Inviting Bread

1.34 am.  The normally chaotic taxi stand of Dumdum airport was eerily silent. The pre-booking counter had dropped its shutters long ago. Most of those at the Arrival had personal cars already waiting for them. Apparently, everyone but Udayan had known about the strike. Well, not much he could do about it. He began his long walk to the main road. Were buses running? Unlikely. Still, he had to try. In the worst-case scenario, he would have to walk to one of the hotels and spend money to find a shelter in his own hometown. It started drizzling the moment the shed above him opened up to the night sky.  A black Alto, unimpressive and severely dented, slowed down beside him.  “Dada, where to?”  Udayan stopped dragging his luggage for a second.  “Shankaritola.”  “Can’t go inside those narrow lanes. I can drop you at Sealdah Station.”  “That’ll do too,” Udayan shrugged, “How much?”  “Dada, a thousand.”  “A thousand!” Udayan’s voice rang out th...

A momentary glimpse of blue snow. I get distracted by the computer lock screen. I’ve never stared at a scenery quite so intently before. Houses blanketed by snow at night time. The front porches and the streets awash with a warm yellow light that somehow tempers with the subzero temperature. I don’t know where this place is supposed to be. Is it a real place at all? I have never seen snow. This doesn’t seem any more real than any other snow that I have seen in movies.                It’s not really the snow I long for. I don’t particularly see the beauty of it either. It’s not possible to understand why people long for the snow without ever having witnessed snowfall. I’m not sure I’d like it even if I had. There isn’t anything beautiful about holding an ice-cube in your hand, is there? My bones start aching when it gets too cold. But I want to know if this place is real.        ...

Make a wish.  The instruction was simple. People waited with baited breath, with their palms vibrating with the anticipation to collide and let the celebration reach its catharsis. The cake lay meekly amidst a pile of confetti, awaiting its slaughter. Time slowed down. “Come on, girl,” barked one of her uncles who could never bother to remember her name, “Make a wish so we get this going.” Time finally stopped. The flame of the birthday candle stilled. She stopped the dreadful process of inevitable ageing to think. What do I wish for? She wished for the uncle who didn’t remember her name to be gone. She wished he had not whispered a criticism of her mother for her sleeveless blouse to his wife. But wishes didn’t rectify the past and those things were done for. She widened her mind. She would wish for everyone to be happy, always. But. She didn’t want her uncle to be happy and everyone included billions like her uncle. Or worse. Also, if a rapist was happy, someone else ...

There is no way in which I could die that would not make you cry.  I died before birth that one time and you almost killed yourself. You had never even met me but somehow that did not bother you one bit. I was completely formed in your mind; no half-baked bun that couldn’t even survive in the incubator. I was whole. And that’s why you almost killed yourself that time. What would you not give to see me smile, at least once. To know me, even a little. I died when I was not even one. You couldn’t even be one of those annoying women who say “My baby is 32 months old.” The doctor was right. Wouldn’t you have been even more devastated had I been forced to live with an unformed heart, only to die when you had made all plans for pre-school? This was better, right? Yet, you cried. You wished you had never met me. Maybe then it would have hurt less.  I died when I was twenty-three and it was utterly and completely my own fault. How on earth did you find a way to blame yourself? You even...

  My father was terrified of hair. Not all hair. Only the kind of hair that used to belong to a scalp but had ceased to continue its residence there. So he was scared of loose hair lying around in places where they had no business to be in. Have you noticed something about loose hair? It is never pretty.  It could have belonged to Helen or Aphrodite but once one of them comes off their heads, it ceases to be beautiful. There is something disgusting about that singularity. The possession of a lock of the beloved’s hair is completely understandable. The possession of a single hair is not only bizarre but possibly unintentional. Intentional possession is even more bizarre. Let’s talk about a single hair. And let us talk about death. My grandmother was ninety when she died. I was not sad. Ninety was a good age to die. It is neither climactic like thirty two or anti-climatic like one hundred and thirty two. Her hair was raven black even on the day that she died; raven black an...

  The fizz of champagne is a curious thing. It seems to have the overwhelming power to make the thin glass enclosing it shatter into a million pieces. The boy carrying the tray did not seem to harbour this same apprehension because he was carrying the flutes pretty confidently for someone who was doing it for the first time. “You know how I know that he hasn’t done this before?” a man in his early thirties told an older woman standing in his vicinity. The man was dressed as all men are at gatherings such as these. It could be described in detail but that would add nothing to the general perception of him. He had been to too many of these parties to care about standing out and especially to know that standing out at these parties was not necessarily a good thing. You got invited to more parties if you ended up being a charming guest. “Oh Professor, how?” the woman gasped. The professor did not miss the exaggeration of her reaction. He did not miss most things and this was just routi...

“Man is exploring the sea in order to increase his resources.” That is why when you drown on a Wednesday afternoon, no one looks for you. It should be sad and it would be in any other world, but it isn't in this one. Because you see, as you are drowning, you find yourself surrounded by a swarm of jellyfish. Except they are really hot air balloons. It is not a miracle; water is like air. Whatever floats here, floats there. You breathe in because you can. There are people inside the hot air balloons. Tiny business executives pumping up the currents in their tiny grey suits. But that’s not all that is interesting about the hot air balloons. When one floats by you, a little too close for comfort, you realise you can see through the tightly stretched latex spheres. There are lights inside. Fairy lights? There is a city inside. It kind of resembles New York. But it could be any city- Bombay, London, Tokyo. Cities are essentially all the same unless they are your own. In the unfortunate e...