Leader of the Pack
Posted on September 6, 2017 15 Comments
She thought her mother was a vampire. It was my fault.
Random Thoughts of an Angry House Cleaner
Posted on August 28, 2017 1 Comment
Housecleaning is not a benign activity. It’s hard to stay calm and centred when you’re vacuuming a floor, mopping with vigour, or scrubbing a shower. Those are inherently violent and aggressive activities.
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That’s Not A Knife, This Is A Knife
Posted on August 3, 2017 10 Comments
Here we are four adults, or near-adults, crammed sardine-like into a two-bedroom apartment until we find an over-priced, under-sized house to buy. Living cheek by jowl with teenaged children is like living in a share-house with bears who forgot to hibernate through winter. I do not recommend it for long periods of time. My epithets for the children – Godzilla and the TeenWolf – have never been truer. Their appetites, their ability to generate landfills’ worth of garbage, and their Bollywood levels of melodrama leave me dizzy and gasping.
Noir
Posted on August 3, 2017 22 Comments
Crimson splatters line the walls, crime scene tape girds the door. Shattered glass, a single lily, and pristine white shagpile carpet grace the floors.
He lifts the needle, abruptly silencing the Shostakovitch piano concerto.
Tipping back his trilby, he scratches his head. Who still uses a record player?
Image credit: SouthernRebel/pixabay
Kali’s Fortunes
Posted on August 2, 2017 1 Comment
“Charlatan! Mountebank! Rogue!” Angry arrows of spittle punctuated each word. Like some fearsome avenging Statue of Liberty, the woman waved her bag held aloft at the roadside fortune teller.
A Reliable Sign
Posted on July 27, 2017 4 Comments
Saudamini squinted at the cloudless sky, trying to divine its hidden messages.
“Bring in the clothes, Amini!” she called to her daughter-in-law.
“Why, Amma? The sun’s shining!” Amini’s voice floated thinly from the small, bare kitchen at the far end of the house.
“Rain is coming.” Saudamini rubbed at her aching knees.
Ramesh and the Deer
Posted on June 21, 2017 10 Comments
The fire hissed and fizzled as the moisture in the kindling bubbled into vapour and the twigs caught alight.
Ramesh hadn’t expected to be making camp in the jungle’s damp undergrowth overnight. But then, he hadn’t expected his shot to knick the flank of the deer instead of felling it where it stood.
The Last Thread
Posted on June 8, 2017 5 Comments
My fingers trace the ridges on the back of her hand, puckering the skin. The silken thread of her life pulled too tightly.
“Lack of turgidity. A sign of dehydration,” my doctor-cousin informs me brusquely. But I know better. The Fates await her with sharpened scissors and a single eye.
I didn’t post in this week’s YeahWrite Microprose #312 grid, but I love flash/microprose and wanted to play along with the other YeahWriters. The single word prompt was hand. This piece, about my maternal grandmother, is nonfiction.
On Spinning in Circles and Hoping for a Lasso of Truth
Posted on June 7, 2017
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51137764
I’ve been sitting with my feelings on the new Wonder Woman film since seeing it last week. And I’m only sharing them here because I was specifically asked.
Let me say up front that I love Wonder Woman (hell, I once named a secret Facebook group Thermyscira, so…), and I grew up spinning in circles like Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, ardently hoping to magically transform. It is the purest of joys to see a woman superhero inhabit so much screen time.
Seeing women (not just one, all the inhabitants of Thermyscira) represented as clever, powerful, uncompromising, and impatient of foolishness, was life affirming. I’m so pleased that children have such a powerful, intelligent aspirational hero.
Dark Skinned Reality
Posted on May 4, 2017 10 Comments
The child of migrant parents, I grew up walking in two worlds, fitting comfortably into neither. In the 1980s beauty role models who looked like me were non-existent in the western society my family made their home. They were equally absent in the culture of my heritage.
Asha Rajan 