2023-10-01 14:45
There is an unnamed wound pulsating in the bosom, undecided and doomed in its genesis and intent. Coursing outward, it burns and bites like rising flames, frosting ice. I wish it could be dr… Read More
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One Grain Amongst The Storm | A Mélange Of Memoir Blog
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A mélange of recollections and fiction, short stories, book reviews, and monologues on mists and twisters of life.
2022-01-15 10:07
From virus to virusI have kept my date with not dying,tossing and turning in sheets,cough syrups and repurposed antibiotics.Inside me, the pathogen worms,outside me, the pathogen storms,in t… Read More
2021-01-31 04:53
It has come upon meonce more, this month ofinterrogations, the rat raceto the roads I never thoughtI’d take. Behind me and beyondthe misty miles, lie themuch-dreamt meadowsthat will ne… Read More
2020-11-06 08:29
It was on the Saturday the 24th of October, 2020, with the three days’ holiday in its infancy, that I dozed off with a mild ache pulsing through my meagre frame, right after the mornin… Read More
2020-10-11 14:29
This drop on the sill,
a distant cloud come home
on wings of heaviness,
or grief as I know Read More
2020-08-22 09:32
(This brief ghazal is dedicated to Disha Salian and Sushant Singh Rajput who were brutally murdered on June 08 and June 14 of the year 2020 respectively, in the city of Mumbai.) Read More
2020-08-15 19:49
Sullen rain simmers, pretends to slalom and surrenders,recoils in the clouds of sodden discontent. Aridthoughts smother the sapless jelly of life. It is theMonth of August, the fat middle of… Read More
2020-04-11 19:35
Confined to the peripheries of my home, looking out the window at a mysteriously pink moon rising day after day, I have of late been forced to cogitate on the wonders of being alive, the hum… Read More
2020-03-28 19:27
I do not know whether the citizens of United States take Mr Trump literally or seriously or both, and I am glad I am not subject to that trilemma. But I was thrilled when he called the Chine… Read More
2019-12-15 15:23
Yes, I have descended to filching from weird quotes of indeterminate, ambivalent origin and intent. True, I have faltered, faded, fumbled and stumbled into that eternal bin. The crispy tang… Read More
2019-08-25 17:58
(Further to Bruno’s Story) It seems I have troubled your heart, but it is a tale recount I must. So that next time you see a dog pup scrapping the bins for crumbs, you don’t winc… Read More
2019-08-24 16:20
&nbs&hell…Read More
2019-08-17 19:52
What memories have etched this incision in the night? My heart will crumble without a reason in the night. Icebergs implode like a fireball of miseries, The tranquil marina is a prison in th… Read More
2019-08-17 19:52
What memories have etched this incision in the night? My heart will crumble without a reason in the night. Iceber… Read More
2019-08-11 20:06
(Further to Luna’s Story) At the end of long nights birds chirped and squawked, squirrels chattered their heads out. The wind rose and fell and the tall trees whispered. Footsteps… Read More
2019-08-04 10:39
Dear Finn, I don’t even know where to begin. But before the skies get creepy like a hole in the mouth of a snake, and darkness falls like flakes and sinks into the soul of the dogdom… Read More
2019-07-28 16:24
Like a penitent pigeon, grief has settled again on the ledge;
Molten moons have lingered and shone in vain on the ledge.Read more Read More
2019-04-13 12:57
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” ~Stephen King In the darkness intervening the 25th and 26th of February, the Indian Air Force executed wha… Read More
2019-02-01 18:40
Disquieted and quietened we stand, the pair of us at the brink of the Internet, conjoined and disjointed at the splice of consciousness and a unique resource locator. Beguiled enough to have… Read More
2019-01-31 19:25
The hurricane sits in the trees, the earthquake in the grass,
Shall I kiss the poison ivy, or cuddle with the snake...Read more Read More
2019-01-01 17:47
Afterwards, I shall be a mote swirling at your window, Without a breath, or a heartbeat, ringing at your window. Noon has stumbled through the half-wicked buildings, Like a blemish upon the… Read More
2018-12-18 03:32
