It was raining heavily with water clogging the street and the hard-hitting drops keeping people restricted to wherever they were, maybe home or office or an educational institution or simply waiting under a shaded place. But Vasant was prepared for it, he knew these heavy rains very well and he knew how much his city…

It had been a long time since Tanvi’s family had walked into city life. Her paternal grandfather left the village right after his marriage and slowly most of the family followed, scattered across the country in search of a different kind of life. But the elder brother of Tanvi’s grandfather decided to remain in the…

The day had been deprived of the complete intensity of sunlight by a layer of smog that didn’t seem to be moving anywhere. Prabhat often glanced at the sky when he stopped at the traffic light. It provided him a form of calm, but with the present condition the calmness had been affected. At the…

Some monkeys ran around playfully on the roof of a house. Mr Markam watched closely from the closed panoramic window. What made the view unique was the old architecture of the houses around that had been maintained along with trees which remained untouched throughout the years.   Mr Markam looked at his watch and it…

Girish started the morning early, he had to get to work and get done with some pending tasks. He walked along the society road still finishing up with the last of what was once a sandwich in a complete triangle. Just then his focus was broken by the sound of something crashing towards his right.…

At 3 in the morning, a pair of footsteps ran through the Singhal household. It opened the door to the backyard and rushed towards the mini swimming pool. Mr and Mrs Singhal woke up to the sound of water splashing and rushed out to see their son Ajit standing in water, still in his night…

Anjay waited for the bus at the stand. He was returning from the marriage of a colleague. He along with some of his coworkers had headed there after work. The bus arrived and there were more than usual people to tackle. Anjay had already let a bus go to avoid the peak of the crowd,…

When I travel in a bus, or a metro train I often observe the people travelling besides and a lot of the houses and other buildings passing by outside.   I sometimes ask my imagination, what would it be like to ‘be him/her’ or to ‘be there in that house or office or a shop’.…

It was late evening, as Ajay stood beside a dark blue sedan, waiting. People came and passed by, Ajay scrolled his phone, still waiting. Then the wait was over, he kept the phone inside the pocket and detached the tyre inflator from the tyre of the car, only instead of inflating it was being used…

Whether we admit it or not, somewhere within ourselves, the heart tries to find that meaningful connection with the right kind of answers. Friends are one such kind of connection and most people have them, near or far. But for a certain period around the school, college time, the closeness to friends is more than…

The evening Sun had started to visibly lose its brightness and people as they looked up at the sky, saw what was to come ahead, a restful end to the day or a very busy one. Mr Chabra was busy too, quietly pasting fliers of his business around. He looked around for any approaching police…

A silent morning began to come alive with human presence as two legs rushed on the road towards the park. The legs entered the park and headed towards a particular bush and behind it they hopped and a hand reached out to pick up something, a cricket ball. The evening a day before, Sanjit had…

Mr Rastogi stepped out with a watering pipe and began watering the plants. It was Sunday evening, Mr Rastogi had a good afternoon nap, something the rest of the week was devoid of. As he watered the plants, he thought of his son who had lost a considerable amount of Mr Rastogi’s money in a…

The late evening invited people out from their work, back to their homes and the roads became busy. Medha let the peak of this time pass away in a coffee shop. She sat at the same place every day, if possible, from there she could see the world outside, awaiting the moment which made her…

Shristi had been planning this for a long time; she had been trying to set up time for it, somewhere in between being busy and being lazy. Little did she know that when it would eventually happen, it would take a lot more time than what she had anticipated. So, one day during a government…

Mrs Damle was a housewife, in her 70s. Living a decent life with her retired husband who kept himself to his books most of the time. Their only son was divorced, but shared custody of his daughter. Their apartment was on the ground floor and the small porch in front of the second entrance which…

Mr Vaghani sat at an ongoing religious event in his society. He had stopped interacting after the initial few formal interactions. He preferred the silence, listening to the different sounds of the event, absorbing the energy it emitted in the air along with the distinct smell any event of such nature carried. All these reminded…

The cold air of early winter flowed in a modest manner. It was still early in the morning for a day such as Sunday. There were several people out, some who were already in their woollens, some who were feeling the cold but still for some reason known to them were still in their t-shirts.…

As the clock struck 6 in the morning, Mrs Mongia stepped out of her apartment and down in the elevator she went and out for a morning walk. It was a beautiful morning, then again, all mornings seen even for a second without a burdening complexity in mind can prove to be beautiful. She walked…

It was 8 am and Rikita hurriedly stepped out of her house with grocery bags and she met on the road her friend Lisha who was also carrying some bags. This was a planned meeting where they planned their visit to the supermarket. They walked quite happily discussing the list of things they intended to…

Bhuman sat with eyes focused on his laptop screen, looking through some reports his team had prepared. The smartwatch woke up with vibrations from the alarm set. It was lunch time. He got up and out of his study room and climbed the stairs down to the drawing room of the house. Bhuman heated the…

Keshav woke up from a nightmare abruptly. It was 4:50 am, earlier than his regular six on school days. He calmed down and had some water. It was not an unusual occurrence but a known outcome. Every time Keshav saw a horror movie at night, there was a high chance that a nightmare had become…

It was a usual weekday, nothing exceptional if you look at it in a generalised manner, then again individually a lot was happening with people all round and someone could be having the best day of his/her life or the opposite. Jiya had been quite concerned over the numbers in her credit card bill. The…

Mr Dohre sat staring at the cup of tea in his hand. “Something wrong with the tea? Not to your liking?” asked Mr Pawar Mr Dohre and Mr Pawar had been friends for a good portion of their adult life. Now both of them were retired. Mr Pawar was mild and quite understanding while Mr…

The sky had been pouring more than usual. The rain had slowed down the otherwise busy city which always seemed to be rushing towards something or the other. Amongst the traffic jams at several places, Vibha was stuck in one of the comparatively denser jams, the ones that have the habit of not moving for…

Mrs Doshi lived a peaceful retired life with her husband, her daughter and son-in-law. She had feared loneliness when her daughter married and shifted to another state but that changed when her son-in-law had to transfer here as part of promotion and Mrs Doshi took the opportunity to convince them to live together.   Mrs…

The festival of Diwali is a beautiful festival. In India behind the obvious sound of crackers are small villages to big cities illuminated by lights of various kinds and lights are what Mr Prakash Chand particularly loved. Mr Chand owned and lived in the ground floor of a three floored house. There was a single…

Jagat stood silent with his travel bag standing on his right side. An expression of an unwanted clarity was present on his face. He turned to look a last time at a view which he didn’t know when he would see again and he walked into the airport. This was not how Jagat had arrived…

Fossil evidence of ancient skulls, for instance, suggests that early Neanderthals used tools to pick their teeth. Scientists have also found tooth indentations indicative of teeth picking in human remains among Australian Aborigines, prehistoric Native Americans, and the earliest Egyptians.  The practice of teeth picking was not uncommon among early civilizations, too. Mesopotamians used instruments…