INDImag – Contemporary fiction | Motivational short stories | Social stories | Short story criticism

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I just realized how unalloyed and unconditional this old man’s love was. And that’s when I realized ‘True love is neither physical, nor romantic. It is an acceptance of all that was, that is, that will be and that is going to be……

I look at her, longingly, as she walks away,
Wondering when I would see her again.
Suddenly I can’t help but question,
“Is she wondering the same?”

A fiercely independent, yet emotionally fractured Eliza finds herself on a suicidal mission; until, friends intervene and seek professional help for her and a great story unfolds..

This piece is about placing trust and being betrayed. It follows a simple balled format with a-a-b-b rhyme scheme, the kind that’s meant to sound like the tap-tap of a horse’s hooves.

Every week, there is a mad scramble, a veritable race between dog and woman, to see who gets to greet the Lord and Master first as he arrives home for the weekend. This is about one such weekend….

A lonely doctor of 46, practising in a remote village in Karnataka, has his life planned out as a confirmed bachelor. What he has not planned for is a love-at-first-sight moment. Even as he struggles to confront his feelings, he knows this will always be a one-sided affair. Bring out the hot chocolate and read this ‘any’wood love story.

On a moonlit summer night plunged into darkness by a power cut, our family of 5 sat for a ‘candle light’ dinner. In Rajiv Gandhi’s banana republic, talk was cheap and we spared no expense or effort and every dog had it’s say …

That one minute encounter made my otherwise pathetic days at office that much more pleasant. How long would he be out of the country? A week? Two weeks? That’s okay…I was anyway going to hang around for next century, the way the project was heading. I searched in every cubicle, across the five floors for him – but in vain. But then, I smiled more often.

Loneliness. Solitariness. Desolation. The thesaurus can cough up many more synonyms for you if you cared to look further. But, the point is – all these easily converge to one certainty – Suicidal Instinct. Loneliness is an emotional state governed by a powerful feeling of emptiness and isolation. It is more than the emotion of wanting company. It is a feeling of being cut off, disconnected and alienated. It is an experience of inner hollowness or vacuum, with feelings of separation and alienation.

The other day I came across a mail I received about the Tao of Forgiveness. While going through it my thoughts drifted back 39 years through time, to the days just after the Indo-Pak war of 1971. My unit had returned to Ferozepur from our operational area and we were in the process of settling [...]