This sub-category is like a personal blog for writers. Writings primarily based in personal experience are part of this.
My grandmother smells of coconut oil and Yardley talcum powder. Her hair is thinning, but she has black hair. She has never colored it. She dumps the coconut oil on her head lavishly and religiously. She wakes up early in the morning and goes for a long bath. She comes out, drapes her saree loose,…
How many years would it take a pupa to become a butterfly? You read me correct when I used the word years. For me, it took twenty long, draining years to start the process of metamorphosis — twenty years of bondage within me. I never tried to free myself of the chains of relations, and…
Naren was a successful lawyer based in Kolkata. Being the only child of the family, he was a darling to his mother who showered boundless love and affection upon him. Naren grew up as a perfect ‘ma ka beta’ who loved his mother dearly and vowed to do anything for her. Naren was brought up…
I waited a while before coming out to speak in the squeaky, mousy voice of a timid Disney character (think Piglet). It’s easy to shoot me down, more so since the year-end travel time is upon us. It is one of the biggest trends among us millennials, and I refuse to toe the line hence,…
The upper primary school curriculum of West Bengal has recently incorporated a topic on bad touch and good touch. The idea was to develop awareness among students about sexual abuse. Obviously, this has been done keeping an eye on the rising number of assaults on children around the globe. In most cases, the child, unable…
My office laptop showed me only about 324 unread mails that I needed to read and work upon. Three hundred and twenty-four freaking unread mails! Unlike in my Gmail, these were not promotion mails that I could just sweep to archive. This usually happened on days when I had back to back calls and meetings…
Once, someone had told me, “You look so much like your grandmother.” I didn’t pay heed because I was used to hearing that all the time. It was like how everyone would look at Harry Potter and sigh, wistfully, “Oh, you have your mother’s eyes!” Be it my eyes or my cheekbones or the shape…
I was 17 when I started living alone. I was in Bangalore for the last three years, and now, I am in Chennai. And I am a self-declared pro at finding and living in real estate. Well, the budget real estate. The cheap and the decent. The manageable places. The adjustable neighborhoods. The struggle to…
If you were the kid, who wore their elder brother’s/sister’s clothes when he/she outgrew them, and the legacy continued for generations until they reduced to the size of a hanky, give me an ‘M’! If you were that poor little kid whose mother pushed you into that public bus’ seat until your ribs came out…
A government veterinary doctor was brutally murdered on the outskirts of Shamshabad, near Hyderabad, who went missing on the night of Wednesday, 27th Nov 2019. The voice call is available here on popular media. The victim, Disha, made a call to her sister explaining her situation moments before she was trapped by four lorry drivers/cleaners,…
The difference between “chest” and “breasts” is called shame. Most people, including myself, have been conditioned to call breasts chest. And by doing so, for the past how many ever years, I have denied even their existence. I would stop myself from saying that word and use “chest,” because it is more socially appropriate so…
It is hard to decipher at first; the change is so subtle, almost invisible. But it was there nonetheless. It was hard to digest either – the slow descent of parents from the holy pedestal of saintliness to what they really are – people. We have all heard the Mahabharata lore of how Yudhishthira’s rath…
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