People were beginning to give me funny looks. I couldn’t stand outside any longer and opened the door. It felt like accepting defeat… as if I am a traitor. But after so many years of disappointments and heartbreaks, I had run out of options.
So, I entered the saloon and requested them to shave off my nearly non-existent hair.
Brown skin: Hi, Are you from the USA?
White skin: No, UK.
Brown: Aren’t they the same?
White (with exasperated sigh): Are you from Pakistan?
Brown: No, india.
White: Aren’t they the same?
The cuckoo looked intently at the crow’s nest. The baby was making hungry noises while the dedicated parents took turns to feed it with their beaks.
She sighed. It was a little too late to regret…
The longing…
The wait…
The disappointment…
The hurt…
The pain…
Now I know,
You were never worth it.
Vultures gathered in the sky waiting for the feast to begin; the Elephant lay on the ground waiting for the inevitable.
As the summer Sun blazed down his neck, he wondered whether he should just give up. With cheap plastic factory-made toys flooding the market, who would buy his handmade wooden toys?
But he had children to feed… May be, he should talk to that Contractor today and get a job as a labourer…
I don’t love myself yet,
But I am trying!
“Do you think we should tell him?”
“And what would you tell him? That his blind date left two hours back right after she saw him?”
“Sigh! I wish he understood that fair women like her don’t date dark men like him.”
She looked at the sky
With the longing
Of a bird in a cage
Through the small window
In her marital home – her prison.
When she left the house that night, she had tied a dupatta across her face. No one must see her.
Her trembling hands clutched the money she had ‘earned from the service’. Her children would not go hungry today…
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 