Tag Archives: drama

“Shit! This is the worst possible time to take a break,” I cursed under my breath as my thoughts homed in on the new client pitch in the coming week. “The timing is all f***** up,” I muttered as I mentally ran over the salient points that I wanted to pitch. My forehead furrowed. I arched my back to relieve the tightness. My neck felt stiff and I rolled my shoulders to work the suddenly sore muscles. But, that only brought momentary relief as always.

I was chomping into a leg of Chicken leg when... A murder! It was a murder! My blood curdled at the sight. I tell you, the chicken that I was eating could not have squawked louder than I did at that point. They noticed.

The heat was oppressive. It was worse inside than outside. His throat felt scratchy and he was parched. The lack of oxygen, probably due to the swirling mass of patients, made him feel dizzy and nauseous. But, he could not afford to feel weak. Not right now. His family needed urgent help.

‘The lass pined for her kin. The winds that blew, whispered messages from her ilk. By and by, she grew melancholy. Till one day...,’ Malcum paused and looked at the waters of the bay, ‘she found the skin Sean had hidden. That day, she transformed, dove into the bay and disappeared, never to be seen again.’

We went out often after that for meals and even movies. We discovered that we had much in common. We talked endlessly and shared stories of our childhood. I told him about my family, he told me about his. He was an army brat who had been raised all over India. His older brother was a software engineer in America and had recently married an American girl. The specifics of our friendship gradually changed as we discovered more about each other. Something grew between us but was yet unspoken. It was Rohit who confessed it first on one of our outings.

Bijju was not an imposing figure in stature but he had a fearsome reputation.  He was a cutthroat businessman and ran a tight business. His employees feared him. Rumour had it that he had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks in penury. What he could not have as a child, he had vowed to provide for his own progeny. Thus, he had embarked on a career in construction. He had started working odd jobs in the jungle and learnt on the job. His work had been good, his eagerness to please even more so.  Through sheer hard work he had built up a small yet respectable business, the same one that he now so shrewdly ran.

This story won me the coveted Gitesh Biva Memorial Award ——————————————————————— The sun peeked into her basement apartment from the window high up, near the ceiling. It was the only time that she got any sunlight, in the late afternoon. Sitting at her desk Anne opened an unread mail in …