Kangleimaichou

The new metro train in Delhi is a long shiny tube in which genders are packed in separate compartments. If a lady happens to be in mixed compartments she can expect to stand among tens of ogling men squeezing her with visible pleasure. To expect to get off the train with polished shoes still shining, suit without wrinkles, is to expect that after a fall from forty-storeyed building one will get up and walk.  To expect a seat while travelling more than an hour is something one should forget, even a mother with her infant in her arms finds no gentle character to save her from the nastiness of being squeezed between loud-talking men and then being jostled with her infant. Expect your destinations, but expect no comfort and decency.  If you have put up the bestial nature of the fellow commuters, then you should also expect the worse form of elbowing your way out among gushing people in unnecessary hurry, while being pushed in by impatient people from outside. Decency belongs to...

He was as jolly as he ever was; waiting for me to drive me home through the richly lit parts of Delhi. A bit further from where he had picked me up we stopped for the red light, in fact there was no need to display those graceful traffic colours; people were just cutting in and honking ,and hurling disturbing abuses at one another.  A police man in white shirt and blue trousers holding a flashing truncheon stood in the middle of the road. His face was greasy and bore no sign of activeness; hadn’t it been for the movements of the flashing truncheon while changing hands, he would have been mistaken for a planted dummy. The honking lorries, the motorcycles in oscillating motions, the mid-size cars of middle class Indians and a very few luxury cars of BMW and Mercedes, drawing attention, cut in, dodged and moved forwards, but they made sure the man holding the flashing truncheon was not mowed down as one would avoid ramming onto a strong pole. A little ahead of the evitable chaos a l...

If one were to look for a self-defeated people, there wouldn’t be need to look beyond our own in which we all have been in a state of decay and soon to be transformed to decomposed stuff which a person in wellingtons boots , nose and mouth covered ,with a shovel in his hands to throw us away just like we all do in our own backyards. Despite being a self-defeated people, we also have made ourselves a people who are capable to churn out senseless excuses to counter the practical reasoning, which is vital to the development of a society, and much more desperately in a condition like ours, we are incapable of. What gives us a grim picture is the sheer indifference of which we all are collectively capable of and the resolute-like state of ours to live inside it and playing out our little mischievous games, and yet living like an accomplished people, suggesting all is utter vanity and it will soon, very soon, will fizzle out only to leave behind a world fit only for lackeys. You have to...

Brother Chaoba has been driving on of the backs of these Himalayan mountains for years, he is a man who has witnessed his peers plunge to the gorges, many a times being pushed down, and several times torched whenever some ruffians couldn’t be pleased. With a degree in a political science from once a prestigious college in his confused place he brought pride to his parents in his village, but that pride soon became a burden;  he was expected to land with a proper job, but it wasn’t as easy as most people thought then; he would have to prepare a large amount to feed an entire establishment starting from the Chinese-cigarette puffing peon to the burly man with his neck virtually strangled in gold chains and podgy fingers leaden with precious stones rings. When his amorous life overrode the financial concerns he eloped with the lady of his dream, but the love that promised everything in its heydays now gave in to the groaning stomachs and the worst was having to listen to the groans ...

     Had it not been for the thick mist the strewn rubbish and ugly look of the buildings would have been revealed.  They say the place has now been christened as “LA City”, and they are right to say that the place indeed has become one with the lean-on buildings and the exploding population which makes the place bustling.          There are plenty of restaurants but one among is particular. “Heaven’s supper” run by a young man with greasy face and mouth issuing betel-nut juice over the steps of his restaurant only to add his own share of colour to the place, and inside the his popular place are the young Bihari and Bengali boys in extra-large shirts and colourless-patch-covered trousers rolled up till their thin shins, and they scurry their ways inside the greasy man’s place in dug-in rubber slippers with little success in hiding the cracked heels filled up by black dirt. When the place’s shutter is pushed up with loud noise the manager i...