KhepiAri

Photo belongs to rightful owner I have a train to catch in next three hours. Instead of fearing the heat I am going to face tomorrow, my thoughts are stuck on a particular dog eating leftover from our dinner on the wet pavement outside my home. She has lost all her fur, her body is crafted with infection and scars. Once she was glorious but at present she is in terrible pain because of the incurable skin disease she caught. For last ten days, she has been part of our conversation on dinner table and before sleep talk. My mom had tried to stop her itching with talcum powder for pets. Another household tried to stop the infection with turmeric powder while another person used vermilion to kill the pest in her body. In honesty I would say she would better be dead. A nice, adorable and friendly dog like her deserves better life, but more important a pain free death. Thrice I had planned to be the psychopomp for her, thrice the plan remained executed in my head. I have...

I love reading books. I absolutely adore the paperbacks, hardcover, ragged, torn books. I cherish the first touch of the cover, I love inhaling the fresh smell of printed pages or the old dust smell with yellow patches make me weep. I love all kinds of books from glossy paper to coarse paper, from low brow to high brow language, from serious novel to comic books anything everything. I can now read e-books too! But I cannot read books once they are prescribed in my course work. Yes at this moment I hate Vanity Fair for its length, but when I was in ninth grade I had swooped through the pages in three days. I enjoyed the sexual tension between Catherine and Heathcliff. I enjoyed imagining my own Wuthering Heights. Now I loathe the book when I realise the real age of the characters being less than twenty, who am I kidding when Catherine returns all refined and ladylike she is just ten! The novel White Teeth sits on my lap and my own set of white teeth grit at colourful cover of th...

*My condolences lie with the victims of Earthquake in Nepal, but we can always use little humor to cheer up I think* Yesterday I was sitting on my veranda and enjoying the sudden breeze that decided to sooth our burning skin from heat, my vision engulfed a house standing alone within the green field. I can see this decorated bricked house from southern side of my caged veranda. This crafted house has a pompous household and a beautiful garden which my landlady and I envy during the fleeting spring. I kept sweating and turning pages when I heard the commotion of closing iron doors from this house. I looked up to find the mistress of the household hurrying out of the gates again to turn around to enter the house. On other side of the gate, her chariot, the battery operated Tuktuk and its driver grumbled. My curiosity peeked up by leaps and bound and I morphed into the railings of my veranda. To see and listen to her.  The woman in orange saree came ...

Colours and intriguing shape are one of the most effective marketing tools ever. Had I not seen the white purple bottle shaped like a saline pouch with my buddy I would have never tasted the content inside it. How many times have I fallen prey to looks? If I count both figuratively and literally the answer would be countless times both in materialist and personal choices. The first time I saw advertisement of instant soup years back, I had to buy it and it was a terrible experience. I happily copied the actions of Anime characters and placed the bowl on plates and sat with folded legs to sip my soup. And the soup tasted horrible. But when it comes down to my elder sibling, she is a recurring victim of marketing strategies. Every time she would order some cold drinks for us to drink, they would always come with hot spices. Sometimes chilli made cameo too. But what made me pick up the mysterious drink sitting inside the refrigerator with other colourful drinks far ...

Letters, I always had a fascination for letters. Written words caged in paper and sent on a mysterious journey. With its departure a constant worry takes birth will the receiver get the thought on his door posted. Free of time barrier and often late in earlier times. They have bewitched the world for time immemorial. In school they were taught as formal and informal letters. One that required decorum and manners was Formal. They are restricting and I am against them. They are a mass scale conspiracy to run the bureaucratic whip on humans. The only letters ever penned by the pre-selfie generations were to their imaginary friends in their English Work Book and tests. I had many imaginary friends all named Nina. She never liked my letters hence I never got more than four out of ten when ever I was asked to write a my letter to a friend.  The fascination with letters began years before when landline was new luxury in our home. On one of those hot days when I rolled on f...

Hamlet said ‘Words Words and Words’ I would say Discourse Discourse and Discourses. All of a sudden my life is a reaction that is created between two separating atoms. The Other that was never conscious in me has began to challenge my alter ego. My simple carefree life has become complex all with change of location. I was a female once, I became a feminist female years later, I became an out and proud queer person, I have no accent, I have no mother tongue, I have no location. Am I a cosmopolitan or am I the eternal other that brings chaos to world? I feel like Hamlet a fool on the stage of world theater. Few days back I called the most important man in my life barking out all my problems and trouble on to his ears. The conversation with him made me realise with each passing day, I am gaining moments of epiphanies. These epiphanies are true to their name, they neither make me happy nor sad. They simply produce another thought process in my mind.  A shared train jour...

Does the month of February feel inferior because she has twenty eight days? Does she feel insulted when every four year she gets an extra day under wings yapping Leap year! Leap year! The essential question that everyone asks in their childhood would be why dear February has only twenty eight days in her kitty. Some of us know the Roman Version where one from the Ceaser clan snatched days from her and added it to the month named after him. Some know the mythical version where February became self sacrificing to save another month from vanishing.  In childhood it was a short month that was too short before the impending month that brought exams. March its successor has his domain of fear, where he terrorises kids with Exam and adults with tax. In the end poor February becomes the sweet victim of post-new year nostalgia and pre-exam stress. Again being second also equivalent to being invisible, never the first always the second, it’s such a hurting position. In blink of...