Category: Random Thoughts

Love, like fragrance of flowers,

Is not lost with passage of time–

Merely concentrated in the core of our petals.

To smell it, you have to believe in it.

4 years back, I decided to give my blog a new lease of life. Earlier, it was created to post silly photos. But I decided it needed more silliness so I started adding stories to it. 😯

Before that, I had only told stories to my nephew and my 2-year-old daughter. I didn’t feel qualified enough to badger the world with what I thought. But then, I decided it doesn’t hurt anyone. I had no followers anyway. 😋

Today there are 502 of us here. Well, I am a part of the crowd too, my own cheerleader. 😊

Thank you for sticking to me, having my back, helping me through my writer’s block, just being there listening to me rant and adding your own perspective in the comments.

Lately, I had been absent a lot. Been busy with my book, looking for literary agents and then, life as usual has been keeping me away. But mentally, I am always here with you, wanting to tell a new story, share what my daughter cooked up (she has been cooking clay food lately. I have seen green Pizza, brown dumplings purple icecreams with pearls 🥘🥟 🍦…) 😋 Please feel free to eat!

Please continue the support as I struggle to get back on the track.

Thank you everyone! I love you all!

Where is that crazy girl who calls me Rapunzel? I am no Rapunzel. What does it even mean? If someone insists on giving a name, I would say “Henry” may be more suitable to my age and gender. But these human kids have a knack of giving weird names. One of them even called me “Gandalf, the gray”. But I guess it is still better than “Rapunzel” any day.

Hmmm, coming back to Rapunzel, where is that weird girl who used to try talking to me every day, complaining that I wasn’t responding and being rude. I would be sitting quietly on my favourite branch while soaking up the sun on those cold mornings, listening to the loud, raucous, erratic music created by those huge things that humans travel in, when she would open the window of her third floor room and begin chatting up like I’m an old friend. She would ask about my day, my nest and how the kids were doing, as if I would have time to sit there if I still had kids. They have flown away to find their own life–every single one of them since I and Mrs. got together. Now that she too has moved on to the higher skies, I would rather spend my time sitting quietly remembering her rather than play with a pesky kid.

But it still doesn’t make sense. She was always here, playing in this room and one fine day she was gone. I haven’t seen her in so many days. It left me uneasy. May be she too has flown away. But that couldn’t be possible. Sometimes, I hear her voice from lower floors but she doesn’t come to our window anymore.

Is she being kept a captive? Not sure why I felt the compulsion but I had to find out so I tried sneaking into the house–thrice. But I was always thwarted by that big human who said something like “Fan” and closed windows on my face. When I enquired with her about the little girl through the window glass, all she did was look at me like she couldn’t understand me and say, “Rapunzel, Betu’s gone school”. Moron! Fine, I’ll just sit here and enjoy my music.

Humph! May be I will turn my back to the window. That should help the urge to look out for the little inconsiderate brat, worrying an old bird like me because she is too busy to come visit!

“Oh Rapunzel! You were right mom, Rapunzel is waiting for me.”

“For the last time, my name is NOT Rapunzel!”

“Mom, I think Rapunzel is talking to me again!”

What the ****?! Humph! I’ll just ignore her as always. Now where is that music when I need it?

Not sure what I am writing today. But there are several stories in the edges of my conscience that I am unable to catch and yet unable to ignore, like an errant flyaway hair that constantly tickles me while I am trying to work, talk, cook, teach…

Some are great beginnings with no end in sight. Some are just middle like waking in the middle of journey realising you have come so far but with no recollection of where you started and where you want to go. Others are faint memories of dreams I wanted to turn into stories but never got to it.

I am also in the middle of looking for a publisher/agent for my second book. It has been 4 months with no traction, which keeps me awake at nights. I have mails from people who want me to give them money to publish my book. Why would I do that? I think the whole point of writing a book is to SELL it to a publisher. Or am I missing something? I haven’t even found a literary agent since Short Stories is, apparently, not a great market.

So, if you know a literary agent who might be interested in Short stories from a writer in India, please let me know.

As for the bee in my bonnet, I guess, I will have to deal with it myself.

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Here I am,

waiting for you,

but your arms are full with another

who speaks as and when you want,

what you want and

however much you want–

a slave to your wishes,

forever your companion,

sleek, stylish–

your smartphone…

Author’s note: The first line of this story was offered as a prompt by Darlene when I had hit a writer’s block. I hope I did it justice.

She whispered, “Home at last.”

Last year, he had hit his wife in a fit of rage, as he had so many times before that. But this one became one time too many. She had succumbed to the injuries. He had his job cut out for him as he disposed off the body and dodged the authorities, trying to prove that she had, in fact, run away with her new lover. The case was finally closed and he was celebrating his new-found freedom with a new date when ‘she’ had walked out of the closet where he had once hid her body.

She had never been a pretty one and death hadn’t done her any favours–unmade hair, shrivelled skin, bloodshot eyes, the eerie air she carried around her and the rancid smell that accompanied her had made him shit in his pants. Weirdly enough, his date couldn’t see anything and she only smelled a faint flowery perfume! So, when he went berserk, she assumed he was a crackpot and had run for it, leaving him alone with a murderous ghost who wouldn’t kill him, just brought him close enough every time. She had promised she would make him feel every single scar he had given her in her lifetime; that she would make sure he regretted the day he had married her. She had made good of her promise ever since.

When she wasn’t hitting him with things or strangling him in sleep, she would pleasantly discuss how she would torture him once she was stronger. She would often show up suddenly behind him in the mirror, in the car, in the grocery store and at work; and scare the daylights out of him. She would touch his back in the bath, leaving a trail of goosebumps, promising an eternity of pain once she was ready. He couldn’t tell anyone she was haunting him because saying that would mean confessing she wasn’t eloping and actually dead.

He tried praying, but his prayers only kept her mildly amused. Apparently, when you kill someone and they come back to haunt you, God declines to interfere and all bets are off. Eye-for-an-eye and all that. He had tried holy water, witchcraft…

When in a moment of insanity, he had begged her to kill him, she had smiled sweetly, “Killing you atones your sins. It frees you to go to heaven while I rot here in nothingness. I certainly can’t lose my only source of entertainment, can I? I want to finish what you started, very slowly, in the dragged out painful manner that you always loved…”

After too many sleepless nights with an overactive ghost trying to strangle him, always falling a little short of killing him, he had fallen sick. Hospitalised, he would wake up to find her sitting on his bed near his feet, smiling cruelly, waiting for him to wake up, so she could start over again…

He hated her now even more than he had hated her in life. He knew he had been right to kill her in the first place. But after too many sessions like this, he broke down. Assuming that gradually she would gather more power and hurt him worse, he had split his veins open, hoping to be finally rid of her. She had smiled at him sweetly then and whispered, “Running away, are we?”

When he left his body behind, he waited for the white lights to arrive, how it happens in the movies. But none came. Suicide was a sin. He realised he wasn’t going to heaven or anywhere at all. He finally understood what she had meant by once she was “ready” and “stronger”–that he had entered the same domain where she had been gathering power–when she had given him a twisted smile that promised an eternity of endless pain and whispered, “Home at last!”