Roopa De Choudhury

“Home.” by Roopa De Choudhury

I see you sitting by the window, looking out into a meadow, green as far as the eye can see, a river in front, perhaps a lake, even a pond will do. There are sheep or goats, flocks of geese, but it's not a farm. I see mountains in the horizon, grey, looming with patches of sunlight on top. I see you by the window, frowns and wrinkles as you think about what to write next, as I do now. I see you content for a lon...

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“The Poet” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #112

I could see the storm upon us. I had planned this day for so long, I did not want anything to derail us. We needed this. To be honest I needed this. I had been laid off a year now, and there were days I started to feel like I was disappearing. Have you ever felt that, one little limb at a time, heavy, gravity pulling you down. Inertia, vertigo, depression, many people had much to say. You didn't. Your life carried on muc...

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“Just an ordinary man.” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #102

Just an ordinary man. There is nothing as surprising, devastating and delightful on earth as the fickleness of human nature.  This story starts in the middle. It is late night when Prakash Rao, a station master of a small railway station in a tiny town in Karnataka, India sits down to have his dinner. The meal is simple but satisfying. Rao lives alone and has a lady who comes da...

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“A Present For Her Thirteenth.” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #99

It's the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year. The world outside is still mostly dark. Something miraculous will happen today. I can feel it.  It was bound to happen one day, the way we were destroying the environment. Things started falling apart. The waves came, the rain was acid, the flights got grounded, the bombs fell, the people ran everywhere, wherever it was safe and just like that the world chan...

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“About Earths.” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #97

I enter the cylindrical hall and there they are, all fifty of them, identical frosted glass windows, similar in all aspects, but one. The trigger for the bomb on my Earth could be hidden on any of these forty nine other Earths, accessed through the identical windows. Once I retrieve the trigger, I will save my Earth. The nuclear blast is supposed to take place in five hours, which means I have six minutes to go through e...

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“Swan Lake” by Roopa De Choudhury

             SWAN LAKE When the call came, I was in the middle of a shoot. My phone had been ringing all day, and I had been ignoring it all day. She always called me when she needed something, but this time mother wasn't going to suck me into one of her harebrained schemes for making money. I had my own family now, lots of expenses and I could just see Pete's eyes boring into mine an...

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“How I Met Your Mother.” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #93

It was pitch dark when I woke up, to absolute silence, like being in a horror film. I found myself lying in a strange bed, with some jackets and a couple of purses flung on top of me. I stumbled along the wall for a switch, hitting my shin and knees in the process. I was starting to panic a little when I couldn't find the switch, my hands now crawled all over the walls and just before I got into one of my panic modes, I ...

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“The Sound of Music.” by Roopa De Choudhury

Submitted to Contest #92

"Hi look I see two." I yell and float to the window furthest from the cabin. Yuri floats up to me as well. We see the twinkle in the distance, in the all encompassing darkness. The twinkle fades away within thirty seconds. Yuri looks as disappointed as I feel inside. I feel my body tipping towards the floor and I panic momentarily. Yuri is now at the coffee machine. He tips the pot the wrong way and bubbles of B...

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