Ginger drafts...

I don’t know what time it is, it does not matter. Matter is something my parents, their friends and families, neighbours, in short, all the like minded people settle down to make happen. I, photon, was born roughly 14 million years prior to now under great duress. For about a time from the beginning, it was chaotic, I could barely go from one corner of the street where my mother, electron, would transit from upstairs balcony to downstairs and leave me outdoors and I was born. The neighbours were so close and the neighbourhood so violent that before I could go to the vast playground on the other end of the street, another mother, electron, from the ground floor of adjoining house would whisk me with force and get upstairs, and I was dead. It was only after the pressure and temperature dropped, and all the mothers, electrons, began living a little away from each other, it was only then that I found friends. Now mothers were tolerant, they would not whisk away children, for the surrou...

The fair had a series of shops lined up attached to each other like pearls on a necklace. Cylindrical wooden sticks guarded the square shaped casements that had resin cloth wrapped about the top and sides. Some of the dwellers stood by their stock outside, some performers blew wafts of fire skywards; some navigated a thin rope suspended between two wooden pillars with just a horizontal stick in their hand. I was standing before a turbaned old man’s shop; he was selling swords that were made of thin sheet of wood wrapped in metallic gold paper. With a pouch made of coconut yarn and a handle that had a bar pinned to it, the sword set appealed to my senses. My brother and his friends took a call; we all bought a sword each. It cost us three rupees. My maternal grandmother, a fine woman, possessed the rarest of qualities. Pale yellow complexion, her wrinkled skin puckered into folds at the elbows and ankles. I and my sister would sit by her and dig deep burrows into the blood rid folds o...

I forgot what time it was. Woke up to find heavy arms wrapped up over me; he was breathing heavily, warm air encircled the back of my neck and flew past to find my pierced nose before me. The audible snore, like a rhythmic machine pulsated; with the gurgling gulp on every third stroke of the snore machine, I bethought, perhaps the machine needs oiling. I carefully lifted his left arm with its pointed finger twined in the silk string under my breasts, perched it neatly atop his bent knees that were prodded into my white negligee from the back. I tugged at the sleeve end of my dress on which presently his face lay; fresh saliva was dripping out of his ellipsoid mouth on to my dress which had stiffened out of the night long salty secretion. I whisked my sleeve out of pure revulsion of the carnivorous mammal beside me. He shifted to his side of the bed; his wide nostrils throbbed and the breathing grew louder, wafted as if a goods train had come to a halt before gaining speed again. Ther...

Under the yellow street lights, we played until it was dinner time. Doused in the phosphorus yellow light, our clothes hitherto shy, now, the white ones betook the colour of gold, and the grey ones purple. We raised our hands up high and gazed at the light through them to find the pale skin now turn scarlet red. There we hissed and pawed, hid and contorted our bodies, laughed and mooned about. All was dark beneath the glistening yellow of the street lights; one had to walk between the lamp posts and feel the colour of one’s skin and clothes shift peripatetically as if we were swaying on the rainbow that kisses earth with its wide multicoloured lips after the rain. We were about seven years old; jumping up and down, someone crooning, someone coughing hysterically, hastily one would slip into one of the houses to hide there in the dark. Regular power cuts ensured that we had our share of play time. In the dark; we played ‘hide and seek’. Only the street lights stood up in the dark like...

I was pregnant, but it did not matter. Ledzep was visiting India and there was nothing that could stop me. My husband was a pragmatic man; he would not let me go. But only I knew that beneath the thick black whiskers of responsibility, hidden inside was a playful child. It was my fifth month, the bulging stomach, apricot coloured, soaked me with joy while my husband tenderly dropped a kiss above my navel. Ours was a love marriage. We met each other in a hotel; he was on his business trip and I was holidaying with my friends. Sitting by the window that overlooked the swimming pool, at 10 in the night, he was typing slowly. As if lost in thoughts, he would look through the glass window, then in a flash, something from the dark that extended beyond the pool would stir a thought and he would sink into his laptop once again. Yes, I would be extremely careful. After a bundle of promises, he accepted, and so we began on our journey. It was midday when we got there; dusty winds swept the groun...

Brazenly, Renu flung the piece of chalk at one of the students while the principal peeped through the window on one of his visits. Paring at her nails, a girl from the last row hurriedly jotted down from the board while the sleepy one beside her woke up to find out that her teacher has moved on, after waking her up. A deep crack in the black board ran all the way up the length of its face. The easel on which it stood, bickered under its heavy weight. The teacher was in her early twenties; her hair was long and she woke up early every day to wash her hair and braid them up. It made her look a tad taller, and a lot matured for her age. Through the golden yellow glasses, her eyes peered at every student in turn. Wind wheeled through the dusty outdoors, packed up dry leaves and dropped a couple of them in the first floor class room. Principal Daniel, a man in his forties, brushed the lovely forelock into his hair. With one hand in his box pleated blue trousers and the other on the wooden f...

I am standing before ‘Landmark’ inside Chennai’s citicenter. A lady in her early twenties flung her eyes upstairs as if to reassure herself of the innumerable lolloping men who dashed into dustbins, corner stones and into each others. She was wearing a pinkish white sari that rested on her haunches laxly; her plush midriff extended all the way up from where her sari lightly embraced her waist below up to the pert shoulder blades. With the sari end let loose, her expansive back furrowed into a long thin parting that grew up from the sari, flew meditatively through the valley between the shoulder blades that appeared like giant elephant’s ears, only firm, thick and frozen. Her hair, she parted in the front, looped into a thick braid in the back with plaits furled up over the bronze ears; the back of her neck so white that one wondered if it was a blood ridden bird’s underbelly. The incipient freckles on her slender waist, gaunt arms and a taciturn bosom flanked against the posture that d...

The disgruntled youth looking about himself sullenly, walked into the adjoining kitchen room where a dhoti clad nonchalant sweaty brown creature with a pear shaped paunch was leaning over a table. With his heavy hairy hands, he was scrubbing mounds of thick black oily smudge from the kitchen table with a chequered piece of cloth wrapped around his wrist. The cook patiently entertained the youth’s complaints about serving late, nonplussed and reserved, he pointed in the direction of the hot pan on the stove, mumbled something about the huge number of orders. With that, he pulled out a grimy broom from the floor, beat it against the charcoal black wall to get rid of the roaches, and swept the pans clean. He then proceeded to dip his grisly hands in the vessel containing dosa paste with a flat bottomed tumbler before mopping his deeply furrowed forehead off the torrential sweat that never ceased to bother him. The youth was slightly taken aback; the ghastly nature of the kitchen left him ...

She threw her head back in sorrowful reprieve. The silver plaited sari glistened under her heavy drooping eye lashes that were fixated on an oblong shadow cast by the evening sun before her. Ensconced on a wooden chair, she aligned the folds of her deep red colored sari. While she was caught up in the wake of a gentle breeze that slipped a dry flake of dust into her eyes, a pair of golden yellow feet sneaked out from underneath the restrained flutter of her sari. Her long thick eye lashes beat incessantly and tears smudged the rosy cheek. Through the dilating pupils, the iris of her eyes dissolved the surroundings as she shaded her eyes with the back of her feather white palms. Brushing his hair back and accentuating the furrow in the parted hair, a young lad in blue jeans and honey colored plain t-shirt noticed the silver white anklets that hugged the melancholic pair of sneaky feet and the lass in pain above for whom the feet belonged. In her undulating world, a pair of rugged army b...