Let’s speak first of the strange flower, titan arum. The Sumatran rainforests are its home, where it prepares for seven years for its first flowering. It blooms for less than twelve hours, during which time it lays siege to the whole forest with its odor. …

We are all agreed that life began in the oceans, but I wonder how. Could it have been that the ocean looked up and mistook the galaxies blazing with the violence of a billion stars for its own reflection? Or maybe the ocean felt like I do the frequently pointless…

Where a once militant atheist bends his knee to religious experience — In the four years that I lived inside my college, my soul was broken and remade and then broken again. I left it behind twelve years ago. It is funny that in all that time I have never known how to describe it. Don’t get me wrong, I know what…

Where the ghost of a ghost-story possesses Mamachan’s body — I read The last voyage of the ghost-ship for the first time at midnight at Thrissur bus stand, as mosquitoes buzzed around me, and someone new in town struggled to make the bus-stand ATM work to the amusement of the tea-stall ghedi(dude). Looking back now, the story wasn’t particularly great…

A personal narrative that is pure joy. — 1. Fight. If you don’t know how to, learn to. Fight your parents. Fight your friends. Fight the people who they say are your friends. Fight the woman you love. Fight the guy who pays your pay. But most of all fight the man you are at all times. Become…

Chapter 1: You are all falling for the liberal propaganda. Naik burst out of his room, his eyes red with cannabis, found his laptop on the steps and began typing furiously. “What is it now?” his wife shouted. “I think they have been lying to us all this time.” “About what? Is this is about the Jalebi wale Baba?” “No…

When God sees the butterfly hovering over the water lilies, hunting meaninglessly, in a meaningless world, He has to stop himself from pleading to the butterfly to pray to Him, ask him for a wish, anything, anything, so He can feel He is in control. Because you see, the butterfly is a worm which had its only prayer answered, and then forgot God, and then forgot the world.

(disclaimer: Images produced using stable diffusion) — Hello sir, I think your laptop camera is off. ymg’ shan’t mgr’luh ya ahororr’e — ok — I think there is a lot of static. Can you repeat that? Nafl llll mere shuggoth — Sir, should I start with the presentation? …

The first poems I wrote, I would sign at the bottom of the page and then slash off the name. Because even then I knew that the only way for a poem to be successful was for it to be greater than the poet. All poets wish to trample on…