RainDrops

I started noticing her in the way you notice the first raindrop on a hot Trivandrum afternoon-without meaning to, and then not being able to think of anything else. Every morning, after the security scanner scanned my badge and I did the little dance with the turnstile, I would take the same spot on the wooden bench near reception. It was my "transition area", where coffee met courage, where I pretended to read emails on my phone and absolutely did not watch the glass doors. At 9:41 on the dot-give or take the vagaries of the Kazhakootam traffic, she would appear. Meera.   Shoulder-length hair tucked behind one ear , laptop bag, Saree draped on as a Friday Casual. And each time I saw her coming, my stomach would flip like a gull catching a thermal. The gut knew before the brain; she's here. The sunlight from the atrium would follow her inside, turning the scuffed floor into water. She walked with that quick, quiet purpose of people who don't waste time, and I watche...

Prelude: Khamoshi Memories (Class XII, 1996) Khamoshi had not yet released, but it's songs was already playing inside my head: a medley of skipped heart‑beats and badly timed lab experiments. I was 17, perched on a high stool in the Biology lab when Miss A walked in - transfer student from another school in Jaipur, blue‑eyed hurricane in a bottle‑green salwar. From that moment my internal syllabus read only Love 101 . I did everything our Physics teacher warned us not to do with delicate equipment: I stared, I daydreamed, I forgot Ohm's law. Eventually I handed her a rose and a diary of love songs (90 rupees, Archies Gallery) and whispered the world's most nervous proposal. She said "No" - of course and the rumour ricocheted across campus faster than sodium in water. By dusk my mother greeted me at the door with a Malayalam monologue that made even the neighbourhood boxer (the other guy who liked her) look gentle. Exams arrived, Miss A disappeared, and I learn...

Today, I stumbled upon the news I wasn't prepared for! CreativeLive - the platform that had once been a vibrant, inspiring corner of the internet - is shutting down. And as I read the announcement, a wave of sadness and disbelief hit me harder than I expected. It's more than just a website closing. It feels like the quiet end of an era that once held a special place in my heart. I've been a regular visitor of CreativeLive for years. It was more than a place to learn; it was a space that felt alive with passion, purpose, and creativity. Some nights, I'd find myself diving into hours of photography sessions, completely lost in the lessons, scribbling down notes, pausing to absorb a concept, rewinding just to hear a profound insight again. It became a routine, a sanctuary; my own little virtual classroom filled with light. Names like  Sue Bryce ,  Ben Willmore ,  Lindsay Adler , John Greengo and so many others weren't just instructors to me. They were mentors, gu...

When Anvitha first met Rithin, it was in the hum of fluorescent lights and the fragrance of jasmine garlands at a small temple on the outskirts of Alappuzha . Their parents spoke in excited overlaps about horoscopes and train timings; the young pair spoke scarcely at all. She stole a single curious look at him; enough to see the mild confusion behind his polite smile-then lowered her long lashes and turned the look into silence. In that instant, Rithin felt as if a cloud had crossed the sun; the world dimmed yet became mysteriously more vivid. Anvitha was unlike anyone he had seen in the cafés of Koramangala or the glassed-in meeting rooms of his software firm. Her beauty was quiet, almost secretive; A heart-shaped face, all soft angles and sudden mischief, is framed by a river of black hair that never quite behaves; some days it pours straight past her waist, some days it loops into loose waves, and often two rebellious curls slip forward to kiss her cheeks. Wide almond eyes edged w...

Long before dawn the backwaters of  Kuttanad  lie like a sheet of ink beneath a sky still deciding whether to be night or morning. On the verandah of the old Nalukettu house, its laterite walls breathing the night’s final coolness, Devassy Kurian keeps first watch with a brass lamp and an enamel mug of  chukku kaapi . The lamp-flame draws fireflies; the coffee draws memory. His grandson Adithyan will arrive before noon, the first visit home since joining an aeronautics programme in Bengaluru. The boy’s phone calls are full of jet engines and software internships, yet each end with the same Malayalam lullaby Devassy once hummed to him beside a cradle fashioned from a rice-sack and coir rope. The old man whistles the tune now, soft enough not to wake Ammachi inside, and watches the river darken into indigo, then blue. Across the water a country boat appears. Raman the ferryman stands aft, the bamboo poles a metronome against dawn. He nods; no words are needed. The villa...

(The story is set in 2025, but in the slow heart-beat of rural Kerala where the seasons still start with a sigh of rain. Adapted from the Malayalam cult classic 'Thoovanathumbikal', scripted by Padmarajan.) I. First Mist - Kuttanad, Dawn of Monsoon Long before the sun had chosen a colour for the sky, Ani Nair  unlocked Akshara Offset , the little print-shop that still smelled of his late father's linotype days. A hush lay over the paddy flats; only the oars of an early fisherman knocked the canal water into soft syllables. Then, as if God remembered to breathe, a spray-fine drizzle fell. It was the kind of rain Kuttanad calls mazha manam - you don't see it, you only feel the air getting colder and the earth giving up its perfume of wet chilli leaves and river-silt. Ani closed his eyes, soaked a moment of quiet into his lungs, and kicked his ancient Bajaj Chetak to life. The scooter coughed, grumbled, then decided to be loyal for one more day. He rode to Mariya...

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 ...

