Tag _fiction
They said the fire began from a faulty wire on the fourteenth floor. In our part of the world, everything begins with a faulty wire. Governments.Marriages.Buildings.Families. Somewhere, something overheats quietly for years while everybody keeps pretending the smell is normal. The tower stood in Gurugram like all rich buildings do — full ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Raghav was, by every measurable standard, a successful man. He had money, a corner office, a wife who loved him enough to be occasionally furious with him, and a cardiologist who had recently informed him that his body was behaving like a government office during an audit. Hypertension. Borderline diabetes. Caffeine dependence of a severity …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Rhea began speaking to God in the parking lot of a Gurgaon hospital. Not because she was particularly religious. She wasn’t. She had the usual modern arrangement with faith — respectful during turbulence, indifferent during stability. She owned three versions of the Bhagavad Gita she had never properly read, reposted Rumi quotes on difficult evenin... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There was nothing particularly wrong with Tariq. That was, in many ways, his problem. He was educated, moderately well-read, and spent a considerable portion of each day consuming content he would have been embarrassed to describe aloud. Not obscene content. Merely useless content. The kind that fills the hours without filling the person. He worked... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
I have a friend — let us call him Tariq, though that is not his name — who built a small empire in the years after liberalization. Import-export, mostly. Electronics, then textiles, then something to do with logistics that I never quite understood but which seemed to make him comfortable in the way that only … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
a woman. a river. the body’s small revolt. I. She had not meant to come to the river. The car had deposited her at the wrong ghat — Assi instead of Dashashwamedh — and the driver had shrugged, indifferent as only a man with many other fares can be, and pulled away before she could … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The morning Dadi died, my mother made saag. No one had asked her to. No one had even suggested it. But at five in the morning, while the body was still warm in the back bedroom and the men were making phone calls in low, important voices, my mother had gone into the kitchen, tied … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
ਸਿਮਰਉ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਸੁਖੁ ਪਾਵਉ Simrau Simar Simar Sukh Paavau A story in the voice of the Punjab\ ਭਾਗ ਪਹਿਲਾ — The Man Who Forgot the Name Pehla Bhaag The fields of Lohgarh had not seen rain in forty-one days. Harnek Singh stood at the edge of his land — three acres of cracked earth … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
ੴ ਮਨਿ ਜੀਤੈ ਜਗੁ ਜੀਤੁ — Conquer the mind, conquer the world — Guru Nanak Dev Ji I. Harpal Singh had, by his own conservative estimate, thought about the same problem four thousand, seven hundred and twelve times. He had thought about it in the bathroom, which was the only room in his Punjabi household … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Brigadier (Retired) Balwant Singh Sandhu — seventy-three years old, whisky-nosed, magnificently moustached — had decided, quite firmly, that God owed him an explanation. Not a long one. Balwant was a practical man. He didn’t want philosophy. He didn’t want some saffron-robed fraud waving incense at him and murmuring about karma. He... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The old man had been dead for three days before anyone noticed that his lantern was still burning. It hung outside the blue door of his haveli on Mochi Gate — that narrow, forgetful street where the city had accumulated centuries like a man accumulates regrets, one on top of another, without ever quite letting … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
His name was Mahmoud, and he had been a difficult man. Not cruel — never cruel — but difficult in the way of men who feel too much and say too little, who love with a clenched fist because they were never taught to open their hands. He had been a tailor for forty years. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There was once a dervish — and no one remembered his name, which suited him fine. He had walked so many roads that the soles of his feet had grown philosophical. He had sat at the feet of masters who glowed like embers, had fasted until his bones felt hollow and clean, had whirled in … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
PART ONE — THE ARRIVAL The city of Barzakhpur existed on no map. It sat between the Thar Desert and something older than the desert — a fold in reality that cartographers had always, somehow, skipped over. The locals called it the seam — the place where the visible world was stitched to the invisible one, and the stitching ̷... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There was a man who owned a small shop that nobody noticed. It stood between two louder places—a pharmacy with bright lights and a café that spilled music onto the street. His shop had neither. Only a wooden door, slightly uneven, and a window that held things you could not quite categorize. Old postcards.A chipped … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Navneet had not planned to stay long. She’d come back for Baisakhi the way you come back for things when you’re twenty-six and living alone in a city — out of obligation first, then guilt, and then somewhere on the bus ride, when the highway gave way to smaller roads and the fields opened up … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The first thing people said about Raghav Bisen was that he had a memory like a ledger. It was not the sentimental kind that held onto old laughter or passing seasons; his memory was exacting, almost mechanical. He remembered numbers, routes, faces, and conversations with a clarity that made forgetting impossible. In the older parts … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She had spent a lifetime being seen. In the golden years of Rome, when cinema felt like prayer and light fell on faces like a blessing, Alessandra Vieri believed that being watched was the same as being known. She was wrong. The world loved her not for who she was, but for what it could … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
