Broken Bangles: Travel, Stories, Thoughts

The story they told me begins with a shipwreck on the coast of Kochi. The ship was full of slaves from Africa brought to labour in the naval yard of the Dutch-controlled port. They were starving, battered by dysentery and skin diseases from the long voyage, crammed inside the ship’s basement, and close to death’s door when they arrived. The shipwreck was near the shore and many passengers swam and survived. They were all scattered and one young black slave was rescued by an old fisherman living alone, a couple of miles away from the port.   The fisherman knew he was a slave but kept it a secret. He had an idea of what travails awaited a slave on these shores and the kind and innocent eyes of the slave roused a fatherly affection in him. His remote house was isolated and he had little connection with the community. He nurtured the boy back to health and taught him his language and his ways. A few months went by. The boy knew that desertion would bring severe punishment to him. ...

  ( Statue of Yakshi by renowned sculptor Kanayi Kunjiraman, Malampuzha Dam, Kerala; image source: Ranjithsiji, Wikipedia) Kerala's White-Sari-clad Vampire  Her story is terror-evoking and awe-inspiring. She is culturally tethered to the gender politics of the society in which she exists as a myth and lore. The girls in a small region in south India (the Malayalam-speaking population) grew up listening to the terrifying Yakshi stories and assimilated from them, an odd feeling of empowerment. The Yakshis in these stories are the spirits of women wronged and killed by men. A Yakshi kills men and completes her revenge, not only on the individual who wronged her but the whole bunch of ‘mankind’. Her feet do not touch the earth when she walks. This is how you can know her for what she is. She will wait for her victims in twilight, dawns and dusks, on the edges of dark nights. She has long black hair that almost reaches her feet. Her lips are full and crimson, her eyelashes thick an...

(Image source: pexels.com) The old woman walked into the main street, and chaos gripped her like a thief with a knife. She trembled and stood frozen for a moment on the sidewalk. Three teenagers, their eyes on their phones, almost knocked her to the ground as they passed. The rushing stream of cars and bikes gave her vertigo. For a moment, she believed that she had entered a fatal phase in her life. “I will die here like a canary that comes into contact with an electric line.”  She had not set foot out of her cottage in the woods and into civilisation for many years. After her husband passed, she made herself into a recluse. They had no children.  A man in the nearest village brought her groceries and an occasional DVD from the cable store. She loved to watch musicals and cartoons.  In another life that seemed ten lives ago, she was a rich farm owner. She had many horses and a bustling farm. People came to buy her produce and work for her. She had cows. She made cheese an...

 The Slave's Promise: A Minifiction Series: Chapter 2 We reached a high wall. He stopped and leaned on it and looked at me with an odd light in his eyes. His face was brightly hallowed by the moonlight. I found myself touching his face, and he kissed me on my cheek. I closed my eyes.  I woke to the sound of a heavy chain and strained breathing. I was standing near the same wall with my ears pressed against the wall. Then I realised the sound was coming from inside the wall. I was no longer myself as I found tears running from my eyes, and a piercing sorrow travelled through my body convulsively. In a last attempt to take control of myself, I tried to think about what was happening. Then, I lost myself to a stranger within me. I was pushed into the role of an observer, and the stranger was me.  I saw a white man with a hat on his head coming closer. “Please, please, let him live,” I pleaded with him. “Come to my house, we will discuss that,” said the man, and he walked awa...

  The sights outside the metro train fleeted before my eyes, creating a mirage of green, grey, and blue. The evening metro was packed with office goers as they got cooked in the day’s sweat accumulated from their toil in hot offices. Summer was at its peak, the sun mercilessly scorching the steel body of the train. My childhood city, an ancient port on the western side of the Indian peninsula, is bound to drown in the Arabian Sea in the next 25 years when sea levels rise, if climate experts are to be believed. As I sat on the train, experiencing the extraordinary heat, I felt like I was inside a burning furnace about to fall into the sea. This teeming seaport of colonial verisimilitude, where the Dutch, Portuguese, and English built their forts and cemeteries to rule, live and die, had been a second home to me where our family lived when we were kids. Here, my father had a job, and I still have many friends from my school. In contrast, my village, where our family settled afte...

“There is no grand narrative. There is no pattern. Randomness defines it all. Or why do children die? Buds could be eaten in bloom. Evolution’s hands are always full. Hence, it does not mind wastage. Only a few need to survive for species survival. The rest is just fodder,” inside the bar, around a table, four of us sat and listened to the rambling of the only friend who was drunk.  Others were in a happy mood. They glanced at the drunken one who had turned a philosopher, as often happens with such substances. Then they glanced at each other and winked and smiled kindly.   “Why is a beautiful woman, as gorgeous as a pheasant, consumed by cancer? How do we embrace this impermanence and stay sane?” His eyes sparkled with suppressed tears.  We all felt sorry for him because he was a loner, never fully liked by his friends, but tolerated because he had a sharp wit when he was not drinking, and he meant well, we all knew that.   Deep inside, everyone knew his wo...