She woke up with some of the others to the sound of insistent knocks on the sides of the trucks. After a while, the door slid back with a bump, causing some of the children to call out in fright. Everyone’s gaze turned to the sun’s rays streaming in, warming the air slightly in the unusual silence.
Ellen Kaempfer, a 45-year-old Jewess from Hamburg, stood up and looked to her older sister Betty. She pulled her to her feet and helped her pick up the little boy she had taken into …

I still miss her. She’s been gone a long time now. I miss her silly grin, her soulful eyes, the way she looked at me, asking for approval, the – “Did I do that right, were you impressed?” – sort of look, while holding out her paw for confirmation, the way sheepdogs do.
We used to run and play together when I was a kid, chasing after the sheep and dodging the Alpacas until Mum called us in.
The day came when I had to leave the farm to study at Cambridge. …

There’s something about continuity. It’s always welcome.
It’s predictable…mostly.
My father isn’t an easy man to deal with. Sometimes I wish I was
comfortable with the idea of being gay. Just to rattle his cage. So I
had to settle with being a sewage disposal consultant (everybody’s a
consultant).
He was very unhappy with me, to say the least. When I get home in the
evenings, he’d say over his shoulder,”Don’t forget the disinfectant!
And shower outside!!”
It’s how he runs me down. It’s cool. It’s worth every moment of
watching him squirm when we have guests. Naturally they ask …

The Indian Railway train #2032 down Raajdhaani Express slowed down and finally stopped at a railway station. There were very few people on the platform. A frail man stood on the platform, facing the train. He was doing small magic tricks. He pulled out a scarf from nowhere and his wand vanished into thin air! Inside the train a ‘man of science’ and an author of romantic novels sat by the window seats, facing each other. He relied on logic and she (the author), relied on her heart. The two …

I wake up with a start. It had to be a nightmare.
What else can possibly explain it?
Dazed, I glance at the clock. 4am.
Waking up scared, night after night, how long will I suffer?
I snuggle under my sleep-warmed quilt and my hand reaches out
to stroke the cold half of the bed-Empty since the last month.
All I want to do is curl up and weep.
But the tears have all dried up, sucked out from me by the same dark
angel that crushed his skull to unidentifiable pieces that evening.
I feel cold inside, without …

Even in the dark, I could see, the end was near, death was throwing open it’s arms to me. I could feel my pulse ticking, my heart was drumming in my ears,” any minute now” I thought to myself.
“Chikne!! table saaf kar” the man in blue loongi yelled at me.
I hurried to dutifully do the same, after all Anna bhau’s eyes were on me. I had come to Mumbai a day back, the last train from the village left at 3 am, I with the unerring logic of a 15 …

Akash’s diary
January 01, 2010
I woke up wishing I was dead. If dreams come true then why am I not an actor? I dream that I win awards, I’m a star and I’m married to the superstar Antariksha. And then I wake up.
My current job is so unglamorous, it’s ironical. I’m an accountant. Accounting has set rules; certain items can only be debited. If an amount meant to be debited is credited, the account won’t balance. But once everything balances, I can go home knowing that everything is in order. Except …

I studied the world outside the frosted glass, hoping it would distract me from the wrapped present in my hands. The refrigerator hummed, the logs in the fireplace crackled as the heat deemed too much on the chunks of wood, and the rush of holiday traffic buzzed by in a hurried frenzy. Even with all that went on around me, the absolute stillness within the walls of my once home pierced my ears and rattled me to the core.
Don’t go there.
I brought my attention back to the present. I couldn’t …

Esmay sat crying on the porch steps, thinking with dread at what her daddy had planned.  At first she thought it was all a sick and cruel joke; his way of paying her back for something she wasn’t quite sure she had done.  But as the days had wore on things became obviously clear that it was as real as the tears that filled her small hands.  She had planned to run; hide anything to avoid the terror not moments away.  She was an only child and the betrayal she …