Stirred by the burning sensation, she had come back from her grief-filled fog. She realised her clothes were dripping with oil; and she was burning on her dead husband’s pyre.
She tried to escape but her relatives pushed her back in until she stopped moving, all on the pretext of reuniting her with her husband.
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Daughter: Mommy, would you please read a story for me? I can’t sleep.
After 70 years
Mom: Honey, would you please read the letter for me? I can’t find my glasses.
The loneliness had become too much. Every one told him that he should move to a new city and start over again. He could, then, meet new people, and may be, even find love again…
He looked at his children: five and eight. Would they mind moving? Of course, they would! Their lives were here with their grandparents, their school and friends. He couldn’t uproot them at a whim!
He couldn’t hurt them, so he let the memories hurt him.
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…
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…
“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.
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 