Prashant's Solace

                  Siddhi and Neil were having lunch in a lavish hotel on a hot Saturday in Allahabad, India. It was May afternoon when the sun was at its merciless best across the span of the country. But it was a happy day for the Prasad siblings. Neil was in India for his marriage and the brother sister duo were out shopping in the upmarket Civil Lines neighbourhood of the city. They decided to break for lunch. These days were a departure from the routine calm and lazy afternoons at the Prasad household. It was filled with commotion and tension in the run up to the D-day. This was a far-cry from the usual silence which the Prasad's were used to, until Neil went abroad. He had moved to Brazil for work and had come home on this short trip after three long years. During the course of their meal they had had an argument. “It is high time you realize Siddhi that if you don’t study the future is perilous for you,” said Neil. ...

[Yes, you read the title right! What follows is the story of most Indian girls, sadly if you ask me but true nevertheless in most cases. When we were school going age our teachers asked us to write all sorts of autobiographies; of a pen, a book, tree, desk or a bench. It is my firm belief that if our teachers would have asked us to write one of the opposite sex, things could have been better for each one of us; For one, if we could think like a blackboard or a chalk, we could have done well knowing the grossly misunderstood opposite sex, and two, given the hypocrisy and apathy that breeds all around, a little empathy of another human would enlighten rotten minds to reason our living.] Here it goes; autobiography of a girl written by a boy… I was born in a middle class family in one of the many small cities that dot the confused Indian landscape. A landscape filled with contradictions of what represents our culture and what is foreign to u...

 This is a tale of an emerging I-land, Where S for society is negligibly silent.                               Organs with ideals loud, in it were big three,               And very unlike the alphabet, it all began with C; Noble in initials, C took I to some gain, Many say now evident, it intents not the same;               Boisterous B began unlike, religion its fundamental,               Short not sweet its reigns, looks for strong revival; Parading all virtuous, swaying gazes along comes A, "Lets promise I to glory," says, "C and B can only decay";                Misery sea stepping feet, I-landers simply look on,                Can any hold the surges, least survival be forgone; Step u...

                                    Musings of ... shall I say, an 'ordinary Indian life'? Life works in mysterious ways. There are times when principles guide you into a particular action and reasonably so. But then again there comes a moral dilemma of relations. People. Humans who are related to oneself in a love hate relationship create a unique situation. Times when we forego all that we want to stand for or are willing to stand for, just to nurture that bond.  There will be a time when shadows that lead our path will fall behind. Relations left out to face themselves lost over time and space.                                                                               ...