A Successful Man, City Fire
A Successful Man
Posts by Category
- poetry 46
- issue1 26
- fiction 25
- issue2 20
- issue4 20
- issue5 20
- issue3 13
- nonfiction 12
- issue6 12
- feature 8
- photostory 3
- behind_the_cover 3
- editors_note 3
- non-fiction 1
- photo-essay 1
poetry
My Clarity
The process: the chipped paint-frayed window screens, the wasp nests of last year that don’t have a purpose, the tufts of old-man-gray dusting the yard; all ...
Leaving Home, Submerged
Leaving Home
Cardiac Arrest
This love heart that pulsed passion and fluttered and quivered daily in awkward agile anticipation has become clogged and congealed. Now, the HMO’s of love d...
At the Animal Shelter After Dark, A View of the Pacific
At the Animal Shelter After Dark
Just ice when the fire’s lit
If what they said Was interesting And their interests Were what they said
Two Poems
Essential Vocabulary for Transfolk
To the Poets of My Generation
I fear we are singing to ourselves, Chanting love songs Across a candle-lit and empty time Between the backs of our minds.
Three Poems
miasma theory
Slice of Life
They told us we’d found the true spirit of grindcore but all we had were walks on the beach and the inevitable fondnesses for horses and people that led to i...
My Mother’s Kajal
She brings the lipstick close to her lips, her lipstick becomes more wrinkles adjacent to the lips than lips, her hands tremble as she picks up the kajal1. ...
flowers for sale at a newsagent
not feeling recently so very inspired in spite of birds which wheel and scatter on the sky like salt on bacon.
Dissent
I wanted to write a dissent poem, but they said that not more than three lines can assemble together.
Discovering Your Roots
Your great-grandfather wasn’t part of the resistance. He served the war years on the wrong side. The best you can hope for is that he despised himself. Other...
COVIDcopia Cadences
Strange TMI factoids we learn trawling through progressions of non-dark websites regards all manner of TP [hint: not tooth paste].
What will you write
when your hands droop impotent and your thoughts are paralyzed. What will glimmer in this gleaming oblivion? Compose yourself first. Pick...
Windows
Windows in my house are dealers of bugs, friends with spiders. Shut so tight, if they were women, they’d have identical lips all aligned in a single line. ...
Two Poems
1947
Pile Driver
I am a twenty two year old reservoir Ready to cave in Like a suicidal blood clot I put my name in the goblet For a space program I know there is no returning...
Two Poems
Images from Childhood The memory quickly fades into origin: days of sunlit, ashen mornings, and the golden –
Refuge
It’s a circumambulation - For you and I A perpetual hunt for each other, And one that knows no end.
Limbo
Limbo. Dying undying. Living unliving. Where do I belong? I peek through whitewashed windows and see golden lights, Stars maybe, if stars resided on Barr...
Neighbourhood Bulletin
Once there was rain with the rainbow, friends with butterfly scents and snails touched by index fingers, back in the day when hands joined in the warmth o...
Two Poems
Working Class Houses
Platform Ticket for NDLS
A cow shits lazily at your entrance.
Home
One late and silent evening quite a few winters ago, Nosain took me in lovingly, as she did all her children before me.
Two Poems
For the Tourist at Lal Qila, Delhi
We Called Her Soul
Look down, little baby. there she sleeps in that modest, open casket, inhaling all her graces and hallelujahs in her serene passage to the good Lord.
Two Birds
Author’s Note: stillborn and stillbirth.
To Frieda, With Love
Frieda, listen little love Frieda. You have scars and burns and bumps-a, And stretches and cracks that may look rueful, But nothing little love, can make ...
The Oblation
It lasted for seven minutes, A hush, a bluff, a thrust, in and out It is all the rage to grope, fondle, maul. The boy was told in the strangest time, It was ...
The Happiest Place on Earth
I like to place bricks on my voice, So it will let out only whispers, When my eyes are listening, To the moonlight falling asleep, On seabed. I like to tie ...
Ten Talks
1. The stones arranged like a staircase that once made Pocket size waterfalls along the stream course Now turned into bricks you call house So when you brin...
Politics of the Divine
Tug O’ War? ‘Twixt Arabic verses, and dialectics? House of God— a pilgrimage to Mecca— a mandate? Pelting stones, and Satan— salvation? Diktats of Islam— a r...
