Poems & Short Stories

  Manu Joseph’s The Illicit Happiness of Other People moved me to tears. Even now, my lips quiver at the mention of the book’s name, and my tear glands well up with a flood of tears. The end was too much to bear. This book is different from his earlier works like The Illicit Happiness of Other People and the iconic Serious Men . I was intrigued by this latest work of his, so without much thought, it became my February read. Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us is a piercingly intimate inquiry by Manu Joseph that highlights real-life instances where the middle class and the rich get away scot-free in their dealings with the poor. Joseph’s matter-of-fact writing doesn’t sound overtly critical, yet it makes you introspect about the things you take for granted. He examines the privileges that define the rich at the expense of the poor, or rather how the poor have resigned themselves to the treatment they are subjected to. It reveals how misery is normalized and how lamenting one’s miserable ...

In this long form, I reflect on the  constant chase, the unsettling void that comes after, and the desirable vs. undesirable chase.   The prospect of something is more desirable than the thing itself. Because there is an underlying chase that hums inaudibly inside of us and makes us sway to its tunes. Online shopping keeps you motivated till the time retail fatigue doesn’t hit you. And for me, retail therapy becomes retail fatigue in no time. My window shuts off very early. I hit gold on the very first page most of the times. And then comes the act of waiting, which is driven with excitement. It is like all elements of the universe conspiring together to make the product fall into your lap. The domino spirals into action from processing and dispatching to delivery. Like usual, that day too I got what I wanted in the first click. Right when I was adding the sparkling accessory to my shopping cart, I had an epiphany. “Do I really need this?” A question that is not part of a shop...

Reading: A Solitary Activity Reading has often been a solitary activity. We read and get hooked by the characters of a story. Then we set off on an adventurous journey, and there is no looking back till the last page. We flip through the pages, analyse texts, parse through the syntax of words written, read between the lines, and form an interpretation from the words unsaid. Silence heaves an inaudible sigh with only rustles of pages making their presence felt. Storytelling: A Precursor to community reading Community reading or reading in a group is a byproduct of storytelling. Storytelling became the driving force to be informed and conscious of our experiences so that it can be regaled with enriching forms of entertainment and dramatic composition in front of an audience later.  Sitting around a storyteller with curious ears gave way to discussion of the stories narrated. Gradually, with more access to written forms of texts and written material, the concept of reading grew ...

       Gratitude is a powerful tool to unlock abundance. Appreciating the aspects around us does not come very easily, especially if you are on a downward spiral; you would find it a herculean effort to unearth the positives. But the moot point is— are we trained to be grateful? The constant chase Fundamentally we all are trained to worry because the survival mindset kicks in every time we are on to something. So even if we have gained something, for example, success, it is hard for us to feel good about it; forget about being grateful. Even before the warmth of the moment mellows, we are on the lookout to chase the next thing and put all our efforts into attaining the unattainable. Every time we achieve something, we are on a next chase. To level up and accomplish more. Pause and reflect We are not taught to pause ourselves, take a moment to feel the joy that our accomplishments have offered us, revel in the moment, and feel grateful for it. This is what i...

“Amma, it feels like you have put on the AC. Air has grown cold”, said my 7-year-old lifting up her beady eyes from her maths homework. A cheery hurray followed. I shook the clothes firmly and filed them neatly on the cloth stand. Yes, indeed. There was a light nip in the air. Not due to AC. And, certainly no change in the temperature. It was still a blazing 38 degrees outside. I smiled and was whisked off to my childhood days. To my nondescript haven that would have looked more picturesque in a child’s sketchbook than in reality. A chawl which housed 14 flats adjacent to each other, spaced out at an arm’s length. A place where people were knitted closely together regardless of what social standing they were in. A place where we children had not one but many houses at our perusal to watch television, eat lunch, sleep under the warm covers and take refuge from the angry monsoon spells. A place where aimless wanderings were honoured but not bothered by ruthless meanderings of the rou...

  You cannot run from positive affirmations even if you think you have run out of them.   They will come, looking for you. All you have to do is keep your eyes wide open and graciously receive them with warmth and care. They can come to you at any moment and from any quarter perhaps, while running errands like when the momentum has picked up in you to array the disarray in your child’s wardrobe. When that happens, you treat them as a little note, an epiphany or a sacred sign from the universe and insert them as a key that locks itself into your mind with an audible click, only to unlock a change in you and get reflected in every journey you embark. When your little one’s Tees mouth affirmations, you cannot just run away without glancing at it. Start small, dream big, repeat – Starting small and repeating them with consistency is so underrated these days. So much of today’s world is rooted in instant gratifications and making it big in a wink of time. Small, incremental progr...