Tag _storytelling
There was once a king who ruled a prosperous valley. His palace stood on a hill, its windows opening toward rivers and fields. Every morning, courtiers gathered to announce matters of state. Messengers arrived on horses. Ministers bowed. The king listened, decided, commanded. People called him Maharaja. Yet each dawn, before the palace stirred... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Mariam wakes before the alarm because the body remembers. She sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for the familiar weight in her shoulder to soften. It does, eventually. She stands. The neem outside her window has shed another leaf overnight. She notes this without assigning meaning. In the kitchen, she fills the kettle. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The city has an hour that belongs to no one. It arrives before alarms and traffic and the anxious choreography of office time. In this hour, balconies are still dark. Curtains hold their breath. Even the stray dogs seem unsure whether to claim the pavements yet. Mariam wakes inside it. She does not rise abruptly. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Every morning, the old watchmaker opened his shop before sunrise. He did not do it for customers. Most arrived much later.He did it for the light. At that hour, the street was still learning how to breathe. Vendors were arranging vegetables with sleepy hands. A stray dog circled the same lamppost every day. Somewhere above, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Each morning, before the city learned how to speak, the disciple would step out. He did not wear robes.He did not carry beads.He did not announce himself. He carried only a small cloth bag, folded neatly into his pocket. People did not know what he collected. They thought he was just another man walking through … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In a village near the canals of Malwa, there lived an old man everyone called Bauji, though no one remembered his real name anymore. Every morning, before the sun climbed over the mustard fields, Bauji would step out with a dented steel bucket. He walked slowly to the hand pump near the gurudwara, filled the bucket, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They liked to say later that she was reckless. That love made her careless. That a woman who crossed a river at night had already surrendered sense. None of that was true. Sohni thought carefully. That was her burden. She knew the river’s moods — how it thickened after rain, how it pretended calm when … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Aarav wasn’t in crisis. That was the strange part. His life looked fine from the outside — meetings, momentum, motion. But inside, things felt scattered, like too many tabs open in the mind. One Tuesday morning, instead of reaching for another podcast or affirmation, he paused. He didn’t ask himself how to feel better. He … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
He learned it not in a temple, but on a Tuesday afternoon. The kind of afternoon where nothing dramatic happens. Papers stacked on a desk. A phone that hadn’t rung in hours. The feeling that decisions were being made somewhere else—about him, without him. Earlier, he had believed life moved by effort alone. If you … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
He arrived at the old man’s house angry with his life. The road had given him nothing it promised, and the town he came from had grown too small for his hunger. He spoke quickly, as if afraid silence might undo him. He spoke of what he deserved and what the world had withheld. The … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She realised her mind was cluttered the way a room gets cluttered—not overnight, but slowly. A thought left open here. A worry placed gently on a chair. A conversation replayed and folded, then forgotten, then unfolded again. That evening, she did nothing dramatic. No resolutions. No fixing. She sat by the window with a cup … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In a glass-walled office overlooking a city that never slowed down, Ayaan kept a small, unassuming ritual. Every morning at 6:11 a.m., before Slack messages began to pile up and before the market opened in Singapore, Dubai, and New York, he closed his laptop, placed his phone face down, and sat in silence for seven … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The man arrived in Srinagar in late autumn, when the chinar leaves were already the color of old fire and the city had begun to hold its breath. He rented a room above a shuttered bookshop near the river. The shopkeeper gave him a key and did not ask questions. In Kashmir, those who ask … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
By the time Arjun Malhotra realised his phone was missing, the Mumbai local had already spat him out at Andheri like a seed from a pomegranate. He stood on the platform, suit damp with sweat, heart banging louder than the vendors calling chai. The phone had everything — client decks, half-written love messages, a month’s … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Gurpreet Kaur managed compliance for a large logistics firm in Gurugram. It was the sort of job that rewarded firmness, brisk emails, and the strategic use of capital letters. By the end of most days, her voice felt like it had been dragged across a filing cabinet. She still kept her hair covered.She still kept … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There are stories that do not begin with an event, but with a feeling.This one begins in two evenings—far apart, yet strangely aware of each other. In Multan, the day was folding itself away. The heat had softened, like a thought finally giving up its insistence. The azan drifted from a distance, not loud, not urgent—just … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She came home later than planned.The lift ride felt longer than usual, her phone buzzing twice before the doors even opened. A client message. A family follow-up. A reminder she had set for herself and already forgotten why. Inside the apartment, she dropped her bag near the door instead of placing it neatly where it … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Farid Rahmani learned early how to leave. He left rooms before arguments hardened. He left cities before they began to claim him. He left people before they could ask him to stay. This talent—if it could be called that—had once saved him. Later, it would hollow him out. He was born into a family that … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
At the edge of the year, when calendars were being replaced and voices elsewhere were rehearsing celebration, Zahir sat in a room that had no insistence on time. The room was ordinary.A low table.A window that did not demand to be looked through.A light that did not brighten or dim for effect. Nothing in it suggested arrival. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She arrives when the light is neither day nor night, that in-between hour when the city seems to hold its breath. Her name is Anaya Rao. If one were to list her achievements, they would sound impressive—carefully constructed sentences about success, recognition, and a life well managed. But none of that has followed her here. At Haji R... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
