โNow that the autumn is approaching, you might pack up your colour and brushes to paint the landscape of this wailing vale in all possible shades.โ He was losing count of days now. It was a month-old lockdown and the September sun had just begun to smile readily at the mountain peaks.ย โWhat day is…
Ramnath Jiโs house? Who could have expected this? What threat? What danger, could an abandoned house pose? Next to Ramnath Jiโs house is a departmental store- Royal Bazaar. Once in a while, a car may pull up near the glass door and a family with sophisticated strides will enter and return with the same sophistication…
He was lost but still hopeful of something, something that could only be felt and not detailed. A young boy of teens, no mustaches at all, a jacket of fashion, seemingly a hipster, opens up fire, so much so that, all the available men lay dead-down.ย Oozing blood and screams were so parallel that none…
Soaring through the warm, misty skies of Delhi and Punjab, we rumbled through the brooding clouds over Pir Panjal before we touched down at Srinagar airport, where the wild summer rain followed me home.ย Iโd been away from home for three long years. When I returned, I learned what three years can do to a…
He kept looking dreamily at his white sneakers left to sundry on a green plastic armless chair on the roof of his fatherโs one-storey house. Jibraan looked at them yesterday as well, even a day before, too, with varied curiosity, but today he sat on his knees and blew on them twice to remove a…
You see, Snow White was chosen. It could have been anyone, couldnโt it? But it had to happen to Snow White, and it did. Mirror, Mirror on the wall. We often thought what if, in the parallel universe, Snow White was born in Kashmir? Someone would put a bullet in her. โZoonieโ would be her…
The durood were heard from both the local and distant mosques. It sounded as a viscous amalgam of voices to me, in which, if listened with the ears of heart, one could quickly lose himself. It was strange how it awoke me, even though it had never done before. I went to the kitchen where…
โGo back to your country! We donโt want you here!โ The words still echoed in my mind as I crossed through the carpeted lobby of the Student Union building. Students sat in huddles on the floor, others sitting lazily on the arms of couches occasionally laughing at something someone said. When I walked by, the…
โThere are some things that canโt be explained in this life,โ Menshiki went on, โand some others that probably shouldnโt be explained. Especially when putting them into words ignores what is most crucial.โ ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย โHaruki Murakami,…
On the bulge of Amira Kadal, I stare at the fish in their basket, murmuring between themselves about their estrangement from the Jhelum that flows underneath, belligerently. Or, maybe, they are just gasping for a few extra breathsโ as many as they canโ before it is all over; as all of us try to do…