Mom (to her 12 year old): Honey, Why are you up so late? Are you alright?
After 40 years
Daughter: Mom, Why are you up so late? Are you alright?
Tag: Life and After
Tiny Story: Free(?)
The pen shook in her hands and a part of her wished the court would reject the papers because of the garbled signatures. So far, she had assumed she did not care anymore but it seemed like she did.
He was wearing dark glasses indoors, she was sure, to hide the emotions in his eyes. If only he would stop her just once, she would relent.
But he took the pen and signed with shaking hands, setting both of them ‘free’.
Tiny Story: Modest
“The boy at the shop across the road keeps staring at our house and smiles whenever I come to the window. Yesterday, I slapped him for that. I am not that kind of girl.”
She repeated her story for the tenth time and looked out of her window at the shop with evident pride. The boy was smiling while he stared at another house. Her face fell.
Tiny Story: The Monsters
After hiding beneath the bed for half an hour, he whispered, “Do you think it’s gone?”
Teddy bear replied, “Not sure. Want me to find out?”
He helped Teddy peak out from under the bed. Teddy said in a bright voice, “Yup! Gone! I told you, you needn’t worry while I am around.”
He hauled his 26-year-old frame out from under the bed. “I was just being cautious! You can’t beat all of them.”
Tiny Story: The Accident(?)
By the time it was dusk, he was tired of hiding in the old warehouse. He had looked for shapes in the peeling paint of the walls all day. Now that the hall was darkening, he was a little spooked, not that he would ever admit it.
Suddenly he found a shape resembling a face of a man clutching something. Was it a knife?
He looked away trying to curb the guilt and dread rising in his chest, only to find one that resembled a woman dead on the floor.
Suddenly, the peeling paint that was her hand moved slightly.
He clutched his heart and died…
Tiny Story: The Brothers
“It’s alright, dear! The pain would end soon.” Hamish consoled Heera.
Heera was too ill to work… ever. People had suggested Hamish to sell him to a butcher and get some money to buy another Ox. But Hamish loved him as a brother. They had been together for nearly eleven years, transporting goods on their ox-drawn cart for a living.
Once Heera died, Hamish would have no one to pull his cart but he would think about that later. Right now, holding Heera’s head in his lap, he prayed for his pain to end. Only when Heera’s eyes went glassy, did Hamish allow his tears to fall.
-Dedicated to all who have loved and lost
History: Survivor Stories – From the Horses’ Mouth
“The monsters looked like a small grey mountains.”
“They had large wings where ears should be and a hand in place of nose that they used to pick and throw us around.”
“As His Majesty Alexander’s war horse, I had believed nothing in the world could scare me but the war cry of these ‘Alifants’ sent chill up my spines.”
“I’m glad we returned after that encounter on the banks of river Indus. I don’t think we could have survived one more.”
-Survivor stories by His Majesty Alexander’s war horses
Tiny Story: The Secret Admirer
Every evening when I go out to forage for food, I see her returning home. The last of the sun glints through her brown glossy feather as she glides through the air in all her regal glory.
She lives on the tallest tower in front of my humble tree and I have worshipped her for all the three years of my existence.
But as a creature of night with wiry, featherless body and jerky flying skills, I wish I was worth her.
I don’t think she knows I exist…
Tiny Story: Jaliawala Bagh
She had run to the park like a crazy woman where Britishers had opened fire on a peaceful gathering. “But surely, they would spare a four-year old”, she had thought.
Now she stood petrified, looking with glazed eyes at the mountains of dead bodies and wondering which one search first.
Tiny Story: The Narrow Escape
He was just one sip away from freedom but his hands felt too heavy; they wouldn’t lift the bottle to his lips.
He stood there for a long time until the bottle slipped from his hands and he began to cry.
Tiny Story: The Reason
After the divorce was finalised, she posted the picture of a gold hair clip on FB with the message, “Why I divorced him? Found this in his pocket. It isn’t mine! He refused to tell me whose it is. 😡”
He commented, “It is yours. Bought it for your birthday. Good riddance though! 😜”
History: Sati
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.
Tiny Story: Mom and Babe
Image by unsplash.com
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.
Tiny Story: After
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.
Tiny Story: New Beginning
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.
Tiny Story: The Prejudice
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?
Tiny Story: Second Thoughts
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…
Tiny Story: The Inheritance
Vultures gathered in the sky waiting for the feast to begin; the Elephant lay on the ground waiting for the inevitable.
Tiny Story: The Death of Art
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…
Tiny Story: Skin-heads
“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.”
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 