No one in the Riyadh office could quite place Faisal. He dressed simply, spoke without hurry, and arrived five minutes early to meetings that others joined breathless and late. His visiting card said Regional Content & Systems Lead, a role that linked a Saudi media initiative with a large, Dubai-based international broadcasting and technology g... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In Annapurna Mukherjee’s house, understanding did not arrive through declarations.It lived in gestures. In the way Annapurna set aside her sharper questions when she noticed the tremor in her daughter Rukmini’s hands.In the way Satyajit Mukherjee lingered at the doorway longer than necessary, pretending to re... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The Michelin star hung on the wall like a polite guest—present, admired, but no longer spoken to every day. For years, the kitchen had been his battlefield and his refuge. Steel counters bore the scars of long nights. The burners had listened to his doubts more faithfully than most people. He had learned early that … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The house on Street 14 had lived many lives before Ayesha entered it. Once, it had belonged to her grandmother — a woman who believed that houses absorbed the temperament of their inhabitants. “Walls listen,” she used to say. “That’s why you must speak carefully inside them.” The house had listened to grief, ambition, compromise, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The house was never empty, and yet it often felt uninhabited. Guests came and went in soft waves—some announced by laughter, others by the polite clatter of teacups being arranged again and again. Evenings stretched into nights, nights dissolved into mornings. If one listened closely, the house breathed in voices and exhaled silence only briefly, &... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
When Sana first began to “ask,” she did it the way children do: half-prayer, half-dare. She would stand on the balcony of their second-floor portion in Model Town, Lahore, and speak softly into the night as if the darkness had a mouth and could answer back. “Just one sign,” she would say. “Bas. Ek.” The … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The house on Khayaban-e-Hilal had white curtains—too white for a city that gathered dust like memory. Every morning, Samina Begum washed them herself, even though the maid offered, even though her wrists ached. There were things one did to remain necessary. From the street, the house looked calm. Respectable. The kind that journalists photographed ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Neda had always suspected that she was made of two forces that did not trust each other. On certain mornings, she woke with a clarity that felt earned. The light in her room seemed cooperative, the kettle boiled without protest, and the day ahead arranged itself into manageable segments. These were the mornings when she … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Mohalla Khanan did not believe in hurry.It believed in arrival. Morning crept in with the sound of steel tumblers, the hiss of milk meeting tea leaves, and the slow opening of doors that had seen generations pass through them. It was in this deliberate rhythm that Khan Sahib stepped out each day—tall, composed, his Pathani suit pressed &#... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Karachi is a city that does not let you forget your place. The sea is always there—salt in the wind, rust on the railings, a stubborn smell of fish that creeps into even the most expensive perfume. The sun arrives like a tax collector, unapologetic and prompt. And the roads—ah, the roads—teach you humility better … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
On impulse she wrote: Pay respects to Haji Ali. It was not written in a diary meant for posterity, nor announced with the drama such intentions usually deserve. It was scribbled between two mundane tasks, the way one writes buy milk or call the electrician. Bombay has a way of placing the sacred and the ridiculous on the same …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
I arrived in Iceland with the usual modern arrogance—armed with a passport, a credit card, and the assumption that I understood the world well enough. Iceland, however, has a way of humbling you without being rude about it. It does not shout. It does not argue. It simply stands there—vast, indifferent, and achingly beautiful—until your … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In the Najd, where the land does not forgive hesitation, there lived a man named Salim ibn Rayyan. Not a mystic. Not a scholar. Just a trader of dates and salt, whose days were counted by caravans and whose nights were ruled by the wind. Saudi Arabia is not gentle with illusions. The sand strips … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
“Mitr pyare nu, haal muridaan da kehna…” She said it softly, not singing, not quite speaking either—more like remembering a line her breath already knew. The old Sikh lady sat cross-legged on the cool marble of the gurdwara, her dupatta loosely pinned, silver hair escaping without apology. She had come early, before the sangat thickened, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
On most mornings, the city woke up like a badly behaved child — honking, coughing, stretching, and complaining. But inside Gurudwara Sahib, Sector 47, the world was always washed and ironed by 4:45 a.m. The only human who looked as crisp as the marble floors was Raagi Kartar Singh, a man who claimed no great … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
If God ever wants entertainment, He doesn’t watch Netflix. He simply attends a Punjabi wedding. Take the wedding of Baljit Singh’s daughter, Navya — a grand affair in Defence Colony. Baljit was the sort of man who measured respect by the number of dishes in the buffet. His wife Harpreet believed God’s blessings increased in … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
A Modern Peshawar Chronicle Peshawar today is a city where ancient poetry meets impatient traffic. Bazaars still smell of cardamom and history, but now neon signboards compete with the stars, and every chai stall has at least one philosopher holding a smartphone. In one such neighborhood lived Gul Bano, a young woman with a brain … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
People think a nation survives on democracy.That’s nonsense.A nation survives on men like me —men you never hear about,men who make sure the news you read isn’t written in blood. Yes, that’s me.Or was me.I’ve spent my life ensuring nobody sleeps with one eye open.The joke is — I haven’t slept properly in decades. I joined … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The first time someone told her she had royal blood, Meher almost laughed. They were sitting in the inner courtyard of the old kothi in Lahore, the lemon tree shedding pale yellow on cracked brick, the afternoon a strange, sleepy gold. Her grandmother, Amma Jaan, had just oiled her hair and was combing it out, long dark … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
He was only sixteen when he began speaking to God as if God were a friend who always picked up the call on the first ring.His name was Aarav, but when he prayed, he whispered another name: Allah, the One who somehow understood him when everyone else was too busy scrolling. He wasn’t escaping the world. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
