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 ea...

A strange thought cropped up on my mind today. What if humans didn’t need sex? I know the whole purpose of sex is reproduction, but what if human beings didn’t need sex to reproduce. What if they just grew people in labs? Or what if people lost the urge to have sex one day? How would that change the world? What started as a random weird thought took the form of an anthropological debate inside my head. Would romance even exist if sex didn’t? There’s parental love, there’s love between siblings and friends, but would there ever be the romantic love between couples if sex wasn’t in the equation at the first place? For that matter, would couples exist if not for sex? People woo each other and court each other because there’s that sexual tension, that chemistry which comes from the potential of sexual congress. Wonder what would be the base of relationships if the sexual tension was eliminated completely. Would relationships even exist or would people just live alone in single pers...

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 an...

Disclaimer: This story contains explicit description of sexual acts with characters of the LGBTQ spectrum, and might not be palatable for all audiences. If you can keep an open mind towards that, read on. I have never written on this topic (LGBTQ) before but I tried to handle it with the sensitivity and the respect it deserves. If I offend any sentiments, it'd be unintended and I would like to apologize in advance. Rishabh had promised himself that he’ll be open to new experiences. He had always had a very high sex drive and an open mind to go with it. His approach to sex could be described as hedonistic and carnal. Fortunately, his partners in the past had shared his knack for wild and exploratory sex. But as anyone who’s ever been addicted to anything, Rishabh needed more and more of it to feel gratified. And after a while, his partners just couldn’t keep up with his escalating need for new and different experiences.  Lisa, his last girlfriend, had walked out on him w...

Here’s the fourth part of the Siddhant-Ishika story. Here are the links to the earlier chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 . Go read those and then come back to find out what happened next. At five in the morning, Ishika left Siddhant’s apartment, wearing a red kurta and white leggings. Siddhant paced after her. He wanted to see her off to her cab, but she stopped him by the elevator. She put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. Then the elevator door closed and she was gone. He went to the balcony and just got a glimpse of her walking towards the car downstairs. When she left, the exhaustion and the hopelessness of the previous night hit him hard and he collapsed on his bed. But he couldn’t sleep. Because he’d made a deal with the Devil. And the Devil had collected his dues right away. As he lay on the bed, sleepless and disoriented, Siddhant looked back at the events of the previous night. He couldn’t help thinking about those glorious moments that made up that night,...

Describing the night Shireen & Sashank had as awkward would be the understatement of the century. Their rhythm was definitely off. And it was but natural, since they hadn’t met for a while, after the last time. And the last time was tumultuous, to say the least. They had spent a couple of days in bed and then they’d freaked out in the aftermath. So obviously, when they decided to meet again, it was a little awkward where neither knew how to behave normally.  They downed a few drinks at the club and took a little walk, talking about this and that. Sashank slyly kept on inserting praises disguised as silly observations. The subtlety wasn’t lost on Shireen. Her situation had changed since the last time she met him and she felt liberated. It wasn’t like she didn’t have any apprehensions about this, but the volume on the apprehensions was turned way down. Plus Sashank had an air of confidence that drove Shireen crazy. Midnight was approaching quick and Shireen had to do t...

Aarav stared at his sweaty palms. Why the hell were his palms sweaty in December? He wiped his palms on the side of his denim, and adjusted the little overnight backpack over his shoulders and moved towards boarding gate number 51 at Terminal 3, IGI airport. The crisp morning breeze hit his face and ruffled his hair as he stepped out into the open airfield to board the long domestic flight. He loved the feel of cold air on his ears. Aarav was feeling nervous, for he was heading on to meet Avni. Avni was a girl Aarav knew back from his school days. They'd re-connected recently and he was now boarding a three hour long flight to the city she was in to meet her. It was a totally impromptu decision and he didn't know what to expect. Avni and Aarav always had a spark but had never managed to make it into a real flame. But in the last few months, things had changed. Things had escalated quickly when Aarav wrote about school days and mentioned Avni with nostalgia and Avni notic...

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...

Often, what you really think is not the wisest thing to say out loud. So we end up internalizing a lot of shit. It happens to all of us. It harms us psychologically. But hey, who cares about psychology in a country where the run for basic needs is an all-consuming affair. I have no statistical data here, but I think it is safe to assume that the number of messed up psyches that we have in India is way higher than any place else. With that note, let me tell you what this article is going to be about. I am going to reveal what I really think about things, because frankly, I think keeping them inside is unhealthy. And it is gonna be fun because I have a really active mind with a whole lot of opinions which do not line up with the conventional way of thought. And I am going to be very systematic about it. I will break my opinions up into sections by topic and relevance. So here goes… POLITICS I grew up with the belief that this country was a secular one. I identify with tha...