Originally posted on Weave a Web: ? Bruce hadn’t achieved much in his life. There was one thing, however, he could do: he could be the first in the history of the world to climb one pa… Read More
2018-07-15 20:33
Each night I bleed a part of my soul to her beauty, Silken words awaken to fill up the hole to her beauty. A lone moon is treading forth the liminal dust of nightfall, The dying sun has hitc… Read More
2018-03-25 03:39
Old lesions fester and seep in the cavern of tonight, Dark thoughts gather and weep in the cavern of tonight. A high wind is swaying the maimed tree of deodar, The parched lips of tippler lo… Read More
2018-02-01 19:41
(Click here for Part II) Something in the way Kanika was averting my gauge had hints of a connection between her and the assailant on the platform. Not willing to mire an entire day with the… Read More
2018-01-27 08:44
(Click here for the first part) It is a bit unusual to rain in Mumbai in the beginning of November but what surprised me more was the rumbling of clouds. I wasn’t sure when I had dozed… Read More
2018-01-02 17:01
As I lie here on the dewan pushed against the window, gazing absently into the impossibly yellow canopy of the Amaltas tree, my thoughts race back once more to the field of mustard I visited… Read More
2017-12-28 18:14
Just as I thought I was done with the ash-berries tossed at me by the departing year, suturing up my tattered ego with a ghazal in the reigning obscurity, Mr D. P. Dash ruffled the quiet of… Read More
2017-12-28 18:14
Just as I thought I was done with the ash-berries tossed at me by the departing year, suturing up my tattered ego with a ghazal in the reigning obscurity, Mr D. P. Dash ruffled the quiet of… Read More
2017-12-24 05:26
The old year shrivels like a dog-eared calendar in the ash, Days fuse into dust, hope into hungry tinder, in the ash. For a decade of scribbling my heart out on Internet, The façade h… Read More
2017-11-25 18:27
My muse is a furious fugitive from a foreign galaxy, not unlike the ‘intergalactic interloper ’Oumuamua’, who having orbited the fuzzy nebula of my brain is now poised for… Read More
2017-10-29 18:53
Fallen by the wayside like a sheaf by the nightfall, The sea of love has withered on the reef by the nightfall. Happiness will travel only one way with her footsteps, The dust will settle de… Read More
2017-10-07 19:55
Derrick J. Night, who writes everyday about his incredibly plenteous garden, weaves subtle symbols and imagery in the titles and subjects of his photographs. Yesterday, I was struck by the t… Read More
2017-09-30 18:50
They are burning effigies of vermin, it’s that time of the season, Ones in flesh and bones are hatching the crime of the season. Bandits from the wastelands order beheading of the infi… Read More
2017-09-05 11:11
Such divinations were planted in my ears by my aunt who died on a cloudy day, spelling out the mantra for absolute cheers by watching out the omens sent my way. Cruising for success never co… Read More
2017-09-02 16:37
There are many veils to fog the view, Many mists that came with myopia to hug me at the brink of boyhood, shattering a vulturous utopia. To a lad with concaved countenance, came a blaze foll… Read More
2017-08-27 16:08
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ ~Martin Luther King Jr. So, I got my relocation orders again. As with me, if you are a minion of a financial behemoth, all… Read More
2017-07-08 13:56
Where walkways were fragrant with you, I shall weep, It was not till I left your town, I knew I shall weep. Affinity is at discount in the market of subsistence; There are thousands in the m… Read More
2017-06-24 20:37
Dear readers, the original title of this post was ‘Confusticated and Bebothered’. But I became jittery at the last minute, even though no detractors were skinned alive in the pro… Read More
2017-05-13 17:01
The page remained unblemished across the night, waiting for letters. But then why sniffle a haiku When one can weep a sea? The peepal tree has a new, green sheath. It shimmers and quivers in… Read More
2017-04-22 14:05
Come April and I am awash with phone calls from friends and colleagues about how they fared in the annual performance appraisals. Certain lesions of the past rendered unmentionable on this b… Read More
2017-04-08 18:44
Himesh is fussy about the order in which ingredients should be put into vegetable rice. Butter, followed by equal amount of mustard oil, cumin seeds, chopped chillies and onions, crushed gin… Read More
