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Njan Gandharvan - The Heavenly Misadventure

Prologue: This story is a satiric take on the Malayalam movie Njan Gandharvan, where celestial romance meets earthly hilarity. It’s a tale of love, chaos, and some really bad tea shop manners, reimagined with a humorous twist. Once upon a time, in the lush village of Kumbalam , where the locals had more drama than the regional soap operas, there lived a girl named Bhama. Bhama was a classic romantic; she dreamt of moonlit serenades and secret love letters, but all she got was a noisy neighbourhood where even her pet dog got proposals before she did. One fine morning, while Bhama was brooding about her singlehood, a dashing, golden-haired man appeared out of nowhere in her backyard. He introduced himself as Gandharvan , a celestial being. Bhama, assuming he was just another salesman trying to sell hair oil, told him off. But when he levitated mid-argument, she fainted dramatically, like every heroine in a low-budget drama. When she came to, Gandharvan explained that he was a messenger o...
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A Winter Night’s Love

Ravi was on his third cup of chai that evening, huddled by the small, open fireplace in his family’s old stone cottage. Outside, the mountain town of Manali lay still, bathed in moonlight, each street corner covered in a pristine blanket of fresh snow. He could hear the faint sounds of holiday cheer wafting up from the distant marketplace, where vendors sold roasted chestnuts, fresh apples, and handmade woollen shawls to the few tourists braving the winter chill. He hadn’t been back to Manali in nearly five years. His world now was in Delhi, where he worked as an investment analyst, living a life of constant deadlines and traffic snarls. But here, surrounded by his childhood home’s familiar smells of pinewood and burning embers, his heart felt like it could finally breathe. And tonight, he needed that peace more than ever. Ravi sighed, his breath fogging in the chill of the room as he remembered his recent breakup. He’d been with Neha for two years, a relationship filled with promises ...
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The Case of the Missing Mustache

In the serene village of Karithodi , nestled along the winding backwaters and shaded by swaying coconut trees, life moved at a gentle pace. The villagers in Karithodi knew one another well, and news -whether good, bad, or absurd - traveled quickly. Karithodi was a lush place with canals cutting through its landscape, lined with houseboats and traditional wooden houses painted in bright blues and greens. Fishermen could be seen rowing their narrow canoes at dawn, and the scent of blooming water lilies filled the air. But this morning, an unusual scandal was brewing. Mr. Raghavan, the village barber, opened his tiny shop at the usual time. It was a charming setup on the edge of the canal, with a faded red-and-white barber pole, an old mirror, and a couple of well-worn chairs. Mr. Raghavan, a man of about sixty-five, sported a mustache that was the pride of Karithodi. Thick, dark, and meticulously groomed, the townsfolk often joked that if you were to find Raghavan’s shop closed, just loo...
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The Hourglass of Memory

In the heat of the summer, when the earth seemed to breathe a collective sigh, Radhika found herself standing in the attic of her grandmother's ancestral home in the small village of Haripad. The house, a crumbling relic of the Travancore architecture, had always been a place of mystery, with its faded wooden floors and peeling walls. It was as though the house itself was a museum of forgotten years, with every object in it holding a story no one dared to tell. Radhika, however, had always been fascinated by those untold stories. Now, at twenty-eight, after years of living in the bustling chaos of Bangalore, she had returned to the house, seeking answers, seeking... something. She didn’t know what. But she felt it, like a whisper in her bones—something pulling her back to this place, to this family, to the legacy that felt incomplete. Her grandmother, whom she called Muthassi , was old. Old in a way that felt eternal, as if she had always existed, perched in her corner of the house...
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Chapter 3 - Longing

Kiran smiled at the new classmate who just joined the first day of the school in the new session what just began that day. The Monsoon rains of Kerala had started at its full fervent, and the streets began to fill with the rain water. The splattering of rain drops on the tin sheet of the school roof produced a music to someone who was eager to listen to it. The surrounding petrichor after those first rains brings back joy to all the living beings around the place at that time.  The new entrant, smiled back nervously, and sat on the bench near by, allocated  to her, with her two braids of hair swinging on her back like a swing tied to a tree going back and forth. The first session was taken by the class teacher, and the new entrant was introduced to the whole class as Jasmine, whose father was a Business man working in the Pharmaceuticals Industry, her mother being a house wife. Besides the parents, she had a grandmother and a puppy in her hou...
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Chapter 02

"This is it!!! This is the day I was looking forward to for all these years...", Nalini thought standing in front of the mirror . She had just worn her petticoat and the blouse, as part of this special occasion. Her comrade cum friend Shubha helped her put on a special belt jacket around her waist, with the switch in front of her near the navel; just in reach of her hand. After a few hours, she would be standing in a crowded street with the Srilankan people and the congregation of the Defense Minister of Srilanka. And with just a small wave of her hand, every thing goes BOOM!!! Nalini was just 12 when the Srilankan army took her father away in pretext of interrogation. The next day, they found the bullet ridden body of her father on the outskirts of her village. One the same night, a group of the government army barged into her home and took her mother and elder sister away. She slipped on under a charpoy , and hid herself there for sometime,...
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Memoirs of Pinkcity

I had left Jaipur on a cold December of 2004. It's been 17 years I left the place but the memories remain intact. We stayed at the Government quarters allotted to my dad in the posh Jyoti Nagar area, owing to the vicinity of important offices and places nearby - The Vidhana Sabha, C-Scheme area, Statue Circle, Rambagh Palace etc. (The spoil sport in that area was the Jhuggi basti - The last I hear, it is still there and no one had dared to remove the basti from that place). Winters were very special for me while I was at Jaipur. When the sun peeps out of the cloud with its sunshine in the winter and hits your body, that feeling was amazing... I still feels that warmth, even when I am writing this. When I was in my college days, with my limited set of friends, we go to the tea shop at the back gate of the Maharaja's college  and sipping the tea along with some pakora just felt heaven.  And then, the main event of winter. Every late December, or early January, Jaipur hosted (...
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