Out of the Blue
Red has grown tired now, of the exhausting symbolism, crushed by the burden of representing love and blood, of inducing blissfulness in a loving heart, or in...
On The Edge of the Storm
The storm brews afar in the sea We can’t run and we know it You’re worried, or so you say And look into my eyes searching for answers I am no library — I ill...
Miracle-e-Din & Goa
Miracle-e-Din
For Hoshiarpur
hoshiarpur turns pink at sunset the setting sun casts a tint on nameless faces, nameless roads, nameless graves. the setting sun sets fire to the fields the...
issue1
Issue One Masthead
Co-Founders
Bepurdah
The history of oppression that women have been subjected to since time immemorial, had been taking shape in the Indian subcontinent with the invasion of the ...
A Late Evening in Summer, 2018
Six-thirty on the clock on 11th June saw the sun inching down the horizon, its rays sputtering, spent, like pens running out, leaving thoughts suspended mid-...
As The Sidewalk Ends
This story and its title are both inspired by Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends.
The Forking Bristles
The piece tries to interlace the narrative of Bertha Mason from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with that of a young, married woman. The latter is set in the pr...
The Candy Shop in Jammu
I saw her while I was being diagnosed with dysthymia – a major depressive disorder - at St. Stephen’s Hospital in Gurgaon. Which is kind of ironic in its own...
Untitled
The story is inspired from the video of the song “Sleep on The Floor” by The Lumineers.
Remembering the Indian Freedom Struggle Movement
The story of India’s resistance took different forms at different stages of British expansion. Therefore, revisiting these events serve multiple purposes by ...
Caste in our Communities
Caste is perhaps one of the most potent socio-cultural, and hence politico-economic, forces in India. Centuries old, it has governed humans and human activit...
Love Jihad
The first section of this article by Antara is a non-partisan take on the alleged insidious conversion campaigns while the second section by Malvika is a cas...
From Cha to Chai: The Story of how Tea made inroads into the Indian Household
“If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm yo...
On the Interconnectedness of Humanity, Nature, and Language
13.8 billion years ago, the expansion of a staggeringly hot entity - infinitesimal in size and infinite in density - resulted in a grand cosmic evolution. Th...
Conspiracy Theories 101
Conspiracy theories have been a part of our culture for a little more than a century now. For some, they are a tool of comprehending the veiled reality which...
Revisiting Kargil
The chilly winds at Drass, Kargil, do their best to keep the Tricolour fluttering at the Drass War Memorial to pay respect to the five hundred and twenty-sev...
Editors’ Note
The Medley has been many things in its lifetime, and wandered to many places before it was here. A blog. A newsletter. An academic journal. And then, a title...
fiction
White Block
The white expanse of the blank canvas stared back at me. It was pretty white, really. Whiter than snow but warmer than the empty pages of my pocket notebook....
The Seasons
Since she left her birthplace — a land of the seasons — her existence had been untethered: floating freestyle instead of settling to the comfortable rhythm n...
Fooling the Boys
I had been completely unaware of the plot until Bradley asked for a favour. It came as a surprise since my status at Springdale High didn’t rise to the level...
Cold
My older sister Nan and I climb up our makeshift treehouse armed with our latest swiped goodies. Vienna sausages. Saltines. Sardines. Plastic Merlot bottles....
Who By Sword
The first time God talked to Roger was in the detention hall in high school.
Rage
Is this what they’ll see, when they come to excavate our time? Those unfortunates from future History faculties or departments, who opt to major or speciali...
Interpreter on the X
Fyodor Markov-Smith had to take his fingers off the keyboard. He watched, stunned, as his hands shook. He could not make them stop. But then he never imagine...
Fire of the Forest
The forest was drenched in a dull violet light as a blue sun pierced the canopy. Her eyes gazed thoughtlessly at the trees that loomed titanic over her. She ...
1992
A black cloud of smoke near the intersection of Florence and Normandie drifted towards Mrs. Kim’s California Dry Cleaning store in South Central Los Angeles....
When Love Arrives
“Huh. Tumhare Nanu1 . Bahut popular hua karte the apne zamaane mein. Class ke baad, ladkiyan unke peeche peeche bhaag hi jaati thi – Sir, Sir, Sir. I have a ...
Westlake
Sundays meant that señoras would get up before the sun to set up their small food stands, taking their kids along to help. You could get hot drinks and hot f...
Ghost
A paintbrush between slim fingers. A heartbeat. A single breath that slips away and curls against the ghost sobbing on the floor. A trickle of sunlight reach...
