“He keeps asking me what’s wrong. I wish I knew, but I don’t. I don’t know. So I make something up to keep the monsters at bay. I feel so unhappy. I feel empty inside. I feel lifeless. I fear what the future holds for me. I fear the dismay with who I have become….
Category: stories
Life After Death
The first day after was the hardest. The questions kept lurching towards me like a swinging punching bag filled with sand. I bobbed and weaved as quickly as possible. I threw my left jab out to keep us apart. I answered the hard swings with a right cross, putting my weight behind it, swiveling my hips, keeping my head low and protected from the next one.
Confessions of a Failed Entrepreneur
I’m laid flat on my back on the fake wood floor in the middle of our office staring up at the disgusting ceiling fan that hasn’t been cleaned in over a year, watching a large clump of dust spin around and around, gathering momentum, teetering further to the edge by the second. I have a deep sense that when it falls, it will fall directly on my face, because that’s just my luck these days, and I wont be able to do a thing about it: I literally cannot move.
How to Make Lemonade
This unique triumph over my fear of failure happened on accident. I did not intend to hurt myself or to instill fear in my parents’ hearts. Life hands us lemons when we least expect them and when we would really prefer not to have them at all.
5 years in training
I reached the end of a notebook today. Every time I get to the last page of a notebook it feels like an apt time to reflect. It’s a bit too unceremonious for my sentimental heart to simply shut the book, open a new one, and keep on trekkin. This time I reflected back to…
Learning to listen
A brown and black striped kitten waltzed into my bedroom tonight, unannounced. She came in through the balcony on her tippy toes. Ears perked. Eyes wide and darting. I didn’t even notice I was in her presence until she was right here next to me, waiting for what I’d do. Sometimes people come into your…
riches to rags
I wrote the following piece (with some minor edits for context) 1.5 years ago, at a low point in my life, to myself more than anything else. Recently, when I meet people and they ask me if they should give up their job to pursue work for the greater good, I find I have a…
high
Your mind begins to wander and immediately you feel your body lift off the ground. The pain is gone, the problems subsided. You forget about your feet and your struggles. You drift into a place that no drug can take you, tasting air so fresh it could be from the Himalayas, seeing colors so bright they might not be real, dreaming dreams so tangible that you cant fathom why they haven’t come true. You hear the electric waves pass through the thick uninsulated wires above, watch the sun rays fall deeper and deeper into someone else’s morning run, you contemplate life as it is, here, now, unreal but all too real to be yours’ forever.
foolish
I realize now that I not only made it my mission to fool others, but to be as foolish as possible myself. I take all the roads less traveled, I seek out all the unsafe things to do, and I trust that my foolishness will get me in and likewise out of all the exhilarating unimaginably ridiculous and imperative parts of life. This is what I live for- and this is what they’ve taught me. I treasure them dearly and blame them entirely for it.
guest post: one down in the bribe tribe
Fortunately, one of the calls to the police had gone through and the swat team stormed in within two minutes although these were the longest 2 minutes of my life. Ironically, it was the concern and anxiety of a senior officer from the Lokayukt who was calling the team to monitor progress that was keeping the critical phone line busy!
Like trained commandos, every member of the crack team got busy in something — video-graphing evidence, detecting traces of the powder, searching the office for cash, removal of cameras from my body and analysis of the recordings. Two hours later Khan and the typist were formally under arrest being led out of the building into the waiting police van.