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Shuvayon Mukherjee

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2021

Stories (22)

Comments

Library

153 Followers

45 Following

22 Stories

1337 karma pts

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The Ephemeral Nature of Love

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #142

Grandad died before I understood how I felt about him.A week after he passed, my mother - no doubt grappling with her own demons of regret - left to me the task of sorting through his belongings. I sat in the cramped living room of a stranger and looked around helplessly. Grandad was more of an idea than a person. Others spoke of him as a decorated military man, later in life a successful investment banker par excellence. A widower, a single father and later a Grandad. Whether any of it was true mattered little. I never got to know...

11 likes

Dog Vomit

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #141

This was the beginning of a successful BreadTube career.To get the most views, my first video had to excite the audience. I dug out the old binder where Grandma wrote our family recipes in her meticulously neat handwriting. It opened straight to the scrambled eggs recipe. For a moment I was a bespectacled child again, smearing it with ranch and grinding copious amounts of salt and cayenne pepper on top. Yes, that was good. The scrambled eggs would do nicely.All the top submissions on BreadTube - the best video cooking site on the web - `had ...

9 likes

It Couldn't Just Be Chance

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #132

“Are you there, God? It’s me again,” I whisper, hands clasped. “I’m begging you this time. I really don’t want to go to Christchurch today. Please, can you find a way for me to stay? Or, you know, maybe Adie could move there too? Please. If you’re real, this is your last chance to prove it.”She nudges me in the ribs. “Sam, it’s a bit late for that.”We’re lying on soft grass by the riverbank, listening to the water rushing past like the summer that left us behind. Above us, branches and trembling leaves make fractals in the sky.I look over at...

20 likes

Tunnel Vision

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #128

Lady Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife I’d put poison in your coffee.”Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if I were your husband I’d drink it.”Alison watched the powder dissolve into David’s tea with grim satisfaction. David liked his tea milky. He would never tell the difference.“How’s the tea?” he called from the other room.“On the way,” she shouted back. It was taking too long. She thrust a teaspoon into the mound of toxic grains and swirled it out of existence. Stirling silver clinked against bone china. She carefully put the spoon aside ...

26 likes

What Comes After

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #127

I’m alive as a gentle breeze that pulls strands of hair across her face and ruffles the flowers in her hands. I coax out the sun from behind a cloud and touch her softly on the shoulder. I want to tell her that everything will be okay, but I can’t - not anymore. So I settle for caressing her cheek with the wind. I know my wife well enough to understand what it means when her lips press together and the creases form on her forehead. She’s ruminating again. She’s thinking back to the day when I doubled over in pain and staggered to the ba...

29 likes

The Heart Specialist

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Winner of Contest #125 🏆

The esteemed Dr Maharaj was the only cardiologist at St Agatha’s Hospital. Although I met him many years after he first arrived from Kashmir, the nurses told me everyone had taken to him right away. How could they not? There was a sincerity in the way he spoke; a strength in the hand he put on your shoulder. And when a patient’s heart was beyond repair - because there was no way he could save them all - he held their hand and promised to help them through until the very end. Dr Maharaj was the doctor that patients would kneel next to their c...

199 likes

142 comments 142

The Horror of Knossos

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #124

When I was a child, I would peer across the sea to Knossos and tell myself I could see the Labyrinth. I thought of walls impossibly high, impossibly black. Of a great stone door that six hoplites strained to open. Of jaws, to swallow those who ventured within. Fate determined that I never saw these things, for they led me inside blindfolded. When the cloth fell away from my eyes, I was a blind, defenseless creature scrabbling in the dirt. I heard retreating footsteps, a thud in the distance. And then: nothing but the ragged whistle of s...

20 likes