Vagabondancy

"Who is your ideal girl, da?" she asks, running her slender fingers through my hair as I lie on her lap. Her voice reaches my ears, but I somehow am unable to further process it. I continue tracing the outline of her face with my index finger, tucking a strand of her devilishly black hair to the back of her ear. She gets goosebumps, as, in the process, my fingers touch the tip of her earlobe. Even after all the passionate nights and days of love making, the back of her neck and the tip of her earlobes are still off limits to me. They are just as sensitive as mine are and it is one of the cutest things I have ever seen her do. She shrugs so hard till she covers her ear with her shoulder and smiles. "Tell me Bunny, what do you most value in a girl?" "Is this one of your trick questions to which there is no one right answer?", I dramatically exhale with my mouth. "Nooooo, answer me." "An ideal woman, or in general, a human is o

Some prisons are hard to break out of. Your morning alarm makes you want to wrap your tired, withered, calloused hands around it and slam it face first across your bedroom wall. You are indignant. You wake up groggy. You tap the other side of the bed, half expecting to find her. You do not. Your legs drop to the sides of your bed, the wrong or the right, you do not know, nor do you care. You sit up, your spine bent beneath its load. You shake your head and try to straighten your back but soon give up because it hurts. You hurt. Your shoulders droop. You inhale amidst all the ache in your lungs. Your breathing is interrupted by a violent cough. You run to the bathroom only to vomit a miniscule amount of blood. You grab the clean, crisp white towel that is hanging near the basin and think twice before you wipe your bloody mouth. You can not stand the sight of blood so you turn it around and let it hang. You pop a couple of pills from the draw and drink the tap water to w

"I come here everyday with a few packs of biscuits for the stray dogs", the hirsute old man says, looking into the distance. A kennel of fluffy doggos surround his chair, wagging their tails, nudging his crumpled, faded dhothi. "Where do you live, sir?", I ask, wondering how, at such a ripe old age, he still manages to come to this temple every single day, walking up a flight of nearly 80 stairs, which I, a considerably young guy in his twenties, have trouble doing. "It gives me happiness.", he says. He tears open a pack of Parle G biscuits, tucks the small torn piece of plastic carefully into his bag so as to not drop it inside the river flowing behind, and starts feeding the dogs. "I live in an ashram nearby. I consider these mutts my children and I feed my children everyday", he smiles and asks me if I want some biscuits too. I sit near him, thank him and accept his biscuits. As I start nibbling them, I hear him mumbling something. &qu

She needed no spotlight, nor did she expect one. But there it was, a mild crimson ray of the setting sun, casually caressing her curvy, bourbon hair from a half opened window inside the cafe. It was a chilly winter evening post the capricious monsoons of Mussourie. The cold yet docile gust of wind that came drifting in, makes her shiver ever so lightly. She tucks her slender neck closer into her jacket, as she holds her cup of steaming coffee closer to her face and breathes in the aroma. She looks left and right and after she realises there is no one looking at her, smiles a little and inconspicuously takes a deep whiff off an old, wrinkled page of a Ruskin Bond novel. Her face flushes with embarrassment as she sees a little kid looking at her and soon smiles at him. The little kid smiles back, revealing a set of pearly whites, with the front two baby teeth missing, and soon runs away, chasing a kitten across the corridor. She returns to her book, taking a sip of coffee from her cup

"Bunny don't leave yet! Sit with me for some more time", he hears her say, as she looks at him yearningly. The sun had just set and the indigo of the night has all but taken over the magenta of the sun kissed shores of the Bay of Bengal. The Marine drive could not have looked more tantalisingly sublime. It was undeniably the best part of living in Mumbai. She was precariously sitting at one of the  boulders, legs dangling, her recently mehandi laden toes gently grazing the cerulean waters. This was their favourite spot. The limestone Ripraps that are used to stop the shoreline from  eroding, facing the Western horizon. Bunny turns back, but not before rubbing his eyes with his palms. He returns to the rock next to her and exhales. "Why are my eyes clouded, Naina?", he asks, without expecting an answer. "Or maybe it's just my heart.", he continues. Why was I not able to see what was clearly in front of me, ceremoniously hugging me with all its

"Gohan, get out of here. Jump, fly, teleport, do whatever you can and get the hell out of here. The others must be warne..." Goku's sentence was cut short by a sharp blow to his chest, the repercussion of which caused his spine to almost fold forward into two. He tried to lift his broken palm, fingers shattered asunder, in an effort to land a punch on the legendary super saiyan who stood in front of him, but his stifled breath did not do much to help him rise to the occasion. His hands looked scraped and bloody from underneath his torn uniform that Master Roshi had once given him. Whatever was left of the uniform, was soaked with blood and sweat. "Son of Kakarot, listen to what your father has to say. Off with you before I change my mind. Warn the others, let them come. Let them see how pathetically poor Earth's mightiest warriors are in front of me. You call yourselves Saiyans?", Broly spat on the ground near where Goku lay, almost dead. "I will cru