Snapshots of the Flowers in My City
While talking about why she didn’t write linearly, Virginia Woolf asked, “is life like this? Must novels be like this?”
Bukcheon
Three years. That’s for how long I didn’t go back. I don’t have an elaborate excuse for it, to be honest. I had a decent job in the city and going back to th...
Villars-Sur-Ollon
Villars-Sur-Ollon 15 July 2016
The Lament of the Damned
She sat down after an hour of hard work. Her body did not need rest; her mind did so she sat. The morning had just begun and life in the city was already bus...
The Guilt of Detachment
As I sit in the balcony of the three-storeyed building I’ve called home for the past one year, coughing multiple times because of the smoke coming from the t...
Dadi
She had two favourite children. One died young. And left her bitter. Vengeful. Shocked. She was afraid of evenings and bullets since then. But she often told...
Cracked
When the cracks first appeared, she decided to ignore it. Who would care for it anyway, those blemishes on the wall. It was his job and he just may do it onc...
A Late Evening in Summer, 2018
Six-thirty on the clock on 11th June saw the sun inching down the horizon, its rays sputtering, spent, like pens running out, leaving thoughts suspended mid-...
As The Sidewalk Ends
This story and its title are both inspired by Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends.
The Forking Bristles
The piece tries to interlace the narrative of Bertha Mason from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with that of a young, married woman. The latter is set in the pr...
The Candy Shop in Jammu
I saw her while I was being diagnosed with dysthymia – a major depressive disorder - at St. Stephen’s Hospital in Gurgaon. Which is kind of ironic in its own...
Untitled
The story is inspired from the video of the song “Sleep on The Floor” by The Lumineers.
issue2
Editors’ Note
Contrary to popular belief, the most important step, the hardest step, of a journey is not the first one. As Sanderson says, it’s the next one, the second on...
The Lament of the Damned
She sat down after an hour of hard work. Her body did not need rest; her mind did so she sat. The morning had just begun and life in the city was already bus...
The Guilt of Detachment
As I sit in the balcony of the three-storeyed building I’ve called home for the past one year, coughing multiple times because of the smoke coming from the t...
It’s Moo
There was a lecture on a particular concept of Carl Rogers that was being taught in class, when the month of September started. And you know how September is...
Dadi
She had two favourite children. One died young. And left her bitter. Vengeful. Shocked. She was afraid of evenings and bullets since then. But she often told...
Cracked
When the cracks first appeared, she decided to ignore it. Who would care for it anyway, those blemishes on the wall. It was his job and he just may do it onc...
We Called Her Soul
Look down, little baby. there she sleeps in that modest, open casket, inhaling all her graces and hallelujahs in her serene passage to the good Lord.
Two Birds
Author’s Note: stillborn and stillbirth.
To Frieda, With Love
Frieda, listen little love Frieda. You have scars and burns and bumps-a, And stretches and cracks that may look rueful, But nothing little love, can make ...
The Oblation
It lasted for seven minutes, A hush, a bluff, a thrust, in and out It is all the rage to grope, fondle, maul. The boy was told in the strangest time, It was ...
The Happiest Place on Earth
I like to place bricks on my voice, So it will let out only whispers, When my eyes are listening, To the moonlight falling asleep, On seabed. I like to tie ...
Ten Talks
1. The stones arranged like a staircase that once made Pocket size waterfalls along the stream course Now turned into bricks you call house So when you brin...
Politics of the Divine
Tug O’ War? ‘Twixt Arabic verses, and dialectics? House of God— a pilgrimage to Mecca— a mandate? Pelting stones, and Satan— salvation? Diktats of Islam— a r...
Out of the Blue
Red has grown tired now, of the exhausting symbolism, crushed by the burden of representing love and blood, of inducing blissfulness in a loving heart, or in...
On The Edge of the Storm
The storm brews afar in the sea We can’t run and we know it You’re worried, or so you say And look into my eyes searching for answers I am no library — I ill...
Miracle-e-Din & Goa
Miracle-e-Din
For Hoshiarpur
hoshiarpur turns pink at sunset the setting sun casts a tint on nameless faces, nameless roads, nameless graves. the setting sun sets fire to the fields the...
issue4
When Love Arrives
“Huh. Tumhare Nanu1 . Bahut popular hua karte the apne zamaane mein. Class ke baad, ladkiyan unke peeche peeche bhaag hi jaati thi – Sir, Sir, Sir. I have a ...
