Till death do us part - An excerpt from "In the Shadows of Death"

That was the bed where Medha and Agni had spent nights shouting at each other and fighting like alley cats. And that was the bed where they had made love night after night. Towards the end of their marriage, their lovemaking had been reduced to a domestic routine that they would indulge in a few times every month, just because a healthy married couple was supposed to, and to satisfy a physical need just as someone sits on the pot every morning to empty one’s bowels or munches on a sandwich in the afternoon. But there was a time when making love to Medha was a passionate experience, where they could sense the union of their souls and not just of two bodies, and they would often end up teary-eyed. He missed that – he missed that sorely.

Agni tried to calculate how many times they had made love. There was no way to figure out. Did she keep track? She would often surprise Agni by effortlessly quoting from memory the number of days that had passed since the last time they had made love. The intervals would most often be several weeks mostly because Agni had been too tired after his work or had been away from home investigating a murder. Which meant she did keep track. How did she? Did she write down the dates somewhere? Did she make tally marks?

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Book Review - Poems by Subhadip Mukherjee

Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Reading the poetry of Subhadip Mukherjee in his book ‘ ছেঁড়া চিন্তার Scribbles’ (Offtrack Publishers, co-authored by Dr. Kausik Ghosh), I am convinced that he is bleeding. And that’s good news. Subhadip is a nagorik kobiyal. His poems hold mirror to the stifling urban life with its rat race, with its mindless pursuit of materialistic ambitions, and with its consumerism. নাগরিক ব্যস্ততা নানা জটিলতা... দাশু বারবার কিস্তিমাত He mocks the same judgemental urban society right in his introduction when he says: যদি তাকে চিনে থাকো যদি তাকে জেনে থাকো Boss, বেশী . মিশোনা তার সাথে সামান্য নেশা হবে ... তুমিও " খারাপ " হবে দেরি হবে রোজ রাত্তিরে Subhadip’s poems paint love in its myriad hues – from extreme euphoria to brooding despondency. Subhadip depicts the unadulterated purity of love when he says: তুই ক্লাস নাইনৈর খাতার...

The Sinners: Extract #1

Aarti was with Vikram in her one-bedroom flat. It had been raining for quite some time - the dirt washed away, street lights reflected on the wet roads. There were distant rumbles in the evening sky, sounding almost ominous. Very few cars sped down the empty road below. The room was half-lit by a single lamp on the study desk. It was just the two of them inside the flat. They had returned a while back after dining at the Marriott in Juhu. “I’ve been missing you for days, Vikram! I don’t remember when we met last,” Aarti’s voice rose a couple of notches, the resentment in her tone pronounced. “And when we met today after weeks, we ended up fighting.” There were beads of sweat on Aarti’s temples and above her lips. She was visibly tense. There was a bad taste in her mouth, not the kind you carry home after a dinner at the Marriott. Vikram tried to pull her closer but Aarti freed herself and walked away towards the desk. She looked away, trying to hide the...

Decoding Marriage - An excerpt from 'An Autumn Turmoil'

Most of us have a glorified idea about love. I think it comes from the staple diet of Bollywood movies we are all brought up on. Couples strolling on the beach, watching the sunset together, whispering promises of eternity into each other’s ear, and making love on satin sheets in wooden cottages overlooking the Swiss Alps. But life does not play out like this. The movies do not show the truth, what happens backstage. The love fades. The promises lose meaning. And the lovemaking goes from being a passion to a duty, something a married couple ‘is supposed to do at bed time.’ Before long, you reach that stage, where you can count the number of times you do it every month on your fingers, with a couple of fingers to spare. And you surrender to the monotony. The husband and the wife start living separate lives under the same roof – all in the name of security, comfort, marital bliss and sometimes, the fear of what ‘everyone would say’. Abhishek and I are fast approaching that stage in...

Mukherjee Musings

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