]. Just then the watchman ran in without knocking at the door and shouted that the school was going to close and all children must go home. Hindu Muslim riots had broken out and curfew had been imposed for three days. Happy to escape the Hindi ‘matra’, I raced out of the room and searched for my 11 year-old-sister who I called behnji which means sister in Punjabi. Behnji was already waiting with a stern expression on her fac...
Submitted to Contest #35
I stood in complete awe before the divine lake and raised my hands to the sky. The sight of its majestic waters washed away all the anger, envy and arrogance that had been the basis of my thoughts and actions all my life. Completely humbled by the mighty mountains behind the lake, I promised myself three things. I will not judge anyone and will not hold a grudge against anyone. I will say sorry to all those I might have hurt intentionally or unintentionally. I will delete the word ‘I’ from my vocabulary. Today was the day I w...
Submitted to Contest #34
Suddenly the sky turned dark. The nor ’wester storm mercilessly tore through the trees making their branches snap and fall with a heavy thud. The windows began to rattle controllably and the bathroom door flew open. The glass bottle on the windowsill shattered on the sink. A gust of wind blew dry leaves and dust into the room. Then the streetlights went off leaving the lightning to hold the show. And what a show it was! Flashes of lightning tore up and down the pitch-black sky. All sounds were drowned in that of the thunder th...
Submitted to Contest #33
Red or blue? She couldn’t make up her mind about choosing between the blue and the red dress in the store like she couldn’t about most other things. It was the red that had first caught her eye but blue was really her color. She couldn’t possibly be seen wearing the bright shade of red to work. But if she were to buy the blue, it would make it the fourth blue in her wardrobe this season. She decided to come back the following day after making up her mind. The next day, she purposefully strode up to the shelf where she had found it. But it wa...
Submitted to Contest #31
She trudged her way to the cornershop as she had been doing for the last two decades. Nothing seemed to have changed in all these years. Neither the shop with its prominently displayed goods nor the lady with the sleeveless blouse and cotton sari universally known as Boudi (Bengali, sister-in-law). Neither the shop boys, who had been in their teens when she had first started frequenting the shop, nor the tea-vendor who brought them hot cups of tea twice a day, appeared to have aged. The only change was in the floating generations of stu...
Submitted to Contest #22
New Year’s Eve did not mean much in India other than to Christians, anglicized upper class elite and youth of all classes educated in missionary institutions until the 1990s. The rest spent it watching the annual late-night entertainment programme on the state-owned channel Doordarshan anchored by a young man and a woman with clipped British accents and include a pot pourri of Indian and Western music and dance, the highlight being a live performance by a celebrity Bollywood singer. Majority of Indians would ring in the new year to ‘the nigh...
Submitted to Contest #18
Sunday mornings have always been cleaning up days for her. Unlike other couples who sleep on till noon on weekends after partying until the wee hours of the morning or staying up to watch a movie, she would wake up at 2 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings to shut the door so that he could leave at an unearthly hour for work to avoid the early morning rush in the local trains. Unlike others who work five days a week and sleep till late on weekends, he worked only on weekends. ‘So that one of us is always home to look after the chil...
Submitted to Contest #12
She hated disfigurements of any kind. A chipped cup, a run in the socks, a dent in the car, a broken toy truck, a dysfunctional clock. She would go about restoring them to the best of her ability. And if she couldn’t, she’d either smash them to smithereens or chuck them in the trash can. Repaired objects always seemed to get her goat. She would be forever conscious of the defect that had been set right, the tear that had been discreetly mended or the broken ends that had been carefully stuck together. However hard she mig...
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