Categories
Short story

Sanctuary

Volume Three of Fearsome Critters is out, with my short story “Sanctuary.” Set on a solo weekend trip to Benaras, “Sanctuary” fictionalises a friend’s psychoglocial journey. A journey of healing from trauma, rediscovering oneself through reflection (with aid from psychedelics), and recovering one’s faith in people and purpose in life.

Categories
Book review

Brecht. Anne Frank. Harper Lee. (Three Book Reviews)

Parables for the Theatre: Two Plays by Brecht In college I’d heard of Brecht’s penchant for theatre that broke the fourth wall; a decade later, this two-play volume I read this month was the first Brecht I read. My experience reading drama is limited. I’ve read the classical Athenians, and some Plautus; Shakespeare, and a […]

Categories
Short story

Holiday. A short story. Love, Fate, and Acceptance.

After uny exams in north India, a young couple takes their first trip together. Impeding separation looms over them, all but inevitable. Sarthak and Jaya have different attitudes to fate. When an eventuality is all but certain — is it wiser to yield, or to fight it anyway?

Categories
Microstory Poetry

A Poem And Two Microstories

A very angsty love poem in five parts. To cheer you up afterwards, two microstories.

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Categories
Flash story

How To Catch A Bee

In this magic realist flash story published at Dove Tales: Gardens in the Desert, wildflowers learn about cooperation. The hard way,

Categories
Book review

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: the TL;DR version. Love, art, and mortality.

Always wanted to read Shakespeare’s Sonnets, but never had the time? Fear not. I impersonate Shakespeare to tell you the story of sonnets’ love triangle. The Poet, the Fair Youth, and the Dark Lady. I bolster my summary with ample quotations, and attempts at humour. The Sonnets explore every facet of desire: yearning, sexual desire, jealousy (of rival lovers and of rival poets), love-madness and insomnia, tranquil admiration, breakup and reconciliation.

Categories
Microstory Poetry

A Poem and A Microstory

A poem about the prosaicness of love. And a microstory about the childishness of adults.

Categories
Microstory

Noon

In this vignette published at Flash Fiction Magazine, a woman wrestles with ambition, inertia, and anxiety.

Categories
Book review

The Sellout (2015) is Incisive and Relentless, But Falls Short of Greatness

The first third of The Sellout’s 288 pages is hilarious. After that, Beatty recycles himself… I would’ve enjoyed getting to know Foy Cheshire, the leader of the faux-intellectuals and the book’s chief antagonist. As it is, Foy remains a theatre-mask… The Sellout is excellent, but not great. Mesmerised by its brilliantly coloured flat characters, it the novel misses opportunities to humanise its characters.

Categories
Book review Politics

Newspeak And Nationalism: Are We Living In 1984’s Dystopia?

1984 predicts the charismatic authoritarians, bigoted nationalists, and media-suppressing demagogues who lead the world today.