Ginger drafts...

I was sitting there on a wooden bench that had bent tiger like claw foots. Overlooking a lake, it was beautifully situated. Thoughtful, in peace, I sat there gracefully watching the morning sun in the still water gently receding away from me. Droplets of water on the rust covered gate before me were convivially embracing the yellow smudge and the earth was pulling them towards her. There the droplets hung with earth forcefully stretching them for the grand reunion, they gradually thinned at the tips and dropped dead on the earth’s roof. I hated to be disturbed at a time like this; it was such a depressing thought. It was the mobile phone this time, the lady sitting on the bench beside me pulled out the mobile phone from her pockets and she took a while to answer it, she was so much in awe at the ringtone that she reluctantly answered it at the end. Then the conversation with so much giggling and guffawing, over what appeared to be inane inquiries as to whether or not she was putting u...

Everything was sort of slowing down, the vehicles were slow, people were walking slowly, my heart was beating a tad slower, then even slower…..and then it was so slow that you could count the heart rate just by sitting there and listening to it. It was easy to listen, for now I felt totally aloof, taken away from the world and locked up in a shell, a transparent shell of some sort overlooking the real world. I could see the people before me, walking past me, grinning, mocking perhaps even trying to make a conversation. Indifference, absolution, nothing mattered now, not the people around that were eyeing me suspiciously, not the vehicles that were honking so long and interminable, yet so melodiously that I was slipping into sleep, the kind that that even babies would not have experienced. Then, I was counting numbers, there the frog that leaped in joy was retreating into its hideout, it was growing in size, so long and so big, counting numbers again, my mom yelling at me, the gorgeou...

Too often, I am plagued with what I have come to acknowledge as fascinating spillages or leakages out of an extraordinary mind, a mind that is sober at times and infinitely imperious at other times. I was travelling in the intercity bus the other day and was quietly ruminating over the pleasant and relaxed life that I was leading, when all of a sudden a peasant woman got into the bus. She was carrying two cylindrical milk cans as huge as the obese guys you find in page three articles munching heavily on something delicious with a ferocity that is at once disgusting. Anyway, this woman sat beside me with the milk cans, which I noticed were empty, for they were making this clanking sound with the bus jerking its insides violently in city traffic like a whale that is rushing to swish past the uncouth underwater shrubbery to gulp down the colonies of fish speeding away. The woman's dark brown hands were scarred with fatigue and her skin rugged with hair on her hands sloping hither and...

I remember those days like antique pieces of a forgotten memory. I lived in a place that was old, the houses were old with brownish walls and dark interiors, the people were old with wrinkled faces and curved backs, and the air was old for it smelled thick, rusty and corrosive. When it rained, the outdoor sewage canals inundated our compounds with rich sediments and stuff, not that anyone cared, but what was becoming was that, we had to deal with the big blunt nosed predators that came as an aftermath to the deluge. It was not so rosy inside either; the already brownish walls now swelled and the plaster came off it, everything was sort of damp and wet, the floor, doors and the people too, for they were now wearing woolen sweaters. The compound I lived in had three more houses and the people were unique and distinguished. So unique that neither of them could have replaced, even in part the others. I was in first standard, and every day after waking me up, my mom made me sit and read a...

Fifteenth August, it was a special day for me and my schoolmates in the neighborhood; we waited impatiently for this day every year, it was unlike any other day in the whole year excepting one more day which was also celebrated in almost similar fashion. I began preparations from the day before, white uniform neatly ironed, white socks and shoes thoroughly cleaned for the occasion. Then, I would go buy bread and jam especially for the next day, for it would be inconceivable to think that my mom would wake up early and prepare breakfast. Milk too, my mom approached our neighbors to preserve the extra milk that she purchased just for the occasion, in their fridge (we did not have one). Later in the night, my dad would bring the paper flag and I neatly hid it between papers in a long note book with the pin resting beside it, so I won’t waste time searching for it in the morning. And, I went to bed early, setting up my mental alarm and all the other available alarms to wake up early. I us...

The man was screeching into the mike madly, quite hysterical at times, and strangely the crowd stood transfixed like rabbits staring into a head light. The man on stage took large gasps of breath before exploding back into the mike with a ferocity that felt like the bass out of a twelve string guitarist working on base, but this was no metal head; he was an activist of some sort. He looked determined and was sadly exhausting all his eloquent praises on a phony little bald headed man sitting beside him, who was yawning deliberately, so it seemed. And then, tiny little annoying dots came spurting out of the electron discharger hitting the television screen with an infinitely immeasurable accuracy, the connection was lost. In the middle of a vociferous and audacious episode of political transcendence, my dad decided to unplug the TV cable and was kind enough to answer my inquiring mood (we were shifting to a new home). I did not share socially affecting proclivities such as politics, or...

It’s generally accepted that one’s life is fulfilled by the nature, strength and richness of the relations with the people living around him. In making this assumption, one tends to forget about one’s relations with the dead, despite the fact that the dead are in a way more approachable and accessible through their works than the uncertain relation with the living. One is constantly prided and gratified with the level of acceptance he squeezes out of his relations with the living, but here again one might mistake that the reciprocity of acceptance is only likely with the active relations (relations with living people), but upon careful examination one finds out that it is simply the other way round although not so revealing in nature. Through the works of dead, one gains an idea of their lives and the times in which they had lived, now upon conscious evaluation, one is bound to stare into the philosophic equivalents of past lives, of a whole lifetime, and the perceptions by posterity....

A building is judged by its structural integrity; the architect is generally praised for the fulfillment of his obligation, but is subjected to overwhelming adulation if he manages to conjure up a majestic monument of awe and beauty by fusing futuristic technologies with traditional methods. A player is judged not just by his occasional outstanding prowess, but by the critical regime that he employs in sustaining a hard earned record. A soldier on the border is judged by his endurance and his acknowledgment of the fact that his physical and mental attributes would be tested against the capacity of resilience. A farmer is judged by his attention to nature’s fury, the conscious and informed response in harsh times and his reception to modern techniques and studies with relevant statistical information. A fisher is judged by his foresight and careful planning; by fishing in far off lands when weather is conducive and saving coastal areas for ruff times. A mechanic is judged by his attenti...