Tales from a twisted mind

A Decade gone bye     While rounding up my daily activities for the night, I happened to nonchalantly look at the phone screen and notice the date - 27 th March 2019. For a moment, I continued to stare at the screen, my hands continuing the task on their own, while my mind flew back in time – 10 years back to be precise – and with a jolt, I realised it was during this exact same week, back in the year 2009, I was in training at my first job.    Oh my goodness! It has been 10 years?! How cool is that?    I say I deserve a pat on the back and to treat myself to some sweets. However, I am instantly reminded by my paunch, glaringly I imagine with two dark red eyes, to avoid unwanted calories or otherwise it will inflate even more. The audacity of it! In 2009, it would not have dared to do something like this. But, then again, it never even existed back then.     The two years of junior college were pure torture. Due to an ea...

The First time     It is ok! It is going to be alright.     Excitement and nervousness coursed through his veins as he rode his two-wheeler bike into the bylanes of Charni Road. Viraj was accompanied with his neighbour Jeetesh and the pair were headed to the big yellow house at the end of the gully.     Pulling near the entrance, he parked the vehicle and took one long look at the building. He stared at the big, yellow building      The building was two-storied with no terrace at the top. The colour had faded – its exterior now covered in grime, dust and affected by smog, over time. A couple of banyan offshoots blossomed from near the drainage pipes that ran down the exterior walls; one of them broken and spilling waste water onto the streets.     Some men loitered near the entrance. Viraj overheard a couple of them arguing over the price. A man, probably the one in charge, was eyeing the ...

When Viola Davis won the Academy award for best supporting actress in the year 2016, she gave one of the most memorable speeches ever. She spoke about dead people in cemeteries.She said, “People ask me all the time: ‘What kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say, exhume those bodies, exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition, people who fell in love and lost.” Although, I felt odd when I heard the speech live two years ago, the meaning of it became clear to me roughly three weeks back, when after Sunday mass I paid a visit to my father’s niche in the church graveyard. Often at times, I simply walk past the niches and the graves – the graves make me feel sombre thinking about the dead bodies lying underneath the slab covers, decomposing over time, while the niche fascinate me because generations of family members have entombed their remains together. Some of these niches even have a photo of the deceased, alon...