Once upon a time, there lived a man who could sew to perfection. These were times when bales of fabric stared down at you from shop shelves, transforming themselves in your mind's eye into lovely frocks, smart shirts and swirling ...Read More
On a sultry Gujarat afternoon, the lazy summer heat would waft in, bringing in its warm folds the salted sweetness of his voice. “Paaaaaavvvvbiskeeeeeeeeeeeet!” Always starting low at ‘paa’ and reaching a nice final peak at ‘keet.' Paav and biscuit ...Read More
What the remakes of old classic films like Chashme Baddoor miss out on is an ingredient called innocence because you can't ever recapture what is lost. Or fake the sense of wonder conveyed by Farooque Sheikh and Dipti Naval on ...Read More
If only I could…
Rewind the track of my life,
To go back in childhood,
To roll in mud;
Hide under beds;
To play in the street light;
To be dragged home by the ear!
**
If only I could…
Scramble through
The recycle bin of time
To rummage for my ...Read More
Pic: courtesy the author
Today, I woke up to grey skies and rain. Incessant, revitalising, cleansing rain.
Today is not a day to be with people. It is a day to be spent with the self. It is a day for solitude ...Read More
Pic by Kunal Karan Kapoor
Sometimes, the merest thing can trigger off memories- an image, a sound, the whiff of a perfume. I recently viewed a photograph of Mumbai….endless tall buildings, a grey snaking road and a bird soaring in the ...Read More
He rode quietly, feeling the wind on his face, feeling her snuggling up to him, his pillion rider wife. The song he had caught off the radio at a snacks store still auto-played in his head.
11 children, all in their ...Read More
It is a girl. She is walking down an uneven path on the barren hillside, placing her feet carefully on the loose stones. Her thin brown fingers are curled around some ferns with white spore smeared undersides that she uses to stamp Christmas ...Read More
She stood there,
Like an old woman with concave lips
Like an old banyan that spreads its
arms wider and roots deeper
Like that rock by the roadside that
weathers but waits for you
To take a breather and rest.
The ruffling leaves echoing a friend’s laughter
The ...Read More
Last weekend I packed my bags and prepared myself for a journey through time. I was headed to a city which had acted as the backdrop for one of the liveliest and most exuberant phases of my ...Read More
The dreaded day will arrive shortly and I will become 60. How and when did this happen?? “It is only a number,” people say. Well, I used to say it too. But it’s a number with a 6 in it. ...Read More
It was a dank wintry evening of November 1993 and we had had our fill of Bengali sweets. My girlfriend and I were stepping out of a confectioner’s in Gol Park, Calcutta when I noticed a lanky, slightly slouching, man ...Read More
