I sit with my back to the wall and stare at the last spot of dying light on the floor. I follow its path as it creeps like the spiders, moving with the sun as it hides for another day. The shadows in the room finally chase out the last rays, and I am once again shrouded in darkness, seeking
I am a good person. This realisation didn’t dawn on me quickly, it was a lengthier process than that, slow and drawn-out. I suppose I always knew. Though it took longer to come to the surface, and only when I had more to compare with did I get clarity. I was probably the best person I knew. I don’t mean
Celebrities bemoan the drawbacks of being rich and famous but being poor and famous is far worse. Derek Mackintosh had, for a few years, been the former and was now very much the latter. That was why he was standing outside Costcutter, waving his arm at an approaching W7 bus to Finsbury Park, rather than hailing a taxi. As the
Amidst the black granite laden with salvers of boiled white rice, spiced okra, and seasoned mint chutney, he reiterates, “Right, Neha? Right?”and for the third time this week, I withhold the acid and concur, “Yes, daddy. I heard you the first time.” A glower simmers at the back of my throat as my mother shoots me a hardened look, “He’s
My dead grandfather visited me as a bird once. I ignored him at first. I’m not so used to bird callers, much less a dead grandparent posing as a bird, that just made a weird thing even weirder. Even before I knew it was my gramps, there was a strange intelligence about this bird. I was hastily brushing my teeth
I remember some thingsI am happy to not remember everythingMy name is GregI remember her name tooAnneshe is my motherI call her MotherI say, “it’s me Mother, Greg,” but it doesn’t come out rightshe pats me on the head and puts the leash on. Suddenly, in the street, she gives me a hug and cries into my furI know why
Turtle hatchlings run towards the sea at night. Pupils fixed on the jumping glimmers of the Moon over the water—their only guide for safety. They stake their chances of survival on big numbers, on the anonymity of the crowd. Same shape, same shell, same pull to live. To move forward. Grow. Exist. There’s something endearing in their frantic attachment to
I used to dream about them as he read me to sleep, curled up with my head on his lap. The villains from my huge, illustrated storybook: the big bad wolf, skulking through the woods; the witch in her gingerbread house, heating up her oven; the dragon in his lair, guarding his gold. And the heroes who wanted to stop
When you adopt you calculate. Doubt divided by hope. I think that’s it. Our daughter spent six months with her birth mother, in squalor. In and out of respite care. Three months with a great aunt, then relinquished to foster care. Adopting means stepping behind the curtain to see how the conjuror performs his magic. They teach you what love
There was once a peasant man whose wife prayed fervently for many years before bearing him twin sons. The first son was beautiful. The father held him high and named him Wilhelm, after himself. But the second son was covered in quills like a hedgehog, quills so sharp they tore his mother’s flesh as he entered the world. She cradled
