Tag _urbanwriters
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
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
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
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
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
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
I. Before the Borders In the year 1938, Karachi was a port city without the word Partition attached to its future like a wound. It was British India, certainly, with its signs in English and its clerks in dull khaki files, but for the children playing in the narrow lanes of Kharadar, it was just home. Sakina, twelve … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There lived a man named Iqbal Singh, who collected regrets the way some people collect postage stamps. In every cupboard of his mind, there were old quarrels wrapped in newspaper, mistakes preserved like pickle jars, and a few embarrassing memories stitched neatly into cushions — so he could sit on them daily. One day, while he … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The metro slowed with a tired sigh, its carriages clattering into the station. Leila leaned her head against the glass, watching her own reflection dissolve into the blur of strangers on the platform. Everyone seemed to have a purpose—earphones in place, bags tucked close, screens glowing like fireflies. She alone felt adrift, as though she …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
By the time the call ended, the rice had stuck to the bottom of the steel pan. Rehana turned off the gas and lifted the pan anyway, setting it down on the counter with a careful clink. The voice on the phone—her mother’s, measured and fatigued—still floated in the quiet of the kitchen. “Bas itna … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Delhi is a city that never whispers. It hums, argues, and flirts with chaos. By seven-thirty every morning, it smells of ambition — mixed with exhaust, incense, and last night’s regret. Among its restless millions lived Rafiq, an urban planner with the face of a poet and the posture of a man used to waiting. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In contemporary Indian cities, the café has become what the addas of Calcutta once were, or the press clubs of Delhi in the 1960s: places where ideas take tentative shape, where ambition rubs shoulders with uncertainty. It was in such a café—wedged between a bookstore and an art shop in South Delhi—that Mira, a young … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The stage lights were blinding, the auditorium vast. Riya adjusted the sitar on her lap. Its familiar weight should have steadied her, but tonight, it pressed heavier than usual. The audience was silent — waiting, watching. Her palms were damp. Her throat dry. Fear, old and stubborn, sat in her chest. She closed her eyes, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In certain cities, dusk does not fall; it gathers. The lamps along the avenue learned long ago to wait for the hush that precedes power. That evening, the hush came first. She arrived neither early nor late. Time, obedient as a well-trained bird, perched where she wished. Those who watched her never said so aloud, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She did not wear the Mekhla to look beautiful — she wore it the way people light a lamp for someone who may never return, a quiet act of faith. The fabric did not flatter her, it remembered her — like a river remembers every village it has ever fed. It was not obedient like … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
On the outskirts of Old Delhi, not far from the sluggish bend of the Yamuna, lies a modest neighbourhood called Gulmohar Lane. It is a place without grandeur, but also without pretense. The houses bear their peeling paint with nonchalance. The lanes twist in ways that suggest neither intention nor apology. And the shops, family-run … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The rain had come to Thanjavur like a returning pilgrim — gentle at first, and then insistent, washing over the red-tiled roofs and courtyards as if reclaiming an old promise. In the large ancestral house on East Main Street, the monsoon meant many things: damp prayer mats, the scent of sandalwood paste, the gleam of … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Cities are sly creatures, and none more so than Istanbul, which has learned over millennia to hide its true face behind a dozen masks: the Roman, the Byzantine, the Ottoman, the Republican, the tourist-brochure city and the smoky-backstreet city, the city of call to prayer and of cocktails, the city that flirts across continents like … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The old man sat on his usual bench outside Jama Masjid every evening as if the sun was waiting for his permission to set. People thought he was a retired professor or a forgotten poet — because only such men can afford slow lives. But the truth was simpler. He was once a clerk who … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
By late October, Delhi had turned into glass. Not just the towers, which had long ago risen with their tinted façades and sleek, mirrored lobbies, but the city itself: every surface reflecting some fragment of another life. Billboards mirrored Instagram posts, Instagram posts mirrored billboard poses, and car windows held faces half-remembered from... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