Semesters with a Side
We go through jars without realizing their capacity to contain more than liquids, millennial cakes, knick-knacks and loose change. Stationery is capable of s...
Windows
Windows in my house are dealers of bugs, friends with spiders. Shut so tight, if they were women, they’d have identical lips all aligned in a single line. ...
Two Poems
1947
Pile Driver
I am a twenty two year old reservoir Ready to cave in Like a suicidal blood clot I put my name in the goblet For a space program I know there is no returning...
Westlake
Sundays meant that señoras would get up before the sun to set up their small food stands, taking their kids along to help. You could get hot drinks and hot f...
Two Poems
Images from Childhood The memory quickly fades into origin: days of sunlit, ashen mornings, and the golden –
Refuge
It’s a circumambulation - For you and I A perpetual hunt for each other, And one that knows no end.
Limbo
Limbo. Dying undying. Living unliving. Where do I belong? I peek through whitewashed windows and see golden lights, Stars maybe, if stars resided on Barr...
Ghost
A paintbrush between slim fingers. A heartbeat. A single breath that slips away and curls against the ghost sobbing on the floor. A trickle of sunlight reach...
Snapshots of the Flowers in My City
While talking about why she didn’t write linearly, Virginia Woolf asked, “is life like this? Must novels be like this?”
Neighbourhood Bulletin
Once there was rain with the rainbow, friends with butterfly scents and snails touched by index fingers, back in the day when hands joined in the warmth o...
Bukcheon
Three years. That’s for how long I didn’t go back. I don’t have an elaborate excuse for it, to be honest. I had a decent job in the city and going back to th...
Behind The Cover
Photographs, for me, always serve as a powerful medium of bringing about stories that can be visualized by the audience. Through my frames, I wish to knit pe...
Editors’ Note
Displacement is a word we come across in many different contexts over the course of our life. To be displaced is to not be in the same place one was before. ...
issue5
Behind The Cover
I took this particular photograph on the 18th of January, 2020. On that day, my pelvis ultrasound scan report came out and it was found that I had cysts in m...
Just ice when the fire’s lit
If what they said Was interesting And their interests Were what they said
Who By Sword
The first time God talked to Roger was in the detention hall in high school.
Two Poems
Essential Vocabulary for Transfolk
To the Poets of My Generation
I fear we are singing to ourselves, Chanting love songs Across a candle-lit and empty time Between the backs of our minds.
Three Poems
miasma theory
Slice of Life
They told us we’d found the true spirit of grindcore but all we had were walks on the beach and the inevitable fondnesses for horses and people that led to i...
Rage
Is this what they’ll see, when they come to excavate our time? Those unfortunates from future History faculties or departments, who opt to major or speciali...
My Mother’s Kajal
She brings the lipstick close to her lips, her lipstick becomes more wrinkles adjacent to the lips than lips, her hands tremble as she picks up the kajal1. ...
Interpreter on the X
Fyodor Markov-Smith had to take his fingers off the keyboard. He watched, stunned, as his hands shook. He could not make them stop. But then he never imagine...
flowers for sale at a newsagent
not feeling recently so very inspired in spite of birds which wheel and scatter on the sky like salt on bacon.
Fire of the Forest
The forest was drenched in a dull violet light as a blue sun pierced the canopy. Her eyes gazed thoughtlessly at the trees that loomed titanic over her. She ...
Editors’ Note
Dissent
Dissent
I wanted to write a dissent poem, but they said that not more than three lines can assemble together.
Discovering Your Roots
Your great-grandfather wasn’t part of the resistance. He served the war years on the wrong side. The best you can hope for is that he despised himself. Other...
COVIDcopia Cadences
Strange TMI factoids we learn trawling through progressions of non-dark websites regards all manner of TP [hint: not tooth paste].
1992
A black cloud of smoke near the intersection of Florence and Normandie drifted towards Mrs. Kim’s California Dry Cleaning store in South Central Los Angeles....
issue3
Editors’ Note
When one of our staff members, suggested “Local Flavour”, we weren’t sold on the idea. In our initial discussions, we felt that as a theme, it had almost one...
Behind The Cover
I’ve often observed a certain solidarity in all of my favourite photographs. I had a sense of direction for them, seconds before I even took them. It’s almos...
Villars-Sur-Ollon
Villars-Sur-Ollon 15 July 2016
Epiphany
In retrospect, everything is fine. Just fine.