2017-03-19 19:32
“I’m your phantom dance partner. I’m your shadow. I’m not anything more.” ~Haruki Murakami As if working for a bank weren’t traumatic enough, I am wo… Read More
2017-02-28 18:31
It happened when I was eight or nine. What refreshed the memory this past month was the hurried confession of a rookie Australian batsman to his captain, as he scrambled for the loo, “… Read More
2017-02-19 12:36
As I look back at the life of my departed father, I realise how he had been a part of the transitional era that stood with a foot in the mysteries of the yore and the other into the increasi… Read More
2017-02-10 14:08
My student life ended abruptly, or shall I say, comic-apocalyptically, with the postmodernist classic by Joseph Heller, Catch-22. It happened when I wrote a chapter for my doctoral thesis th… Read More
2017-02-07 18:27
Basanti Hawa, or the ‘Springtime Wind’, was the first Hindi poem I fell in love with, early in my childhood. It is written by Kedarnath Agarwal, a much-awarded doyen of Hindi Lit… Read More
2017-01-31 22:30
Dear friend and patrons, by the time you read this post, I’d be rocking away to my old hometown in a still older train panting over the ancient tracks laid down by the British looking… Read More
2017-01-20 21:31
ARNAB GOSWAMI: Can you tell this, on this channel, right in front of all of us: why can’t the chicken write a blog? The nation wants to know. RAHUL GANDHI: The chicken has written the… Read More
2017-01-15 23:36
The Milky Way is dying, or is dead, by the lever of oblivion; A billion suns will be shattered by the cleaver of oblivion. I remember not the love songs lost or the updraughts of passion; Dr… Read More
2017-01-14 07:40
About a week shy of the onset of the New Year, I presumptuously augmented the copyright notice at my blog to 2017. Don’t mistake me, I have long stopped caring about the trolls looking… Read More
2017-01-14 07:40
About a week shy of the onset of the New Year, I presumptuously augmented the copyright notice at my blog to 2017. Don’t mistake me, I have long stopped caring about the trolls looking… Read More
2017-01-07 17:09
Silver grey on temple peaks is the fern of the New Year. The sun has grown wrinkles at the turn of the New Year. Candlelit stilettos turned sherry red in a nightclub, Istanbul is freshly dug… Read More
2016-12-25 16:58
I cannot say Cynthia Jobin was lonely when I met her, surrounded as she was by a swarm of friends, eagerly awaiting the next instalment of priceless poetry on her blog, Litleoldladywho.net… Read More
2016-12-16 16:17
If I was never really proud to be a banker, these are certainly not the times to have a change of heart when the entire species is steeped in disgrace around these tracts of the planet. In t… Read More
2016-11-20 19:50
All right, that is a shameless rip off from the latest opus of J. K. Rowling, also churned into a movie by Warner Bros. But isn’t this the joy of being a nobody on the Internet, that y… Read More
2016-10-23 16:26
I’ve been trying to wiggle a lot this past month. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, till my face is blue in the corner one-seater as apoplectic debaters fume and combust the television over the… Read More
2016-09-14 11:16
Recently, an old friend of mine who also is under the bondage of a commercial bank, confessed to me he has been contemplating digging a well in the backyard of his house. The gushing fool th… Read More
2016-08-18 11:57
“The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.” ~Pablo Neruda I was young when I first read those lines by Pablo Neruda, from a poem that I s… Read More
2016-07-10 09:27
Clouds germinate on the zephyrs from wet hills The heart leaps windward with the kite of moonshine. I count my blessings over the timeline of Facebook Waiting in the tunnels for a byt… Read More
2016-07-03 05:59
The problem of Muslims is poverty, not infidels. The tentacles of penury that keeps charging the vortex further are primarily fed by unbridled procreation, generation after generation, stret… Read More
2016-06-27 03:13
The mirror is in youth, the jasmine in bloom, Smoky is the kohl like the moon in a dewdrop. Someone chiselled a solitaire on the finger of my beloved, I will dance with her shadow on the rim… Read More
2016-06-05 08:02
“Those who can really represent China are digging dirt and paving roads with their bare hands.” ~Mo Yan But can they? Sidestepping the polemic surrounding the Nobel citatio… Read More
