Author: Richa Koparday

Discover how she crossed the dreadful 500 metres to reach safety.

The sun had bid farewell, leaving behind the darkness, combined with a vivid memory.   The way birds flew to their nests made me jealous. Mine was just 500 metres away and I idly wondered how the world would be if we could practice Disapparition! At that moment, I heard the highly pesky noise of a Royal Enfield Bullet.

I continued to wobble to my sweet shelter, you read it right, wobble. The unsteady gait was due to a horrible fracture in my right fibula or as we know it, the calf bone. So, I could not run or walk effortlessly for a few years. I was grateful that it was not worse but the relief was short-lived. That irksome Bullet noise was heard once again. Something was amiss. It didn’t feel right. For the first time, I wished there was a paan tapri there, it would have been reassuring to see more people. Haven’t you just assumed they were there in every gully?

As the noise grew louder, the pace of my heartbeats elevated. They contradicted the swiftness of my legs! “Don’t look there!” I warned myself repeatedly. Not to trust strangers, theft, rape, aren’t those the scenarios we are brainwashed with? Terrified, I kept my valuables inside my handbag. Staring straight ahead, I did the only thing I could, I helplessly kept walking.

I was only a hundred metres away from safety when the unthinkable happened. The Bullet was blocking my way. We stood on that sloppy walkway. The Bullet-guy, like some precarious villain, strutted towards me. His leather jacket and biceps evidently craved being in the twenties. Although, his salt and pepper hair gave away his age. His grubby beard reeked of cigarettes. That kept me rooted to my spot. I am sure I looked like some ancient statue!

His simple question broke the reverie of my shock, “Do you need help?”

Discover a new way to look at the sunrise.

If the sunrise represents a ‘new beginning’, do we ‘begin again’, daily? Especially, when we visit the ‘sunrise point’? What if I say, you don’t see them? What if I say, you are blind? 

We are reading this, you may argue.

Maybe the sun is blinding you? I argue back.

Are there any ‘new beginnings’?  Aren’t you tired of the same office, same colleagues, same boss, same routine?

(Hey, not the same loved ones! *laughs*)

If adventure lies in every day, where is it? What’s new? This lockdown might be getting gloomy but hey, it is neither mental nor natural.

Don’t look at the sunrise. FEEL it. Feel the ‘new beginning’.  

This realisation blew my mind!

Was this short and sweet comeback in the lockdown productive? Let me know in your comments below.

Discover how college nostalgia meets the present-day ambition of a writer.

Some pointers before you start reading:

• The writing course I was attending was held at the college I went to a decade ago. Thus, this name.
• The following was an exercise in the course where I only had to describe that ‘settling’ (one particular area) with emotions.
• I have chosen this corridor and bench as it was right outside my class.

My flat-heeled shoes whispered tap-tap with every footstep on the wooden floor of that dingy corridor. I accompanied the lonely bench next to a cheery window on the first floor by sitting on it. I took out my phone and opened ‘Google docs’. I was doing a dull job describing that very bench when I heard more tap-taps. I did not want to be creepy, so I only followed that sound, not looking up.

A female voice came from a couple of feet away, it sounded disappointed, for some unknown reason, “Yeah and did you see that Valentine’s day ad today? It said ‘Love comes in all forms’, huh, what a rip-off! Wasn’t that the ‘queer month’ tagline?”
Now another voice came from next to her, responding in curiosity and amusement, “Wait, how do you know this stuff?”

Laughter and the tapping were now away. Desperate for a distraction from my rising nostalgia, I got back to my description.