Broken Bangles: Travel, Stories, Thoughts

(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...

(Image source: pixabay.com) My car was stuck in traffic on a long bridge over the river. I could do nothing except wait for the traffic to clear.  The panoramic sky over the river was blue with white clouds. I switched on the radio inside the car. Country music flowed like a gust on a hilltop.  People inside neighbouring cars turned their heads and began to listen to the music. Many of us involuntarily tapped our feet on the car’s floor.  I saw a stray dog walking on the sidewalk of the bridge. He sniffed around my car’s door and wagged his tail. Then he walked away with a dignified air.  The water was silver grey. The sun, mellowed under the shroud of a white cloud, was looking into the mirror of water and smiling. He seemed satisfied with his own image. What a narcissist! I thought.  This music, and this Sun, and this sky, and these clouds, and the dog will be gone the next moment. I shall remember them when I cross the bridge again, or I would be too preoccup...

“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...

(Image source: flickr.com) A shepherd lived with his family on a Himalayan mountain stretch on its foothill. He owned a house and a Tibetan Mastiff dog. Buddhist by birth, he often wondered about the mysteries of life, looking at the white mountains.  A cairn stood near his house on the path leading to distant lands of Tibet and Nepal through forlorn villages hidden by snow. Each stone on the pile would remind him of the unknown passers-by. He would try to remember the faces of a few with whom he had chatted. There were villagers, mountaineers, scientists, and traders treading that trail for who knows how many centuries.  The shepherd would give water to his yaks and sheep in the corral every morning and go to the village prayer hall. The Buddha idol there, with half-closed eyes, seemed to be fast asleep.  “Where are the answers?” he asked the marble statue when no one was around.  His teenage son had moved to Kathmandu to work there as a driver. His wife was ailing...

(Image source: freepik.com)  “Are we dreaming about this or are we doing this?” was the first question I wanted to ask Ismael. The wind kept lashing at our windows and it sniffled and gave out a low moan now and then. A window had gone loose on its hinges. It is shut but continues to clatter in the wind.    “This is no dream, we are awake, can’t you see the sea through that crack in the window?  I looked. The sea felt on its feet today; a clumsy shapeshifting monster warming up to the moon and waking from its slumber. The room was green from mould and a diluted, airy darkness filled it. The faint light squeezed itself in by twisting its body along the edges of the crack.   We had decided to shut ourselves inside the abandoned house near the sea for a night. A lot of thought had gone into it. Was it because we were two world-weary professionals trying to compensate by finding meaning in each other? I have found no clear answer yet. We needed to do this and i...

(Image source: pixabay.com)   The man asked the woman, “Would you like to have one more coffee with me?”  They met in a cafe, he was immersed in a book, and she wanted a coffee dearly after losing her job.  “The manager was always hostile to me,” she thought.  Looks had crossed between them by chance and both had smiled for no reason, across the scent of coffee, filling the place. The smiles traced a flickering path for their eyes in the fragrant air. That was when she moved to his table.  “Which book are you reading?” she asked.  He showed her the cover. It was the autobiography of an actor. He was on the last few pages. “What did you learn from this book?” she asked. “There is nothing to learn. I just lived his life for a few hours. Books let you live other people's lives,” said the man. “The lives are numerous as books are. All these stories are about how we falter in life. Maybe these books would help you pick which way to falter,” laughed she. He knew ...

  photo source: publicdomainpictures.net The kitten was feeling lonely.  Soon after her mother gave birth, she and her two siblings were thrown away.  The family was averse to animals living inside their home.  The mother cat had chosen a cardboard box below the staircase as its labour room.  The house owners took the 3 kittens immediately after they opened their eyes and saw the world, and put them in the narrow lane that led to another house nearby.  The kittens soon landed in their second home.  They did not have the skill to drink milk from a plate or bowl, and trying to do that, two of the kittens caught a severe chest infection and died in two days.  The third one, a beautiful black female, survived. She looked around.  A dog, just beyond the age of being called a puppy, was sleeping nearby.  She decided to play with him and poked his nose with her little claws.  The puppy woke up and also seemed to be pleased by the invitatio...