Ginger drafts...

Major wolf prodded his clawed grimy nail into the console and regally laid back on his plush leather lounge. He lifted himself a little for the leather made a chugging noise as he slid on it. The overhead panel made a noise that was akin to what you hear issuing from a tap (back on planet earth) before water makes its long journey through the pipes and burbles out in the vent. The hot-iron red of the panel glow bothered major so he held his hand up. But this was not going to work. So he reached for the console and pinched a knob clockwise. The red light dimmed and now the inside of his cockpit had the look of a womb so much so that major wolf went to sleep right away. A crackle woke him up. What was it? He looked about him. Major wolf was not the type you woke up in the middle of a dream. He noticed the green agleam on the speaker so he roused himself from the leather lounge and paddled in a daze toward the crackle and making a good fist, thumped on the instrument. The crac...

Shravani wiped her mouth and swabbed her blood-drib lips with the sleeve of her lemon-green blouse. Above her, a garish noon was swept aside by a rather fat cloud, silver-fringed and wan-brown. She leaned back on the heels of her shoes that were scuffed and unbuckled. She kicked the shoes clean and looked about her for a pair of better shoes. Among the tufts of green, she found a set of teeth, gluey and dripping blood. Following the rope of blood interspersed with pressed clumps of grass, her eyes wandered about and settled on what looked like a straw-stuffed scarecrow.  Her ears caught the sound of the roaring buzz of bees; she instantly dropped to her knees and now dragged herself to a shelter, by the mound of mud, prepared to dig into it with bare hands if that is what it took. The bees, like a swishing curtain came at her; now the sound fuller and final… She was seized. An arm, a fat grizzle-haired arm was clasped around her forearm. The bees made the tintinnabulati...

Spirits don’t cry! Why, my husband did. You don’t believe me, do you now? The truth remains that he did. And for the reasons best known to the world of spirits, we don’t share our secrets with the rest, you know, the living ones I mean. Lor, lor, lor… he cried with such a tenacious heart that his eyes sank deeper and deeper as he knuckled them like a schoolboy does when someone steals his hat or a peacock feather tucked in dog-eared class notebook or a pencil sharpener. He cried and cried. And he cried a little more. My heart melt away like wax under a candle’s flame that is caught in a fiery draught coming in through an open window at night. The fluttering orange and blue flames of his shame melt my waxen heart until it became matted, pale, amorphous, and loosely sputtered on the wooden plinth of my soul. We have been married for a very long time. We were married before we were cut loose form the captive overcoats of our human frames. It is generally agreed that the matrim...

Anusha climbed the stone stairs to get to the assembly hall. Pacing diagonally through the great hall, she found a place by the corner beside the other women. She was suffering from a severe headache all night long; in the magical moments of the crack of dawn, she managed to get some sleep and was presently late to the daily summoning. The mustached officer in khaki trousers swiped his finger in air; Anusha rose up cursing and coughing. She reached his desk and folded her arms before her. The officer crossed his legs, unfolded a paper from his shirt pocket, ran his finger over it, and rolling his eyes to meet her, showed her the adjoining room. In the room, a lady in pin striped trousers was looking through the window that overlooked the railway track. Now a train scurried about from east to west. Stepping into the lady’s elongated shadow, Anusha waited. The lady had dyed her hair brown and wore a nice pony that rested on her nape ever so beautifully. She turned around to face Anush...

‘Apparently, the N62 neutron star of our galaxy is exhibiting strange fluctuations.’ I rode into my metal girded sandals, activated the tracking device, and stepped out into the open. Mother darted off to the window and threw an apple downstairs. I flung my gown up like a net and apprehended the gravitating fruit. Mother waved her chapatti dough stained hand and I reciprocated with a smile that reddened my puffed cheeks. Climbing up the leather upholstered narrow staircase of the school bus, I flung my head back and waved again. I thrust my ID card into the swipe machine and the rubber padded glass doors opened to reveal an empty bus. Just as empty as I thought it would. On Sundays, the school bus swished past the empty streets like a hungry whale with an empty stomach through deserted waters. Settling down on the last row near the window, I thrust my hand into the blue button and the monitor came alive. What was on? It was the video recording of the school principal from the day ...

Chapter 1 It was getting dark now. Nassir drove his SUV into the lane that was plastered with oil and grease. A warm shaft of wind gushed out of the ventilator. A broken slat of the window somewhere in the dark beneath the glowing pallor of the hotel’s back door, slapped its face periodically. Pushing his rotund figure beneath the oil coated tube light, his shadow now only a thickened daub around his body, met two elongated shadows. Two sturdy broad shouldered men dragged themselves out of the dark; Nassir produced his ID card and was marshaled inside. The lounge was once opulent. It was now reduced to an empty backdrop for bald headed, lean framed, and half sleeved clerks to scuttle about in their daily routine. On the desk before each clerk was a translucent dashboard with square topped buttons. The charred backsides of desks bore slanted wedges into which each clerk plugged in a USB. All the desks inside were pooled into a network operated under codename ‘Probe’. It was an underc...

Chapter 1 In that house where sand trickled from the roof and nocturnal creatures ushered in their entry, I and my aunt Mauna lived our days rather sheepishly. We would wake up at the break of dawn and scamper about like rats with nothing to do but forage for food literally. It was the house of aunt Mauna’s father Muniswami. She bequeathed it from him years ago. Not that he is dead. He is very much alive. And he pays us his visit once in every year. Today was the day of his visit. Muniswami was over hundred years old. It’s a bloody miracle that he is still alive. Last year, if my memory is anything to go by, he argued about the present status of his house. ‘Oh! How so royally antique the doors once were’ he said in an exasperating tone when aunt Mauna patted his back and he was on his way home. I don’t quite know where he lived. Aunt had always been very secretive about her family. Where did I come from? My parents? Don’t even begin. In the rainy season, the roots of banyan tree ov...