The Modern Fable

Do flowers grow back petals? Ashnia lay in the bed in the dusty attic. Bandages covered parts of her shrivelling body. She closed her eyes. Somewhere pain touched her. It seemed distant. She tried to recall her past and the sour memories came back tumbling after one another without effort. Her career lay in ruins much like her body, her account was running in debt and here she was all alone in the middle of nowhere. The wind rustled through the cracks in the wooden planks. The house was falling apart, she noticed. It was the fourth time the thought had crossed her mind. There wasn't a lot to ponder over. The small hole in the wooden wall had gotten bigger. Perhaps, it was a mouse. Her mind drifted to the letter she had received last year in the mail. She was to be deported to India from America. Her Visa Application had been cancelled. The land which she had dreamt and fought to live on, was pushing her away. At that time, her body had quaked with rage. A rage which almost blinds ...

Sandy stood motionless in the bus. Staring from the window to the other side of the road. 'Are you who you are?' People brushed against her in the corridor. Her heart jumped for her breath. The homeless man held the cardboard sign to his chest. The handwriting was wobbly. Some alphabets were straight and bold, like a slap to the eye and some were cursive and sloppy, like a meek reminder unsure if it was important. The man raised the sign above his head when he caught her eye. His bare chest was taut. Sandy looked away in disgust, bile rising in her throat. As the bus curved along the curb, it was inevitable to see him. He kept his piercing eye on her. Even when the bus exited the main street she felt a pair of eyes on her head, as if she was a target about to be taken down. She stepped down at the next bus stop and checked herself for any inconsistency. The pencil light pink skirt was creaseless. The matching pink cardigan was pale as ever. Only the black bow bouncing under...

Disha looked both ways before crossing the road.  Direction was the meaning of her name. When parents forced her into marriage, it had changed unwillingly. Though the road to preschool was of bitumen, the daughter holding her hand had set her path in stone.

Trigger warning: Mention of suicide   She would think, "Why can't my parents live happier?" But Raina was not 11 anymore and she had given up on having a peaceful domestic life. She stretched her arms on the bench and closed her eyes in the cool shade of the banyan tree. She could feel the skirt grazing up her thighs. But her neck hurt and she didn't care to comply and pull it down. The society could go to hell. They could give her a visit. It would be a change in her life. She would come to the park behind her house whenever her parents would fight. She had been doing so for 10 years. During summer vacation, she would spend all her days poking around the empty park. School was over and her father had not allowed her to go with her friends, as usual. From the empty bench, you could see the road sloping upwards beyond the railing and faint outline of hills enveloped in mist. She felt a sudden urge to be touched. Someday she would feel so aware of her body that it ...