A Bowl of Elusive

This is the third chapter of the Angela & Eric series. Here are the links to Part 1 & Part 2 . Read on to find what happened next. It had been two whole days since Eric and Angela spent that night together at his place. Eric had not seen her yet. They had been texting on and off, keeping the conversation light and avoiding the discussion of kisses and temptations as much as possible. Every now and then, Angela would drop in a term of endearment and make Eric feel lovelorn. Eric was half tempted to call out Angela for all the ‘mixed signals’ but he did not want to dig a hole for himself.  On the third day, it was cloudy in the morning and by the time afternoon came, it started drizzling. Eric texted Angela asking her if she wanted to get wet in the rain. Enticing as the idea was, Angela opted out on account of her tender health lately. She suggested they have dinner together if the rain stopped. Not one to let an opportunity pass, Eric commented that unless she wanted to eat on

My dear readers, this is the fifth chapter of the Siddhant-Ishika story. Here are the links to the earlier episodes: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |  Part 4 . I would suggest that you go back, read the earlier chapter, if you haven’t already done it and then come back to find out what happened next. Siddhant, like a secure modern man (that he was pretending to be), gave Ishika her space. But inside his heart, not hearing from her was wreaking havoc. Whatever happened between them that night, was haunting Siddhant and Ishika had just withdrawn herself. He was thinking about the promise she had made to him, that she’d never leave. “What happened to that?” he asked himself? And soon, his rampant low self-esteem kicked in. “Have I managed to drive another person away from my life?” he asked himself, with a sense of dread creeping in the back of his mind. That’s when he received a text from Ishika in reply to the one he’d sent. It read, “I just have been busy. I am not going anywhe

"A feeling which soon became a verse, a flood and a storm. Do read this poem with a lovelorn heart and celebrate new-found love." Ab jiye thoda aur, ke phir mar jaye hum? Tere labon pe hasi dekh thoda bikhar jaye hum. Tere aankhon mein shararat ka tinka sa jo hai, Usi tinke ke chaaro or aaj simat jaye hum. Tujhse koi rishta ho na ho, koi lagav sa lagta hai, Marham tadapte dil pe, aaj ghaav sa lagta hai, Tu dekh le aaj aankhon se, aur dil shadaab kar de. Haathon mein tera haath ho to sach bhi zara khwaab sa lagta hai. Teri ek jhalak paane ko dil ab bekaraar sa rehta hai, Lafzon mein mere na chahte hue bhi kuch ikraar sa rehta hai, Gaye dinon mein haar aur thokar ka aadi tha jo dil, Aaj tere siyasat mein wahan kuch pyaar sa rehta hai. Tera saath na mile to bhi aaj shayad ghum na karun, Bichad jayein aaj hum to bhi yeh aankhein nam na karun, Ye dil ajeeb hai, awaraa aaj tere haj pe nikla hai, Raah pe agar aaj zakhm mile, to bhi ye ibadat

Love stories through the years have led you to believe that all connections are instant and sudden. That people just fall in love at first sight, and live happily ever after. If you're older than twenty years of age, chances are that you're already disillusioned with that notion. You know better than to believe that fairy tales exist. You have lived the "real life" where meeting new people is a tedious task, putting yourself out there feels like a real burden and liking someone, genuinely liking someone doesn't come easily.  So when Ishika and Siddhant met for the first time, neither of them was naive or inexperienced enough to believe in 'love at first sight' or anything remotely similar to it. They had both had their own share of relationships and heartbreaks and were just exploring something new. Ishika in fact had no intention for it to be anything more than an evening out with a new guy. Siddhant was cautiously optimistic. Blind dates hadn'

As you grow up, fewer things surprise you. Eventually, you've seen it all, you've lived it all. There are very few new experiences to be had, very few things that excite you. Eventually, you lose the wonder you once had, the excitement you once felt and I think you just wither away and stop living. But don't underestimate the power of new things. Things that can surprise you, things that can knock your socks off, things that can take your breath away. Like meeting someone new, someone who fascinates you, someone who gets your heart racing, someone who invokes feelings you'd forgotten you had inside. All of a sudden, you're ten years younger, wondrous and hopeful. You can't stop thinking about it. About how good it made you feel. You're inside your own head again, reliving meeting that breath of fresh air, wanting it more. So much so, that it scares you. You wonder if you had that same effect on them. For some silly reason, you look for validation,

Disclaimer - This is a work of fiction and can get pretty graphic and explicit at times. Read it with an open mind.  It was a humid evening in Kolkata. I could see the puddles created by the rain from this morning. Somehow I had managed to get off early from work. I was visiting the city for a meeting with the team. I wasn’t very fond of Kolkata as a city. It was crowded and loud and unorganized but it had Rashmita. I knew her from my brief stint at the Oberoi Hotel, Mumbai. She had been an Industrial Trainee then and I was a manager-on-training. Being an employee, we considered all interns “kids”. She was still in college after all. It didn’t matter that she was actually older than I was, by a year or so on account of having started the vocation a few years later than I had. So, I was a little stand-offish when she’d asked me if I was single. It had seemed unethical to get involved with a “junior”. But her internship ended after a few months and she left. I did notice her abs