A small hill town in early spring. The kind where mornings arrive gently, without announcement. A few shops open at their own pace, a dog stretches in a patch of sunlight, and the air carries the faint smell of tea and damp earth. She had moved there only a few weeks ago, for work. The … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She arrived on a Tuesday, just after noon. The drive had been longer than expected. The last stretch narrowed into a road that seemed less certain of itself, bending without warning, bordered by trees that leaned in, as though observing her arrival. By the time the car stopped, she felt she had crossed into something … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They said he had become difficult. Not arrogant.Not withdrawn. Just… impossible to understand. His name was Rehan. And once, he had been easy. He wrote melodies that could be explained.Songs that people could hum, own, repeat. He gave interviews where he spoke of “inspiration” and “discipline,” as if creation were a well-behaved animal. People love... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
𝗜𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. The kind you wouldn’t even mention at dinner. Rhea stood at the crossing near her office, one foot slightly ahead, ready to step forward the moment the light changed. She had timed this signal for weeks now. Forty-five seconds red. Twelve seconds of hesitation from traffic. Then green. Predictable. Today, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
It began in a way that did not feel like a beginning at all, which is perhaps why she did not notice it when it happened, only later, when she retraced the path and found that something had quietly taken root without asking for attention. The Sunday had been unremarkable, held together by the familiar … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She had taken the trip alone, though she told her colleagues it was long overdue. In truth, she had not felt the urgency of travel. It was simply that the apartment had grown too familiar, the evenings too predictable. The sea, she thought, might interrupt this quiet repetition. The hotel room was modest. A narrow … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They said he smelled of sandalwood before they said he was a good teacher. Not the bottled kind. Not the kind you buy in polite stores with polite receipts. This was the kind that clung to old prayer rooms, to wooden beads rubbed for decades, to silence that had been sat with honestly. It followed … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
By the time Meera reached the office, her day had already begun twice. Once in the morning—when the alarm rang, sharp and impatient.And once in her head—where conversations had started before they were spoken, where outcomes had already been negotiated, where she had already won, lost, explained, defended. The lift took longer than usual that ̷... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They called her Her Highness in public.In private, they called her dangerous. Maharani Ira Devyani Singh did not belong to her time — and she knew it. Tall, arrestingly poised, with a face that could move from indifference to intrigue in a breath, she carried her lineage like a perfectly tailored silk sari: inherited, yes, but worn …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She never called it a practice. If anything, she avoided naming it — as though language, once applied, might reduce it to something manageable, explainable, and therefore… less true. Her name was Meera. She lived on the seventh floor of a building where the lift often paused between levels, as if uncertain of its destination. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Eliane Mehra lived on the 17th floor of a high-rise in Mumbai—a city that never truly slept, only paused to exhale between honks, power cuts, and monsoon rain. Her flat was minimalist, curated in quiet earth tones, with trailing plants by the windows and books stacked unevenly near the TV she never turned on. She … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In a third-floor apartment nestled in Delhi’s quieter lanes, under the jacaranda trees that bloomed like forgotten dreams in spring, lived Aanya. Thirty-four, architect by trade, observer by nature. Her home bore no extravagance—just clean lines, a teak shelf of old poetry books, and a floor mat that unfurled every morning at dawn like a … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They called her karamjali before she knew what it meant. At first, it was a word flung casually, like water to shoo a crow. Her aunt said it the day the rice burned in the pot and smoke curled into the kitchen like a curse finding its way home. “Karamjali,” the woman snapped, not even … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
It came at noon, just as the jackfruit leaves stopped rustling and the air turned still, waiting. A single clap of thunder rolled over the paddy fields like a gentle reminder. Then, from the grey sky above Palakkad, the monsoon finally arrived—like a long-lost friend returning home. Anu sat on the steps of her grandmother’s … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In the sprawling old house of the Mukhopadhyays, nestled at the edge of Krishnanagar, autumn came with the soft rustle of fallen shiuli petals and the scent of aging wood soaked in the memory of generations. The house was a world in itself, with its red-tiled roof, a tulsi altar at the center of the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
A modern Sufi story on impermanence. She moved into Room 204 on a Tuesday. No one moves on Tuesdays. But Mira did. Because her five-year relationship had ended on a Monday. Quietly. Without yelling. Just a pause over breakfast that stretched long enough to say everything. The serviced apartment was small but neat. A kettle. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
As everyone has left he will sit by himself for a while. Questions rise too many times before and never he got an answer. Today it was different as he sits on the Pew, some people knew that he did prison time for a crime he didn’t commit. Now he got his answer, finally free… ... mehr auf dewerelddoordeogenvanjuistja.wordpress.com
And the story will build in its tracks
Again... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Let its trail prosper!... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Not all quiet is empty. Some of it is memory warming its hands. The clock on the wall had struck six with a sleepy, apologetic chime. Outside, the gulmohar leaves rustled like gossiping aunties. A distant two-wheeler coughed its way up the lane. Anil Paranjpe was in his usual chair by the window, fingers around … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In North Kolkata, where houses stand shoulder to shoulder like aging relatives who have stopped apologizing for one another, there was a lane off Bidhan Sarani that flooded every monsoon. The plaster peeled in patient layers. Balconies leaned forward, as if eavesdropping. On damp evenings, the smell of frying telebhaja travelled farther than intent... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Mein erster Versuch in Fiction. Ich habe nur noch gar keine Idee, wie das weitergehen könnte. ... mehr auf tinierklaertsichdiewelt.wordpress.com
