Tag: grief

emptiness (microfiction)

04.11.2025

[written on the train home from work, 6-7pm)

A: You said that there was nothing. After the jealousy. After the fire. What did you mean?

S: The numbness. The ache of the emptiness. The place that is not filled. The void. The abyss. Many words. For the feeling of hollowness. Of incompleteness.

A: These are words. They do not describe the feeling.

S: You want to know the feeling of emptiness? It is complete numbness. It is nausea. It is the inability to arise from the bed in the mornings. Read the novel by Sartre. That is its literary expression. Why ask me?

A: It is you that is my friend. Not Sartre.

S: You do not want a wise friend? You prefer my company?

A: I prefer the company of The Tiger. He is also wise, the wisdom of nature.

S: It is a dangerous game. The Tiger has teeth.

A: Didn’t you tell me that the Punjabis have a phrase, ‘Friend of friends’? Isn’t that the philosophy of friendship of The Tiger?

S: You are one that appreciates care, attention and consideration and kindness. An anomaly. An exotic rarity.

A: You have many friends. You exaggerate. Perhaps you should keep better company if you feel like that.

S: The special friend I am looking for… Where do you find the better company? I have looked in so many fields. So many that I thought had embraced me only to watch them scatter in the wind…

A: When the kestrel cannot find a catch in one field, he haunts another.

S: The kestrel is free. He does not have a golden manacle upon his claw. He has no ties to a place.

A: You too are free. More free than anyone else. The wild ungovernable beast…

S: It is true what they say. Emotion is a cage.

A: Forget emotion. Become cold and hard like this world.

S: Impossible. They have a phrase in Punjabi, the language and people you are so fond of. ‘Dilwala’, the one with a heart. I am ‘Dilwala’. Not them.

A: Forget being one with a heart. Become one that has power.

S: It is accomplished. The power of The Tiger is unrivalled. He has transformed the world around him wherever he goes. The light that he sheds is like the blinding rays of the sun. And for them and those, it is unbearable.

the game of dying (microfiction)

17.10.2025

Life had become a thing with thorns in it for many. A complicated and crushing thing. It was evident that happiness was only for the others. So now, the people did not want to live.

So they would go to the game of dying.

You could die any way that you wanted to. For a moment, you could feel the ease of death. Just for a few pounds. You could escape this thing called life and this trap that was the world.

The game of dying promoted itself as moksha, the Hindu ideal of freedom and departure from the chain of being and constant rebirth.

The downside was that even after dying, you had to go back into the world.

You could choose how you wanted to die. Poisoning. Being stabbed. Burning.

First, I started off by being poisoned. After all, was this world not poison that one had to swallow? It was exceedingly painful. The throat would swell up, there was severe nausea. It was hard to breathe.

My next death was the revolver. I would sit there with it, staring into the barrel of it, completely focused. I would forget about all the many problems and the unfulfilled cravings, of the friends and loves that had betrayed me. Then when I pulled the trigger, the beautiful oblivion…

But now, the death I chose every time was burning. It was the most painful death. Excruciating and unbearable. The most intense death.

They would watch us. The ones that had led us to death, they came in droves to watch us. The ones that had taken all the happiness would watch, eating popcorn, smiling at each other. It was an amusement for them and we were their clowns. They had always watched our suffering and poured petrol upon us while we burned. That was how the world went around.