2016-06-03 16:35
As the nightfall of blogging closes in on me, I am more inclined to exhaling in private than gasping online, more willing to navigate through the bushes and backwaters than honking in the pe… Read More
2016-05-14 15:12
The evening is long with shadows of the afternoon chopped and spent at the edges of green black leaves of pubescent jackfruit trees. With the cicadas I pause and creek. With the cicad… Read More
2016-04-15 20:49
Somewhere in the pages of his unforgettable autobiography, Paul Kalanithi alludes to the concept of areté, the ability achieved through a confluence of human faculties at their peak… Read More
2016-03-01 01:50
*The beginning It was half past six in the morning as I trod the bridge over the moat to the looming entrance. My heart matched the pitter-patter of my hastening steps. Unlike the stolid fa… Read More
2016-02-23 20:45
I swear I will tell you each word of the story as he had whispered in my ears. I first met him at Sadar Bazar in Agra. I had just purchased a paperback called Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and was s… Read More
2016-02-07 14:58
*The Beginning *Previous chapter “You should have known enough to let her into your life.” “How?” “You could have proposed to her.” “Should I h… Read More
2016-02-07 14:58
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2016-01-31 18:23
*The Beginning *Previous chapter How long is the life of a hollow in the heart? A cavern full of sighs of what didn’t happen? It seeps out from the crevices of my sleep and spreads lik… Read More
2016-01-31 18:23
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2016-01-21 19:19
Rose gold iPhone Fingerprints of feather Haiku they wrote. The bowels jettison Smokes of pot noodle Dawn, noon and dusk. Grumbling in the groin The brooding, wet cistern Agrees a… Read More
2016-01-17 13:39
*The Beginning *Previous chapter We ducked swiftly and crouched behind a clump of coconut trees just shy of the beachfront. The sea had risen from its surface and was clawing out of the shor… Read More
2016-01-17 13:39
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2016-01-08 18:03
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter (On the flyleaf of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’) Dear Bonehead, I have been sitting in this chair with uneven legs through the afternoons, wit… Read More
2016-01-08 18:03
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2016-01-03 19:12
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter I have to admit I was smitten by Ayesha beyond hope by then. I am not sure when the feeling set in but those excursions in Gorai had set her pulsating in my… Read More
2016-01-03 19:12
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2015-12-14 21:44
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter I have gone back and walked down that stretch of sand lined with palm trees. The sea is busy as ever and so are the frolickers of the beach. A new joint has… Read More
2015-12-14 21:44
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2015-10-22 20:15
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter Next to the watery foliage of weeping figs and money plants, I sit and stare into the haze as if all that I say now is trapped in that timeless vagueness. Th… Read More
2015-10-22 20:15
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post Read More
2015-08-29 20:41
It’s been a while since the nightingales sang in the darkness, fidgeting on boughs swaying in the night-wind. It’s been a while since the fingers splattered on the keyboard like… Read More
2015-06-28 20:24
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter I wouldn’t meet Ayesha for many days after that. Shipra had taken ill on our way home from Nashik. It began with convulsions in her stomach and soon sh… Read More
2015-05-11 12:53
*The Beginning *Previous Chapter As the taxi wound its way back through unfamiliar streets, a steady downpour beat on the roof and slid past the windows. A wiper kept drawing a dull se… Read More
2015-04-12 15:53
*The Beginning The little rendezvous over dinner was skidding to an abrupt end. She was eating a tad hastily but with a grace that seemed natural to her. I had to perk up my act, trying hard… Read More
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