Bookmarks and Popcorns

A sound of a horn, a scent in the air Is precisely what you were to me Annoying yet abundant, random yet reminiscent There was no escape to a place where you were inadequate. In a lone road or a cramped mall I caught repetitive glimpses of you in close quarters Excessive and abrupt enough to breakthrough And crumble my wall of confidence into dust That flew in every possible direction In pursuit of the source of such a ravage In a quest to assure my mental stability With my held-high face staring at the ground, Sunglasses protecting my emoting eye’s confession, I walked away with an undue pain in my heart A feeble heart that you fumbled with A pain you prematurely precipitated. I know I have nothing to fret now You were just a blunder I held onto so dearly A bluff, a dismay, a miscalculation An overestimation of what you could be An oversight of what you were A virus I relieved myself from A door I walked through With your presence dispatched Memo...

How many of you have looked at the back of your sunscreen bottle and noticed a CAUTION note? “For external use only”, most of the bottles say. Every time I read that caution note, I wonder to myself, ‘Which kinda idiot thinks sunscreen lotion is edible and consuming it is how you protect your skin and it’s tone from the sun?’ ‘Probably the same type of idiot who thinks the best way to booze, while the liquor shops are closed, is to drink hand sanitizer’ I would reply myself. How many of you have read, “If it irritates your skin, discontinue using it” at the back of a sample product?! Major facepalm, right?! I mean, how many douchebags out there persistently use a sample product in spite of it giving them a gory rash? Ridiculous! The moment I mentally laughed at these things, my brain got a cue to pick up a ladle, dig deep down into a mound of unforgettable embarrassments of my life and coercively pour it all over me until I am racked with a sambar of awkward- thrika ...

Bells of my heart rang loud, pupil grew wider, palms started to sweat, lips dried out, mouth ajar and body frozen. How many of you have experienced this state of yourself? Why? Is it always because of the love of your life? Fear begs to differ. Yes. Attraction could make your heart skip a beat, alter your reality, and make you feel like you are floating when he/she is attracted to you too. But fear could make your heart stop beating, crash your reality, and lift your soul to float its way to heaven as you lay dead when your fear comes true. It was definitely fear in my case. Fear is constant. For everyone who believes change is constant, fear poses as a pioneer of contention with its omnipresence. The rad is that, like most other things, there are 2 sides to this coin as well – The good and the bad. The good is that it gives you an image of what a failure could be and makes you run in the opposite direction. The bad is that it gives you a phantasm of the worst and forbids you...

Every time I stepped out of my house and bumped into some neighbourhood aunty or uncle, the first thing I hear, before or after the basic greetings, is, “What, Kanna, you have become so fat” I never knew if it was a question or an exclamation. Either way, it was offensive. Regardless of whether words like “Kanna”, “Chellam”, “Kutty ma” are added or not. And he/she seemed to have no awareness or care of how mean and catastrophic such a comment could be. Now imagine getting these comments mostly at the start of your day. Long before the breach of COVID-19 into our lives, I had a habit of going for a walk by the beach. Every day, I woke up at 5 a.m., did my morning rituals, wore my tracks and tees, pulled back my hair into a high-pony or plait, tied the lace of my running shoes, and left home by 5:30 a.m. I took my Mobile, headphone, smartwatch, some cash, and a napkin along with me. I drove myself to the beach and parked by scooty in the service road. I used my Adidas Running App and S...

To start with, there’s nothing much I miss, actually. I am a CS student who stayed at home all the time except for the 2 hours class, 1 hour meander travel, more and less, and 1-2 hours of miscellaneous excuses to be out of the house. At home, I had an imperative routine of eating, sprawling flat on the floor and staring at the ceiling, eating, watching some movies on laptop or TV while I eat (or vice versa), scoring half a century for the number of times I open and close the refrigerator, watching YouTube videos about how to be productive, eating, listening to motivational speeches to prepare myself to be productive, eating, arranging my bookshelf, cupboard, room – sometimes even the shoe rack – so that I won’t be stopped by my unclean environment from being productive, actually studying for an hour or 2, and sleeping before I realize it. It was de rigueur for me to wear clothes such as shorts and loose tees so that I was ventilated enough to endure the undue heat. At the day time, I ...

Genre: Spy thriller Author: Harinder S. Sikka Rating:  ★★ Calling Sehmat is the debut book of Sikka published in 2008. Ten years later it was made into a movie named Raazi starring Alia Bhatt. I loved the movie and wanted to read the book. The first thought I had while buying the book was ‘How did they fit that story into this little book?’ I got the answer while reading it.  The plot starts with the love story of Tejashwari Singh and Hidayat Khan. They give birth to a girl, Sehmat. Hidayat, an Indian Spy, influences his daughter to be as patriotic as he is. Sehmat grows into a sweet, polite, gracious, and respectful girl who goes on to do her college in Delhi. She falls in love with a fellow student, Abhinav. Meanwhile, Hidayat is diagnosed with cancer and does not have many days remaining. Hidayat asks Sehmat if she could be a spy for which she eventually agrees and takes the training to become a spy in haste. She is married off into a Pakistan General’s house...

Falling asleep the second you hit the bed is a dream for many including me. That night, my dream came true. But that dream turned into a nightmare when I woke up suddenly at midnight. It was murky and spooky enough to scare a 17 year old girl like me. After all, I always had an implacable fear for ghosts. I tapped on my mobile. ‘2:30 a.m’ it flashed. The room felt, ominously, freezing, and dry. I turned around immediately to throw an arm over my mom. I needed the solid assurance of my mom’s presence to fall back asleep at this hour. Somehow, I always believed that no devilish, supernatural, ghostly being can haunt or possess me when mom was around.  Just when I threw an arm over my mom, my finger brushed past something. Something that was neither the bed nor the blanket. I shut my eyes close as I struggled to normalize my shallow breaths. After a few minutes of nothing anticipated, I realized how stupid I was for panicking like that. But I knew I had made the judgment to...

She It is a bright summer afternoon. Her ruffled brown hair shines a beautiful golden as the sunlight delicately touches her head. The occasional long breeze effortlessly sways by, making her ochre locks dance gracefully. She closes her eyes and lets the nature nurture her rare moment of small pleasures and hide her repulsive features. Nothing but an occasional soft gust on a busy day could be such a bliss for the little ten year old who works with her father, cleaning the empty plastic plates of eaten or leftover food.  She wears the frock that her father had bought her for Diwali, two years ago. It is torn here and there, has stains of all kind, and stinks a bit. Her dry hair screams it’s need for some oil. The repeated scratchings hints it has been days since she took a bath. Her chocolate brown skin has a lot of mosquito bites and her face is sweaty all over. But she is way too young and poor to notice any of this. She does not care about what she needs. She occas...

Genre: Thriller, black comedy Language: Korean Director: Bong Joon Ho Rating: ★★★★★                                      Just when the entire world started to throw more light on the K-pop and K-drama culture, came the black comedy Korean film Parasite. A movie that wasn’t recognized much initially in India until it was nominated for the Oscars. Never has the Academy Awards chosen a non-English movie for the Best Picture category. This stimulated the world’s curiosity and interest. I have never seen so many people talk about a Korean movie in Tamil Nadu. The theatres were filled with not just the movie-buffs and K-culture followers but also other people. When a neighbour uncle who has watched (mostly) Tamil and (sometimes) English movies asked me about that film, I must say I gaped at him for at least half a minute. But then, there was also this huge bunch of audience who went ...