Two Poems
Working Class Houses
Platform Ticket for NDLS
A cow shits lazily at your entrance.
Home
One late and silent evening quite a few winters ago, Nosain took me in lovingly, as she did all her children before me.
Fight Club: A Political Discourse on Modern Man
What does it mean to be a man?
Two Poems
For the Tourist at Lal Qila, Delhi
nonfiction
Epiphany
In retrospect, everything is fine. Just fine.
Fight Club: A Political Discourse on Modern Man
What does it mean to be a man?
It’s Moo
There was a lecture on a particular concept of Carl Rogers that was being taught in class, when the month of September started. And you know how September is...
Bepurdah
The history of oppression that women have been subjected to since time immemorial, had been taking shape in the Indian subcontinent with the invasion of the ...
Remembering the Indian Freedom Struggle Movement
The story of India’s resistance took different forms at different stages of British expansion. Therefore, revisiting these events serve multiple purposes by ...
Caste in our Communities
Caste is perhaps one of the most potent socio-cultural, and hence politico-economic, forces in India. Centuries old, it has governed humans and human activit...
Love Jihad
The first section of this article by Antara is a non-partisan take on the alleged insidious conversion campaigns while the second section by Malvika is a cas...
From Cha to Chai: The Story of how Tea made inroads into the Indian Household
“If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm yo...
On the Interconnectedness of Humanity, Nature, and Language
13.8 billion years ago, the expansion of a staggeringly hot entity - infinitesimal in size and infinite in density - resulted in a grand cosmic evolution. Th...
Conspiracy Theories 101
Conspiracy theories have been a part of our culture for a little more than a century now. For some, they are a tool of comprehending the veiled reality which...
Revisiting Kargil
The chilly winds at Drass, Kargil, do their best to keep the Tricolour fluttering at the Drass War Memorial to pay respect to the five hundred and twenty-sev...
issue6
A Successful Man, City Fire
A Successful Man
My Clarity
The process: the chipped paint-frayed window screens, the wasp nests of last year that don’t have a purpose, the tufts of old-man-gray dusting the yard; all ...
White Block
The white expanse of the blank canvas stared back at me. It was pretty white, really. Whiter than snow but warmer than the empty pages of my pocket notebook....
From the Time Keeper’s Almanac
Church of St Augustine, Goa
The Seasons
Since she left her birthplace — a land of the seasons — her existence had been untethered: floating freestyle instead of settling to the comfortable rhythm n...
Leaving Home, Submerged
Leaving Home
Fooling the Boys
I had been completely unaware of the plot until Bradley asked for a favour. It came as a surprise since my status at Springdale High didn’t rise to the level...
Cold
My older sister Nan and I climb up our makeshift treehouse armed with our latest swiped goodies. Vienna sausages. Saltines. Sardines. Plastic Merlot bottles....
Cardiac Arrest
This love heart that pulsed passion and fluttered and quivered daily in awkward agile anticipation has become clogged and congealed. Now, the HMO’s of love d...
At the Animal Shelter After Dark, A View of the Pacific
At the Animal Shelter After Dark
feature
photostory
Semesters with a Side
We go through jars without realizing their capacity to contain more than liquids, millennial cakes, knick-knacks and loose change. Stationery is capable of s...
Bepurdah
The history of oppression that women have been subjected to since time immemorial, had been taking shape in the Indian subcontinent with the invasion of the ...
behind_the_cover
Behind The Cover
I took this particular photograph on the 18th of January, 2020. On that day, my pelvis ultrasound scan report came out and it was found that I had cysts in m...
Behind The Cover
Photographs, for me, always serve as a powerful medium of bringing about stories that can be visualized by the audience. Through my frames, I wish to knit pe...
Behind The Cover
I’ve often observed a certain solidarity in all of my favourite photographs. I had a sense of direction for them, seconds before I even took them. It’s almos...
editors_note
Editors’ Note
Dissent
Editors’ Note
Displacement is a word we come across in many different contexts over the course of our life. To be displaced is to not be in the same place one was before. ...
Editors’ Note
When one of our staff members, suggested “Local Flavour”, we weren’t sold on the idea. In our initial discussions, we felt that as a theme, it had almost one...
non-fiction
From the Time Keeper’s Almanac
Church of St Augustine, Goa
photo-essay
From the Time Keeper’s Almanac
Church of St Augustine, Goa