Broken Bangles: Travel, Stories, Thoughts

(Image source: publicdomainspictures.net)   They lived in the same house on an island of history.  It was just about the same feeling of being out in the sea. Normal days preceded and succeeded days with storms and rough waves. When it was calm, everything was blue.  During the night, they knew all the darkness of the world. They clung to each other, despising it.  There was no lifeboat, no escape, but a canoe that looked like death. The holes in the canoe could swallow the entire sea. “I shall swim away one day, I shall take the canoe to another shore,” they would think, each of them, not once but for many galactic years.  They never knew there were millions of islands in the sea like theirs. The daily drudgery of life was a breath of fresh air. The lively sheep, the scent of corn, and decadence- the right distraction to stop them from killing each other the next moment.  Fishing in shallow waters, they dreamed of a day when a guest arrived. A stranger sen...

photo source: publicdomainpictures.net Daughter A young woman living with her parents was quite fond of dogs. She had seven. One night, they began barking in a thunderous clamour. The young woman looked out of the window to see what was happening. She heard her aged father opening the window to the courtyard and scolding the dogs for the noise. She could still hear the song her mother was listening to on her smartphone. It was a birthday gift that Mother got on her 70th birthday. "How long will I have the company of my ageing parents?", she wondered. God forbid, if they die soon, she would leave the house, she thought; then altogether regretting that thought, she tried to forget the sensation of loneliness that the thought evoked. The dogs were barking, all seven of them. The three puppies were mildly bored and lowered the pandemonium a little. She knew them distinctly from their barks. The older bitch, the leader of the pack, had a fierce bark that resonated across the court...

  photo source: susted.com On an ordinary day. On the sidewalk of an empty highway. Zora stood thinking of her home in a remote village in Africa.  Compared to the city she was in, her village and her home were crowded; richly, she thought.  Her family had cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, and cats.  The mornings like these were never silent there. The cacophony of meows, coos, clucks, bow-wows and moos; thinking of which, a smile appeared on her face. Ah, the smell of those mornings! She mused. She tried to picture in her mind, her favourite dog, Abiba, chasing a chicken. In the car that passed Zora on the highway, was a girl, Chunhua, from China, a medical student, who sat thinking of her forthcoming vacation in Africa.  She closed her eyes and saw a dog chasing a chicken and a girl running after the dog, calling out loud, ‘Abiba, Abiba!”  She was surprised, "I never used to have such strange yet specific thoughts before. Something odd is happening to me."...

  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...