Short Scribbles

A collection of independent short stories and thoughts. Each number point indicates a different thought/story.

These have been moved to, and new updates are being posted on my other blog, whose link is available here. However, I choose to let this post remain here as well, so that the date of posting it is recorded.

1. They exchanged pleasantries, and made polite talk. He thought hard about what the reason might be, but there could be no other explanation. They both knew it.

It had taken a thirty hour long journey, and a three hour dinner to realise that an old friendship had been lost.

2. She peeped into her father's room and saw him bending over, his hand moving fast. The computer's screen saver came on, as her tiny feet stumbled across the room and asked him, "Daddy, what are you doing?"

Her father wheeled around, realising that he had company.

He had wanted to do this, but not this soon. She had to grow up, she was probably too young for this now. "Do you really want to know?", he asked. "You might not understand."

"Please, daddy", she begged. He couldn't restrain himself. Hadn't he waited long enough? And it was she who insisted. He beckoned her to come closer and made her sit on his lap.

Half an hour later she was almost in tears. "This feels really dif-difficult daddy, I don't understand what you are doing." "Don't worry, a few more nights of this and you'll start liking it. You'll feel right as rain, I promise," he said. "And will you promise not tell your mother about this? Will this be our little secret?", he added nervously. It would be too much to answer for.

And so she did - it had taken more than a few nights, and she didn't know yet if she liked it or not, but had become quite comfortable with it.

She felt proud - this was big people's stuff. Who said calculus was for kids?

3. "You used me. Made me do your bidding. Had me with you for months.  And now you refuse to give me any credit", cried the application for which I refused to give five stars on Google Play. Or at least its developers did.

4. Seated in his car's back seat, he was answering a phone call from his boss urging him to reach soon when a hungry looking beggar knocked at his window. Before he could reach for his wallet, the signal turned green and his driver sped away, for they were getting late for the conference. He turned back, looking helplessly at the disappointed man who turned away slowly to return to his place on the pavement before disappearing into the sea of automobiles.

A tear trickled down his cheek as he wondered why he was even attending a conference on reaching out to the poor.

5. Three variants:

• She watched him - active every moment, excelling at everything with ease, his aloofness infective - She saw him laugh, run, write, win - fell hopelessly in love, giving herself up to him. Alas, if only she hadn't, she could've been all that and more.

• She watched him - active every moment, excelling at everything with ease, his aloofness infective - She saw him laugh, run, write, win - fell hopelessly in love, giving herself up to him. Alas, if only she had seen how he spent his nights.

• She watched him - active every moment, excelling at everything with ease, his aloofness infective - She saw him laugh, run, write, win - fell hopelessly in love, giving herself up to him. Alas, if only she had known what he did for a living.

6. Two variants:

• He changed himself - his appearance, his walk, his accent, his habits. If only she had accepted him for what he had been, she could've seen him smile more.
• He changed himself - his appearance, his walk, his accent, his habits. All of it diffused as smoke, when she broke his heart so cruelly.

7. The asked the veteran playwright how he did it. "Ask a simple question", he replied, "Answer it with a story forged out of truth. That itself will make people laugh and cry."

8. A man, upon dying, becomes a picture, a word. What are these, but pathetic articles of memory, trying in vain to hold back a long lost soul? A soul that has been caught by inescapable Death - that valley of no return. Of what use is this image, this name?

A man in another's heart is an inexpressible image - the only expression possible is a tear from a melted heart.

9. Is a common field/work/interest actively required to sustain a friendship? Sounds like a naive thought, but is it entirely deniable? The converse seems true - friendships born in the armed forces, colleges - in places where lives are similar, seem much stronger than others. Perhaps there is some truth to it?

10. All this effort, all this money,
      All this pomp, all this cheer,
      All just for this miserable man,
      To feel better about himself.

11. On the naive woman's love:

• When she falls for him, gives herself up whole, holding nothing back - not heart, not soul, not cloth.
• He was everything to her - her hero, role model, her favourite sportsman, her best friend and more - but to him, she was merely a playground.

12. Two variants:

• There will come a time when you will decide for me, his father had told him. Fifty years later, he remembered those very words, clutching his unconscious father's hand as he signed the form, requesting the hospital to remove the life support. "Had I known that it would come to this, I would've never wanted it," he whispered to himself, a tear trickling down his cheek.

• "Why did God choose for me?", she had asked a clergyman years ago. "I would've preferred something else, he should've asked me." And now, she requested the doctors to remove her husband's life support. Meeting her expenses was more important than keeping a paralysed man alive. Coming out, she announced to the rest of the family, "If it is God's will, so be it."

13. "Aah", said the veteran engineer in a contended tone, as he sat down to be put to death by the new execution machine. "Took me a lifetime of crime to get to see my own baby work."

Will update as I come up with new ones