       'Oh God No!!! Not me please. What did I do to deserve this? What misery!". Twenty year old Leah thought for herself. She took a small sharp edged wood splinter hidden under her louse ridden blanket and pierced her long scaly finger. Nothing came out at her first and second try, and then she tried harder. This time a tiny amount of blood oozed out of her finger. She pressed her finger harder so the blood could come out in a gush. She applied the blood in her lips and her bonny face, so it look lovely and fresh. The German soldier barked out at the inmates, "Any one here sick? Any dead bodies?". No one moved. The soldier came to everyone's sleeping barracks, looked at the haggard faces and picked up a few of them who looked particularly ill. He reached Leah's bed, glanced towards her once, and moved on to other beds. The chosen ones are marched outside the barracks, and then no one heard of them ever.       The year was 1937. The 15 year old ...

Its been five years, I had been in Bangalore and in my current organization I work for. Things have changed so much so that Bangalore doesn't seem to be the good old 'Rustic Bangalore'. Water problems, Electricity problems, Commutation & Traffic problems, Sewage and Garbage disposal problems, problems, problems everywhere... Buildings popping up in all directions, Builders exploiting every piece of land available and Industries polluting or ending the once clean lakes around. Four hours of traffic commutation every day just to travel a 8 to 10 KM on road is just too much to ask. The Metro line program they had planned so far is such a BS piece of work that it benefit no one. And under construction Metro lines are still under construction, even after 5 years of its inception. There's no proper system laid on disposal of Garbage waste, and people dump their wastes on public road sides everywhere. BBMP have no idea on what to do with the garbage they collect and they...

For the past one month, I am in Istanbul; the cultural capital of Europe. Nice weather, nice people and nice places to visit. Don't expect anything for shopping though - except Turkish delights and Evil Eyes. And don't expect people to understand whatever you ‘blabber’ (Yes, that's the word which comes in your mind when you talk to those guys!)   One of my colleague had a severe lower back pain, on a Saturday morning. We were working, and I thought of going to the office in a relaxed mood by 10 AM. I was about to step down to my Taxi, when the phone bell rang... 'Hello Vipin, this is X; Hey I need your help. Can you please take Mr. Y to the hospital. He has severe back pain and I think he needs some medical help". I went up to this guy's room and he really was writhing with pain... So I tucked in some money (Fortunately or unfortunately, since I had converted the Traveler's cheque to Turkish Lira for some shopping on Sunday) and went with Mr. Y on the same...

“Did you hear that voice?”, Anjana asked him. “What voice?”, he asked, paying more attention to the direction in which she was directing to. “That soft raga, flowing out of somewhere…As if, as if It is coming just to tell me something...the way the sound flew from… As if its saying to go and meet the originator of the sound…” She replied with a soft exultation on her voice. “You have gone crazy!”, he pulled out of the room in anger and shut the door close.  She was still listening to the voice, flowing through the window, reaching her ears. And she almost stood there for about half an hour… The place, is where she was brought up; where she had ended up all his childhood and his teenage dreams. Place where she had confronted her first love. The place where she played Sitolia (Seven stones) with her childhood friends; The place around the pond where she and her friends used to sit for hours on end chatting and gossiping about the latest TV serials happened to see the ...

Have you ever seen this moped/bike before? Well....It's the Hero Motors "Hero Puch Shakti"... The bike I started my ride with... Incidentally, I have never seen or seldom seen Hero Puch mopeds running in South Indian roads..I don't know the reason why... In Northern India, it's still being used and people still prefer it with Luna/Scooty and the like... It was the year 1997, my college days just about to start after my 12th, and I started pestering my father for buying the moped for me...Finally after some days of "Niraahara Satyagraha" and "No-Talk" days with him, I got the brand new Hero-Puch Shakti 3G... What a heck of a mileage had that small piece of engine...It gave around 70 KM per liter of petrol most of the times, so cheap and very economical... I still remember, when I used to drop my sis in the moped to her school during the chilled Winter mornings of December/January in Jaipur, packed from top to bottom with sweaters, mufflers and h...

Writing after so long...."Life is a bux of Ammo..." (The famous Duke Nukem phrase!) You never know when the ammo gets exhausted, but you surely would know when it's gonna explode. :-) Past one month was like a wash out for me...Nothing serious, nothing memorable happened during this month. If you ask me what was special in the past month, I have nothing to talk about...yeah except Work and pain due to the dreaded fissure developed due to the Antibiotics which i have taken for the dental treatment. The fissure appears and it goes and then re-appears and I will be mainly off & on on laxatives. It appears like some one cutting from inside you with a knife, and the pain disappears as soon as you are done... I find warm water bath and the diltigesic cream Diltiazem very relieving. Please consult the doctor before you take over these medicines of your own. Rainy day has started in Bangalore. I love rain...Each time when I became drenched in the rain water, it feels the ...

Gotta chance to see The Terrorist [1999] after 10 years of its release. Oh man...How could I miss such a wonderful movie for 10 years? The Direction and Cinematography by Santosh Sivan was awesome...Ayesha Dharkar (of 'Bend it like Beckham' fame) as Malli was superb in her role. Some of the scenes in the movies was just Heart-warming and will remain with you for long, such as the scenes of Malli with her lover, and scenes where she clasps her stomach after knowing that she is pregnant...The story resembles the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by Tamil militants. Classic movie and a must watch if some one missed this... So life was moving ahead smoothly, without any turbulence, and suddenly from no where I got a severe constipation which road-blocked my smooth passes ;-) may be because of the chicken I ate during the last 2 weeks...compounded by the hot Bangalore weather. I had problems with constipation before but this time it seems to be severe...I am in a "banana diet"...